There’s no escaping it, my lad (nearly 17) loves gaming. Therefore he wants to, and usually does, spend a lot of time at his computer online gaming. I don’t like it because I think he should be doing other things as well – ie away from the screen and the internet.

Our modem allows me to set times on and off for particular devices and I have set it up for his computer as this is what he spends the bulk of his screen time on. This was after negotiating with him about these times. If we argue about anything it’s the times I’ve allocated to when it goes off particularly around the times on the weekend although he’s hardly mentioned it recently.

This negotiation included him taking some more responsibility for things around the house. He already has jobs to do and now that he wants to stay up later he has to cook once a week. This was implemented at the beginning of this year. Plus it’s a good life skill to have. I’ll always remember the time I travelled with a mid 20s male friend and when I broached taking it in turns to cook in the evenings he said he’d never cooked before. The first meal of overcooked rice and baked beans was nearly edible and it could only go up from there.

At the moment I usually tell him when and what he’s going to cook. It’s not been easy to get this process happening. Even though he agrees with it in principle, the reality is often a bit different. I’ve told him that if he doesn’t cook once a week then I’m revising his technology cut-off time. He’ll still push for me to help him and by helping he means being his kitchen hand. I try to remain as hands off as possible because otherwise he’ll never learn. For the most part what he cooks is pretty edible although the recent chorizo cassoulet was a bit dry and I realised he’d left out the stock. He also doesn’t like that part of cooking means cleaning up but as I’ve reasoned with him is that I’m happy for him to clean up every time I cook and I’ll do the same for him. He decided to clean up after himself and cleans up reasonably well after he cooks.

Recently he refused to go his school’s sports day because none of his mates were going. I can’t physically make a 6’5” young man do anything so all I had were other consequences and those included turning off the wifi for his computer and leaving him a long list of jobs to do for the day. Fortunately this was followed up an after-school detention as well. However I refused to sign a note excusing him for the day for him to get out of this after school detention.

But being the resourceful young man he is he found a way of assigning his computer a different MAC address so he could connect to our wifi. When I realised what he was doing I found that you can download software to spoof your computer’s MAC address for this type of thing. The modem thinks it’s a different device to what I’ve turned off so he can then connect.

Unless I turn off the wifi for all devices I don’t have a technological leg to stand on. So it was back to negotiation. And this is the key. MAC spoofing must have its drawbacks so the negotiation went better than I expected.

MAC spoofing is no longer being used – although sometimes threats are made to turn it back on.

In regards to the amount of time he spends gaming? Maybe it’s not too bad after all. At least he’s showing that he can commit to something. He is ranked in the top 7% of the game he plays.

Penelope Trunk has given me some hope about my son’s gaming habit.

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.

You’re at work and you get a phone call at about the time he gets home from school. That’s good. You like to know that he’s home safely. He’s quite excited and breathlessly tells me that when he got home he didn’t have his keys and he couldn’t find the spare keys, ‘because you keep moving them’. Side note, when you’ve got a teen it’s ALWAYS your fault. Never mind that I moved the keys once – which I told him about – and I moved them back to their original spot – which I also told him about, and showed him as well. And never mind that he’d used these keys a couple of weeks ago and promised me he’d put them back after he used them.

He climbed over the gate. I’m not sure why as we have 2 side gates that can be opened fairly easily.

He found a window around the back that wasn’t locked and managed to crawl through it and get inside. He was glad that on this particularly hot day he didn’t have to catch the bus to my work to get my keys.

Now, this window that was left open? We’d opened it 2 months ago when I had a party so an extension cord could fit through it to power some lights I set up out the back. I’d been asking him for the 2 months to make sure he’d locked it properly. But lucky he hadn’t hey?

When I got home from work, we looked in the spare key vicinity to try and find them. They definitely weren’t there.

He decided to look in his room because they might be there. Note to self. Steal keys occasionally and make him look for them in his room so it gets tidied! I can live with clothes on the floor until he can’t find something. I don’t like empty or nearly empty food packets, or dirty plates and glasses because I want to keep the mice and cockroaches away.

I had a look in the key bowl by the front door. Lo and behold there they were. However, he still couldn’t find his own keys.

But his keys turned up in his pencil case as he discovered the next day at school.

All’s well that ends well. All house keys are accounted for. The teen’s room is relatively tidy. All windows are locked and secured.

Until the next time.

Now that he’s 14 I feel more comfortable leaving him at home by himself some times. And he’s more than comfortable with that as well – to the point of saying goodbye to me and whooping it up behind the door as I leave. However, there are times when I tell him that he will be coming with me – no negotiation. Of course he tries to negotiate. And he pleads. And he argues. And this is all repeated. I used to get caught up in the back-and-forth but I’ve learned to back off and walk away.

I tell him that this is what we’re doing and when we’re doing it. I give him plenty of notice because the delay tactics come into play. He’ll decide he needs to eat so out comes the cereal and milk. This is why I allow plenty of time or have something on hand to eat in the car.

I find all of this harder to deal with than getting him and all his belongings as a baby or toddler out of the door. At least he didn’t argue then.

And once he’s out and over the fact that he’s not at home by himself it’s usually pretty good.

One of our recent outings was to see the Brighton sculptures. Below are the photos with one of him actually letting me take a photo of him. Also a rare occurrence these days.