[toomuchtodo]

The canonical method for this is to setup a checking account for your child, provision a debit card for them, and transfer funds in as needed from your own accounts they have no access to (so the blast radius is limited to the amount you transfer into their account). This breaks down if your kid discovers your banking credentials (use 2FA!), transfers funds without your knowledge, and you refuse to press charges.

You could also issue an authorized user American Express card to your child if they're old enough (13 is the minimum age), and enable spending limits (they are the only issuer I'm aware of that has this feature, Citi only supports it for their Costco card and the Barclays implementation is very limited). This only works if where your kid needs to spend accepts Amex of course, and will not protect you from "friendly fraud".

Parenting is hard.

[bawolff]

Children aren't actual idiots.

Teenagers are old enough to know that stealing 20k is wrong. Some sort of massive parenting failure happened here, and the end result is that the parent is out 20k. Parents are responsible for their children, and actions have consequences.

[toomuchtodo]

The part of your brain that internalizes consequences doesn't fully develop until you're around 25 years old. I've helped provide additional knowledge/context, it's up to you to work on the empathy (your comment comes across very much as "sucks to be you", which is both unrealistic and very uncool considering the reality of parenting and human development).

Children and teens very much are idiots, generally speaking (see: previously high teen birth rates, ongoing high teen auto insurance rates, and the principal of sealing juvenile court records to give teens a “do over” for most criminal offenses).

https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?Con... ("Understanding the Teen Brain")

[bawolff]

Not fully developed is not the same as not developed at all. This isn't an example of a rash purchase. The kid stole the parent's password and transfered money between the accounts over a period of 15 days. That means premeditation and repeatedly doing it over 2 weeks. Its not a case of /omg these shoes are so cool im going to buy them anyways eventhough i cant afford it/. This was planned and carried out over a period of 15 days.

I understand that kids can get carried away and do stupid things sometimes. But its not like teenagers have no control over their actions. We (mostly) don't see teenagers holding up banks, going on mass murder sprees, etc.

I'm not suggesting punative punishment. I'm only suggesting that the parent take the direct consequences of the kid's actions. If your five year old breaks something in a store, nobody really thinks its the five year olds fault, but the parent still has to pay for the broken item. The teenager definitely has more culpability than the five year old of this example.

[waste_monk]

>The part of your brain that internalizes consequences doesn't fully develop until you're around 25 years old

You're providing excuses for a teenager, when children become capable of understanding that stealing is bad around age 3 to 5 - he is far too old for the "idiot kid" excuse to fly. Even if he didn't get the whole "having a criminal record can ruin your future life" in the concrete sense, they should absolutely know better than to steal. They said they had no idea it was so much, but even so it is beyond belief that they thought no one would notice tens or hundreds of dollars stolen, let alone tens of thousands, or that they could get away with it.

Frankly, society is far too eager to excuse criminal kids who do things like this and then cry about having to face consequences. The parents should file a police report, it will be a very harsh lesson to the kid but he has screwed up on an incredible scale. I do feel sorry for these young offenders who have their future seriously altered, but empathy should not get in the way of the parent being made whole from the crime comitted against them.

[bawolff]

> The parents should file a police report, it will be a very harsh lesson to the kid but he has screwed up on an incredible scale

I actually disagree. If it was my kid, i would be willing to eat the 20k in exchange for protecting them from the legal system. That's not to say there wouldn't be consequences, i would be pretty livid, but 20k would be a small price to pay. This may be influenced though by (like many hn'ers) being employed in the tech industry, where 20k is a substantial sum, but not lifesavings amount of money.

The issue I see is that streamers are real people, with hopes dreams, etc. They may have already spent the money donated to them, etc. Sure if it was actually stolen its reasonable to require them to give it back. One of the reasons the penalty for stealing is harsh, is because it doesn't just hurt the person stole from, but also the people who were paid in the stolen money. The parent wants to be made whole without any of the consequences coming back to either the son or the parent. This isn't fair to the streamers. Either the parent needs to take the responsibility for the stolen money (which she has elected to do by not pressing charges, but it comes with a 20k price tag) or needs to throw teenager under the bus in order to be made whole under the normal legal system. In the article, the parent wants both to shield the kid from the legal system but also disavow herself from his actions. But its unfair to other hurt parties to have both. Either the parent takes on responsibility for the kid's actions or she doesn't. There is no magic loophole where the parent takes responsibility but doesn't end up with consequences, nor should there be.

[Zanni]

She did. "The son was given a debit card with a nominal balance to buy school lunches ..." but "He then began transferring money from his mother's account to pay for the transaction." The son defeated the protections in place.

[tsomctl]

Make sure that there isn't "overdraft protection" bullshit on your checking account. Otherwise it would defeat the purpose.