To Catch a Thief

Well, the saga continues...



The principal spoke to my son's class today about the pilfered lunchbox items (still ongoing), but my husband is working on taking things to a whole other level...



by installing an alarm circuit in the lunchbox, triggered by a rubberband. Personally I think this would likely give the teacher a heart-attack or be seen as some sort of terrorist attack. I'm trying to talk him down. Right now the only thing stopping him is that the rubberband is a little 'sensitive'.

Just Desserts?

I have a little situation. Two weeks ago my younger son (2nd grade) came home and told me that I didn't put a dessert in his lunch. I assured him that I had--that's the best part of a lunch, after all. So, he said he guessed then that somebody had taken it. I wrote it off, figuring it was a fluke--maybe it had gotten lost or thrown away, but we decided that we'd put the dessert in the front pocket of his lunchbox instead of the main compartment, just in case. Then Monday this week he asked me why I was giving him such small lunches. Turns out he was missing both his dessert and his croissant. So...I emailed his teacher to let her know the situation, and I started showing him exactly what I was putting into his lunch.

She was upset to hear that this was happening in her classroom and evidently lectured the students on how unacceptable it was to touch or take someone else's food. She also put my son's lunch behind her desk for the day. She emailed back that she didn't expect it would happen again and if it did, she had a brave student in her class. That night my son came home with half of his dessert missing--it could have happened before 'The Talk'. Then Wednesday and Thursday nothing was missing. But today again he came home and told me he didn't have a lunch dessert (it was two yellow-creme Oreos) and I hadn't packed him a snack (I had--I always put it in the side pocket of his backpack). Arghhh!

So I sent another email to his teacher this afternoon to let her know the latest. I'm not sure what she will do, but I would be content to give her another shot at solving the problem. My husband, on the other hand, wants to doctor up a couple of Oreos, smearing cayenne pepper into the yellow creme. He figures if they eat their pilfered treats at school, they'll be found out as soon as their mouth is on fire. And even if they don't, the hope is they'll think twice about taking someone else's food again.

I feel weird about this. On the one hand I want this kid to stop stealing, and ideally, he should be caught. On the other...this kinda feels over the top. And I think we'd be painted as bad guys if the eating happens in school.

I'd love some second opinions...

By the way,
Thanks for all your good wishes--and thank you for the award, Al! I will put together a post about it shortly!