Most of us, given the options and depending on the situation would choose the easy way. As in: do the job and get paid, or fail to turn up and don’t get paid. Practice the piano and pass the exam, or don’t practice and fail. Turn up to sports practice and be on the team, or get booted off. Pay the mortgage or lose the house. Do the right thing at school or get expelled.
I was going to write about ‘loving detachment’ tonight, but that concept got trashed when I received a call from the school principal today and this other more pressing issue has taken precedence. Teenage son, aka T1, was stood down – that is, suspended - from school today. Not for the first time.
Every day this term that T1 has left the house, I have encouraged him to face up to doing the detention time to make up for his truancy last term, so that he can wipe the slate clean, get on with Term 3, and look forward to the rugby team tour later in August . Lots of positives, I said. I believe in you, I said. I don't hear a word you are saying, he perhaps thought.
And so, it transpires that he hasn’t gone to the last several detentions. On top of that, there was an incident that had a teacher send him out of class to the Principal’s office. (“Unfair”, T1 protested. “It is supposed to be three strikes then out”. His counsellor put to him the possibility of the teacher’s tolerance being stretched due to past incidents in class. T1’s reaction was predictable.)
The school has worked with us in the last few months trying to find ways to support T1, but I will find exactly how far the tolerance will be extended, at a meeting with the Principal on Friday. The consequences are not pretty.
Conveniently, T1 had a counselling session booked at 3pm today. Getting him there is the subject of another whole post. But we did get there. Almost 2 hours later, we emerged with a tentative agreement. I and other authority representatives will “leave him alone” (his core demand) if he: attends school, completes school work, respects teachers, property and other pupils and maintains his sports commitments. He will be home each night at 6pm for dinner, respect his mother and brothers and household property, contribute to the running of the house, be at home on weeknights and negotiate his hours to go out at weekends.
You can, counselled his counsellor, choose the easy way or the hard way. Believe me, he said, the easy way is by far the better way, and we are all here to support you in doing that. Easy way, or hard way? your choice.
Within 15 minutes driving from the city to home, he had told me to get fucked because I wouldn’t agree to drop him at a mate's house where he scores or uses dope, so he bolted from the car, and its been 7 hours since I last saw him.
I guess he’s chosen the hard way.
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