Father of teenage online gamer and Wicked Stepmother could hardly believe their ears.
There were movements from the upstairs habitat of said online gamer. Sounds of teenage person getting up. But the clock said it was still morning. How could this be, especially on a Sunday?
Gollum Boy, our teenage online gamer does not appear before afternoon as a rule. ( There are other posts about Gollum Boy. If you want to go back to the beginning here is the link.)
symptoms of addiction
I’m the Wicked Stepmother. I’m the one who has had the reputation for being the negative voice in the household.
I worry that our teenage online gamer is making unhealthy choices, sitting up there in the dark, playing these games for hour after hour.
On weekends we usually see him only when he’s hungry.
What could have made him change his habits this last Sunday morning?
And he continued until the end, only slipping downstairs for sustenance to keep him going.
picture from BBC
There’s no harm in watching your team play sport, even if nowadays they’re calling it e-sport which only involves having a fast hand and fingers. I understand the attraction. These team players are as much gamers’ heroes as football fans’ favourite players.
But, I think, most football fans have a life outside of football, don’t they? They can talk about other things, can’t they?
Our online gamer was still at it at 2am this morning. He’d done a 14 hour shift. Sounds carry at night when the house is quiet and I heard him simply shifting position on his sofa. (His loft room is directly above our bedroom)
I pulled the plug on our internet connection.
Biological parent is backing me up today. The plug comes out at 11pm every night from now on, school holidays and all.
What would you do?
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She’s been a little under the weather. These long French school holidays are a strain, particularly when coping with complications from CRPS – you know- the shortage of sleep, the constant pain etc.
looking blackly
So.
Wicked Stepmother was at the end of her tether
with Gaming person who lives upstairs, otherwise known as Gollum Boy who has had close to three months off school. I’ll repeat that – THREE months off school. All right then, two and a half. One is prone to exaggeration when one is at the end of aforementioned tether.
None of his chores were being completed.
little kids can do it – picture from mirror.co.uk
A job even little kids can do – GB doesn’t get up in the morning so if you need clean plates and cups etc. for lunch (as you do) you have to empty the dishwasher yourself.
He’d conveniently forget to take out the trash.
(We have three collections weekly here in France. During very hot summers you need non recyclables to be gone. Fast.)
smelly stuff!
See, little kids can do it. GB did it when he was little. But now he’s GB. He’s only interested in online gaming and as we’ve already seen, gamers are cuckoos in your house, lady.
They take. They never offer to give.
Biological parent (BP) and Wicked Stepmother (WS) grew tired of always having to ask GB to do his chores.
He refused point blank to get up before his preferred 1pm or even later. He refused point blank to help with bringing in supermarket shopping and putting it away.
Yesterday he said he was inviting 7 of his friends to come round here for the last day of school summer vacation. They would like to use the pool and possibly stay for something to eat.
Wicked Stepmother refused point blank.
‘No,’ she said. ‘And the reason is this. Since my incapacitation last December when I was hit by a car, you have shown so little consideration for your father and me. This morning I have yet again emptied the dishwasher for you and washed all your clothes.
Throughout the whole of the summer holidays you have offered to do nothing. And yet you still expect to get what you want. It isn’t happening any more. Neither is your ironing. I don’t want to wear your tee shirts. You do. You iron them. This is what is called working to rule.
Wicked Stepmother signing out for now.
And if you think WS is being over the top in her treatment of online gamer – watch this video of what happens to some gaming addicts in China.
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Crusts are poisonous. They must be. Kids leave them. Who hasn’t seen a slice of bread like this in the picture below? Crusts are so poisonous kids leave them even if, really, to be perfectly honest, they really like the stuff they’ve left behind on their plates.
Why do kids leave crusts?
perfectly poisonous crust
They do it to get to you, you know. Kids leave crusts behind just so’s they can let you know who’s really in charge here.
In my last Wicked Stepmother post I showed you photos of the poisonous crusts making a regular appearance on my kitchen table each morning. Not to mention the half a jar of Nutella smeared on them. The Nutella saga requires a Chronicle post all of its very own, together with the tomato ketchup one, jars of which get flushed from where it’s been left on the plate down the plughole on a regular basis.
blobs left on plates
Now, we’re not talking little kids here. Not toddlers. Not primary schoolers. Not anybody who isn’t taller than me.
We’re talking nearly 16 years old, towering over the top of me and so sharp you’d prick your finger if you went to hug him.
I thought I had a cunning plan. Remember? The poisonous Brioche crust story?
brioche crusts with Nutella
Buy Brioche rolls, Wicked Stepmother! They haven’t got crusts, Wicked Stepmother. You can wipe the smile right off his face, Wicked Stepmother, when you present him with something so devilishly delicious he can’t bear to leave even the tiniest morsel.
I found Brioche rolls with added crème fraiche. My mouth watered just looking at them. The aroma from the packet was vanilla and buttery and eggy and crème fraichey.
Not even a saint on hunger strike could have resisted.
can you believe it?
No. I couldn’t believe it, either. Take a closer look at teenage kid getting one over on me.
I give up!!!
I pretended I hadn’t noticed.
Well, all you Wicked Stepmothers out there. You’ve got to keep face.
Anything with a crust on it must be dangerous. Isn’t that so? Isn’t that why so many kids don’t eat them?
Well, they come up with all kinds of reasons and excuses for leaving them on their plates. Crust tastes bad. it’s dry. It makes me choke. Etc. etc. You could list all the excuses kids come up with for not finishing off their crusts.
Dangerous crusts
Sandwich – designed to choke you.
Pie – no filling left in it so it’s not worth eating.
Pizza – covered in germs from where you’ve been holding it in your dirty mitts.
Toast – burnt to hell and just plain nasty. Actually, if it is burnt the kids do have a point. It IS dangerous. It’s carcinogenic.
burnt food is carcinogenic
But burnt food aside, why do kids insist on leaving crusts?
There’s an entertaining website called How To Be A Dad, but it’s just as entertaining for Mums. Andy has coined the phrase Crust Poisoning. I can’t claim any credit for that. (I wish I’d thought of it first!)
Here’s a link to Andy’s post about crusts on the How To Be A Dad website. Hilarious, isn’t it?
And here’s another link to the I Used to Believe website. The top story is brilliant.
from the I Used to Believe website
But, here’s the thing. These posts on other websites refer to LITTLE kids. What happens when your enormous 15 year old is still doing it?
Wicked Stepmother took some photographs to demonstrate. There are just the two pictures, but the rest of the week the same thing happens.
Monday’s breakfast leavingsTuesday’s leavings
What we’re looking at here is not burnt. It’s not dry. It isn’t hard or horrible in any way whatsoever. It’s Brioche. Here’s what Wikipedia says about it –
A loaf of Brioche is a joy to behold. It’s soft and sweet and buttery-eggy and you could easily suck it down if you didn’t have any teeth.
There is no reason on this earth why anyone would need to leave any of it.
Now then, Wicked Stepmother cannot abide wasting food. Her generation caught this from ancestors who had lived through rationing and hardships today’s kids couldn’t even begin to imagine. Wicked Stepmother’s generation has learned to be economical with resources and it can be quite an affront to see so much food going into the waste bin. On a whim.
But, as you might imagine, Wicked Stepmother has a cunning plan.
She will buy no more loaves of Brioche. Not a single one. Here’s the premise.
You know how there isn’t a crust on a muffin?
crustless muffin
Nobody ever leaves bits of muffin on their plate. They go round the plate, stabbing with their hungry fingers picking up every last crumb, don’t they? Dab, dab, dab till all the little crumbs are consumed. Till the plate is shiny and empty and there is no waste to go in the bin . . .
(I’m getting a bit excited now at the prospect of putting into operation this cunning plan of mine. Oops, cunning plan of the Wicked Stepmother.)
We shall purchase only Brioche Buns. Crustless Brioche Buns.
Eggy, buttery and flaky. The answer to this crust dilemma?
Leave me a comment. Go on, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Wicked Stepmother had grown tired of GB’s complaints about meals. Always a picky eater, GB had grown even pickier, it seemed. Feelings came to a head when, one night during the long summer holidays, GB complained that the basil in the pesto sauce was overwhelming.
a staple meal at our house
Now, I knew this wasn’t true. It may well have been a tad on the strong side for ordinary mortals but here, at our gaff, we go in for STRONG flavours. Even fussy GB likes STRONG curry and FIERY chilli. So, how come the relatively mild pesto had fallen foul of his lordship’s approval?
The fact of the matter was, I had used red basil, homegrown in a pot out the back, rather than all green basil with which he was more familiar.
wicked red basil
The result was very colourful – a bit like the borders on this page. A mixed pesto sauce with some green leaf and some red plus my usual lashings of olive oil (extra virgin, of course), two chunky cloves of garlic crushed into the mix, ground pine nuts (hand charmed with my trusty pestle and mortar) and finished off with finely grated parmesan cheese and more olive oil if it’s got a bit too thick.
Wonderful.
scrumptious!
Divine.
Eat it quickly and be first in the queue for seconds.
But, we got faces and a turned up nose.
What?
After I’ve spent months growing this tender little plant, taking care of its every need, watering and moving it from shade to sunshine and back into shade when it got too hot for its little feet in a clay pot?
After I’ve done all that hand-charming with the mortar and grating with the grater? Okay, so I’m laying it on with a trowel. Still.
Cuckoos are everywhere. You can see them even in the supermarket. Standing around, doing their cuckoo things which don’t amount to much.
What is a cuckoo?
A cuckoo is a thief. Let me make this quite clear. Cuckoos steal from you.
cuckoos get you to do all the work
They steal your time. They steal your food. They get you to do all the work.
If you’ve got gamers in the house, people, you’ve got cuckoos.
Human Cuckoos.
Gamers are cuckoos in your house, Madam. Gamers who are obsessed with reaching the next game level at the expense of doing anything else are thieves in your castle, Sir.
They take and they take and they take and they give nothing back, because every ounce of energy they possess is going into the effort of gaming. So, you hardly ever see them except at meal times when they hover about, scanning the hob and oven for evidence that you are going to feed them soon. Certainly, you will never see them when there are tasks to be done about your home/castle: they simply cannot tear themselves away from their latest urgency which may be as serious as needing three more life enhancers (or whatever their game calls them) in order to protect their body shields. Tish!
Do I sound full of sarcasm? I hope so.
Worse, they can carry their precious games with them wherever they go.
Understand this. Gamers don’t want to be with you. Indeed, most of the time you are in their company (sort of) they are ignoring the fact that you are a human being who enjoys contact with other human beings. Most of the time they are ignoring the fact that THEY are human beings. They want to live in their virtual world. It’s more exciting there than here in the real one.
cuckoos’ accessories
They are afraid to be separated from their preciouses. I made that word up. Preciouses. With apologies to Tolkein. Regular readers of my Wicked Stepmother Chronicles will be aware of my feelings about teenage online gamers who I call Gollum Boys.
Maybe it’s because, deep down, gamers don’t like the real world and its real contact with real people. Maybe they have personality issues which makes them shrink from actually talking to people. Perhaps they have deep-seated fears about inadequacies that they can hide behind a facade of knowledge re: newest cheat codes.
Well, if they didn’t have issues to begin with, they will have by the time they’ve moved on to the next upgrade of Call of Duty.
Think I’m being too scathing?
Hold on. Look at this. See what I found in the supermarket.
giving mum a helping hand?
These guys were blocking the end of an aisle while Mommy did the shopping. She kept coming back to drop things in the trolley. The girl to their right was also playing on her hand held, but I wasn’t quick enough with my camera to get her in the frame. I had to snatch this photo quickly before other shoppers got in my way.
They are not teenagers. This is what teenage gamers turn into. Numpties.
Ladies and gentlemen, these are grown up CUCKOOS looking bloody stupid, standing there for all to see just how bloody stupid they look, letting someone else do all the work. Mommy is just as much to blame, letting them treat her this way. Saying it’s easier just to let your family gamers get on with it and stay out of your hair is just an excuse. Mommies and Daddies, you have allowed your offspring to turn into . . .
Pillocks!
If Wicked Stepmother had been their Mommy she’d have left them there. Gone home and made herself dinner for one.
Wicked Stepmother looks at the calendar. 4 weeks down. 6 weeks to go. French school holidays go on forever.
plus last week in June, plus all of August . . .
September feels like light years away.
The good ship doing nicely thank you has encountered more squalls. The power switch off (see previous Wicked Stepmother post) happened only the once. Good intentions were slipping. Had slipped. Storms were building on the horizon once again when, out of the wide blue yonder, GB accepted an invitation to go to the beach.
the beach at Vias
It wasn’t GB’s idea to go to the beach. He doesn’t particularly like the feel of sand in his shorts. And the beach is no place to take your X-Box, but some of the other gamers thought it would be a fun thing to actually get outside for a while.
This is what he needs, said Biological Parent. It will do him good to get out there, splash around with the lads. Swim in the Med.
Wicked Stepmother had concerns.
Just for the morning, is it? she said.
Yes, said Gollum Boy. We’re going at nine o’ clock. I’ll be back for lunch.
Nine o’ clock in the morning? Wicked Stepmother could hardly believe her ears. What will you need to take with you? she said.
Nothing, came the answer.
No sun cream?
I won’t need it.
He made the nine am. start and off he went with his towel. At twelve came a phone call. The parents picking up the boys had decided to make an afternoon of it, too. They’d made lunch for everybody and turned up with their deck chairs.
So, what time will you be back? said Wicked Stepmother down the phone.
I don’t know.
Grey skin, accustomed to dark places and no sunlight can’t cope with a day at the beach. Maybe the other gamers in GB’s group led a more balanced lifestyle with occasional breaths of air and a little exercise. Maybe they had enough sense to cover up their poor grey chests and backs.
GB encountered his first ever episode of sunburn on his chest and shoulders. Throughout previous summers he’d always managed a sensible approach to being in the sun. This summer, when he walked back through the gate his shirt was rolled up under his arm and he wore a look like a lost puppy.
We snapped off a few bits of Aloe Vera to use the viscous liquid inside the leaves. GB didn’t like the stickiness of the ooze.
soothing Aloe Vera
We went to the pharmacy and came back loaded with unguents and lotions etc. etc..
Be aware, French pharmacies don’t believe in selling you one product when five will do. Take a shopping bag.
The various creams from the pharmacy didn’t help much either.
Then, we read up about using vinegar.
We’d known about some of the uses of vinegar for some time, but this was news to us.
Of all the treatments we tried, cider vinegar came out tops. Sprayed on sun-reddened skin, a fine mist of cider vinegar cools and soothes and stops the itching.
For the next few days, GB went without his shirt as his skin was too hot to wear clothes. He stayed in the shade reapplying the vinegar treatment and smelled like a French Fry, which I suppose, in effect, he was.
magic potion!
There are many claims about the benefits of using cider vinegar. The sunburn treatment certainly worked for GB.
So, there we were, sunburn episode behind us and still a whole load of summer in front of us. What would happen next? Would BP continue to ignore GB’s regression into gaming addiction?
Another invitation arrived. From the same gamers’ group. A trip to Laser Evolution in Béziers.
Aha!
This would get him off the X-Box.
This would get him moving. But, only in the DARK.
I didn’t have the strength to argue about the benefits of fresh air.
Click on image below to view Evolution website.
See you next time when Wicked Stepmother decides to take a break from planning meals.
I hope you’re enjoying the Wicked Stepmother Chronicles. I know there are a lot of us out there. Don’t forget to drop me a comment. I love to hear what you think.
WS=Wicked Stepmother GB=Gollum Boy, the online gamer BP=Biological Parent
School holidays have begun. The only students attending collège this week are doing final year oral exams in preparation for lycée next September.
rock formations at Moureze
GB has one more year in collège. He handed in all his text books on Tuesday. He said it was painful. Wicked Stepmother thought he meant he was heartbroken to see them for the last time. (Joke)
No, he said, it was painful because they were so heavy.
On Wednesday he floated off, sans text books, for the morning bus and probably floated back at midday to make his own bacon sandwich for lunch. We weren’t at home to witness. Himself and I were entertaining visitors and actually having a rather nice picnic in the hills above Clermont Hérault with a large ready-roasted pintade from the market, tomatoes, cheese and crusty bread. GB would not eat this fare and, anyway, picnics are for boring old farts.
pintade is a guinea fowl
When we arrived home, the kitchen bore the evidence of GB’s culinary efforts, complete with tomato sauce-streaked plate left where he’d finished with it. GB was where we expected him to be: glued to the X-Box, the 10 week holiday grin already secure upon his face. (We noticed it when he came down to see if we’d brought back any chocolate biscuits.)
His final day at collège this semester was Thursday last. The grin grew even wider.
‘What are you going to do with all this time off?’ said BP.
‘Hmmph!’ GB replied.
Nothing more was said at the time.
On Friday, GB spent all day gaming.
On Saturday, GB spent all day gaming.
did you know such organisations exist?
On Sunday, there was a sea change.
Oh, yes.
Wicked Stepmother had nothing to do with it and remained, her own thin grin firmly in place, out of sight.
Biological Parent put the question again.
‘What are you going to do with all this time off?’
No answer. Not even a humph.
‘If you can’t come up with ideas of your own, GB, I’ll think of some for you.’
No answer.
‘I’d like you to come down at three this afternoon and help me in the garden.’
Three o’ clock came and went.
three o’ clock deadline
BP went to the garage. He walked over to the electricity control box.
power control switches
Our power controls are different in France from what we were used to in the UK. We don’t have ring circuits here. Each room can be isolated by the switches on the main control box.
At 3:15pm last Sunday afternoon, two rooms were blacked out.
At 3:15pm last Sunday afternoon, the plug was literally (almost) pulled on activities at the top of the house.
At 3:15pm last Sunday afternoon, there was no X-Box, no YouTube live streamed games/tutorials from Syndicate the #1 UK gamer. The lights were out. The sockets were dead.
BP waited in the garden where GB’s old bike awaited cleaning and maintenance before we sell it.
Power was not restored until 6pm. So, GB still had minimum 8 hours game playing from when he got up to lights out. I think it’s way too much.
Wicked Stepmother plans to show this post to BP, especially the picture about 10,000 hours spent by the age of twenty-one. Isn’t that such a waste of a young life?
WS = Wicked Stepmother, BP= Biological Parent, GB= Gollum Boy alias teenage online gamer.
Scene 1: The kitchen. Midday, Wednesday. GB is due to return home at 12.30. Shopping bags litter the counter tops and table. Wicked Stepmother is putting away market produce. Biological parent is getting in the way.
BP: ( stuffing into his mouth the piece of cheese he has just snapped off the new block )Have you thought yet about what’s for lunch?
WS: Leftover Bolognese sauce. I’ll do some fresh pasta to go with it.
BP: Will there be enough, Wicked Stepmother?
WS: There’s enough for two.
BP: What will you have?
WS: (reaching under the kitchen table to retrieve tomatoes that have rolled there)Something else.
BP: Shall we have a drink first?
WS:(from under the table) Good idea.
BP: I’ll have a coffee, please. (exits)
Scene 2:
The kitchen. There are still bags of shopping to put away. WS has retrieved tomatoes and is now making coffee. GB arrives from half-day school classes.
WS: Hello, Gollum Boy.
GB: Hmmmph.
WS: Everything okay?
GB: Hmmmph. (exits)
WS finishes putting away the shopping and makes coffee. She is adding milk when GB suddenly reappears in doorway.
GB: Dad says I’m having pasta for lunch. Will there be some kind of sauce to go with that?
He scans the empty hob for proof.
WS: Yes!
GB: What time will it be ready?
(It is 12:40)
WS: You know what? It’ll be ready at exactly 1pm. (GB exits again) Biological Parent! Oh, BiologicalParent! Are you there? Your coffee’s ready.
Scene 3:
The kitchen. 1pm. Lunch for the boys is ready. WS gets out dishes and begins to make herself a sandwich. BP makes for the door.
WS: Where are you going, Biological Parent?
BP: To tell GB his lunch is ready.
WS: He already knows. He asked me for a time and I gave him one. I told him it would be at exactly 1pm.
(Close-up on WS’s face. Her mouth is a thin line)
BP: Then we will put out his lunch, Wicked Stepmother and he’d better get his ass down here.
GB’s lunch going cold
(They eat)
BP: Actions and consequences, Wicked Stepmother. Actions and consequences.
(They clear the dishes and make another drink. Still no sign of GB. Noises off are obvious gaming sounds with GB calling out to team members to Look out! Wait! Let him have it!)
pasta will be cold by now
(Close up of clock face)
Scene 4:
Kitchen. WS and BP are nowhere to be seen. It is 2:15pm. GB arrives. There is a dish under a net cover on the table. GB stares at it as if he doesn’t know what to do with it.
GB: Dad! Dad!!
BP enters kitchen. He is carrying a gardening fork. He appears not to have heard GB calling him.
GB: Dad!
BP: What?
GB: Why didn’t you call me to let me know when lunch was ready?
BP: Were you told it would be ready at 1pm?
GB: Hmmmph.
BP: So why didn’t you come at 1pm?
GB: I thought somebody would call me.
BP: Oh. (He begins to walk away)
GB: Well, if I’d known this was going to happen, I would have come down.
BP: Ah.
GB: So why didn’t somebody call me?
BP: We’re not going to call you any more, Gollum Boy. Not when you’ve already been given a time.
GB: Why not?
BP: It’s your responsibility to get yourself ready to come and eat with us. You could help, couldn’t you by laying the table or stacking the dishwasher? Remember those small chores we asked you to do? You’ve been avoiding them, haven’t you?
GB: Hmmmph.
BP: If your lunch is too cold to eat, you can reheat it in a pan. Wash up after yourself, please. We’ve already tidied the kitchen. (He exits)
Gollum Boy sits to eat. He tastes. He stands and for a moment it looks as if he’s going to make the effort to reheat the food. Then he sits down again, gobbles the food quickly and gets up to leave.
BP: ( from outside) Don’t leave that dirty dish for somebody else to clear!
GB rinses dish under tap. He looks around. He doesn’t know where to put it next. He leaves it on the draining board and exits.
In the garden, BP is happily planting tomatoes. In the bedroom WS looks in the mirror.
I’m the one who is supposed to be wicked. I’m the stepmother, the one who might not have the child’s best interests at heart. The one whose motives are always going to be suspect.
I’m having one of those days. Stepmothers will know what I mean. Ladies, if you’re contemplating becoming a stepmother, better read up about it first. Especially if the ex-wife is a late wife. You are taking on more than you know. This isn’t the place to go into too much detail, much as I would like to. The bereaved child is a very serious subject and deserves more than a post on a blog. In any case, the specific issues of being stepmother to a bereaved child are not what I wish to address here. I have something much more generalized in mind.
A Facebook friend recently shared a piece about the benefits of allowing children to be bored. Some university prof had just come out with something I’ve been saying for years. If your ten-year-old is bored, let her fix it. It’s her problem, not yours. Wow! Somebody got paid to write this down?
I remember a time when Gollum Boy was little and in a strop. He wasn’t getting his own way. Father had other things to do just at that time and couldn’t do whatever it was young son wanted. Young son pouted. Young son wailed. Young son went into a tantrum because he’d learned that tantrums usually worked for him. But, on this occasion, I was in charge.
The tantrum was building into meltdown because father wasn’t available. I said, ‘Why don’t you find something to do that makes you feel better than how you feel right now?’
‘I’m BORED,’ he shouted.
‘I’m busy,’ I said and left him to it.
I went to the kitchen and clattered about doing a bit of washing dishes etc. When I went back to the living room, young son had found something to do. AND SOLVED HIS OWN PROBLEM.
Now we’re getting to the crux of this.
Here’s what I think: if you ALWAYS fix things for your kids, they never learn how to fix it themselves. In the case of the university professor and current thinking on childhood boredom, the fixing of the problem by parent figure doesn’t allow the child to use his/her own creativity. Eventually, according to the prof, children may lose the ability to use their creativity. They might forget how to imagine. So, by fixing the boredom problem, you could be doing more harm than good.
Back to this morning. As you know, the young son in my Wicked Stepmother Chronicles is now Gollum Boy, addicted to online gaming and not wanting to do much else. If you’ve read my previous posts, you will also know that we have been having an ongoing battle between the three of us which came to a head when Gollum Boy almost passed out at school.
You have probably also worked out my methods by now, too. It doesn’t take an expert tactician to see that I have employed an attack and immediate retreat modus operandi whenever these issues crop up. I have my two penny worth, say what I think needs to be said and retire from the theatre of battle to let biological parent and teenage son sort it out between them.
Still with me? Good. Here it is, then. School holidays are over. Back to school. On the third day, Gollum Boy is too tired to get up in time to catch the school bus. The last time this happened, biological parent (BP) drove to school and arrived at the same time as the bus so errant teenager didn’t get into trouble for being late. On his return, the BP said,
‘I’ve told him. This is the last time I’m getting him out of it. Next time he misses the bus, he’ll have to catch the later one and face the music when he’s late.’
Guess what happened this morning.
The alarm must not have gone off was the first excuse. There followed a volley of further excuses as BP hurriedly got into his shoes and rushed out the door to drive Gollum Boy to school.
I was waiting for BP’s return. I reminded him what he’d said the last time this happened. But I added more.
‘You’re as good as stealing from him,’ I said.
‘Don’t be dramatic.’
‘Don’t be in denial,’ I came back quick as a flash. ‘You need to hear this. You’re stealing from him. You’re robbing him of opportunities to learn from his own mistakes. We both know why he couldn’t get up this morning. He NEEDS to experience the discomfort of being in trouble for missing the start of classes.’
stealing away your child’s chance to learn the hard way?
I went further. See, I know what I’d do if I were dealing with one of my own or one of yours or anybody’s child I was taking care of.
There would be an X-Box ban tonight. A laptop ban tonight. A tablet ban tonight. Smartphone ban tonight.
Actions and consequences, junior. We all have to face them. That would be my message.
But I’m the wicked stepmother and I’m getting tired of being the one with the tough love message.
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