This Charming Man

Is there ever a time when you don't worry about your children? Mr Charming is, in my opinion very good-looking, sweet-natured, bright and eloquent. He is also very tall, has a great head of hair and lovely teeth. He's almost 19 and in his first year of uni in Cornwall studying English. He was desperate to go to this particular uni and just managed to scrape in but all of a sudden he's talking about transferring to a uni that's closer to home in his second year because he's 'pining for home'. Now, he has his morose moments - that's part of coming from a Polish/Irish family....melancholy is never far away, but generally he's really good fun. He has a group of 'friends' here at home who he really wants to keep in touch with but they treat him badly. In the main they're wasters - still in the first year at college even though they're all the same age as him. One missed all his secondary schooling because of bullying supposedly but mainly because he has a super-indulgent mum who treats him as her best friend and just let him stay away. He's now at college doing GCSEs but failed the first year and is doing them again. Another missed nearly all of his secondary schooling and two years of college because of social anxiety. Hmmmm. The third just goes along with the first two. Don't get me wrong, they're all okay - always polite to me, clean and tidy and so on (and I'm not disputing there are such things as school avoiders and social anxiety, just not in these cases). But they treat my Mr Charming badly and I can't have that. When he came home at Christmas he planned a night out on Facebook so he could see all of his pals and all but one cried off. He said to me 'I'd never do that to them Mum' and I wanted to kill them all stone dead. There's also a girl involved that Mr Charming liked and had 'talked to' on MSN for ages before he came home for Christmas. After leading him on she then went off, right under his nose, with one of these 'friends' of his. But she still won't leave my lad alone, texting him, MSNing him, so he thinks he has a chance with her. I was telling Big Man all of this and he said 'this girl, where does she live?' 'On my shit list, forever', says I. I could kill her, too.

If only he could find a girlfriend in Cornwall I think he'd feel a lot better. I think it would be a big mistake to transfer back closer to home, especially when his so-called friends are not missing him, or so it seems. I tried to say this on the phone to him - that he has moved on and they haven't - but I don't want to upset him, I hate to think of him feeling down. I think I might have to call in the big guns on this one - Red and my mum, Babcia. Red is very forthright and she also has the advantage of being a year ahead of him at uni so she can give him advice. And Babcia gets on very well with Mr Charming and adores him, and he her, so she will speak to him gently.

Isn't being Mum the hardest job in the world sometimes?