What would you have done??

At work the other day, I got a phone call from my DD, who was at school, asking if her friend can come and stay at our place for a few days, as her friend is to scared to go home...
I was a bit flustered as to what I should say, not knowing exactly what had happened. So I told DD, her friend can come over, but her parents have to know where she is and we would have a talk when I got home. So her friend sent a note home to her mum with her brother.
Anyway I get home, and ask the girl (whom I've never met before) what the problem is. She tells me, that a lock went missing from her cousins, she took it and put it on her locker, which she has told her mum. This weekend a something else went missing and her mum is accusing her of taking it, but she didn't take it. Her mum told her she had to give the lock back to her cousin, which she now can't do, as the janitor at school had to cut through it for what ever reason. Now her mum will be mad at her because the lock has been destroyed..
To me this just didn't seem like such a major problem, so I said how about you call your mum and explain it all, she said she can't, because her mum will just yell. All she wants to do is call her dad, as he will be able to calm her mum down. So I say fine lets call your dad, she doesn't have his number, it's a mobile and not listed. Next she is telling me she would like to go to her dads place, so I ask where does he live, she tells me the suburb, somewhere on the other side of Melbourne, but doesn't know his address, but if she gets a train to the city and asks there which connection will take her there, she should be able to find his place.
I just said NO WAY, you don't know his address, you don't know the train line, you have no phone number, anything could happen.
So after lots of talking and telling her that by not going home she has probably made the situation much worse etc. I finally get to call the mum, who understandably is not happy. I told her that I would bring her daughter home shortly, that her daughter was upset about something and wanted to talk to her dad. The mum tells me she has a restraining order against the dad.... Good thing i didn't let the girl go there...
Anyway, I finally take the girl home, her and mum walk into the house quite nicely. I drove away very slowly just in case there was screaming or hitting, but all seemed calm.
Just wandered if you would have handled this differently...

Streuth,
I think what you did was Ok, I mean you can't go accusing the Mum of anything, all Mum's yell!?
But what an awful situation for the girl, she probably only wants her Dad & her Mum may be craeting stories to keep him away from the kids!

I have seen some very vicious (Generally ex wifes) in my time & one is related to us! The things they go to, top keep their once DH's away from the kids...


I hope this girl sorts it all out, she is probably copping the crap from her Mum since the seperation...

I'd perhaps ask your daughter if the girl was at school, or perhaps if there is a school consellor you could contact to explain the situation to them to keep an eye on it all, they may already know something, also tell the girl to speak to the counsellor (assuming there is one).

There was a girl I went to school with & one day she said she had called the cops & told them her Dad was beating her up, her Dad was taken away, but in actual fact the girl was dating a violent guy & theDad was trying to protect his daughter by forbiding her to see him, so covered in bruises from her B/F she called cops & told them her Dad did it...

It eventually got sorted out... You can imagine how surprised I was when 2 years ago I saw her at the School reunion & she has a 2 yr old son to the B/F!! Amazing!!!

I think you did Ok, you really had no power to do anything else!

The girls was at school the next day, apparently mum slapped her, and then apologised for being so angry.
I did tell the girl that she should talk to the school councilor, but apperently a friend oh theirs, who has problems at home (long story) has spoken to the school counculor and the councilor then told the parents what that girl had said. Not sure if that is the way it should operate. Anyway, this girl now wont talk to the councilor.
Not knowing the full situation I really didn't want to tell her to much. As far as I know once kids turn 14 they can pretty much choose which parent they want to live with, depending on circumstances. But once her mum told me about the restraining order against the dad and that he is an alcoholic I really didn't want to give her to much info.

Well don't feel guilty, there is nothing you can do, other than perhaps speak to your daughter about the girl & perhaps offer her to have a sleep over, so she feels more comfortable & if her homelife is really bad there is a place & person she feels she can trust???

Good Luck, sounds too messy!!!

A counsellor is meant to be confidential but i guess it also depends on the circumstance.

I think you handled everything the best you could with the little knowledge that you had about the situation, and least face it you only had the girls side of the story.

Love

School counsellors are meant to be confidential. Unless of course they suspect the child is in danger or being abused in some way. It was very unprofessional for that cousellor to contact the girls parents, when they were the ones hitting her. It should have gone through proper channels, ie. the school pricipal first, and then possibly Family Services etc.

Bit dissapointed in the consellor too, the girls needs someone impartial, that she can trust.

Agree with everything already said, and yeah, what an icky situation. I deal with this sort of issue all the time at work, there is never an easy answer. Kids can be so mixed up, but so can the parents.
I have to try and work out what we can do to help the families in this situation, and it's really hard because everybody wants to get their side of the story across, and lots of the time, no one is really right or wrong.
YUCK.

Yeah, it really was tricky.
DD has a few friends with home issues, and brings them home like puppies :)

I really don't mind, especially if the child is in trouble. I've told DD that we will arrange a sleepover one night in a week or two, give the girly a break :)

Just a word on school counsellors... I don't know whether it's just a couple of isolated events or maybe a lack of training (..?) but I had some issues when I was about a year older than your DD...
Long story but I had "sacked" the singer from my band because she was getting into drugs and becoming a right b**ch, so her and one of her other friends started pushing me around and telling their older friends/boyfriends who had cars to chase me, I'd nearly been run over in the street quite a few times by these people.... So I had those people in my face outside of school, plus the girls at the root of the problem were in all my classes at school and I had to be careful walking down the stairs, watching my back all the time and all of that, it was HORRIBLE stuff...
As you could understand I was scared s**tless, ended up with the school counsellor, I told her everything that was going on....... and who was the first person she spoke to about it? The girl who started the whole mess in the first place.
The worst thing was the girl denied everything and somehow made out that I was bullying HER, (if they'd bothered to ask random people in our school and community they would have known otherwise!!) and I ended up wasting most of Year 10 either in bed, throwing up, or with stress headaches, and trying to get myself out of trouble in the principal's office.
It was the biggest crock, I ended up applying for a selective school in Sydney (for yr11) so I could move out of town and get youth allowance and support myself.
I moved out to the big smoke, and after 2 weeks of school found I couldn't cope with facing people anymore, and basically stayed inside for around 6 months... then I had to get a job to support myself because I spent all of my "higher education money" that was reluctantly passed on to me even though I had not finished school.
OK enough ramble (sorry to hijack!)...
The moral of the story is, if that school counsellor betrayed me and put me in more of a position to be harmed, and your DD's friends counsellor put her in the position to be harmed, then where do these people get their qualifications? The weetbix box?
I very much hope it's just 2 isolated cases.

*sigh*

Hijack away :)

I always thought that situations should be handled confidentially where ever possible.
What on earth do they think they are doing, in your case it would have been much better to suss out the situation first..
I find a lot of things at DD's school are act first, think later. It seems to be that way a lot now.
I've had a run in with DD's previous PE teacher, they were doing a subject on relationships, the kids had write down who they like and who they hate, pretty stupidI thought. Anyway DD wrote down that she hates her father (xh). The teacher (not a trained councilor) pulled her aside after the lesson and started digging, asking all sorts of questions. DD got really upset by the whole thing. I rang the school the next day and told the teacher off something shocking.
If she wanted to do something,she should have checked the school records first, and then either approached me, or arrange for the councilor to talk to DD.
The poor teacher was in tears when I had finished with her. She kept talking about legalities, meaning that the DD may have been molested and the children's services would need to called in. If xh had so much as laid a hand on DD, there would have been no need for children's services... iykwim..