MY boys have always been so laid back they are practically horizontal. While I’m whipping myself up into a blind panic about a deadline they have to meet or trying to help ensure they get somewhere on time, they’re telling me to ‘relax’ and ‘stop making such a fuss.’
And they do have a point, for there comes a time when you have to let them get on with it. We so-called ‘helicopter parents’ are always being urged by experts to pull back and let our children sort things out for themselves.
So when 17-year-old Roscoe announced weeks ago that he was going to go to a Warwick University open day and had arranged to stay with his big brother, who has recently moved there, for the weekend, I reckoned his time had come.
He was going to book a train, he said, and just needed me to take him to the station from school on the Friday afternoon. It was all sorted.
Fast forward four weeks, the day before he was due to leave, and he told me he needed my credit card to pay for his ticket. Because he didn’t book it in advance, it cost £95 instead of £60. “It would have been £40 if you’d organised a railcard,” I complained.
“Well, it’s your money,” he said, with a shrug of his shoulders. And he wonders why I’m normally breathing down his neck.
He was going out that night and I couldn’t resist suggesting he pack his bag before he left as there wouldn’t be much time next day: “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said, eyes rolled Heavenwards.
He wanted to come home from school to get changed first on Friday, but I did point out he hadn’t allowed much time to get to the station if we got caught in heavy traffic or were otherwise delayed.
“It doesn’t take that long. You fuss too much,” he shouted from his bedroom where he was deciding what to wear.
His bag wasn’t packed, of course: “Don’t panic. Everything’s in a pile, I just need to put it in the bag,” he said.
He emerged after fifteen minutes that we didn’t have to spare with a holdall and I couldn’t resist hovering: “Have you got your underpants, socks, toothbrush?” I asked. “Of course,” he said, annoyed. “Do you think I’m stupid?”
“Pyjamas?” I added when we got to the car. “Wait a minute,” he said, running back into the house to get them.
“You do have your epipens, don’t you?” I asked as I started the engine. He needs to carry these adrenalin injectors with him at all times in case he suffers a bee or wasp sting, which he’s allergic to and which could, potentially, be fatal.
He didn’t know where they were. I pointed out that he assures me every morning they’re in his schoolbag: “I just tell you that,” he barked, as if I should have realised. So we went back inside to search for the epipens. I found them eventually: “You do have your asthma inhalers, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, triumphantly, before adding: “But they’ve run out.” So I grabbed some of his younger brother’s spares.
“We really don’t have much time,” I stressed again. “Chill out,” he said.
And then we hit a diversion, which was badly signposted, leaving us to guess which way to go. “Hurry up,” said Roscoe, who was by now starting to fidget a little nervously. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
We were stuck in heavy traffic. “Put your foot down,” he said, pointing to the time on his phone. “And can you not just go through those red lights?” There was rising panic in his voice.
I was worried we might not get parked easily at the station: “I can’t just drop you outside because you know I have to go in with you to print out your tickets from the machine with my credit card,” I said.
“Well, you could have told me that,” he said indignantly. “You’re going to make me miss my train now.”
By some small miracle we arrived on the platform with exactly two minutes to spare. “Look,” said Roscoe, pointing at the departures board: “I don’t know why you were panicking so much. We had loads of time.”
I WAS helping out with tours at our sons’ school for a group of past pupils from the Sixties who had returned for a reunion. Unusually for a state school, it has boarding, although most students are day pupils who live locally. During the tour of the girls’ accommodation, I asked one of our guests if she had been a boarder: “I was desperate to board. But my parents refused to move away.” Some mums and dads can be so inconsiderate.