‘Teenagers make good lockdown companions’
Anna Pursglove has welcomed the ringside seat back into the optimistic world of her children
Ihave spent a significant portion of the past 12 months locked down with teenagers. Actually, technically speaking, with a teen and a tween: Jed, 15, and Patti, 12 (left).
“Cooped up with all those hormones! How do you cope?” asks one friend, whose kids have flown the nest. “I’d be tempted to let them lie in until the pandemic is over.”
The thing is, though, that I don’t think she means this because – and this isn’t a widely advertised fact – teenagers actually make extremely good lockdown companions.
In the normal course of things, young people want to hang out with other young people. Definitely not with their 40-something parents. One day you’re inside the minutiae of their worlds and then they go to high school and, bam, you’re on the outside.
In lockdown, however, your ringside seat in their lives is given back to you. Exposure to your older children’s passions and opinions is funny and refreshing and stimulating and, sometimes, like being in a very tangential episode of Question Time.
“Mum, would you agree that terrorism is a relative concept?”
“Er, can I just get the lasagne out of the oven, Jed?”
“You must have thought about it!” “Um…”
“Well, it is. Did you buy any more ice cream? I was hungry in the night and I ate it all.”
Teenagers, furthermore, are a naturally kind and optimistic species and, consequently, quite brilliant at picking you up when you’re down. Finding me sniffing after a Zoom call with someone close who I haven’t seen for a long time now, Patti had the perfect remedy. “Let’s watch Cobra Kai together, Mum. It’s cool and it’s got some old guy in it who was famous when you were young.”
This turns out to be The Karate Kid’s
Ralph Macchio reprising his role as Daniel LaRusso. Whenever the middleaged Daniel is in danger of wallowing, the teenage characters step in and show him something that is good about the world. We have much to learn from Cobra Kai.
Then there’s the new language I’ve begun to master over the past year. Restricted in their interactions with friends, the kids have had no choice but to chat to me, introducing a multitude of new words and phrases in the process. Had a young person told me, in 2019, that they were “shipping” two people, I would have assumed a nautical vessel was involved. Now, however, I can tell you with confidence that “shipping” is nothing to do with boats. It means the speaker is rooting for a particular couple’s relationship to last. I told you teens were optimistic.
Of course, life with a locked-down teen can also be frustrating. I am not sure, for example, how much more Duke of Edinburgh bronze-level cookery my kitchen can take. When he signed up for DofE, Jed was wooed with tales of adventures in kayaks with overnight stops in wild glens (we live in a very beautiful part of Scotland), but Covid has dispensed with all that and instead he’s cooking. The frying pan met an untimely end after becoming permanently fused with some pancake mix. Who knows what the kid put in it but, judging by the aftermath, my money’s on an industrial aggregate of some kind.
Other parents will also, I am sure, attest to the fact that having teenagers with no access to food other than what you buy in the weekly shop is a little like having locusts. The entire loaf of bread? Really? Since last night?
No pile of wet towels or plundered fridge or teen tidying (everything they own stuffed under the bed), however, can diminish the pleasure of having them around more. No, they aren’t at their best before 9am… scratch that… before lunchtime, but those afternoons feel like stolen hours. Like time that I’ve been given back.
Of course I want this to end. I want them to have their lives back and to be able to carry on doing what teenagers are supposed to do, which is interacting with the world and finding out how they fit into it. Will I, however, be selfishly sad when I’m forced to give Jed and Patti back to their friends? I will. Very.