Skip to main content

And.... Another Bad Decision

I had a lovely birthday dinner/dessert celebration tonight (birthday's on Monday) and was about ready to go to bed when I got a call. The 14 year old kid of the family I've been working with has been arrested. For drinking and driving. At age 14. (Barely).

His mom is, understandably, freaking out. She's been working as hard as she can to keep the family together. They have nowhere to live after August 31 and no money to find somewhere. She doesn't have a bank account or credit history so most places wouldn't rent to her even if she did have the money. She's a recovering addict trying to stay clean through both of her boys watching their friend be murdered, be in danger themselves, have to relocate, and deal with the anger/fear/guilt that comes from seeing a friend be killed. Now her oldest one is in bigger trouble.

I'm so angry at him, because he knows better. He took the car keys when she was sleeping and went with his cousin who was staying with them after the two of them had been drinking. He was driving without a license, at 14, while drinking, and drinking while underage. In a car that probably has no registration or insurance, and which his mom had just bought so that she could work and not be dependent on welfare. The consequences for this are going to be far-reaching.

I'm furious with him and I'm worried and I feel guilty, although I don't know why. I can't do anything and even if I could bail him out, I wouldn't because I think he needs to know the consequences but I'm really really worried. And I'm worried about what the family is going to do with no job, no money, nowhere to live, no car, and now this to worry about.

If you pray, please pray for this family and this kid. They need help.

Comments

Anonymous said…
This is a major bummer. ~ Dennis

Popular posts from this blog

Stuffed Animals

There are several much more serious stories I was going to share, but I'm not in the mood to be made sad tonight, so I'll tell you all about the stuffed animals.  This is a post that needs images so someday when I have or borrow a working scanner, I will add the photos. A few years into teaching, I joined Freecyle.  For those of you who don't know Freecycle, it's a group of people in any given community who are on an email list to get rid of their old stuff and get stuff from other people.  It's a fabulous form of recycling. Somebody posted that they had a huge bag of stuffed animals in good condition to give away and I decided to grab it for my class. I thought that some of the kids would like the stuffed animals, but I certainly didn't think they'd all be into them.  Kids grow up really fast in that neighborhood, and when you have six-year olds talking about how they walk to school alone because their parents say they're "grown," and how

A Loss

  (I have been putting off finishing this blog post for months. You'll see why)  Today, I was cleaning a bookshelf and I found the journal from one of my third-grade students, who I call Fred in my book , in 2001. I still had it because he didn't come to the last day of school to get his stuff this year and I guess it got put in a pile and somehow I've kept it with me.  He didn't come to the last day of school, probably because his family was a mess: dad in prison, mom in an abusive relationship, all the kids (understandably) acting out violently. Fred was expelled from our school in second grade for hitting a teacher. Then he was expelled from the other school, I don't know why, at the end of second grade. He came back on the condition from the administration that he be in my class because I had him as a student in first grade and he listened to me and worked well with me.  We had a really good relationship, although Fred was definitely not easy to have in class.

A New Prison, Part Two

  Second very long part of the prison visit report.   After we got all the paperwork filled out and went through the metal detector, we got visitation slips with the name of the inmate, and made our way over to the other building for visitation. This is not maximum security so thankfully you can just sit next to the inmates, and not be separated by glass or have to use a telephone to talk.    First, you get a gate unlocked and go into a holding pen that is of course in direct sunlight (or rain if it's that season) and surrounded by fences topped with razor wire. You wait there until the gate at the other end is unlocked. This holding pen was a little bigger and less claustrophobic than the other prison (I do not have any claustrophobia and I came very close to a panic attack once at the other place) and they opened the other gate more quickly. Then you walk, again in blazing sunlight (or rain) to the visitation building. This one was less of a walk than the other prison but I still