" Pardon Me "                 

I was in the grocery store one day and saw something I've seen too
many times before; parents teaching their children to steal !

A mother was hunching her little girl. Apparently  the girl didn't want
to stuff the loaf of bread up her dress, as she was being told to do.
Then the mother told her to walk slowly, keeping her legs together so
the bread wouldn't fall out before they got to the car.

This mother was teaching her child to be a criminal. She was taking
away the child's life before she had a chance to live and make her
own choices. There are so many young kids in prison today and I'm
sure many of them were taught to be criminals by someone they know.

All the other times, I didn't speak up, but this time I was determined
to stop this. I could have just told the store managers, but I didn't want to
put the little  girl through that kind of trauma. Seeing her mother arrested and being
placed in a foster home was not the answer. Confronting the mother was.

I boldly went up to her and told her how wrong she was for teaching her child to steal!

The mother looked at me and calmly said,

"Oh, she's not my child. She's my neighbor's kid."