Confused and stressed by new boy's behaviour

[Ketrick]

A new boy started in my son's year (4) three week's ago. I phoned social services about him because he told me that he has to go home on his own after school and wait for an hour for his mother to come home. He also said he never ate breakfast, and also he has, from day one of starting at the school, walked one and a half miles there and back on his own. He is nine years old. He has to cross two major roads and go through various back-alleys, I know this because I walked him home myself once as I felt sorry for him. His mother has given him a mobile phone which he takes everywhere with him. All this seemed to me to demonstrate that this child was not being treated with enough care. There is a very good after school club which he could enrol in.

I have tried to contact his mother by giving the boy my phone number and a note with my email address. She has not contacted me. The boy follows us all the way home to our front door (even though it is out of his way), every day. He always demands that I give him a fruit juice. He is very insistent and persistent about everything. He behaves much older than his actual age but yet is very demanding, he is completely different to any 9 year old I have ever met. He also knocks at our door every day before school. He phones every saturday and sunday to say he is in the park and would my son like to come and play, which my boy never wishes to do.

I have told the lad that he cannot come in and play unless I have either met or spoken to his mother and that she has given me a phone number I can contact her on. But she remains silent and has never been in touch. I really don't know what to do, but it is clear to me that this boy is very lonely and bored and has latched onto us in the hope that we can entertain and look-after him, which we can't and don't want to.

Any suggestions as to what on earth I can do next, while trying to be as gentle and honest as I can with him, will be very gratefully received.

[GypsyMoth]

when he phones at the weekend why dont you ask him to put his mum on the phone?

or dial 1471?

[amistillsexy]

If you have already told SS about him, why not leave them to deal with him?