I hesitate to blog about this lest you all judge my parenting skills, but we're all friends here, right?

My daughter is a thief.

She stole a pair of sunglasses from Kmart last week and then, here's the kicker, proceeded to look me in the face and LIE to me about it all weekend.

This would be...you guessed...the 5-year-old (the one with penchant for temporary tattoos and non-stop adventure).

It goes down like this. We're at Kmart. I'm looking at the discounted girls winter jammies ($5 -- time to stock up for next year, moms and dads) and she's wandering around looking at the sunglasses in the aisle. I couldn't find the jammies I wanted in the size I needed, so we left. An hour or so later after we go to WalMart, Lauren is in the car wearing new sunglasses.

I asked her where she got them & she said they were out of the machine at WalMart (I had given her 50 cents). Well, they had Ariel on them and I knew they didn't come out of that machine. I turned around and looked her right in the eye and said, "Where did you get those sunglasses? Don't lie to me."

She stuck to her story.

Later that weekend, my older daughter holds up the plastic holder the sunglasses came on and asks..."what's this?"

I was driving. One glance in the rear view mirror and I knew what it was.

"Give that to me!"

Sure enough, there's a Kmart price tag and UPC on it. I was mortified.

"Lauren, this is a Kmart tag. You STOLE those sunglasses from Kmart."

She still tried to stick to her story, but she was busted.

She cracked. And, she started crying and saying she didn't want to go to jail and yatta, yatta, yatta.

I told her that she would be taking them back to the store and she would have to apologize.

A mommy friend said that's exactly what she would do. Another suggested I make her go to the store, apologize and then pay for them with her allowance.

Has your child ever stolen anything? What work...or didn't work for you? What would/did you do? Is she destined for a life of crime?