HELP! OUR TEENS ARE TERRORS TOO
After one brave mum drew up a charge sheet of her 15-year-old’s maddening ways, droves of you wrote in with your horror stories
FROM leaving clothes on the floor to hours chatting on the phone, the sins committed by teenagers are endless. So when Nicola Jackson, 15, posted online the ‘rap sheet’ on which her parents listed her flaws, it went viral. Here, four other mums share their teenagers’ rap sheets — and their offspring try to defend themselves...
1
Tracy clement, 50, a divorcee and college curriculum manager, and son Sean, 17, live in Wells, Somerset. Sean, who has three older siblings, neil, 25, leonie, 24, and elise, 20, attends a boarding school, but has been at home for two months over the summer.
TRACEY SAYS:
It feels like sean has been home for ever. He has very expensive tastes and spent the first few weeks of the summer holiday working in his father’s ice cream factory, earning money to pay off debts — money he’d borrowed from his siblings to buy takeaways, ride around in taxis and spend money on designer clothes — during the previous term at school.
they loaned him the money for emergencies — something he has a very strange definition of.
then, once he’d paid them back, he spent most of August sleeping until midday before lying around on the sofa wearing a blanket like a toga, and watching U.s. drivel on TV.
I’d get home from work at 6pm to find the house a complete mess, with cushions, blankets, glasses and plates scattered around the living room floor. Not a single inch of kitchen work surface was visible beneath the dirty pots and dishes.
I’d spend the first half hour of every evening tidying up and shouting at him for being so damned lazy. He doesn’t argue back, he just smiles sweetly, pours me a glass of wine and returns to the sofa. Infuriating.
sean is massively spoilt — my daughter calls it ‘fourth child syndrome’ — and I guess that’s my fault because it is much easier to clear up after one than four, like I used to.
One of sean’s few responsibilities this summer was to put the bins out on a tuesday night in time for collection on Wednesday mornings. However, in over two months, he’s only managed it once.
Although I feel like dragging him out of bed at the crack of dawn to do it before I go to work on Wednesday mornings, I can’t be bothered, so just do it myself.
At the start of the holidays he went to Glastonbury festival and left his two-week-old iPhone 6s, which his father pays £65 a month for on a contract, in an open tent and it was damaged beyond repair in a downpour.
His dad then gave him his old iPhone 6, which sean left in a taxi, never to be seen again. He now has an old iPhone 5s of mine, though we’ve run out of replacements if that one gets lost or broken.
sean also loses door keys and bank cards on a weekly basis, creating lots of work (for me) cancelling and replacing them.
thankfully, he has lovely friends and I don’t object to them congregating at our house at the weekend, but what does annoy me is they drink my nice rosé and pinot grigio, instead of the cheap boxed wine I buy for them from lidl.
sean can be a bit of a disaster zone right now, but he’s a sweet, lovable boy underneath it all, so I’m confident he will make a fine young man — eventually.
SEAN SAYS:
MUM gets annoyed with me about some of the things I do (like smoking her cigarettes) or don’t do (like tidying up or remembering where I left my keys), but we always try to remain civil with one another.
she can’t understand why I have to spend so much money, for instance taking taxis when I visit my sister in london at weekends, instead of the Underground — I just don’t like the tube — or meeting friends for lunch at the Ivy. But I worked really hard at the start of the holidays to pay that money back.
that wasn’t enough for Mum, however, and since then she’s got frustrated with me for spending 12 hours a day lying on the sofa, watching TV — I’m just enjoying the rest before getting back to school and preparing for A-levels.
But I don’t like falling out with Mum, so I let her get upsets off her chest and don’t argue back.
2
Helen moulford, 46, is a seamstress. She was widowed from her husband, Bill, 18 months ago and lives in oxford with her daughters, megan, 18, Grace, 15, and fouryear-old elizabeth.
HELEN SAYS:
THANK goodness it’s the end of the summer holidays. Meg has driven me up the wall with her untidiness and forgetfulness.
As soon as she returns from college, she’ll fling her coat here, her bag there. I spend my life picking up after her. When she comes in from a night out — never deigning to tell me what time she’s coming home, of course — she’ll cook something elaborate, such as Mexican eggs for a late-night snack.
this means I come down in the morning to find a sink full of pots and pans waiting for me. she does do her own laundry, after a fashion.
But she’ll often fill the machine with clothes, then leave them in there to go mouldy.
And if the laundry fairy —– me —– happens to wash, dry and fold clothes and put them on her bed, I’ll find them on the floor the next day.
she started smoking at 14, much to my disgust, and would get strangers to buy her cigarettes, which horrified me. she’s still smoking now, but as she’s over the age limit, there’s really nothing I can do about it.
she has one tattoo —– which is quite tasteful —– on her hip and that’s fine. But she’s threatening to have more done, and I’m begging her not to.
thankfully, although she started young — she claims she was 16 — she’s been sensible about sex.
Having a baby sister who is 14 years her junior means she knows exactly what it’s like to have a newborn.
I do let boys stay under my roof, but she’s always rowing with boyfriends and then moans when all I say is: ‘Well, dump him if you don’t like him.’
Of course, it’s all normal teenage stuff and, to her credit, she’s been through some very tough times recently — my husband Bill, Meg’s father, died 18 months ago.
that said, her teenage years have been a rollercoaster and I can’t wait for the day she has her own children — and the boot is on the other foot!
MEG SAYS:
I AGREE 100 per cent with mum’s criticisms of me, and my only excuse is that I’m a teenager.
At least I’m never stroppy or rude and I don’t mean to annoy her.
Besides, I’m much better than I was four years ago, when I went completely off the rails and was having sex with boys and smoking weed. But losing Dad has made me grow up and I need to be a better role model for my younger sisters.
Yeah, I smoke cigarettes and I’m thinking of getting more tattoos, but if that’s the worst thing I can do, I don’t think Mum should worry.
The parents who dared throw a strop back
When I was pregnant, I read books about bringing up babies, toddlers and young children. now they’ve reached the teenage years I want to know where that book is?
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore my children.
But since the teenage years hit three years ago, life has become infuriating.
Since the age of two harry has always known to say: ‘Pardon?’ if he mishears. Yet suddenly, all I get is a sullen ‘What?!’ every time I say his name.
he never puts anything back where it belongs.
We have a little pot near the front door for keys and both kids can never, ever, put the key in it. They always put it next to it. Why?
We do a lot of recycling and it’s harry’s job to sort it out. But he actually only takes out one bottle or one bit of cardboard, and leaves the rest for us to clean up.
We call him ‘Arfur’ — because he only does ‘arfur’ job. As for his room, he’s going for the ‘just been burgled’ look, clearly.
nor are his interpersonal skills any better. Apparently, it’s against the law to get on with your younger sister. Whenever I catch them getting on like a house on fire, they start punching and saying they hate each other.
his moaning and complaining are also exhausting. Last year, we were lucky enough to spend 42 days on holiday — yet on our summer holiday in France, all harry could say was: ‘What? Another holiday? not again...’
We were staying on a five-star French campsite for over three weeks this year and he hardly ever took his head out of his laptop, book, or phone.
he complained about everything, including the fact that the swimming pool wasn’t deep enough.
At one point, his father — who never gets angry — was infuriated. he yelled: ‘I have no idea what will make you happy!’ and threatened to take his laptop away for ever if he didn’t change his attitude.
Fortunately, that worked, and we got glimpses of our normal, lovely son for the last few days of the break.
Of course, deep down we know that it’s simply a phase. he can be lovely and thoughtful and I wouldn’t change him for the world. But it is like having a 6ft toddler in the house.
HARRY SAYS:
NOT really a fair summary from my mum. OK, sometimes I only do half a job, but I clean the house, sweep up the leaves, trim the hedges . . .
I may complain about it a bit, but I’d say I’m a pretty good son.
As for moaning about the holiday, I’ve never liked caravanning and Mum and Dad know that, but it’s all we ever do — go to France caravanning.
4
DAISY Steel, 45, a TV producer, lives near Frome, Somerset, with husband Jonathan, 45, a computer programmer, and their children Ben, 14, and Joe, ten. they have three older children, Jack, 24, who has left home, Poppy, 21, and Jasmine, 19, who are both at university.
DAISY SAYS:
I’D forgotten what it’s like having a teenage boy, as it’s ten years since my eldest was 14, but Ben is, let’s just say, really rather challenging.
he’s spent most days this summer at the skate park in Frome with his friends and invariably missed the last bus home, which, because we live in a village, is at 6pm. not only does he not bother to call to let us know, he also puts his phone on airplane mode to conserve the battery for social media, which means we can’t get through when we try to call him.
Most evenings he contacts us eventually to ask for a lift home, but on one particularly awful night last month he neither rang nor came home, leaving me pacing the house all night. I assumed he was staying with a friend, so didn’t trouble the police, but I barely slept, in case I was wrong, and had to leave for work in Bristol at 5am the next day. I called home mid-morning to see if he’d turned up and his brother, Joe, said: ‘Oh Ben’s at his friend Billy’s house, I saw he posted something on Instagram from there.’
Of course I was hugely relieved, but also furious with Ben for being so utterly thoughtless.
his capacity for self-absorption is his worst flaw, he never thinks about the impact of his behaviour on his family — or our pets. For instance, I’ll leave instructions for him to feed the cat and take the dog for a walk before I go to work and he totally forgets.
Over the holidays he’s also become nocturnal, awake until 3am messaging friends from his phone and then in bed until lunchtime.
Worse still, he wakes his father and I, who have to be up early for work, by selfishly brushing his teeth in the bathroom next door to our bedroom — because he prefers it to the one next to his. he has two sets of bunk beds in his room, for when his friends stay over, and infuriates me by sleeping in a different bed every night, so I end up having to wash four lots of bedding.
When I tell him off, he doesn’t generally argue, he agrees and promises not to do it again — but then he always does it again!
I think adolescents come out the other end when they’re 19 and you get your darling child back again — so I can see why some people send their children away to boarding school...
BEN SAYS:
I DON’T do any of the things Mum gets cross about on purpose, I just forget to feed the cat or let her know when I’m staying at a friend’s house.
I wouldn’t do it out of spite, I’m just not very organised so sometimes forget to do things. I think my parents will be happier when I’m back at school and things return to normal.