Wanted: one manual for the operation of teenagers

My son is driving me mental of late. If you fancy looking back at some previous posts then you’ll see that while he’s always been a handful, he’s also always been such fun, with a brilliant sense of humour and of course we’ve always had such a nice relationship. That was when he was a boy. Now he’s drifting closer and closer to teenage-hood, and I honestly have to say that this isn’t my favourite phase. In fact, I would really like to get a time machine and fast forward through the main bulk and pick up when he’s grown up a bit.

So what am I dealing with?

Firstly, the lad is completely uninterested in school and has just decided that he doesn’t like it so he’s not doing it. This of course doesn’t really work out so well. At this stage I feel like everyone is making such an effort to get him to do well but the only person that can really make a difference is him. It’s been a bit soul destroying and it’s hard to accept that no matter what you do, and how hard you work it’s never going to make the blindest bit of difference until he starts taking things seriously.

Of course, as usual, the school thinks he has ADHD and to be fair, I can’t contradict this so we’ve agreed to have him assessed. However, I know my son, and he does have the ability to concentrate and focus on things – as long as he thinks it’s interesting. From what I understand, a child who has ADHD cannot pick and choose what he concentrates on. Also, I believe that children who really suffer with this have trouble socialising. No issues there at all. But I’m not the expert so let’s see what happens with that.

Then of course we have the attitude. I can’t handle it, but at the same time it doesn’t appear any different to many teenagers and way better than some little buggers I see running around. The general theme at the moment is that nothing is his fault and the world is against him and life is so unfair! Oh and of course everything is so-like-totally dramatic. Seriously-Like.

This morning was a prime example. He hadn’t bothered to get stuff ready for school last night, so I woke him up early to get him organised and give him time to get himself together. Well, neither of us are morning people. I usually let him sleep as much as possible in order to minimise morning interaction with him (which seems to work). However I thought this morning that I can’t let our obvious dislike of all things morning, including human beings, and anything that moves, stop us getting both our acts together and starting the day right.

That didn’t work. At all. I ended up yelling, he ended up sulking. Not the happy organised brilliant start to the week I’d hoped for. So tomorrow I’ll try again. I still believe the early morning thing is a good thing because if we can get it right, we’ll both be able to benefit from starting each day in the best possible way. But more than anything, I hope that I can motivate him at some point to do well and be the brilliant individual I’ve always thought he could be.