Wanted: one manual for the operation of teenagers

My son is driving me mental of late. If you fancy looking back at some previous posts then you’ll see that while he’s always been a handful, he’s also always been such fun, with a brilliant sense of humour and of course we’ve always had such a nice relationship. That was when he was a boy. Now he’s drifting closer and closer to teenage-hood, and I honestly have to say that this isn’t my favourite phase. In fact, I would really like to get a time machine and fast forward through the main bulk and pick up when he’s grown up a bit.

So what am I dealing with?

Firstly, the lad is completely uninterested in school and has just decided that he doesn’t like it so he’s not doing it. This of course doesn’t really work out so well. At this stage I feel like everyone is making such an effort to get him to do well but the only person that can really make a difference is him. It’s been a bit soul destroying and it’s hard to accept that no matter what you do, and how hard you work it’s never going to make the blindest bit of difference until he starts taking things seriously.

Of course, as usual, the school thinks he has ADHD and to be fair, I can’t contradict this so we’ve agreed to have him assessed. However, I know my son, and he does have the ability to concentrate and focus on things – as long as he thinks it’s interesting. From what I understand, a child who has ADHD cannot pick and choose what he concentrates on. Also, I believe that children who really suffer with this have trouble socialising. No issues there at all. But I’m not the expert so let’s see what happens with that.

Then of course we have the attitude. I can’t handle it, but at the same time it doesn’t appear any different to many teenagers and way better than some little buggers I see running around. The general theme at the moment is that nothing is his fault and the world is against him and life is so unfair! Oh and of course everything is so-like-totally dramatic. Seriously-Like.

This morning was a prime example. He hadn’t bothered to get stuff ready for school last night, so I woke him up early to get him organised and give him time to get himself together. Well, neither of us are morning people. I usually let him sleep as much as possible in order to minimise morning interaction with him (which seems to work). However I thought this morning that I can’t let our obvious dislike of all things morning, including human beings, and anything that moves, stop us getting both our acts together and starting the day right.

That didn’t work. At all. I ended up yelling, he ended up sulking. Not the happy organised brilliant start to the week I’d hoped for. So tomorrow I’ll try again. I still believe the early morning thing is a good thing because if we can get it right, we’ll both be able to benefit from starting each day in the best possible way. But more than anything, I hope that I can motivate him at some point to do well and be the brilliant individual I’ve always thought he could be.

Car trouble

Unless you can make a car soft and cuddly and wrap it in a ton of fluff, it will continue to feel foreign to me. I recently had to take the car in because it was squeaking like a constipated mouse.

“Hello there, what seems to be the problem?” says friendly mechanic man.
“Ah, well I have a squeak, well more of a screech coming from my car…”
Pause.
“Is it when you break?”
“It sounds like it should be when I brake, I mean it has that break kind of sound to it but actually it mainly happens when I’m NOT breaking… oh and my break light just came on, but that is, like, totally unrelated to the screech..”

I stopped suddenly feeling ever so slightly out of my depth.

Mechanic dude looks at me expressionless, “Ah…”

So I booked it in for a service and they said that it would flag up any problems. Of course they would also pay special attention to the ‘squeak’. In my mind I put on my demur little bonnet, tilted my head slightly and while doing an appropriate flutter of the eyelashes said “Why thank ye kindly sir. I’ll just take my ignorant little lady butt on home then while you fleece my bank account”

Later on they gave me a call and by this stage I was determined to show a little control, take charge of the situation and gosh darn it just get this sucker fixed already.

“Hello Mrs O, well in a nutshell your whatsit and dinglebong are fused together and you need to replace this flibberwocky and whatnot…”
He carried on and on while I was keeping the tone even and saying what I thought would be appropriate things like “yes” and “of course” and “uh huh, I thought as much”. I ended the call by telling him I was just going to go over what he had mentioned, check a few things and would let him know what to proceed with.

I sat for a couple of minutes processing everything, then picked up the phone and dialled..

“Babe, you’re going to have to call the mechanic – he spoke words to me but I don’t know what on earth he was saying…no, I can’t really tell you what he said – it was, um tyres and um, something was fused and the breaks I think… “

Well at least it’s fixed. It cost one million and eighty pounds and thirty two pence but in fairness it drives so nicely now…

The next morning I lost the car key. Doh!

The double J noise duet

sssshhhhh!! Don’t move. Don’t breath. Not a sound if you please.
Both the kids are sleeping…

I can physically feel the happy spreading over me as I become the little old woman version of myself sitting here in silence listening to the morning bird song with a slightly moronic smile on my face. I feel no guilt that it makes me so happy that my children are so blissfully quiet. You have no idea how rare that is in my house.

J, my first born nutter is the personification of pure joy, and that isn’t a quiet thing. It’s amazing to watch him find joy in all that he does. Even if he’s been naughty and sent to his room, minutes later you hear him singing away. When he’s happy, his volume control button is automatically bust and immense amounts of booming voice, chatter, laughter and so on can be heard from here to the other side of town. I admit he drives me insane a lot of the time, because it’s so hard to make him take anything seriously. He is the human version of an excited Labrador.

My latest, Baby J, is the personification of a cuddle. She is a loving sweet little soul and if I could, I would have her in my arms all day. I don’t think she’d have a problem with that at all. She does of course also have her moments where she makes one heck of a noise such as if I take a bit too long to get the feed prepared or she’s lost her dummy or if she simply wants UP… now! She has some lungs on her when she really gives it all that.

And of course we are now into the Easter Holidays which means that the children combine to make one happy harmonious noise medley. So again I say to you… ssssssshhhh. Don’t move. Don’t breath. Not a sound if you please.