How to act if a child has committed a crime

No matter how much impetus you put into a child's education, there are episodes in which you can not control your actions. Whether it is because of the closeness of his friends or because he is lost in adolescence, it is possible that in his day he was a good kid, become a teenager capable of committing a crime.

A somewhat difficult situation in which parents usually do not know how to react. What is the best way to overcome these moments? Judge Emilio Calatayud offers some clues from his experience prosecuting cases in which the accused are minors.

How do parents feel about crime?

According to judge Calatayud, the first thing felt by the parents When they are told that a child has committed a crime, it is disbelief. It is hard to believe that the person who has been raised and raised has done such a thing, so they prefer to think that everything has been a mistake. At this point, most of them usually take the child's part, exculpating him from all responsibility.

Later, during the phase of judgment in which it is increasingly difficult to avoid the fact that the child has committed a crime, the feeling of denial turns into shame. Parents prefer to be swallowed by the earth and suffer a lot. They do not know how to react and they sink into a kind of pain that is difficult for them to get out of first. It's hard to think that the child they educated has now done this.

How to react when our child has committed a crime

The best thing from the first hour is not to treat the child as innocent when 100% and accept that not all minors are good. We have to deal with the possibility that the child to whom he has been raised has been able to commit a crime. Only then, accepting this point can begin to seek a solution that in the first instance is to explain to the child that he must pay his debt to society.

The parents must make the child understand that they are very angry and exercise the authority that belongs to them within the family nucleus. The more you prove the guilt of the accused, the less you have to fall into the blackmail you make and not give the arm to twist. Only in this way will the son understand the mistake he has made and that he has something to return to the society.

Damián Montero