No suicide. No prosecution.

I had a call tonight from the case worker at the social services organisation, who very carefully and professionally advised me that a person, whose name he could not reveal, had contacted the organisation and told them that they were concerned my son was possibly suicidal. Given the nature of this information, the organisation needed to let me know.

Earlier today, I approached my son to ask him to come with me to get the new school uniform (I'm still banging on at him about the need to go to school - silly really). As I opened my mouth to say, 'we need to go this morning to get ....', his response was negative, aggressive, abusive and dismissive. As I stood in front of the door way and tried to talk to him, he showed an incredibly well honed ability to belittle, mimic and abuse me all at the same time. Quite extraordinary. Anyway, it was like pushing the proverbial uphill, so I stood aside and let him leave. Then, against all my newly learned instincts, I followed him to see where he was going. Now, I haven't driven around looking for him for some time (thanks to already experiencing the futility of doing this, and my own exhaustion). To cut a long painful story short, I phoned the parent at the Focker resident where he went into, and had a conversation that had us both facing off. In my corner, while appreciating that she was offering a place for my son to hang out, I was asking her not to support his truancy and disappearing acts from home; in her corner she said she had no control over his presence in her house, she always asked him if I knew where he was, and she'd given him lectures about going to school. In her view, she was providing a safe space for my child as he obviously didn't want to be at home with me (ouch), he was a lovely quiet boy and no trouble to have in her home (ouch again). After a long conversation, the space between us was not easily navigable, so we agreed to retreat and consider options.

And then I get the phone call late this afternoon: way out here on my lonely parenting planet, I am being told that an anonymous person calls an agency concerned that my son is suicidal.

Forcing long calm deep breaths, I asked myself: is he, where is he, how serious is this, what else do I need to know, and what happens next. My first response was to request the number of the Emergency Psychiatric Services at the hospital. Then I asked for details about this anonymous tip off. It helped that I am aware that the ethical boundaries of confidentiality can be broken if a counsellor is aware that a client may be harming or intending to harm someone else, particularly a child, or if a client is intending to harm themselves. And so in this case, details were very important for me to know what I was dealing with - an attempted suicide, a threat of suicide, a plea for help, erratic and dangerous behaviour...? I really had no idea and needed to know. After checking through the appropriate channels, the case worker came back to me able to reveal some of those details.

(BTW, I am spinning out while all this is going on ....I'm not that tough).

As it turns out, the Mrs Focker who I had talked to earlier, had passed this on to her case worker.

Suicide. Scary scary stuff.

I was advised to wait for her to call me to discuss what she knew. She didn’t. I eventually got hold of her. An hour had gone by and I had no idea where my son was, what state he was in, what I was facing. (I was a bit shaky).

According to her, she had never said my son was suicidal, not at all.

I asked her again, to clarify this. No. Not at all.

So, we had a laugh and talked about the weather. Not.

I seriously think at times I really am on a different planet from anyone else. I’ve just been informed that my son may be suicidal. The case worker suggested that in his view, Mrs Focker was not being malicious by informing the authorities, but was doing so out of care and concern. And then Mrs Focker tells me she never said or implied suicide. Am I somehow living in a parallel universe? That this could be reported to me via an agency, then withdrawn???

Let’s just say the conversation I had with Mrs Focker was challenging. My note pad is covered with scribbles reminding me to keep my Heart at Peace. It helped.

Is my son suicidal? I do not know but I don’t think so. Are you? Your neighbour? Your uncle? Who knows what lies beneath. What I don’t know is whether the supposed safe house parents out there who have my son at their home during school hours, and for all nighters, would contact me if they did think my son was in danger. That scares me. Or am I just on a different planet thinking that communication between parents is the norm?

At least there was good news today: the case worker also informed me that it's unlikely the authorities will seek to prosecute me for not sending T1 to school. Not really worth it given he's almost 16. Excellent news in amongst a lot of bad bad bad conversations. How ironic: I’m not going to go to court for not sending T1 to school. Made my day.