Column

A fortnightly, and forthright,column that charts the rather choppy waters of trying to parent teenagers

Scene 1: The city is quiet, the sounds of traffic have died down, everyone is gently snoring in their beds. But as the clock ticks away diligently, so does my daughter, her eyes poring over an Economics tome, or her pen scratching away furiously as she tackles Mathematics.

Scene 2: It’s the dead of night again. My husband has switched off the TV after watching the late-night broadcast and retired to bed. My son is in the arms of Morpheus in the children’s bedroom. I walk towards the fridge to grab a bottle of water, when a chink of light in our guest/computer room stops me in my sleepy tracks outside the closed door. I can hear my daughter’s soft voice and the softer clink of computer keys.

As my kids grew in years, I was faced with a new development in the household — late nights. It was an eye-opener to learn that your teenage child could sit up into the wee hours of the morning, trying to make head or tail of various notes, textbooks and journals. Or worse still, could chat endlessly on the computer with a mobile tucked miraculously under one ear.

Turning into nocturnal creatures is a behaviour trait shared by teens everywhere, and solutions to it are discussed by all mothers. Paternal shouts make no headway, too! I’ve tried suggestion, persuasion, temptation and the threat of violence (mind you, only a threat) but the age-old mantra of ‘Early to bed, early to rise’ has failed.

Apparently, its fault is just that — it is OLD. The new success key, I am told, is defined by how many hours you can push yourself into staying up.

As I stirred mugs of potent coffee and looked at my daughter’s head over her table (the computer was another issue), I realised that this would be one more thing I must add to my list as I lost my children to the big, not-so-bad changing world…that, as they slept the best part of a day exhaustedly and then bragged about their fortitude in burning the midnight oil, their satisfaction and their smiles were what reassured me that sleep be damned, they were truly content.

If late nights had been restricted to computer time and phone calls, mothers would turn into midnight marauding monsters! What saved the day and the next morn’s sanity was the note that I would find every morn on the fridge at exam times, with a smiley on it saying, “Mum, finished math. I went to sleep at 2am. Wake me up by8 am. Love you! J”.

The smiley said it all and made my day!

I am sure there are a host of interesting episodes that dot any parent’s life. Do send us interesting episodes on e-mail to parenttrap@dnaindia.net. It would be lovely to exchange notes with parents who are navigating Teen-town!

And, by the way, when friends come over and want to have late-night celebrations, or when teens go out and want to have a late-night out is another story altogether! All about it, next time.
parenttrap@dnaindia.net