What you do when your child steal things?

well frankly thats exactly what i did if i was the first to discover it and i was with 3 and it worked as far as i could ever tell. it also worked with me when i was growing up. the thing that worked with my other 2 is they got taken down to the jail and spent some 2 hrs. behind bars when they were caught by a store and by the time i got called and picked them up they had learned their lesson believe me.

Dont beat the child if they steal the things. Punishment is not good way but to teach very well and say the stolen things is not good.

so how would you handle the situation?

Thankfully I never experienced this problem with my two girls. If they had ever did such a thing I would have made them take back the item stolen and apologize for taking the item. Then they would have been punished for a week or two from their favorite thing to do at the time. Not giving a punishment will create more problems down the line. They need to learn from their mistakes, in my opinion.

Make the kid 'pay for it' (i.e. 'give up something special,' since kids don't/shouldn't understand that that's what "money" is), and then take the stolen thing away from him. I remember when I was young, I misunderstood the "you break it, you bought it"-concept as more like 'break it, and it's yours' (rather than what it actually means, 'you break it, and you've gotta pay the owner for it' ) I was with my family on vacation in upstate New York, and we went to an Antiques-Shop. I saw an old pinball-machine I wanted, and--armed with my 'break it = bought it'-misunderstanding--I scratched the glass a little in the corner. Long-story-short: I paid for the machine, but they threw it away (or something ... wherein I didn't get to keep it )

I haven't tried to experience that, if ever I'll the child talk and I'll listen to him or her. Then, let see what will be next. I am sure, there some reasons why they did it.

First thing I did with my children is to teach them stealing is wrong in the first place. Out of all my children, the only one who stole, that I know of, was my oldest. She was probably about 7 or 8 at the time and we had left the store and somehow either her younger brother or someone saw she was eating candy we didn't buy. So my husband took her back into the store and gave her money, (that she had to pay him back for when we got home) and made her apologize to the employee and gave them the money for the candy. By making my daughter responsible for her actions, she knew that we did not take stealing lightly. Then we did another lesson in explaining why stealing was wrong and ever since then, she hasn't stolen and as far as I know, my other children have not either.