Bang! Bang! Reality knocking!

I didn’t get much done on my bloggy commitments this week. Reality came knocking on the door instead to tell me I HAD to take action.

On Thursday, Teen1 was suspended from school for the use of cannabis during school hours. He’s to appear in front of the Board of Trustees sometime in the next week. He’d wagged with three others, one of whom was found with weed on him at school, and then following questioning, all three admitted to smoking dope when wagging earlier in the week. All admitted it except my son, who vehemently denied it. His comment to me later: “ I’d never nark on my mates”. Even if they did to you? I asked incredulously. Apparently so, but as an afterthought, he did mutter that he couldn’t believe his mates ratted on him…. I suppressed a response.

My immediate concern was to see how far, deep or wide was my son’s state of mind, and his reaction to this latest narrowing of the path ahead.

An ambitious task indeed. Like a typical mother and woman, “I really wanted to know how he felt”!! Why do you always want to know how I feel, he muttered.

The thing about being off school though, is that I could engineer tasks to be done around the house, and so cleaning out the garage together on Friday allowed some engagement in the process of teen-to-mother “communication”. Short sentences. Quick jokes. Off hand queries. The occasional soppy stuff as I deliberately opened a box with all his preschool paintings (remember those?: the one of the 4 year old handprint with cute poem; and the ‘this is me and my family’ painting), allowing me a quick brush on his arm and a “you were sooo cute” rewarded with a ‘get out of here’ soppy smile back.

I didn’t discover much. He’s adamant he won’t go to the Board meeting. He apparently doesn’t care, he knows he is risking non-completion of NCEA qualifications, and tells me that he’ll find something else to do, some “course” (the Focker kids who have been expelled already are doing Kokiri or similar “courses”). Then he demonstrates that he is definitely 15 years old, when he comes in with the permission slip for a Geography class trip for me to sign, and as if a lightbulb goes on in his brain, suddenly realises he might not be able to go and is suitably abashed at the thought.

What is this all about?! I think it is about being 15, and male, and brain development impaired, and stuck in a corner with his mates, and making blindingly blinkered choices, exacerbated by a personality that is honing its propensity for arrogance, egotism and and and and… whatever else, it defies reason.

I’m going to go to the Board meeting with a well rounded presentation. When I’ve thought of what that is exactly.

The Board will doubtless make its decision on how my son presents himself, if he does turn up. It really is up to him now, in all his youthful immaturity, to find a way to get through this.

I do believe there’s a responsibility on me as his parent to present an argument, in this case not to defend his actions, or request leniency, but raise some broader issues. I know the Board is only there to do its job. I support that. Schools have to protect all their pupils, and I respect that too. But, if they expel my son, the likelihood of him passing NCEA level 1 this year drops exponentially, and therefore the statistics would suggest that he’s headed towards dropping out of the compulsory education sector, into unemployment, potentially crime, and time spent in a vastly different publicly funded government institution.

In which case, what is to be done? I can’t defend my son and anything else seems like protesting too much.

I’m going to fill my waking hours with researching and constructing this presentation for the Board. I’ll post the argument and if this were a discussion on, say, Nigel Latta’s Facebook community board it would be interesting to see what experience was out there amongst other parents and Trustees with experience on this matter. I am fast running out of intelligent, researched, witty or insightful commentaries on managing this situation. I know this blogspot software is cr*p and posting comments seems to be a technical nightmare for followers and readers, but any and all comments are welcome. Quickly. Email me if you don’t want to post a public comment – I know from past correspondence that more than a few of my readers have been down this path.

I’m all out of good ideas right now, but I’m sure some will come to me in the more lucid hours of the morning, probably around 3am, as I wait up this long night for the Teenager to come home.

I hope you are not waiting up for yours to come home. But, if you are out searching the streets for your child and you find mine, please can you send my boy home?....