Fine for your opinion. Mine is one that says it isn’t. She’s 7. Maybe the problem is with the parents? Just a thought.
In this case, the parents knew that the daughter was only going to get a discussion from the desk cop, and may have even told the daughter the same... but her conscience was beginning to tell on her.
There’s a balance here. She didn’t get anything worse than a guilt trip of an afternoon. Nobody was even spanked. And again, for a HABIT that actually snared significant funds before it ended.
The author of this post described a pattern of behavior that goes beyond the usual case of shoplifting that occurs when a kid sees a toy or piece of candy that he wants. And yes, disturbed behavior can manifest at any age. I honestly cannot see anything wrong with trying to scare her out of that behavior—it is a concept called “tough love” and parents have been resorting to it to deal with problem behavior for years.
Some kids grow up just fine with soft parents and hands-off discipline that consists mostly of explaining to the kid that the behavior was wrong. Other kids need a more rigorous approach to discipline. The child described here seems to be of the latter sort.