Think raising babies is hard? Wait until they are terrible teens
NOTHING could possibly have prepared me for what I’m living through right now.
Had I actually still been married, I would probably be chasing a divorce after this lockdown, as it has exposed many weaknesses in what I thought was my solid parenting. Teenagers, it turns out, are a bit of an ordeal.
Studies show that mums and dads of teens are 20 per cent more stressed than 20 years ago.
There’s not just the financial pressures from teens, the constant keepie-uppie with phones, computers and fashion, but the added pleasure of social media.
Then throw into the mix hormones, curfews, risky behaviours, smoking, drinking and sex and you have a wonderful pottage of purgatory.
When your children reach their teens they need to question your authority in order to find the impetus to break away and become independent adults. And they don’t do this lightly. No, they make sure they also judge and question your parenting and basically suck the life out of you.
For most of us women it also often coincides with the menopause and possibly mid-life crises. I mean, could there be a more perfect storm? Unsurprisingly, girls are more antagonistic towards the female parent. And research shows the task of setting limits for their teenagers falls more to mothers than it does to fathers.
I have four children (referred to as the Ungratefuls for obvious reasons) and they are all very different.
One no longer lives at home. He’s 25 and is my Goldenballs, as his teenage years really lulled me into a false sense of security, being largely painless.
I also have two girls, aged 19 and 16, plus a boy of 12.
Utterly trapped
So far . . . and I do love you, girls, BUT . . . the boys are proving simpler, less complicated. Unconscious bias, possibly.
Lockdown with these hoodlums forced me to question my sanity, made me feel like I was in freefall and wonder what the hell I had been thinking all those times in the past when my Fallopian tubes would jump for joy as soon as I saw a man.
I’m a liberal parent. I haven’t sought to make my children my “friends” but I certainly wasn’t prepared for the contempt, defiance, audacity and confrontation that has arrived. About everything, from changing the toilet roll (they don’t know how, apparently) to rudeness (they’re surprisingly good at it), politeness (they can’t even spell it) and lack of empathy (it’s only they who count, it turns out).
I’m not allowed to utter the words, “Well, when I was a teenager”, because allegedly I’ve never been one.
I can’t offer advice because I “don’t understand”. I’m not allowed to discipline because that’s “damaging”.
I’ve been reprimanded for calling one of the Ungratefuls “lazy”.
In modern times, this is “injurious and prejudicial”, I was told. Yes, she used those words. I did once try to explain that she’s intelligent and could go far. “Intelligent” is also detrimental to her mental wellbeing, I was informed.
Give me strength.
At the beginning of lockdown, I would cry out loud and scream from time to time — just to let off steam because I felt utterly trapped.
And because I was parenting on my own, I guess there is no need for divorce or separation or marriage breakdown now.
But I felt utterly blindsided by the scale of the task because teens nowadays are savvy buggers who are well versed in conversations about various “conditions” everyone seems to be struggling with — mental health, eating disorders, anxiety.
Which is great. But not so great when you’re trying to run through a minefield to get to the other side before they criticise your parenting abilities and make you feel like a complete sham.
Things have improved slightly. It was that or murder. But it has sapped me of all my energy and made me question what I was thinking when I thought that having kids was a great idea.
I joke, of course. They can bring me enormous pleasure when they actually do change the toilet roll. But if you think weaning and sleep-training is tough, wait until you join the Bewildered Mum Of Teens Club.
A very close friend of mine always used to say: “Small children, small problems. Big children, big problems.” So enjoy your little eight-pounder while you can.
Is 'black pepper' racist?
I STRUGGLE to keep up with all the latest social movements, oral etiquette and the various prohibited words and expressions.
I exaggerate not when I say I’m sometimes scared to open my mouth at home because one of the Ungratefuls has been a passionate advocate of social justice since she first strung a sentence together.
Often, I am jokingly and harmlessly inappropriate and un-PC, only succeeding in pushing my middle-age boundaries in a woke world of righteous fundamentalists.
But it was when my 12-year-old Ungrateful sat at the table with a look of absolute panic on his face that I realised things have gone too far.
All he had asked his sister was: “Can you pass the black pepper? Or is that racist?”
Make mutts matter
I WAS disturbed to learn that the puppy Katie Price bought for her 13-year-old daughter Princess died in an accident at home. There’s more than one lesson there for a young girl, I would have thought.
I was equally disturbed to learn there has been an increase in people buying puppies during lockdown – because apparently, what else is there to do? Except puppies require a lot of work and attention, demand constant surveillance and are sentient beings with needs that require a long-term emotional and financial commitment.
I worry about how many of these pets will be surrendered or neglected once “normal life” resumes.
And why people won’t consider adopting rescue dogs when shelters and rescue centres are brimming with ownerless animals.
A dog is for life. Not just for lockdown.
English slip-up left me in soup
LOVELY newsreader George Alagiah said that when he first came to England from Ghana at the age of 11 and headed to boarding school, he made damn sure he had a cut-glass English accent in order to avoid racist and classist bullies.
As a foreigner who arrived from Sweden at the same age, I had the same ambition – I wanted to sound like the locals and did not want to stand out.
I became all the more determined after slipping up when getting “soup” and “soap” confused, mistaking a sofa “suite” for a sofa “suit” and always referring to spiders’ “cod webs”.
It burned like hell to be laughed at because you couldn’t speak properly.
Now, I’m pleased to say, my grammar and English is often better than my peers’ because I had to learn everything from scratch and I didn’t want to attract attention.
Until I decided on a job in TV, that is.
Mustn't mind the gap
HANDSOME Viking eye-candy Dolph Lundgren has just got engaged. He turns 63 in November and his fiancée Emma Krokdal is 24.
We shrug this off because a) he’s a bloke, b) age is just a number and c) what is 39 years between two lovers?
Except when I was questioned ahead of my appearance on Celeb First Dates Hotel last year about what age range I would consider for a partner, without a pause I said: “Twenty-five to 50.” My daughters were HORRIFIED.
I’m nearly 53 and the idea of an older woman with a far younger man is deemed unthinkable and distasteful. Yet a handsome man marrying an adolescent girl is much more palatable.
Well, I’m not having it. Don’t you dare give me the side eye when I walk with my future 22-year-old beau! OK, a girl’s gotta dream.
Unmask this man
A ROBUST, toned, muscled, strapping, athletic, sturdy, brawny, vigorous, ripped (you get my drift?) man has been parading up and down Oxford Street in London in his birthday suit with his plumbing shielded only by a feeble face mask. He’s making a point.
I was wondering if he’d like to come and make that point in my town.
Because I also think I need to adjust his mask a little.
Just want to be helpful.
Sirieix about sex
FIRST Dates TV maitre d’ Fred Sirieix is hopelessly in love with his fiancée and has revealed he is having the best sex of his life at 48.
He puts it all down to the fact he has a greater overall wisdom at his age and that he likes himself more than when he was in his twenties.
As a mature woman who recently had to kickstart her sex engine after some barren years, I agree there is much truth to feeling a bit wiser with age.
But if we’re really honest, it probably has nothing to do with our maturity and all to do with the connection you make and the person you’re with.
It’s nothing you can find on an app, on paper or via social media.
It’s just there when you meet. And it takes your breath away.
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Swed spot
SWEDEN didn’t go into lockdown, preferring instead to keep the economy going with its obedient citizens.
The Swedes have been pleased by the way their government have tackled the pandemic, so much so that a solid minority has decided to get tattoos of the chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell. Not a bad-looking chap either.
I was booked in for another inking just as we went into lockdown.
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But as tattooists have opened up again, I’m thinking a little Prof Chris Whitty on my left shoulder or buttock.
Thoughts, please.
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