Colleen Smith

MY teenagers tell me everything.
I know that sounds naïve. And I know that it flies in the face of all the evidence about parents not knowing the half of what their children get up to.

 And I accept that it’s not normal for parents and their teens to have such an open and candid relationship. And trust me, half of the time I really wish that I didn’t know in quite such graphic detail about all my daughters’ teenage kicks.
But that doesn’t take away from the fact that they do, tell me – even sometimes while I’m walking in the opposite direction, waving them away and shouting that I’d rather not hear.

 OK, it’s true that they don’t tell me everything straight away. There are times when they spend a few weeks or months getting comfortable with some new growing-up stage themselves before they feel confident enough to share (sometimes they like to choose a particular moment for its greatest shock value: over the dinner table when we have friends and family round is a special favourite).

 And then there was the year when my eldest daughter pretended that she had quit smoking, which she hadn’t. But now she says that was just to keep the peace because she couldn’t bear all the rowing it caused.

 As you can imagine I was fascinated this week by the results of a new ICM poll which asked children about all their bad habits.
Are they taking drugs? Having sex? Having unprotected sex? Shoplifting? Looking at internet porn?

 It didn’t surprise me that the children were open and honest in their replies.
But the survey went on to question a parent of each child, to find out how much they knew about their 11 to 16 year old’s behaviour.
And that was what shocked me. The parents really were living in cloud cuckoo land.

 Of the children who had taken drugs, 65 per cent of their parents believe they haven’t. Of the smokers, 52 per cent of parents didn’t know. Of the children who had lost their virginity, 50 per cent of parents were unaware.
The parents quite literally didn’t know the half of it.

 Now I hope this doesn’t make me sound smug. I’m not claiming in any way that being in the know makes me a better mother.
It usually just makes me terrified. There are times when I am filled with admiration at my children’s bravery – and other times when I am shocked to my roots by their naivety.

 I know the saying is that a mother’s place is in the wrong. And as a single mum I am constantly worried about my seeming inability to set firm boundaries.
When I was writing this I asked them whether they are frightened of telling me the truth. Or ever frightened of me? They snorted with laughter: “Hell No!”
I am still not sure whether I am supposed to take this as a compliment.

 My kids’ theory is that teenagers mainly lie to keep the peace. My two say they tell me because they know I can handle it.
I know that was true for me.
Despite my Catholic childhood, I never thought I was doing anything sinful by lying as a teenager. I really felt that I was protecting my parents from something that needn’t concern them.

 A psychologist explained to me (and excuse me if I’ve got the science of this slightly skew whiff) about how part of a child’s frontal lobe actually goes through a period of deconstruction and reconstruction during adolescence. And the result of this is that for a while they really do lose the ability to understand the laws of cause and effect. In other words, children are far more sensible between the ages of seven and 12 than they are between 13 and 20.

 It doesn’t matter what mum and dad say. It doesn’t matter what teachers say. It doesn’t matter how punchy and hard-hitting the Government safety slogans and anti-everything campaigns are.
As far as teenagers are concerned, none of those bad things are going to happen to them.

 And as a parent, you can talk ‘til you’re blue in the face. You can ground them. You can stay awake all night and drive around town at midnight in your PJs and wellies screaming at them not to hang up again on their mobile, but if they decide they are going to do something, in my experience there is very little you can do to stop them.

 Now what I think would be a far more fascinating poll would be to ask parents to tick answers in the same boxes about their experiences of sex, drugs and all that stuff. And, for those of us not too old to remember, what age we were when we first indulged.
It would be fascinating to see the similarities and differences between the generations.
Surely most of us were just as stupid, and all did things we are lucky enough to have lived to regret.

 It never fails to amuse me that my children make huge assumptions about what I have ever done or not done. Basically they think I am as pure and unsullied as the virgin snow (people who know me will be falling about laughing now).
I don’t think I’ve ever actually told them lies, it’s just that they’ve never asked the direct questions.

 I suppose that, like me, they really would rather not know. Children physically shrink whenever they come face to face with the reality of the fact that their parents have sex.
I know that when I got pregnant the last time, one of my older two realised with a shock that that meant that everybody would know I had been having sex. With her father!

 So while I am happy to accept that parents lie to their children, and teenagers lie to their parents, I am just not happy to accept that my teenagers lie to me.
And, by the by, while I was trying to carry out my limited “research” for this column, my daughters couldn’t see how any of this could possibly be worth writing about.

 Instead, I was told I should be writing about Britney going off the rails.
Or, more interesting still, about how you can now see pictures of Harry Potter’s willy on the internet (he’s currently starring in/ rehearsing for his role in Peter Schafer’s play Equus: “You used to be able to see his chest and bum,” I was told, “but now you can see his willy too.” Stupidly I asked what it looked like (it’s that boundary business again, I know I’m not good with it). And typically, she told me. I won’t tell you what she said. It was not at all derogatory, but it did make me laugh!
 

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TWO things have happened recently which have called me untold stress and sleepless nights.
The first was Christmas. Phew what a palaver! Thank goodness that’s over for another year!
And the second was my first date in a year. And ditto, with the phew and palaver.

 It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, but I really had no idea it would cause me such angst.
It all started with the work’s Christmas party.

 It’s possible that I’m totally deluded, but I thought I looked pretty gorgeous (for a 47-year-old single, working mum teetering on the edge of physical and mental exhaustion, that is).

 Anyway my mum had given me some Christmas money and my younger sister had given me some fashion tips (very high boots and skinny jeans, she said). I thought I looked a bit like the principal boy in Puss in Boots, but I did feel glam. And it was better than looking like the Dame, I suppose.

 And I was looking forward to our Herald night out because the best bit about working for a newspaper is the people I work with. I sit all day surrounded by quick-witted, funny slightly mad people. And, the job itself is infinitely fascinating, although due to boring stuff like the laws of the land and the rules of public decency, a lot of the juiciest bits never make it into print.

 We started the evening by meeting for dinner at 6.30pm (I could drone on again about boring veggie eating out and paying £18 for a godawful cheese pie, but the carnivores also had a ropey meal, and at least nothing had to die on my account, so all in all it was a result).

 Then we met for the party and by the time we left eight hours later things were getting slightly hazy. Apparently I invented a new party game, danced with the Herald Express Christmas cake and there is photographic evidence that I was pole dancing, but I suspect digital jiggerypokery.

But anyway, the next thing I remembered as we walked back along the harbourside towards the taxi rank at about 3.30pm was stopping to eat chips from two well-dressed gentlemen who had been to a ball at The Imperial. I can’t remember exactly what was said, but one suggested that his friend and I should swap mobile numbers.

 Now you should know here that I am practically a virgin when it comes to both texting and dating. I met the father of my children, my ex, He Who Shall Not Be Named, whatever you want to call him, at 17.
In those far off days, back in the halcyon summer of 1976, the closest thing to a mobile phone was the “Beam Me Up Scottie” transmitter on Star Trek.

 I know this must seem hysterically funny to anybody under the age of about 40, but if we wanted to communicate with members of the opposite sex, we had to speak to them. What, I hear you cry, no texts? No MSN? No emails. It seems primitive now, but often we would walk to other people’s houses just for a chat! It’s true, you couldn’t makethis up…

 So anyway here I was, the morning after the night before, with a hangover and no memory of the man I had met on the harbourside, except that he had nice chips.
For some reason which now escapes me, we never spoke on the phone. We began texting each other and, because of Christmas and work and life and his kids and my kids we couldn’t meet up for an actual date for another six days.

 The textual tension over that next six days was unbearable. Nothing rude or coarse, just ever so slightly, politely flirty. I’m not saying it wasn’t fun. In fact it was probably the most fun I’d had all year.
But I stopped sleeping. I honestly had no idea why, but all of a sudden I was taking hours to nod off, waking up and taking another couple of hours to get back to sleep and then waking again another half-hour later. For six days I averaged three hours a night.
And when I was awake, my heart was racing and I was having heart palpitations.
I was expecting to wake up and find myself wired up to monitors in Torbay Hospital’s heart unit.

 If I ever get asked on another date, ever again, I’ve asked my teenage daughters to confiscate my mobile. The agonies of trying to work out what those short little messages and digi kisses, and the length of the silences in between, really mean. The horrors of agonising over what is, or is not, an appropriate response.

 Added to that there’s my way too overactive imagination. It was essentially a blind date, but by the time we actually met, 50 or so text messages later, I had built it up into Casablanca or Brief Encounter or the episode of The Simpsons where Homer first meets Marge.
Despite all that, and the fact that I was so over-tired I looked like an old hag, we got on fine, no embarrassing silences, lots in common to talk about, and had a perfectly nice night out.

 But suffice to say, I am sleeping fine again. Back to my usual sleeping like a log (woke up in the fireplace, ho ho).
Turns out I was just plain terrified. What’s strange is that I didn’t recognise that feeling was fear. Because dating, after years and years (and years) of being with the same person, is like spinning into space without a lifeline (obviously I’m guessing a bit on the analogy here, not being an actual astronaut, let alone one who has experienced being lost in space for eternity).

 Now the big question is whether I will ever be brave enough to go on another date. All those kindly friends (usually happily married ones) who ask why I haven’t met anyone else yet, and blithely ask if I’ve tried internet dating, have no idea of the degree of courage involved in taking such a step.
I think I’ll gather myself first and wait ‘til next Christmas before I try again.