‘I’M off out for a walk,” I said the other day, leaving the 17-year-old and 15-year-old alone in the house. “The two of you can study in peace.”

I was still putting on my shoes in the porch when the older boy, who thought I’d gone, came bounding down the stairs, singing merrily at the top of his voice.

“Ding, dong the witch is dead, wicked witch, the wicked witch.

Ding dong the wicked witch is dead...” The shocked look on his flushed red face as his eyes met mine said it all.

I was young and carefree once too, I wanted to tell him. So how come I’ve suddenly turned into the wicked witch of the West?

It’s because we’re in the middle of the exam season and the nerves are getting to me. I know it’s the boys who are sitting their AS levels and GCSEs, but they’re so laid back they’re practically horizontal.

I have tried to bite my tongue. But is it really that unreasonable to suggest that opening a book from time to time might be a good idea? Or to encourage them to get up before lunch time?

“I was gonna,” is the 17-year-old’s new catchphrase. He wheels it out when I admonish him for not getting round to finishing his coursework, reading a set text or spending the evening preparing for his next exam, like he promised he would.

I close my eyes and envisage my hands clasped tightly around his neck as I give him a good shake. In reality, I take a deep breath and calmly suggest that he gets started.

“Study leave means exactly that.

Study leave,” I tell them both. “Not hanging around town leave, partying with friends leave or going to the cinema leave.”

I read in an article that parents must resist using the word ‘lazy’ when trying to encourage children to study. I have tried, I really have.

But I just keep blurting it out, uncontrollably.

It’s like I’ve got an unusual form of Tourette’s.

Other phrases from the banned list, such as “It’s about time you pulled your finger out”, “Don’t you realise how important this is, your whole future depends on it?” and “You are squandering your life away”, also inexplicably escape through my gritted teeth at particularly stressful moments.

They say I worry too much, that I’m constantly on their backs and that I need to ‘chill’. But how can I, when I see them plugged into iPods and other electronic devices when they’re supposed to be studying? Either that, or they’re on laptops, messaging friends on Facebook and MSN, or texting.

“How can you concentrate?” I ask nervously, noticing that my nails haven’t been bitten this short since I sat my own GCSEs and A Levels.

I am determined not to resort to crude bribery, since I believe that a desire to learn must come from within.

And I have so far managed to bite my tongue when I feel the urge, as they set off for yet another exam, to scream: “You can have anything, anything... tickets to that concert you wanted to go to... a new car... an all expenses paid trip to Las Vegas...

all you have to do is get the results.”

Instead, I have learned to suppress the urge to have a major panic attack while calmly pronouncing: “Just do your best, darling.”

Who said exams have got easier?

They never seemed to be this tough when I was at school.

ONE of my earliest childhood memories is emerging from the rickety little ghost train in our local seaside resort in Northern Ireland in tears, wondering why adults in the queue outside were laughing at me. Six-year-old Albert experienced that same ghost train, unchanged since the Sixties, a few weeks ago when my sister took him there for a treat. He, too, emerged from the ride in floods of tears. “What was it that scared you?” asked my sister. “I don’t know, I had my eyes closed the whole time,” he bawled.

IT was a big word for a seven-yearold to master, so it was hardly surprising that my friend’s son didn’t get it quite right when he announced that he’d seen something in the news about a woman giving birth to ‘sextusluts.”