Today we received notice of a conference with a Judicial Referee regarding two of the charges that David has accumulated this summer. The others include multiple charges of unruly, forgery, and theft of property.
I shared it with David, because until now he seems to think that he is immune to action against him for his actions toward others.
I explained that at 14, he could go to juvenile jail. And that if he went to juvenile jail at 14, there is a chance that he could end up spending the rest of his life in a prison of some kind.
Mostly due to the fact that when people upset him, he lets his anger take over, and doesn’t stop until the anger burns itself out. Imagine trying to corral that type of behavior in a prison environment with a bunch of other people who may or may not share similar traits.
David already has a paranoid personality. I can’t fathom how much worse that would be in a prison type setting.
It was a very difficult conversation with him today. I counted the number of people on two hands who have been trying to explain that this isn’t a path that he wants to be on in life. He claims that he wasn’t listening to all of those other people, which incidentally includes, myself, Mom, an aunt and two sisters, his care coordinator, and a number of other people who have been involved in his care for the past seven years.
I was a bit older than David when I had this conversation with my own probation officer. I followed a path that didn’t involve a prison. Did I stop all of my behaviors? No. Sadly, I didn’t. I eventually did, but it involved getting to my first duty station in the US Army for that to happen.
I pray and hope that David decides to work on changing his life around.