In our first instalment in this series, one mom told how she solved the problem of her 12-year-old son telling her that he was ready to have sex. This week, another mom had a decision to make. Her son was heading for serious trouble. Read on.

Mary Reynolds* and her 14-year-old son Mark* lived in a two-bed-room house in Portmore and she was literally on pins and needles every day. She was expecting to hear the worst - that someone killed him or that he killed someone.

Not that he was a bad child, she said, but he was regularly teased by other boys in the community, and there was the ever-present threat of violence.

The very first evening when she saw him with a ratchet knife and he told her that he needed it to peel oranges, she knew immediately there was something wrong. He didn't even eat oranges.

She seized the knife and they had a big argument.

A few weeks later, she said, she was cleaning his room when she found another knife. It had a slim blade, about eight inches long and a vicious point.

Assortment of knives

"The blood drained from me, because I felt that the argument over the first knife had settled the matter, meaning that I did not want him going around with knives," she said.

This time, she said nothing to him. She simply confiscated the knife. And he obviously missed it, but said nothing to her either.

Over a period of time, she seized an assortment of knives, including one with a 12-inch blade, daggers with menacing serration and more ratchets. And the quarrels mounted, so too the threats to 'box him down'.

"It is not that he had a fascination with the knives. When I asked the reason for getting them, he said, 'If anything, at least I have a fighting chance'. I told him that if the police saw him with them he would be charged with being armed with an offensive weapon. That meant nothing to him."

What Reynolds did not know is that her mother, who had been staying with them for a while, was also seizing knives from him. Reynolds said she found this out when her mother presented her with a scandal bag of knives which she had taken from Mark over time. She had hid them under her mattress.

The two women handled the situation differently. Reynolds said she argued and argued and threatened. Her mother, on the other hand, prayed. Reynolds said her mother even chided her for some of the things that she would say to Mark when she argued with him. Her mother told her: "Words are powerful. Be careful of what you are saying."

Garbage

Reynolds said that one day, she made a package of all but two of the knives taken from her son and made sure that they were taken out with the rest of the garbage when the truck came. And the other two knives? She uses them in her kitchen.

Today, she said her son, who is a young, responsible adult, simply laughs at that whole episode.

* Names changed.

What would you have done if you were this mother? Did she manage the situation well? Did Mark's grandmother handle it better? Send your response to phyllis.thomas@gleanerjm.com.