Boy Trouble

We're having problems with Will (formerly known as Billy) right now.  I started to write about the whole issue, but it's just too long.  It boils down to this:

• He doesn't talk to anyone.
• He sleeps all fucking day.
• He has just been put on academic probation at his school.
• He earned an academic scholarship to his school.  There is no reason for him to be failing one class and on the verge of failing a second.
• He hasn't spoken a word to J in a few weeks - 2 visits ago, when he got dropped off back at his mom's house after the weekend here, he got out of the van without so much as a goodbye.  When he got picked up for last weekend's visit, he didn't say a word all the way to our house.
• When I made mention of his school troubles, he got so mad that I knew about them that he called his mom to come pick him up, and without telling anyone here, he left.

Here's how bad it is.  Crazy Bitch called J to apologize for picking Will up.  She had no idea that J didn't know he'd left.   Junior actually stopped over there while he was on an errand to try to talk Will into coming back, and Will refused, and claimed that J hadn't talked to him in 4 weeks.  Junior told Crazy Bitch that this wasn't true, and she replied "I know.  Will doesn't talk to anyone."

You guys.  Crazy Bitch said that J was right about something.  Sorry if the earth shaking did damage to any of your houses' foundations.

J called Will's guidance counselor on Monday and on Tuesday, met with her in person for about an hour & a half.  Crazy Bitch was not invited, and as of Tuesday had never contacted the school  There is a chance that Will intercepted the academic probation letter at her house, but still.  

The guidance counselor had some observations to share with J - some are just weird but indicative.  The school has a rule against wearing hooded sweatshirts (it's a Catholic school with a pretty strict dress code), but Will wears one all day, and even puts the hood up during class - another big no-no.  I'm not sure why, if it's such a straightforward rule, no one has asked him to go put the hoodie in his locker, but there you have it. He apparently doesn't talk to anyone at school either.  At the beginning of the school year, his Spanish teacher noticed how advanced he was and asked him to test into 10th grade Spanish.  He took the test, and threw it. He scored like 25%.

The counselor was going to email Will's teachers and gather whatever other information she could, but it looks like at the very least, he's dealing with some depression.  The trick now is to get CB to agree to send him to counseling.  This is where she falls back to her old ways.  She suggested that J, Will, and I go to a counselor together.  Because all the problems have to be coming from here.  Probably from me.  Whatever.  Will has always had problems dealing with anger, back to when he was little, and his mom has always denied there was anything wrong.  She refused to even look into it.  So this could be a big challenge.

So that's what's going on here.  I guess we had something coming - out of 4 kids, it took all the way until the 4th for "major" teenage drama to happen.  We had some with Amy, for sure, but never anything that made its way into school.  Hopefully this will get turned around quickly - especially if he is clinically depressed; he needs help before he starts self-medicating.

But other than that, things are great!  How are all of you doing?