Having Neighbor Kids Over

I am proud of your son for having the guts to call over there to ask if he saw it. Hopefully it was not in an accusatory way.....and if not that's perfect. It alerts both the parents and the kid that something may have happened. I would want to know if I was the parent.

I would not allow that kid in the bedrooms anymore. Plain and simple. I don't like neighbor kids in the bedrooms anyway because they don't seem to ever clean up after playing.

Hope it's found....but a good lesson learned.

A few years ago my brothers (who were older teens at the time) had a neighbor over. The kid had never been to my parents' home before. When my mom got home from work she couldn't find her laptop anywhere. Hmmm, coincidence? Guess what the police found in the neighbor's home? My mom's laptop.

Hi M.-

So sorry that happened to your son. $14 is a FORTUNE at that age! Heck, it is a fortune at MY age.

Next time the neighbor kid comes over, I might consider having him 'help' to find the $$...

Perhaps his conscience will get the better of him and it will 're appear.

At least the parents are on notice if their kiddo becomes a 'big spender' all of the sudden.

Best Luck!
michele/cat

Didn't anyone use the bathroom before bed? If the kid was over yesterday, and the wallet was on the bathroom floor this morning, it seems like someone should have seen it prior to this morning. That just doesn't make sense to me.

However, my son recently got a wallet and has been leaving it laying around all over. We keep warning him of the chance of loosing it and have decided that if he does, it will be on him and a tough lesson learned.

I don't think your son can do much about this other than learn to put his wallet in a "safe" place where visitors won't find it. Good luck.

A few years ago one of my nieces (she was 13) was over and when she left I discovered my new, expensive nailpolish was gone from the bathroom counter. Anyway, I called her house, and asked her little sister if she had seen my nailpolish, and she said that the 13yo had taken it. I then spoke to her mom (my husbands sister) and told her what I suspected, what the sister said, and asked her if she could look for the nailpolish and talk to her daughter. That is the last time we spoke to my husbands sister. We still talk to her kids, but she won't have anything to do with us. No Xmas cards, nothing. I guess I shouldn't have said anything.

I'm kind of with MzKitty - doesn't make sense that no one would have seen the wallet on the bathroom floor between the time the neighbor left and the next morning.

A boy my stepson used to be very good friends with stole his YuGiOh deck and started selling it. Once we found out through the grapevine that J had SS's deck, DH got involved and confronted the kid and his mom. The kid/mom paid to replace any cards (all the good ones, of course) that J had already sold. It was not a good situation, but SS needed us to intervene. J is a troubled kid and SS says that now he's a waste of space. For a bit after the incident, SS stayed friends and we set up very clear boundaries. SS took NOTHING over to J's house. J wasn't allowed here to hang out. We put down these rules because we had to look out for the rest of the family, too. The friendship did not last long after that, but it came to an end on SS's terms.

We've also had incidents where a game was taken to a party by SD and the game went missing and nobody wanted to accuse another guest so it was just gone. SD similarly learned not to take things like that with her.

BUT there were also times when money or items just got lost by our kid. SD would clean her room and unearth whatever she thought was gone. We had to have discussions with her on the difference between "stolen" and "lost". She would often say something was "stolen" and later admit it was left behind by herself. Sigh. Or the time that SS took his video games to a match at another school and left them in a bag on the bench in the locker room. Um, sorry, but that was his own fault for not locking them up. And he lost his wallet with money and ID in it when he was a new driver...we made him pay to replace the ID.

So...this is a lesson for your son about his money. The money is gone. Either it was lost by his poor placement or stolen, but since you have no proof, then you can only deal with what you know - that DS left it on the floor. If you think that this child cannot be trusted, change the rules for future playdates and see how it goes. You can also consider asking again if he kid saw it or talking to the parents yourself (as your son is only 8). But at the end of the day, if it's not to be found, then it's something your son will have to learn to deal with, upsetting though it be.