Stealing is wrong, but it can take a while for that lesson to sink in with some kids. Years, in some cases! And sometimes, they might not even realize they’re being taught a lesson.

Redditor u/Pandalungs shared how his nephew ended up stealing around $300 dollars from his grandma (the OP’s mom) for Fortnite purchases. This happened over the span of a couple of years. The author of the post told the r/pettyrevenge subreddit that he decided to teach the child a lesson without even telling him about it. A lesson that is going to take a long, looong while.

Check out the full story below, dear Pandas. When you’re done reading it, we’d like to hear what you’d do in this situation. How would you react if you realized that your child or a young relative was stealing money from someone in the family? What do you think the right approach is?

Bored Panda has reached out to redditor u/Pandalungs with a few questions. We’ll update the article as soon as we hear back from him. We also got in touch with parenting blogger Samantha Scroggin, from ‘Walking Outside in Slippers,’ who was kind enough to share her thoughts about teaching kids lessons about how stealing is wrong and spending too much time in front of screens. You’ll find her comments as you read on.

Some video games are built to entice players to spend a lot of money on battle passes, ‘skins,’ and other stuff

Image credits: Alvaro Reyes (not the actual photo)

A guy shared how his nephew stole money from his grandma over a long period of time to spend it on Fortnite in-game purchases

Image credits: Taisiia Shestopal (not the actual photo)

Image credits: Pandalungs

The author of the Reddit post wrote that he’d been withholding birthday and Christmas cash gifts from his nephew, sending the money to his mom, instead. It’ll still take a few more years for the entire debt to be repaid. What’s more, it’s not even clear if the kid will realize that he’s being punished for what he did.

One redditor suggested that they could even send their nephew a card saying, “$25 has been paid in your honor to the Grandmother Fortnite Fund.” This might not be a bad idea if the end goal is to teach the kid a lesson, and not just repay his grandma all the money he took.

Parenting blogger Samantha, the founder of ‘Walking Outside in Slippers,’ shared her thoughts on how kids can be taught that stealing is immoral.

“I believe that teaching kids about stealing goes hand in hand with general lessons about the importance of honesty and being an upstanding person. If we can get our kids to have a firm grasp on ‘treat others the way you want to be treated,’ stealing would be contrary to that because no one wants to be stolen from,” she told Bored Panda.

“I’m fortunate that my kids are good people who are more likely to sneak a piece of candy from their own Halloween bags than take something from a store. But I can imagine a stiff grounding with favorite items taken away would be in order if I ever did catch my kids stealing.”

According to Samantha, how much time kids are allowed to spend in front of the computer, phone, or TV highly depends on each family’s individual situation. Moreover, it’s usually not just the kids that have an issue with far too much screen time: it’s us, adults, too.

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“Appropriate screen time is subjective to each family, and I would say that many of us adults wrestle with indulging in too much screen time at least as frequently as our kids do,” the blogger said. “That said, we have limits set on each of our kids’ devices.”

There are two issues at play here. One is that stealing is obviously wrong and that children need to learn the natural consequences of such actions. Withholding gifts, especially cash gifts, is actually a pretty decent way to approach the situation.

However, there needs to be a feedback loop: the child needs to understand, very clearly, why this is happening and that stealing will not be tolerated. Kids tend to look to their immediate surroundings for feedback on their actions. If there’s no feedback, they might not understand that what they’re doing is wrong… or that they can get away with it if they (pretend to) apologize.

The other issue is that there’s potentially a case of video game/internet/tech addiction at play here. Video games, especially free ones with a battle pass and microtransaction model like Fortnite, are literally built to be addictive. People are kept playing because they’re rewarded not just with the bright colors and constant action, but because there’s a thrill when you buy in-game skins, weapons, etc.

If you’re prone to gambling addiction or, you know, a kid, it can be incredibly hard to resist getting all of that cool, shiny new gear from the latest update. It really doesn’t help if you’ve got access to your grandma’s credit card info.

A while back, Bored Panda got in touch with writer and parenting blogger Molly DeFrank about limiting screen time for kids at home.

“When parents see amped-up sibling spats, if screen time ends and your child falls apart, if your child complains of boredom when screens aren’t an option: these are all good indicators that your kids might be ready for a screen break. The bad news is that kids are spending seven hours per day on digital entertainment. This is not good for our kids,” she told us during an interview, earlier.

“We get to decide how much and what kind of tech to allow in our homes. If the screen time status quo isn’t working in your house, confidently make a change,” she said. “If our kids only have two or three hours of unstructured time at the end of a school day, how much of that time do we want them consuming entertainment?”

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We might love technology, but too much of it can bring out some of the worst aspects in our children. “Putting tech in its proper place in your home will require a little trial and error. But allowing kids to develop skills and habits outside of the digital world will repay dividends for their mental, emotional and social wellbeing. (Interesting that many tech giants are some of the most screen-restrictive parents!)” DeFrank told Bored Panda before.

“Good parents can have different screen time plans that suit their unique family. But whatever that plan is, create firm boundaries. In the long-term, you’ll find that your kids turn their boredom into opportunity. We also need to ditch the idea that our job is to entertain our kids. We are not cruise ship directors, we are parents. Guide, help, love, nurture, cultivate, equip, mentor? Yes. Entertain? No.”

One internet user had a great idea about what the author of the post could do

Meanwhile, here’s how other readers reacted to the story about the thieving nephew

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