Xi had been expelled from his school for “insubordination” and his parents in desperation had hired me as his tutor so that I could “homeschool” him.

Both his parents had taxing full-time jobs and it immediately became apparent to me that the problem with Xi was that he had no role model to follow. I saw this as being my job. He was clever enough and had done reasonably well academically at his school but he lacked discipline, because he had not been set any example by his parents, of whom, frankly, he saw very little. He was brought up mainly by nannies and other staff to whom he was unfriendly, so that some of them had left because of his bad character.

I felt that there was nothing fundamentally wrong with Xi, certainly nothing that I could not fix. Fortunately he took to me and we got on very well together and I became the mentor that his parents should have been but did not have the time for.

Luckily there was a paddle ball court near his flat and, although he had never played before, I started playing with him. He learnt to play fairly quickly, but he was abusive, lost his temper and generally misbehaved on the court. I could see that that was where I could put his lack of discipline right, so we played every day and I gradually taught him “good-sportsmanship” of which he was completely oblivious when we started playing together. Slowly I ironed out the excesses and over a few months he became very well behaved on the court.

I then started to try to extend this behaviour to his everyday life. This was much harder, as bad behaviour had become so endemic in him, but little by little his behaviour did change. By the time I left the family after ten months he was truly a changed person and he was accepted by another school, where he is now flourishing, both academically and socially. Despite the continued lack of parental guidance, I do believe that Xi will not revert to his previous ways, but will remain a responsible person.  LP