A mothers Tale

Sophie told me that she had been asked to go on a date to go to the cinema with a boy called Karl who she had met at a café in town. She was so excited and said that he was really nice and that all her friends thought that he was lovely.

We agreed that she could go, as long as we met him first because we didn’t know anything about him and she was only fifteen years old. Sophie wasn’t too happy about this and said that we would embarrass her, but she text Karl and he replied that he thought that it was a good idea and it showed that her mum and dad cared about her.

He came over the next evening and me and my husband thought that he was a really nice boy, he was dressed well, he was polite and chatted easily to my husband about the rugby. It wasn’t long before Sophie and Karl were seeing each other virtually every day.

The trouble started when we had a phone call from the school telling us that Sophie was not doing her homework and that her grades had started to slip. Of course we were concerned and talked to Sophie and said that she would have to stay in for three evenings to do her homework, this didn’t go down well at all and Sophie accused us of treating her like a child. She stopped talking to me, and her father and spent all her time with Karl or in her room, well we thought that she was in her room but later found out that she was sneaking out to be with Karl.

We thought that it was just the teenage years, we could see that she was infatuated with Karl and to be truthful we were more worried about her getting pregnant and wasn’t prepared for what was really happening.

It all came to a head when I found a note to Sophie from Karl in her jeans pocket when I was sorting the washing out. It read:

"My darling Sophie,

I’m so sorry for hitting you, I will never do it again, I really mean it this time, you know how much I love you. I love you with all that I am. I don’t know why I do it, but you make me so angry sometimes. Please, please forgive me. I love you.

Love from

 Karl
XXXXXXXXX"

When Sophie came home, I showed her the note and asked her what was going on, she burst into tears and pulled her top over her shoulder. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the bruise on her shoulder. We had never hit or smacked Sophie and I was so angry and upset that someone thought that they had the right to hit our daughter. Even as I was comforting Sophie her phone kept bleeping and I knew it was him.

When her father came home we sat and talked through what had been happening, I looked at Sophie and couldn’t believe how I had missed seeing the dark circles under her eyes, and how much she had changed in such a short time. I felt so guilty.

Sophie was very confused and scared. She said she didn’t know if she loved Karl or not, she agreed that she didn’t always feel comfortable and was afraid of getting Karl angry. In the end Sophie’s dad rang Karl and asked him to come round, of course he didn’t and Sophie received a text saying that he didn’t want to see her anymore.

I wish that we had called the police, but Sophie didn’t want us to and at the time we were just relieved that they had split up. It took a long time for Sophie to get back to her bright happy self, she had to build a lot of bridges with her friends and regain the trust in her teachers. I still feel guilty of ignoring the warning signs that things weren’t right with my own daughter and I would urge all parents to keep a better eye on what might be happening under their own noses.