What's a mother to do?

In My Humble Opinion
1

So here’s the story:

I’m not a mother. One of the women that I work with has 4 kids (all boys) She’s a single mom and a good one. Three of her boys are good. The 4th isn’t.

He skips school. A lot of school. At 15 he is not old enough to drop out yet or even to get a job. Since he has missed so much school he has been transfered to an alternative school and they are supposed to be more strict than usual and whatnot. He still isn’t going to school. They have an automated system that is supposed to call the parent if their kid isn’t in school. Problem is, it calls the house and since she is a working mother she isn’t there to get the call and so he intercepts it and erases the message before she gets home. She recently found out that he hadn’t been going to school because she called the school to find out about his progress after the first couple of weeks and found out that he had skipped over half of the days.

They had to go to turancy court and were fined ~$500 for his non-attendance. He has no privledges at all. There’s nothing left for her to take away.

After a meeting with the school, they have told her that she is supposed to get him to go to school. She can take him there, but what is she supposed to do? Sit outside all day to make sure that he doesn’t leave?

Is this a situation that any of you have faced? Should it be the responsibility of the parent to do more? If so what? Is the school just dropping the ball now and it’s hopeless?

2

Well, I hate to say it, but there’s nothing she can do. I had a friend who walked her kid into school, and the kid split out another door.

My son was cutting school and not doing his assignments (we had lots of problems at home) and he ended up dropping out. They don’t need your permission once they turn 16…

All your friend can do is tell the kid he’s making a mistake and try to maintain a sense of order in the home. My kid regrets his decision today, and I’m sure this kid will, too. Some lessons have to be learned the hard way. I’m sorry your friend has to go through this. It was the hardest part of my entire life.

Incidently, my son and I are fine now. He makes enough money waiting tables to get by. Some kids just gotta take the hard road.

3

Speaking as one who worked with Juvinille offenders at a placement facility, she may need to just put him in the hands of the law. If he’s on probation and skipping school, he will get locked up. Behind bars there are schools, that’s where I taught.

4

I’d haul his little butt down to juvie and hand him over. I’d let 'em press charges for whatever they could, let 'em lock him up and I’d turn around and say “so long.”

Then I’d go home and cry and wait a week or so before he heard from me again. That oughta be enough time for the juvie people to put the fear of the Lord into him.

I’m also a big believer in camps for rotten kids. Friend of mine’s granddaughter ended up in one out west and in 10 months time not only had she straightened up, she LOVED the place, didn’t want to leave and had slammed through TWO and a half years of high school. She’s not even 18 now and is in college – but then this girl was never really rotten, she just got mixed up with a really bad person. Once that influence was removed and they got her into an environment where she had to earn EVERYTHING she had, she totally changed.

5

On rare occasions, I do respit shifts for a short-term placement facility for juveniles. When I started there, they explained that half the kids end up there because they’ve commited a (non-violent, non-felony) crime, but the rest of the kids are either a. between group homes or b. were brought before a judge at their parents behest.

If option B is a possiblity in her area, it might be a good idea. After short-term placement (60 days in the place I know about) most of the kids get to go home and don’t go on to a long-term placement. It’s apparently enough of a wake up call to get through to most kids. It’s drastic, but if she’s being fined…

6

I don’t disagree with any of the advice offered so far, but I’d also suggest, if it’s not already been done, to have him tested and counseled to try and find out why he doesn’t go to school. Is he being threatened? Does he have a learning disability? Substance abuse problem? Bad teachers? Not challenged? Without knowing and understanding his background it’s a little tough to give advice.

Also, how old are the other three kids? Was the “bad one” always this way, or did something change in his life? If the other three are younger it could be a portent of things to come. If they’re older maybe they can offer some insight into their brother’s behaviour.

7

When I was still in my teens, My mom would threaten to throw us out in the streets if we didn’t go to school :eek:

8

maybe there’s more to the story, but in the original post it sounds like the worst thing the kid is doing is skipping school. that’s bad enough, but it’s nowhere close to using or selling drugs, or stealing cars, or running with gangs or robbing people on the streets. it’s a little too early to write him off as a “rotten kid” or send him to juvie jail. suppose he gets locked up and gets badly hurt by older inmates, which by all accounts is not unlikely at some facilities. how would you move forward from that? i second the notion that the focus should be on why he doesn’t want to go to school. he should at least be tested for learning disabilities and depression. if he can’t do the school work or understand instructions school will just be humiliating, which might seem like a pretty good reason to split. maybe an adult who doesn’t have a direct role in the disciplinary process (a coach? a clergyman? another relative?) could take him out for a big mac and just ask him what’s the problem? it might also be worth looking into whether the school system has some kind of independent study or home study option. if he’s capable of doing school work but just can’t stand classrooms (for whatever reason), maybe he could study at home and earn credit by exams. for most kids, school is pretty much the center of their social lives. if he feels a need to cut himself off from that, something pretty awful must be going on, at least in his mind.

9

Seems to me that’s the school should be taking more responsibility - if she’s fulfilling her duty to get him into school, they should be making sure he doesn’t leave. they should also be exploring the reasons why he hates school so much. Plus, they should be willing to use more than one contact number i.e. they know she works, so should leave messages at work or use her cell phone number.

My daughter doesn’t skip school, and generally stays out of trouble these days. However, when she was younger I was often hauled into school for a ticking off. Basically, single parents are often bullied into accepting everything is their fault. It’s easier for the school that way. What I did was talk to a few people and find out what the responsibilities of the school were, then make it quite clear to the head teacher what I was prepared to do and what I expected of them.

Her worst fault now is not passing on information. I’ve now asked her teacher to email me with anything important, and I’m trying to persuade the school to send out newsletters by email as an alternative to expecting the children to pass letters on to parents.

I would suggests she meets with them again, and sort out a plan e.g. “I will make sure my son enters school each morning. I expect you to keep him here, preferably by finding out what the problems is and helping him work things out so that he actually wants to stay here. If he skips school contact me on this particular number - don’t leave a message at home, since I am unlikely to get to it before he does, and even if I do, it will be too late for me to do anything about it.”

10

I think I lived in Silicon Valley for too long. My first thought when I read about the messages being erased was, “Why doesn’t she just have the call forwarded to her cell phone?” Because, like, EVERYBODY has a cell phone, right?

Ay, chihuahua.

11

I think that this boy is actually the Middle child of three. He is 15 and is kinda in a rebellion I think. His father has taken him to his house for the time being because he works swing shifts and will at least be able to be home while school is in session so that the boy can’t just skip and go home.

She has tried to have the calls forwarded to her work phone or cell, but the school is being obstinate about that for some unknown reason.

He was a straight A student until these last few months. He has only been in one fight that I know about, and that was settled by law enforcement. I agree about the testing for depression and such, and will pass it along.

I was one heck of a rebel when I was in High school, but my rebellion never included skipping school for some reason. I think it was just more fun ro perpetrate mischief at school rather than away from it. :slight_smile:

Mike

12

This is more Mrs. Kunilou’s area of expertise, but we’ve been married for 23 years, so I can suggest a few things.

First, she should try to get a psychiatric review for her son. If she can’t afford that, she should contact her county health department or work with the school counselor to find out what resources are available.

Hopefully, that would reveal whether the child is staying away from school for a specific reason, or whether it’s part of a larger pattern. If it’s part of a larger problem, and the child is diagnosed with a behavioral disorder, by federal law, she has the right to ask that he be educated in the “appropriate” and “least restrictive” school setting. Since he has a history of truancy, the most “appropriate” school might be a lock-down facility (it’s not that scary, it just means that all the outside doors are locked except one, which is guarded at all times), or even a 24-hour residential school. At this point, she can force the school into developing an “Individual Educational Plan” – basically a written contract that outlines the child’s diagnosis, how it was arrived at, how the school intends to teach to overcome the handicap, and what additional resources may be required.

I don’t know why the school is being obstinant about where they call her. Who knows, maybe the school’s database only has one space for a phone number. She could try getting a pager and telling the school that’s her only number.

If the administration continues to balk, it’s time to employ what the advocates call “due process” and the rest of us call “lawsuit.” Many times schools become much more reasonable to work with when a parent says the magic words, “I’d like a copy of your due process procedures, please.”

At this point, she’ll need a lawyer, preferably one who’s skilled in this particular area. I can’t recommend where she could find one, but the local Legal Services (formerly Legal Aid) organization and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) may be able to give her a referral.

Above all, she needs to get started on this. In many states, the obligation to provide education only goes to age 16, and after that her son and the school may decide to part ways, regardless of her wishes. She’d have much less legal leverage at that point.

13

it sounds like there might be some clues in your last post:

so what happened a few months ago? did the parents split up? did the family move? did a relative die? was anybody sick? did the kid maybe apply for something (a scholarship? a place on a team?) that he didn’t get? is anybody still after him in connection with the one fight “that [you] know about”? make a timeline–what happened around the time he stopped being a good student? also, is it possible that something happened to him that you don’t know about because he’s too ashamed to talk about it? pedophile priests, to consider one possibility, have been very skillful at intimidating their victims into silence.

if the people who run this school refuse to call the parent at the telephone number the parent provides (“we’ve got our rules”), that may reveal their attitude toward the whole process of teaching and education: rigid, bureaucratic and inflexible. That might be why the kid isn’t happy there.

14

Not being a part of the family, I only hear the gossip that she chooses to share and things that she is upset about. Nothing really notable has happened in the family that would cause him to act out that I have heard of. No splits in the family, no deaths, no sports or anything like that. He is a bit upset with his father right now about his parents splitting up, but that was when he was very young. Seems to have the idea that his dad cheated on his mom, though they have both told him that is not the case and the father is still very involved in his life.

He has gone to school the last two days while he has been staying with his father. It could be that he was just able to leave school and go home when he was with his mother because it was convenient. Maybe she could just change the locks and that would solve it. He may be staying with his father in any case.