Poker face

It was a shock and it happened the night before I was leaving to return to England. Jordi opened his bank statement and saw several payments made by internet to an online poker game. It totalled over 200 euros. We knew his son Marc had been playing online for a while but he had said it was only for fun not for money. He was underage but at the time it seemed harmless.
Not now!
I left for England with everything unresolved. As always getting back to my old home meant facing a huge pile of mail. The next day I started opening and filing and found bank statements for one account which showed further payments to the online poker game Pokerstars.com. My bill totalled 800 euros - about £600.
The rest of the holiday went by in a blur of phonecalls and speculations. Jordi confronted his son who denied all knowledge of the payments. He got angry and stormed out of the house to go back to his mothers. She - never slow to find fault with Jordi and his parenting skills - believed Marc's story, blamed Jordi for making false accusations and clearly welcomed the chance to score some points with her son.
In the end I managed to convince the bank that my credit card had been stolen and used without my knowledge. I got all the money back. But the loss of trust in Marc could not be so easily resolved and thus began the situation that we still find ourselves in.
Key points that perhaps may be familiar to others are

• the child refuses to admit what he did
• the parents respond with disbelief and/or shame
• sometimes the parent prefers to live in denial of the problem
• sometimes the parent doesn't know how to respond so does nothing
• the child plays on all these feelings and doesn't have to live with consequences - there are no consequences that he cares about.

For me, a stepmother and also a foreigner, it was confusing and frustrating. I wanted to have it all out in a big talk. I wanted sanctions or at least a chance to make him feel uncomfortable but I had to play it gently as too easily I became the ogre who wouldn't allow them to forget what had happened. Jordi once told me I was obsessing about it. He wanted to believe it was a one-off event that would just stop now that we all knew about it.
I am more distanced from the deep feelings that make parents ambivalent. I just wanted something to happen. I had been worried for a long time about Marcs lack of concern for others. In my bad moments I felt he was mad and bad. In a more understanding mood I would feel for his confusion about life and his place in it.
I wanted a visit to a counsellor.  Jordi doesn't like professional helpers and felt he could deal with it himself.
In effect this meant doing nothing at all.
I just had to wait until the next thing would remind him that his son has some deeper problems.