Know why your kids are such a pain?You
MARIANNE Jackson, a 52year-old mum from Chelmsford, was so frazzled during the long weeks of this summer holiday she texted her teenager – upstairs in her room eating ice cream – and ordered her to come down to the kitchen.
There she handed her daughter Nicola, 15, a nine-point whinge entitled: ‘Things you have done wrong this week.’
As my eye ran down the predictable rap-sheet (‘left cup in your room’, ‘always on your phone’ and ‘making a tea for yourself and not offering me or your dad one when we do everything for you’) I felt a tiny throb of despair.
Her Angry Mum note has unwittingly documented the state of British parenthood, summer of 2016 – in fact, it is so perfect that I reckon it will still be pored over by domestic historians in years to come.
Yes, our children do live in our houses as if they are hotels, and their bedrooms are middens (under the story on MailOnline, one person commented that her own daughter’s room was such a health hazard that ‘the family pet rabbit and dog are banned for their own safety’.)
They do sometimes make a brew and forget to ask if anyone else wants one, not make their beds, and take liberties. After all, they’re teenagers.
I’ll never forget the time we went on holiday to Colombia, and my mobile didn’t work, so it wasn’t until I was en route home via Miami and accessed my various mailboxes for the first time in ten days that the full scale of a horror concerning my own family became apparent.
I thought my eldest two were safely at boarding school in Wiltshire, but the first few voicemails were from other mothers from Marlborough College (I only throw this in as the school is alma mater of Kate Middleton) asking was it really OK if their children stayed at our London house on the Saturday night?
The next few voicemails – increasingly shrill and after midnight GMT – were from our neighbours complaining about the noise. The final message was from the chairman of our garden committee, saying he was calling the police and we would have to pay to have all the flower beds replanted.
Given this fairly standard story, it strikes me that Nicola is, in fact, a model teenager – and Marianne is a typical modern parent.
My summer reading has been The Girls by Emma Cline, so after reading about underage sex, drugs, and murder in the heart of a hippy-dippy California cult circa 1969, the fact that Nicola CBA (that’s teenage for ‘couldn’t be a***d’) to put her cereal bowl in the dishwasher didn’t really sound that bad in comparison.
IN FACT, the only bit of her mum’s note (it went viral after Nicola realised this would make a sick Facebook post) that gave me pause was complaint number eight: ‘Greeting the dogs with a better welcome than me and your dad after coming back from the holiday we paid for.’
This reminded me grimly of the new reality.
Children are a one-way street. We give to them (whatever has happened to the holiday job?) and then they, presumably, give to their own children in Larkinesque turn.
There is no compunction whatsoever any more about asking – or demanding – handouts. I was far too feeble to ask my parents for money, as that was not the way it worked then. If you wanted something – a holiday, car, trainers – you had to earn it, not ask for it.
But now parents are so soft, and such an easy touch, that we do not even expect gratitude in return – and I speak as a serial offender.
Marianne Jackson has done us all a service this summer, even if her list of daughterly wrongdoing did end with a hysterical and hollow threat that she would never do anything for Nicola ever again.
She has reminded us that the kids are – basically – all right. It’s needy, indulgent parents who need the swift boot to the backside.