What to do with The Boy

I vowed not to write about my kids but…

The conundrum of Boy Seymour is a curious one. He is everything a teenaged chap should be and more: a doughnut devouring, untidy, loud, contrary, lanky, lovable, clumsy, antagonizing  and often adorable young man. He fits the stereotype, but throws in a few little curveballs just to keep me on my toes.

Currently, we are on a metaphorical voyage of self-discovery. The only problem is, I am the one who is trying to steer the ship. He is happy to wash up wherever the tide takes him. As long as there is treasure at the end of the voyage and the labour is low-level, he’ll be happy.

And ok, that’s fair enough. He’s fifteen. Just because I am looking at him and seeing all the possibilities that he has open to him, does not mean he is seeing them, oh no. And I can only see them because I posses hindsight, which is both a curse and a privilege of age. I chose the wrong A Levels. Maybe it is his prerogative to do the same…

The boy is currently doing his mock GCSEs. He is trying to revise, but actually he is doing a lot of wanting to try to revise but getting sidetracked. Often, the sidetracking is happening as a result of a phone or an iPad, or an Xbox or a telly (in my order of decreasing  perceived severity).  He does care about doing well, mostly, but not quite enough.

I remind him to revise. I ask him if he has done his homework and I try to hammer home the fact that this is an opportunity not just to show what he can do but to GET GCSEs DONE. If he has to re-take Maths and English, he will be grumpy. I don’t nag him about any subject other than the key three, and I am not expecting nor hoping for a suite of nines.

But even though I think I am being reasonable, he just sees me as a nag. Which, depending on your perspective, I may well be. The biggest cause of my “nagging”?  The f@cking tech’.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again, I HATE phones and ipads. Yes they’re amazing tools but they are also brain suckers, time wasters and they cost me a flippin’ fortune every month. (It feels like I am paying a king’s ransom just to add aggro into my life.)

They can also be dangerous. So I have tried all kinds of ways to limit my kids’ time on these awful things and it just ends up stressy. I’ve now fiddled so much with parental controls and wifi blocking that the decent phone I stupidly got for my son is a pile of useless crap, as he delights in telling me.

As a final resort, I visited my local EE shop last Saturday to chat about it. What I was expecting, I don’t know. I didn’t even plan what I was going to say when I got there, but I booked an appointment regardless,  and spent half an hour chatting to a tattooed young man with a ponytail about the troubles I was having. Said young man was clearly out of his comfort zone; young, techy and desperate to advocate for the benefits of devices but also bound by decency to acknowledge the concerns of this battle-worn adult, he uncomfortably occupied the demographic in between my son and I.

Boy Seymour threw his oar in. He gets arsey when he is cross, wherever he is and whoever he’s with. He’s a social hand grenade. (I’m hoping it’s just a phase.) Yet the young chap did a marvellous job of trying to back me up, whilst probably relating more closely with my son as he tried to point out that the world is a dangerous place and having the use of a smart phone is a privilege and a responsibility, not a given. I nearly cried.

I am not sure if we got anywhere with some of the other issues I wanted to address, namely my slow downloads speeds and intermittent service, and I am not really sure why I felt the need to reach out to EE in store to help me win these parenting battles that are essentially mine to manage. Taking Boy Seymour with me was perhaps unwise, as I was aware he’d probably seize the opportunity to put his case forward when he saw the young, cool shop assistant who’d likely understand his plight. In the end, there was no firm resolution for either of us, because I am pretty sure EE has not got a magic wand, and they are not there to parent my child. (But they could improve their app, which is ridiculously clunky when it comes to parental controls.)

I guess I just need to deal with it the old fashioned way.

Was it a wasted trip? An embarrassment all round? Partially. But not entirely. I always think it is important to reach out, and if my beef is with phone use, I felt speaking to EE was a sensible option. You never know when someone might suggest something that makes a big difference. For Boy Seymour, this visit was something he will no doubt remember, and whilst he got a bit narky with me in the shop, he also apologised whilst there, too. That’s big. And all I could think of, as the young shop assistant tried to manage the tricky situation he’d been presented with, was a future where my son tells any kids he might have about how his mum went to such lengths to prevent his brain from being permanently infected by TikTok and Snaps. (I also imagined a scenario where two actors might enter such a premises for a mystery shopper kind of mission. Scenario: mother at wits end with son’s online habits and potential tech’ addicition. How would the network providers fare..?)

I need to end this rather ranty post by saying that Boy Seymour is fifteen, growing like a weed and doing OK really. He is a good egg. Yet the mystery of his next steps remains. A Levels are out, after he expressed horror that a local sixth form college “had exams” during the principal’s speech. The course that involves working on planes and/or cars down in Shoreham is out because students are not allowed to drive them. And he doesn’t want to stay on at his current school, for no discernible reason.

Today’s possibles are blacksmithing or becoming a barber.

What will they be tomorrow?

Nobody really knows where life will take them. Perhaps it is like a voyage after all – a mystery one. Destination unknown, route tbc. And maybe that’s how it should be.

#gowiththeflow

#bemorelikeboy