Family Affairs and other matters

My 16 year old son has got three days of work experience. He has NO idea how lucky he is to have been invited by a very old friend of mine to spend three days in a hospital, watching operations, attending meetings, generally getting a feel for how the medical profession works.

It is his second day today and he’s going to be observing a very complicated operation on a one week old baby. How traumatic. Well, I guess it will either inspire or horrify him – at least he’ll have a better idea if medicine could be an option for his future or not.

I am having one of those moments with him though when we have polar opposite opinions of life. I want him to take these three days seriously, get more sleep and be responsible and understand the importance of firing on all cylinders and he wants to go and and party. Till very late. We had a big issue on Sunday night because he went out and came home WAY later than I’d told him to with several friends who crashed out somewhere in the house. I was furious with him. He had to get up ridiculously early and although he managed successfully to do that and hummed a lot just to prove he was fine….that is not the point.

I told him he had to stay in for the rest of the week and earn some spending money to take on his rugby tour (by babysitting for me) and consequently I have had 85 texts from him saying things like “pleeeese mum, this holiday is like meant to be the best time of my life and I am like 16 now so you know you can trust me and stop being so strict”.

Don’t you just love the “but I’m 16 now” approach (and therefore know everything).

So. I tried a different tact this morning. I said that I’d prefer to talk to him rather than have to text him when we are in the same house and that whilst I understood his desire to have the best holiday ever and that he was now 16, that I was disappointed he wasn’t taking my views more seriously and that it was more about a lack of respect for how I felt because I hardly got any sleep on Sunday night waiting for him and that if it was essential to go out I wasn’t going to stop him, but he’d have to find me another babysitter and then he wouldn’t have any money for his trip.

I’ve played the guilt card on a 16 year old boy.

I haven’t got a hope in hell of him staying in tonight have I. I bet he’ll just be saying to his friends “mum says it’s fine if I go out” and skip the rest.

Fingers crossed for that one week old baby having a major heart operation…..it sort of puts everything in perspective doesn’t it. What must those parents be going through.