15^th March 2016

Dear Billy

We are really proud of you the way you have started to make some changes in your life, and we have had glimpses of the happier Billy we used to know. This weekend was, however, very difficult and exhausting. It was good to have a more normal night’s sleep on Friday, but then you spent most of Saturday, Sunday and Monday nights awake. For most of the time during the day you were in bed or asleep, even missing Jo’s birthday tea on Sunday. There was no opportunity to have a proper conversation with you, and you became increasingly angry and abusive. Refusing to return to your digs on Monday as planned made the situation worse, and meant that you could not attend your course. You left your room in a terrible state, with no attempt to clear up any of the mess.

If you want to come back here again there need to be some real changes.

1. You must be engaged in education, work or training for at least 15 hours a week, or at least have evidence in the form of a letter or email confirming a start date to do one of these things.

2. You need to get more help to deal with underlying anger issues. It is up to you how you go about this – whether you go back to your GP and ask for help again, follow up the idea of seeing a counsellor, do some work around the origins of your anger with the practitioner we saw on Friday, follow up Teens in Crisis, or try something else. Again we need to see actual evidence that you have definite arrangements in place. We will pay for therapy if necessary, but it is also possible to ask for funding from the post-adoption fund to cover any costs.

3. When at home you need to sleep during the night and be up during the day, eat downstairs and be generally more engaged with the rest of the family. You are not to stay in your room all day, just coming down to grab some food. If all you want to do is play on your X-Box, you can do that in the hostel, or elsewhere. We do not want the X-Box coming back here again for that reason. If you are working or studying you too will need a good night’s sleep, as do the rest of the family.

4. We expect you to keep your bedroom and bathroom in a decent state, with rubbish in the bin, dirty clothes in the laundry basket – or bring them down to wash, and the room left in a state in which I can get in to clean.

5. We expect you to be polite, and will not accept abusive and threatening language, whether addressed to us or to anyone else.

In terms of the first point, actually committing yourself to some form of activity, you have a week or so before colleges and offices close for the Easter break. If you are thinking of coming back over the Easter holidays at all you have a small window of time to organise yourself.

With love,

Mum and Dad

 

I decided not to say anything about the hours of tearful girlfriend Billy said he loved, made feel special – who desperately loved him, who he unceremoniously dumped, or the unkind Facebook posts and trashing of his room – one step at a time. There is a long way to go, starting with dealing with his anger and the causes of his anger. Whether one can do anything about a lack of empathy I really don’t know. By the time Billy and girlfriend went on Tuesday (they should have gone Sunday or Monday at the latest) I was exhausted and traumatised by the sheer volume of negative energy and vitriol that had been unleashed. Feeling desperately sorry for the girlfriend, who is almost certainly better off without him, but who is so vulnerable herself.