Ds being asked to cover...

[murphys]

Ds (15) has been friends with a girl (same age) for years, they were at same junior school. Her mum and I are quite friendly, she has been around to my house and we have been for coffee etc.

Her dd has gone off the rails a bit, been caught smoking at school and sniffing benzene. She has been suspended about 4 times this year for other things as well and is on final warning.

She wraps her mother around her little finger, making out to be so innocent and its always everyone else's fault for what happened (friend was smoking, she was just standing there - passing the buck all the time). She is sniffing and smoking as we have a friend who teaches at the school, who was the one who actually caught her...

Ds goes to extra math class after school. She is meant to go but doesn't, so in the time that she is meant to be in extra class I am not sure what she is up to, but she tells her mum that she has been to class.

Yesterday when I collected ds, he told me that her mother was in school grounds looking for her as she had gone to extra class to find she wasn't there..

The girl today told ds that his mother would be contacting him to find out if she has been at class this whole year (we are in 3rd term) and that he had better say that she was always there, and ds says she hasn't been once. Ds told her that he couldn't lie to her mother if she asked him outright. The girl has now told him that he better get his story straight to say that she was there, otherwise life will be very difficult for him in school.... So he will be outed as a snitch, and apparently at high school this is probably one of the worst offences amongst the kids...

I have chatted with ds and told him that I am in total agreement with him to tell the mother the truth, I have in fact offered to tell her myself, but he says no, will make it worse.

He is a quiet kid who keeps to himself, isn't a troublemaker and does quite well at school. He also isn't deceitful and says that even if he tried, he couldn't lie to the mother looking her in the face, he just isn't that type of person.

I don't want to go behind his back and say something to her, although I think she needs to know... if it were my child bunking and getting up to no good, I would want to know about it.... so I am a bit torn here on what to do.

What would you do in this situation? Am I being a helicopter mum?

In that position I would go to her house tonight without my son knowing and see both her and her mother at the same time in person and confront the little swine.

However the best thing probably would be to go to the school direct or tell your son or you to tell her mother that it would be best if she contacted the school directly about classes.

If it were me, I would try and ensure that DS was "out with friends" when friend's DM rang, and ask what it was about - and then say she ought to speak to the office as "you know what teens are like, he'll probably just cover for her anyway".

At least then you've sewn the seed of doubt. If she calls again and DS feels he has to lie, she's going to find herself mistrusting it anyway and investigating further.

Very difficult situation though - your poor DS being put in the middle.

They do take register, I think this is the way to go to refer it back to the school. I think she is trying to find out from other sources though as the mother has had a few run ins with the school office as she believes that her daughter hasn't done the things she was suspended for... The girl has swung the mother around to believing her.

I don't think mother will contact ds over phone, she will wait for him outside of school. She has done it before about something else and confronted ds about it at the gate. It wasn't something as serious as this, it was about a project that he had helped her with or should I say ds did for her. If that is the case, I can't fob her off like with a phonecall....

I would tell your friend not to involve your son and she should ask the school. Be firm about it. It's not your sons place to be part of this nor yours. Let her deal with it via the school.