"But I don't WANT to go to JAIL!"

     Impulsivity. According to the red squiggly line under the word, it's apparently not seen as a real word, but I disagree so I'm going to leave it.
     I think that may be part of the problem we are having with J and stealing. She can't control her impulses, and has a hard time understanding cause and effect. I googled "ADHD and Stealing" and it came up with dozens of parents expressing the same issues with their ADHD children. Don't get me wrong though, I'm not trying to give my kid excuses for every poor choice she makes in her life. I assure you that stealing, along with so many other crappy decisions I expect she'll make throughout her childhood, will NOT be tolerated regardless of any excuse she might seem to have to make said choices. To prove this, after I caught her stuffing keychains into her coat pocket at Walgreens this afternoon, I drove little miss J to the police station in order to let a police officer speak with her about stealing.  This is kind of a "last resort" effort after the countless times I've grounded her to her room, forced her to walk back into the store and hand the stolen item to a checker and apologize, sat down with her and just talked with her about the consequences she might face, and even trying to put her in the "victim's" shoes by asking her how she would feel if someone broke into our house and stole all our stuff. None of these tactics have worked so it was time to take things a step further!
     J cried the entire way from Walgreens to the police station, with responses like, "I don't WANT to go to JAIL! I don't want to be away from you!" my favorite was, "but I will starve because they have yucky food in jail!" I am still not clear about how she determined that their food is gross (although I have no doubt she's probably right!) but it certainly was funny the way her mind went! Once we got there, we ended up waiting in the lobby for over a half hour which effectively took a lot of the "punch" out of the whole thing, but I stuck it out and waited because had we decided to leave, I think that probably would have taught her the opposite of what I was going for. Once the officer finally came out to speak with us, he explained to her that if she kept stealing that she would be taken from me and be forced to live somewhere else with other "bad kids." I honestly didn't really LIKE him referring to any child as a "bad kid" because we've always taught her that there aren't really bad PEOPLE, but bad CHOICES... but I suppose if the technique gets her to stop stealing.... whatever.
     I sincerely HOPE that this radical choice I made to try to give my five year old a bit of "tough love" works. I don't want her to fear the police, and think they are out to get her, but I do want her to be aware that there are consequences to actions and that I may not always be there to help her out of any mess she may get herself in to as she grows up.