I contacted Jan when my 14 year old son was getting into trouble at school and with weed. She was enormously helpful and supportive and immediately gave me practical suggestions and advice about keeping dialogue going and helping things change. Using her advice I was able to engage with my child and get a real sense of working together on the problems. He and I found creative ways of 1) agreeing there were problems to tackle and 2) tackling it. We agreed a sort of contract of behaviour that we both felt ok about and this helped both my son and I feel safer and contained. He also felt that he was not being coerced and that he was still in his own driving seat. Working through this together also had the heart-warming result that he realised that his behaviour was also a problem for me and he became concerned about this and definitely took this into account in his thinking about what he was doing. A year on things are much better, my son is happier and he is no longer in trouble at school or with weed. We have a close relationship and he, I know, has felt loved in very practical ways. Throughout this time I consulted Jan three times. I would thoroughly recommend her: her warmth, wisdom and kindness have been of enormous and valued help to our family.
