Ouch!

The review meeting today was purgatorial. Jasper is unhappy at his new school and is being bullied. All my worst nightmares seemed to unfold before me...it felt like an exercise in masochism sitting there while other people detailed everything that is going wrong with him and for him. Can you honestly think of anything worse, for a mother? And he was in silent/sulky mode, refusing to speak or engage with the meeting.

Well we did go for our post-meeting drink...we found a pub that was quite cosy and let kids in. And he did loosen up at bit though it was hard to keep his attention in the busy pub. I gave him one of my pep talks. He gave me a big hug when I went off at the station. It was an incredibly stressful meeting and I thought, my God if ever I was going to go home and 'eat on something' as we say in OA, I would do that now. But I didn't...I just ate a normal, healthy meal.

I told him, in the pub, about the Serenity Prayer. I am going to write it down for him, on a card and send it, because it's something he'll need to really think about, but the thing I was really trying to get across was that he has to understand that there are quite a few things he CAN change as well as certain other things that he can't, and that at the moment I have good reason to believe that he is getting the two somewhat confused.

Jasper can be very frustrating sometimes. He has a tendency to abnegate responsibility for his behaviour. I've always known this and talked to him about it, and now, apparently, Jo is doing exactly the same. Can there be a more important lesson for anyone to learn than that we must take responsibility for ourselves? I only have to think of my Dad...of Jasper's Dad...and to some extent of Richard - to see how this trait can impact on a person's life and not in a good way. My Dad did me a favour in demonstrating to me the perils of blaming everyone else for your problems. Did I want to follow in his footsteps? Heck, no! He was a kind of 'anti role model'.

So you can imagine how I feel when I see Jasper making these mistakes. The difference is that he is young and still learning. What can I do but pray? And keep talking to him about it, and thank God, Jo does the same and as I said to him today, hopefully the two of us have a drip drip drip effect, like raindrops wearing away stone.

Well I'll need to be in touch with my HP quite a lot over the next weeks and months, asking for help and guidance, and just praying for my boy. There is so much he can do to help himself, and really, only a limited amount that others can do, however well-meaning. It is the hardest thing to take a step back. You don't want your beloved only son to suffer at all and yet he has to go through this...it's a challenge, even a rite of passage that he has to face and survive and I know he can do it...it could even be the making of him.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.