Sometimes you wonder how you’re going as a parent. After all there aren’t annual performance reviews to keep you on track ( I actually think performance reviews necessarily do this). But parenting is hard as any parent will attest if they’re not completely deluded.
My biggest fear has always been making a big mess of it and having him spend his adult life in therapy trying to get back on track.
There’s the little day-to-day annoyances with parenting a teen and you wonder how they will ever cope as an adult. I got a phone call the other afternoon after he got home from school. I was having a quick meeting with a colleague while I apologised and took the call, and my son asked me what he was going to eat as there was no cereal left. Of course there was no other food in the house that he could eat! Well none that was convenient as taking a box of weetbix, a bowl and the milk to his bedroom so he could eat a few bowls worth while doing homework gaming on his computer.
I told him to eat porridge and then had to remind him where the oats were and how to cook it.
Or there was the day I got home from work and he’d tidied his room because he’d found a couple of mice in the rubbish bin having a fine old time eating crumbs from the empty food packets. Luckily our dog is a good mouser so they were taken care of and then removed from the house. It’s not the ideal way to get him to tidy his room!
Yesterday’s after school phone call was a bit different. He was walking home from the bus and saw an elderly woman struggling to get her rubbish bins back to her yard. He said he ummed and aaahed about whether to offer help, but he did offer his help. It was gratefully received and he said it made him feel really good.
I must admit hearing this story made me feel really good as well. And these moments are what get you through the other more annoying moments and let you know that maybe he won’t be in continuous therapy as an adult.
