I am posting this on here as, for obvious reasons, I am not allowed to post it on Facebook and I can anonymise it here more (although many of you are FB friends - or, indeed, family - as well but I hope you will respect the confidentiality of this). It may also explain the, perhaps, more odd posting I have done of late and my quite frankly rubbish chess playing. Mostly, though, I feel I want to leave it somewhere for posterity and don't write a diary. I appreciate it may seem disloyal to write this but I have had had a terrible six months (and beyond) and think I am owed this, at least. It’s less entertaining, more depressing and not as well written as, for instance, Adams house cat’s engaging anecdotes so don’t feel you have to read it but, if you wish to, get yourself a coffee and biscuit and plump up the cushions. (it is in three parts as, apparently, there is a character limit).
Bored Jr has always been drawn to the, let's say, seedier side of society. He was obsessed by those "Police Interceptors" programmes on Channel 5 and we were never quite sure whether he was siding with the good guys or the bad guys. He was quite disruptive and badly-behaved throughout school but did finish - with hardly if any bunking off - albeit without great academic results to show for it. He got into trouble outside school for a bit of shoplifting which, though we were understandably pissed off at the time, appeared to be par for the course for school-age teenagers - according to friends anyway. Notwithstanding this, we made sure he was suitably punished and apologised to the shopkeeper etc. He then went to an independent football academy where, while he did well at the football, didn't keep up academically and started missing lessons. Sure enough, he was thrown out of the academy, went to a rugby-based course doing some vocational courses and then started doing sports coaching at college.
We know now that Bored Jr started smoking weed somewhere in the last year of school and the start of college. Now, as someone who used to smoke a fair amount of weed at college age and beyond, I wasn't exactly alarmed but we did tell, in no uncertain terms, that he shouldn't, it was not to enter the house and he could get a criminal record from it which would restrict much of what he wanted to do especially travelling to places like the US. Not for the first time in this story, I look back and wonder if I could have been firmer but, as I know from my teenage experience, once he was out of the house it was very difficult to police. Perhaps horribly inevitably, it became obvious he had started dealing in weed - coming home smelling of it (and lots of it), wearing new clothes and staying out all night regularly. Obviously, this led to a lot of arguments at home, not least when we found weed and flushed it down the toilet. As he was now approaching 18, we were getting increasingly desperate as we knew he could get himself into real trouble and, in reality, there was little way we could punish him. To be brutally honest, if it had been us as kids, we would have been smacked about the head a great deal. However, firstly, I still don't think this is the right course - rightly or wrongly, perhaps the latter with hindsight - and, secondly, he is built like a brick shithouse and, even in the few unfortunate and regrettable physical confrontations we have had, I wasn't sure that I wouldn't end up on very much the receiving end. He had also, with the drug-dealing, got into a lot of fighting and, more worryingly, knives had started disappearing from our draw. We could have informed the police ourselves but couldn't bring ourselves to do it - more questioning that in hindsight - or we could throw him out of the house. However, we adopted Bored Junior and, while not sure how much of his behaviour could be caused by his chaotic start in life, we couldn't bring ourselves to be another family that effectively gave him up - again, we have wondered the wisdom of that in hindsight. Also, we knew that, were we to throw him out, he would end up staying with his drug-dealing mates.
The mates that he was hanging around with got increasingly less palatable or, indeed, visible. Another decision that we wonder about in hindsight is that we have always impressed on him to accept people as they are and not judge them by their background, appearance etc (how liberal are we?). To an extent, this was successful and, to this day, people say about how socially engaging he is especially to adults and younger children. He can quite happily communicate intelligently with vicars, local councillors even coppers. However, this meant that some of his mates that he brought and around - and, who often stayed - were, to be blunt, very dodgy looking and acting. Again, difficult to deal with as, firstly, we had no idea whether or not they were dodgy and, also, if we knew them, we felt we were a bit more in control (again, with hindsight...). Last year, however, he started hanging out with a very dodgy and well-known load of brothers down here. Parents, police, social workers, pretty much everyone knows about them here and there have been loads of vile stories of their actions from an early age. All three brothers have been in and out of prison multiple times and the father is a drug dealer who has pimped out their mother and used the boys to sell drugs on the street - they were seen in their primary school uniform. The police know all about them but can't do anything about the drug dealing as they threaten vulnerable kids and adults to keep them on their premises. No-one else can't do anything about them as they are effectively running a county line down here and are connected to London dealers. I have another mate whose 15 year old kid - more the normal age of those they groom - got involved with them and became off-the-scale out of control, smashing up the house, threatening his mother and sisters and ending up now in residential care but constantly trying to escape to get back here. My mate seriously considered getting some old associates from up North to 'pay them a visit' but realised he and his family would have to leave town due to any retribution. A mate of his had a kid who also got involved with them and, after a couple of years of hell, he ended up meeting them to pay off a drug debt and moving his son away. This lad's brother started the same way and his father gave all his hoodies and puffer jackets to the charity shop as he "wasn't going down that fucking route again". Like Bored Jr, all these lads come from secure middle class families. As you can imagine, this only increased our feeling of powerlessness although we did tell Bored Jr in no uncertain terms that he shouldn't be hanging out with them but, "they're alright when you get to know them" and "they look after me and don't let me get involved in all this". We knew that he was up to his neck in it but, again, our options were limited - the 'kicking him out of the house' option was toyed with but, to be honest, he was hardly there anyway. Even though I am not a violent person, I toyed with many scenarios of warning them away from my son but, of course, am not even in their league let alone their associates. Our limited options were talking to social services but they couldn't do much as he was approaching 18 although they offered him counselling and advice centres - which, on occasion, he did attend (in the odd short periods that he realised he was making a mistake). Again, talking to the police was even more off the table considering the reach of the family.
Bored Jr has always been drawn to the, let's say, seedier side of society. He was obsessed by those "Police Interceptors" programmes on Channel 5 and we were never quite sure whether he was siding with the good guys or the bad guys. He was quite disruptive and badly-behaved throughout school but did finish - with hardly if any bunking off - albeit without great academic results to show for it. He got into trouble outside school for a bit of shoplifting which, though we were understandably pissed off at the time, appeared to be par for the course for school-age teenagers - according to friends anyway. Notwithstanding this, we made sure he was suitably punished and apologised to the shopkeeper etc. He then went to an independent football academy where, while he did well at the football, didn't keep up academically and started missing lessons. Sure enough, he was thrown out of the academy, went to a rugby-based course doing some vocational courses and then started doing sports coaching at college.
We know now that Bored Jr started smoking weed somewhere in the last year of school and the start of college. Now, as someone who used to smoke a fair amount of weed at college age and beyond, I wasn't exactly alarmed but we did tell, in no uncertain terms, that he shouldn't, it was not to enter the house and he could get a criminal record from it which would restrict much of what he wanted to do especially travelling to places like the US. Not for the first time in this story, I look back and wonder if I could have been firmer but, as I know from my teenage experience, once he was out of the house it was very difficult to police. Perhaps horribly inevitably, it became obvious he had started dealing in weed - coming home smelling of it (and lots of it), wearing new clothes and staying out all night regularly. Obviously, this led to a lot of arguments at home, not least when we found weed and flushed it down the toilet. As he was now approaching 18, we were getting increasingly desperate as we knew he could get himself into real trouble and, in reality, there was little way we could punish him. To be brutally honest, if it had been us as kids, we would have been smacked about the head a great deal. However, firstly, I still don't think this is the right course - rightly or wrongly, perhaps the latter with hindsight - and, secondly, he is built like a brick shithouse and, even in the few unfortunate and regrettable physical confrontations we have had, I wasn't sure that I wouldn't end up on very much the receiving end. He had also, with the drug-dealing, got into a lot of fighting and, more worryingly, knives had started disappearing from our draw. We could have informed the police ourselves but couldn't bring ourselves to do it - more questioning that in hindsight - or we could throw him out of the house. However, we adopted Bored Junior and, while not sure how much of his behaviour could be caused by his chaotic start in life, we couldn't bring ourselves to be another family that effectively gave him up - again, we have wondered the wisdom of that in hindsight. Also, we knew that, were we to throw him out, he would end up staying with his drug-dealing mates.
The mates that he was hanging around with got increasingly less palatable or, indeed, visible. Another decision that we wonder about in hindsight is that we have always impressed on him to accept people as they are and not judge them by their background, appearance etc (how liberal are we?). To an extent, this was successful and, to this day, people say about how socially engaging he is especially to adults and younger children. He can quite happily communicate intelligently with vicars, local councillors even coppers. However, this meant that some of his mates that he brought and around - and, who often stayed - were, to be blunt, very dodgy looking and acting. Again, difficult to deal with as, firstly, we had no idea whether or not they were dodgy and, also, if we knew them, we felt we were a bit more in control (again, with hindsight...). Last year, however, he started hanging out with a very dodgy and well-known load of brothers down here. Parents, police, social workers, pretty much everyone knows about them here and there have been loads of vile stories of their actions from an early age. All three brothers have been in and out of prison multiple times and the father is a drug dealer who has pimped out their mother and used the boys to sell drugs on the street - they were seen in their primary school uniform. The police know all about them but can't do anything about the drug dealing as they threaten vulnerable kids and adults to keep them on their premises. No-one else can't do anything about them as they are effectively running a county line down here and are connected to London dealers. I have another mate whose 15 year old kid - more the normal age of those they groom - got involved with them and became off-the-scale out of control, smashing up the house, threatening his mother and sisters and ending up now in residential care but constantly trying to escape to get back here. My mate seriously considered getting some old associates from up North to 'pay them a visit' but realised he and his family would have to leave town due to any retribution. A mate of his had a kid who also got involved with them and, after a couple of years of hell, he ended up meeting them to pay off a drug debt and moving his son away. This lad's brother started the same way and his father gave all his hoodies and puffer jackets to the charity shop as he "wasn't going down that fucking route again". Like Bored Jr, all these lads come from secure middle class families. As you can imagine, this only increased our feeling of powerlessness although we did tell Bored Jr in no uncertain terms that he shouldn't be hanging out with them but, "they're alright when you get to know them" and "they look after me and don't let me get involved in all this". We knew that he was up to his neck in it but, again, our options were limited - the 'kicking him out of the house' option was toyed with but, to be honest, he was hardly there anyway. Even though I am not a violent person, I toyed with many scenarios of warning them away from my son but, of course, am not even in their league let alone their associates. Our limited options were talking to social services but they couldn't do much as he was approaching 18 although they offered him counselling and advice centres - which, on occasion, he did attend (in the odd short periods that he realised he was making a mistake). Again, talking to the police was even more off the table considering the reach of the family.
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