School’s barely been back a week when the text messages start to arrive.
It emerges that the boy has decided to ease himself into fifth year, taking a relaxed approach to matters such as doing homework – or even simply turning up on time – and his teachers have noticed.
By the time his mum’s forwarded six texts from the school, we’ve formed a plan.
Since I work from home, we are able to engineer a swift reversal of the arrangement that’s stood for years: the boy will stay will me during the week and return to his mum’s at the weekend. There will be no more slumping back into his pit after she’s left for the day; at the very least, he’ll be in his registration class on time.
This new regime is intended to impose some order on the life of a 15-year-old who appears to have become almost entirely nocturnal over the last year or so.
It begins well enough.
On the first evening, he deigns to dine with me and we have a “serious” discussion about the importance of doing homework.
“I mean, it’s what, half an hour a night and for that you don’t fall behind plus you don’t have me and your mum on your back all the time.”
Persuading teenagers to do their homework can sometimes be an uphill struggle
He concedes this is a good point and we agree that – after he’s completed an outstanding assignment – we’ll watch a movie.
“All done?” I ask.
“Yep,” says the boy, entering the living room, “I’m hungry.”
It’s been an hour since he ate the second of two huge bowls of spaghetti carbonara and now he wants to know if we have “something light like chicken tenders or Haribo”.
He settles for two cheese and ham toasties while we watch The Last Stop in Yuma County.
I’m an early riser by nature so I’m outside his bedroom at 7am, the next morning, tapping on the door and repeating his name in a deep, mournful tone.
Eventually comes a grunt of acknowledgement so I open the door. He has his head under the covers but I’m prepared for this.
I play the intolerably jaunty 1980s hit Get Out Of Your Lazy Bed by Matt Bianco on my phone, while dancing at the end of his bed.
“Right! Right! I’m getting up.”
It’s all relatively painless. The boy’s out the door by 8.30, giving him plenty of time to be at his desk when the bell sounds.
Forty five minutes later, his mother forwards a new text from the school…
“That overdue homework,” I say, when he gets home.
“Uh-huh?”
“I thought you did it?”
“I did.”
“Why is it,” I say, all TV courtroom lawyer, “That your mum got THIS then?”
I hold up my phone to show him the latest update from his exasperated teachers.
He fumbles for his glasses, breaking my flow.
It turns out there’s nothing to be concerned about. What had happened was this, you see? The boy had done the overdue homework for this particular teacher and that was him up-to-date with what he hadn’t handed in last week. This latest text was “just” about an earlier essay that he also hadn’t done.
I point out there’s no statute of limitations on overdue homework and send him to his room to complete it.
“Are you absolutely up to date, now?” I ask when he comes back out an hour or so later.
“Pretty much,” he says.
I drill down and discover that “pretty much” means “absolutely not”.
He eats four chicken breasts and half a litre of vanilla ice cream before returning to his room.
Me as homework monitor is the height of hypocrisy. I was an appalling student during my high school years, rarely paying attention and – frequently – bunking off to hang around record shops and smoke fags. By the time I stumbled out of the end of six years at secondary, I had a handful of mediocre exam passes.
But I can fake moral authority to a reasonably high degree and, when I later knock his door, he insists he has complied.
Addressing and solving the mystery of the missing homework is only part of the project. The other thing his mum and I are concerned about is getting his sleep patterns into some kind of order.
Of course, the usual restrictions on devices are applied but, still, he’d stay up until five am and sleep past lunch if he could.
During the summer holidays, that was fine but it’s no way to get through your highers.
I wake at two in the morning for the usual reason that 55-year-old men wake at two in the morning and, as I pass his room, I hear muttering.
I spring through the bedroom door – Cato to his Clouseau – and seize the iPhone. How could I have forgotten it?
A few hours later, I’m outside his bedroom door, reduced to counting.
“If you’re not up in 10 seconds,” I say.
“Stop this counting bull****,” he replies.
I laugh. I’m more proud of him than I should be.
And here’s the problem. I’m struggling with one of the tests every parent must face as their children move into adulthood.
No, I don’t need anybody to tell me how important it is to ensure order and discipline in a child’s life. I know the lessons the boy learns now may shape his future and I know it’s not always the parent’s job to be the good guy in all of this. But despite this knowledge, I can’t help wanting to be his friend rather than his keeper.
It requires real effort for me to snap out of that mindset and to become the authority figure I’m required to be. I see texts about missing homework and have to remind myself not to think “och, the wee rogue”.
He finishes all outstanding essays – “promise” – and I decide we should do more father and son bonding over a movie. We watch Reservoir Dogs and he agrees it’s so much more relaxing not to have all that homework hanging over him.
The next day, he’s heading back to his mum’s after school. I feel it’s been a successful week – a good start, anyway – and I begin meal planning for his return (basically, make twice as much as normal then add some).
Shortly after I complete the online food order – full of things I know the boy will love – my phone pings. His mother has forwarded a message.
My heart sinks as I open it.
“Your son has failed to hand in…”
