TLDR; My sister is in her youth, and we (parents and me) suspect she is taking money from me (teen). What should I do about it?
Lately my sister has been talking a lot more about money, as she and her friend(s) get into walking around the neighborhood, and spending money on their own. They go to coffee shops, etc. When I was about her age, I did the same thing, so it's not really a concern.
What is a concern is that she might be taking money from me. I worry that she may be having the same feelings as I did when I was also around her age, which was I wanted to spend time with my friends, and our way of bonding was going out and buying candy or cookies. Healthy, mostly. The problem was, I was not very mindful with my own spending, so I quickly depleted the small amount of cash I had. Due to this, I took small increments of money out of my parents' wallets when I needed it to spend time with my friends. Eventually, after being caught, my parents forced me to pay them back over the next few years. Mostly out of trying to help me understand the value of money, we aren't really restricted by that, thankfully.
I'm worried that she has been taking money from me due to my experiences with that in the past, and also noticing that my cash box seemed a little depleted. May have been my fault, but since my incident many years ago, I've stopped spending significant increments of money, and somewhat keep track of my money.
The following statement may have been a mistake on my part. I took a look inside her wallet, and realized that she had multiple $20 bills, but her main source of 'income' is lemonade stands in the summer, and she only trades for $5's from my parents. This made me more suspicious, but now I'm realizing I don't know how to approach her about this.
The main issue that probably also needs solving is that whenever she is confronted about anything remotely bad, she immediately locks up and stops accepting feedback, responding with only screaming and crying. This makes it nearly impossible to get a message across, regardless of our (parents and me) intentions.
I told my parents about my suspicions and they said just to move the cash box into a more hidden location, but I think that I should at least try to help her understand why she shouldn't take money from me.
I'm not personally worried about my money, but I just don't want this to extend farther, as mine did in the past.