Verbal Warning

What is it with Teachers? I'm a 48 year old professional female holding down a highly stressful and important job, whilst simultaneously running a household of 7, including 3 teenagers and two terrible two's. Yet today, I felt as if I were back at school, spoken to in that patronising tone that teachers do so well, with the occasional sympathetic smile when obviously they were thinking "crap mother".

I should add at this stage, that I made my way through infant, junior and senior school without so much as a detention. I never had a hairgrip out of place and was frankly terrified of my teachers. I left school with 7 "O" levels (they had proper exams in those days) and I've worked ever since. I wouldn't have known where or how to buy drugs (although I'm sure they were around) and the worst thing I ever did was stay too late at a disco (because I was dancing to "Pretty Woman" by Roy Orbison with a lovely chap) and incurred the wrath of my father who dragged me out of there by my pigtails.

I was summoned to my 15 year old son's school by the deputy head - a man of similar age, American by birth with an odd mid-atlantic accent and his head of year, a small weasly woman who looks as if she has a bad smell under her nose and never had sex in her life. The purpose of this meeting was to warn me and my wayward son that they suspect, from rumour alone, that he's using cannabis. If they had bothered to pick up the phone and asked me, I would have confirmed it anyway. It's just another worry as far as I'm concerned. I don't condone it and my son knows how I feel. We live in a rural village and it's use is rife amongst the local teenagers. He strongly denies having tried anything else and I have warned him about the "slippery slope" etc etc. Now, short of putting a dog lead around his neck, buying a kalashnikov and executing all of his friends, would someone like to tell me how I stop him associating with those that regularly use it and don't consider it a problem? There is nothing for these kids to do in a village like ours, the police are only interested in breaking them up when they crowd around the fish and chip shop, sending them scurrying away to hide in dark corners and get as high as a kite. Then, if you please, I find myself defending my stance, when my son quite rightly tells me that cannabis has been downgraded by this government who clearly don't see it's use as a risk.

The upshot of this meeting of minds was a warning to my son that if they "believe", with or without evidence that he is continuing to use cannabis then he will be permanently excluded from school and will only be allowed back into the system to do his exams in May. Exams which he will fail because he's missed so much school because they excluded him. So yet another teenager will fail in the education system and be chucked out without so much as a mexican wave. He may go on to try harder drugs with his low-life mates and end up without a job for the next ten years, if ever, relying on state benefits and staying out of prison by the skin of his teeth, if he's lucky.

It's just as well the wonderful British criminal justice system doesn't convict with or without evidence and on belief alone, but somehow this school believes it can act as judge and jury in a matter like this.

And another thing - I promised I would keep a tighter rein on him and asked them very politely if there was such a thing as drug counselling within school - Er.... no, it's been withdrawn - lack of funding you see. I rest my case.

Now I don't sleep at the best of times. Tonight I will be able to outstare a stuffed owl.