Souffle de Ipod

Today I opened the oven to make croutons and found an iPod.

It wasn't a mystery whose it was or who put it there. It had been indignantly reported missing and the usual suspects had been rounded up and its theft vehemently denied by the young perps. It's a good thing I'm somewhat of a conservationist. Had I bothered to pre-heat the oven we would have had a stinking, smoldering, toxic mess.

We have an impressive number of things go missing, stolen, or broken around here. Just since Christmas we have lost a scooter, a DS or two, two iPods, a skateboard, a skateboard truck, video camera and memory card, four pair of shoes, and....I've lost track now.

I guess that's not too bad considering our record over the last seven years. With hundreds of traumatized kids coming through our home, we're certainly not shocked by sticky fingers any more. We've had stolen from our home a great deal of cash as well as dozens of video games and dvds, books, jewelry and other personal items, a PS2,game system controllers, a laptop, a stereo, cell phones, cd players, hundreds of cds, and the list goes on.

We also have had a lot of kids steal food and our personal toiletry items such as toothbrushes and razors (yuck!) and small things like chapstick and lipstick, hair and skin products even when they are given their own.

And we've also had to deal with shop-lifting incidents with a number of kids. Many have stolen from one another or from school, as well.

Stealing is a very common problem when working with traumatized kiddos. A lot of this stems from them arriving to us in survival mode. It takes a long time for such kids to feel safe enough for these behaviors to stop. That's a whole other post though.

At least for right now it seems that some of the kids are having fun stealing and hiding other's belongings and then accusing the victim of doing it to get them into trouble.

So the vigilance and buttoning up continue and the little thieveses continue to deny and cry foul.

By the way, the croutons were delicious.