Changes

I’m no longer sitting on a jury – after three months the trial has collapsed, so I’m free. Hurray! It felt strange on Friday saying goodbye to the other eleven jurors, knowing that having spent hours together every day since November last year, we would almost certainly never see each other again. I am now at home again, blowing dust off the life I had before. Will is at home again too. He has been at MPW, a private sixth form college in Kensington, since September, taking three A levels in one year. It was a risk whether he would be able to cope with such a highly pressurised course. Having tried to do an A level course twice before, he wanted to catch up with his peers by collapsing two years into one. His personal tutor, Sarah, with whom I’ve had conversations almost daily, rang me last week on a much looked forward to day off I was having from court, last Tuesday, to say that Will had been sent home and that almost certainly he wouldn’t be allowed back. She sounded tired and bored by the whole thing, feelings I know well.

The college have had enough of him, they don’t want to deal with a student who lies so easily, doesn’t turn up to all his classes, and when he is tackled about what is going on lies again (only this time louder), getting aggressive if he is crossed.

‘He just doesn’t seem to care and never says sorry. All he’s got to do is tell the truth, but his lies are damaging and we have to think about the impact on other students’ I hear her say.

She tells me that Will plays tutors off against each other, and I presume she means that she has been personally hurt by this, and ask her if that’s right. She says yes, and sounds sad. The reference to other students is also because she had been called by another student’s mother the week before, saying that she thought Will had plans to stay at her house again that weekend and she didn’t want that. Will has been sleeping at friends’ houses for over three years now, and it’s always worried me that he might be annoying people, so it was almost a relief to hear that a family was complaining. 

Having been suspended three times before, we had received a ‘final warning’ letter about his behaviour at the end of the previous week: quite simply he had to turn up to every class and be punctual, or he would be expelled. There was reference to the way he looked too, I know I should be ashamed but I’m past that. The day the letter arrived Will was not at home and returned in the early hours looking awful. I let him in, and told him about the warning, and that the letter was on his bed. The next day he didn’t go into college. Resisting the desire to scream at him to get up and go in, I woke him up at the normal time, then left for court hoping he would have the good sense to go in.  

The college are excluding him now, with a view to him returning in September. I asked for a meeting to try to convince them to keep Will on, if only to salvage something for the amount of fees we have paid. The college is expensive, almost six thousand a term, paid for by Guy’s mother. You’d have thought this very fact alone, the huge investment that’s been made on his behalf, would have informed his behaviour, you’d have thought…….

Guy said he wasn’t interested in trying to persuade the college of anything, he felt that they wouldn’t be interested in what we had to say and rightly so.  I told his tutor that I thought Will was very ill, and having some sort of breakdown. She’s been very calm and helpful throughout.

Will had an appointment at the Community Drug Project in Forest Hill the next day, Saturday. I had taken Will to the GP the week before, making two appointments, one for both, so we could have a little longer with the doctor. We saw a locum, who was pleasant to us and recommended we self-refer to the local drug counselling units in the borough. This must be new, better than last time we were asking for help. Guess things must have moved on in two years. The GP gave me some numbers to call. I rang them immediately I got home, and spoke to a drug worker called John, at somewhere called the Dual Team in Catford. I got more out of my call to him than I had out of months of speaking to Will’s doctors at the Priory last year!

I told him about Will’s lack of concern for others, his destructive behaviour, how we have now had stolen property brought into the house, how Will had told me the day before that when he steals he gets a rush. ‘Oh dear, oh dear you must be very worried’ he said. He had a comforting voice, deep, with a soothing West Indian accent. He was listening to me, and seemed to know something of what I was relating – this was something I had waited a long time for. He began to tell me about the effects of cannabis, or indeed any drug, on mental health and moral outlook.

‘The things that you and I would find a turn-off, they find a turn-on. That’s what your son will mean by the rush when he steals. How much has he been smoking do you know?’

‘He’s told me that it can be around five spliffs a day sometimes, and at others not so much, but he still smokes every day, I think’ I said.

‘Right, well he needs to come off it for the sake of his mental health. What happens next is that the voices come in, and I wouldn’t wish that on any parent. But I would refer you to the Community Drug Project, the people we have here are much older than your son, their lives are in chaos – a lot have serious drug and alcohol related illness too.’

He then gave me his hospital mobile number telling me to phone him at any time! This was quite incredible, and gave me a lot of strength.

Will saw a counsellor and seemed to like her very much, saying she was ‘jokes’. Maybe some seed for the future here. Guy and I waited for Will in a small coffee shop around the corner, and afterwards we took him for breakfast in a greasy spoon next door to the drug place. Will had had a girl in his room the night before, (we had heard the front door go at around seven in the morning when she left) just to add fuel to the fire of not turning up to college that day when he’d been on a final warning.  I guess having a girl in his bed might be considered normal behaviour for a nineteen-year old, but Will just seems to up the anti with us. He knows he’s not allowed to sleep with his girlfriends here, he has no privileges because of the way he’s been. You’d think he’d want to get us on his side, you’d think………….

Guy talks about that now, in the greasy spoon, as Will tucks in to a bacon butty, telling him he needs to have his sex life elsewhere. Oh God, why couldn’t we just have a normal family life, whatever that is, a bit of peace and quiet as Guy would say. We have a difficult conversation with Will, he tells us that life has never been easy living with us, and that we have been very strict parents. Guy and I take this as a compliment. He also seems to have a new insight that his stealing is his way of self-harming, presume this piece of wisdom must have emerged from his meeting just now with Donna, his new counsellor. Hmm, that’s interesting. Yes, seeds for the future, I can feel it. I let Guy do most of the talking, and just observe the two of them. We all agree that Will needs to keep up his appointments, and he seems to agree.

We have had a peaceful time since then, on the whole. Will seems relaxed, he is no longer under pressure at college – living a feckless life Guy is calling it. MPW have agreed that Will can continue on a very restricted timetable, probably only two hours a week, with an individual tutor, to complete his AS’s, which will mean that if he wanted to continue to A2 at any time he can. He’s been at home with me all week, and seems very different. Almost certainly he has stopped smoking weed and for the first time I feel that the worst is over, I know it is. He’s been asked to go into college to meet his new tutor tomorrow. Guy is predicting he won’t be able to get up and won’t go in, and shouts at Will telling him just that and that he shouldn’t be going out. Will went out though, saying he’d be back by 11. He’s meeting his new girlfriend, a lovely girl who lives locally and with whom he was at primary school. The girl who left the house in the early morning the week before.

‘Why does he need to go out the night before he goes back into college?’ Guy is really building up now, after Will has left, saying I’m not with him over this (as usual), even though I say I don’t agree with it either.

‘I can’t stand him being around, everyone dancing attendance when he’s a liar, a cheat and a con-man. It won’t be long before I’m throwing him out again, I can see it. I can’t wait, I’m sick of all this. I loathe him’.

Of course he’s sick of it, but I wish he could flow with the changes a bit more. I told him tonight that I loved him more than anything else in the world, but there are such huge changes happening here, and I know that Guy finds it difficult to cope with change – as we all do. I’m doing alright with it, because I could see it coming, and I’m happy to embrace it. Now that Will is no longer acting out, I know that the other family members will feel that, and respond, sometimes in a negative way. Alex has become very bossy, and Guy is angry and confused expecting a return to bad behaviour at any moment. He is a lawyer, and makes predictions based on historical precedent. Many times he is right, but I can see that there is growth happening here for all of us. I need to more compassionate with my husband, but I need to remember that I don’t always need to be the peace-maker in the family. We are all going to feel the change in different ways, but one thing is certain that we are all growing – that is the gift in having a child like Will. And that is what we are all doing here – to grow – not to stagnate. I talk to Guy about this, but he seems unconvinced; he is in a lot of pain.

I can, however, let Will and Guy work out a new relationship between them, it has little to do with me. I am trying to rebuild one with my son, and it’s not easy. I’m very nervous around him, expecting him to be unstable and flip out at any moment.  We’ve had over a week of good behaviour from Will, without weed he is so different.

Guy and I went to bed tonight not talking, he’s so angry about Will going out, and I don’t know what to say without getting angry and spiteful too. He began to lose it when I agreed that Will could wash the car at dusk to make some money, calling it a waste of time doing it in the dark. I'm amazed he wanted to make money instead of stealing it!

© Debra Bell 2007