Teenage Master Eight

I think I’ve had a glimpse of Master Eight’s teenage self this week. 

Carrying on from last week’s theme, I obediently refrained from greeting him with a kiss and cuddle at the school as requested and we proceeded to walk home.

I don’t recall what I said and did on the way home that embarrassed him but he was acting strange.

Once we’d turned down our driveway he let me have it.

How was I to know a girl from his class had been walking behind us the whole way?

Once he got over his humiliation, the second incident occurred. He’d built a hut which took up most of the lounge and his little brother walked over part of it to get to the tv remote.

A rather forceful one-sided scuffle ensued, tempers flared and Master Eight was sent to the naughty stair. There, he proceeded to kick the wall and verbalise abuse aimed at his ‘mean mummy’ which was just loud enough to reach everyone’s ears upstairs.

“Mean Mummy, I don’t love her anymore. I want to go and live at Daddy’s. My Mummy’s dumb.”

I left him there a while to cool down. This took a while after I paid a visit to notify him his ipad privilege had been deducted for the rest of the evening.

Eventually he was allowed to come out, once he’d decided he was calm enough to go and put things right. He knows the drill - it involves an apology and kissing the place he hurt, a cringe-worthy task.

He skulked up the stairs, went through the procedure, before grabbing a pen and paper and, shooting me an evil stare, stalked off to his room.

I carried on cooking the dinner but couldn’t ignore the uneasy feeling that something was up. Surely he wasn’t going to run away from home. He was mad enough that I wouldn’t put it past him. 

I crept down to his room before he could slam the door in my face and was just in time to catch a glimpse of a ‘Hate List’ with my name up the top.

Charming.

This was particularly naughty as I’ve taught the kids that ‘hate’ is a swear word. Still, at least it wasn’t a ‘run-away from home’ note.

“This would break my heart,” said a fellow mum to me and I realised I must be hardened. It probably began when he was two and, after being sent to his room, waged a personal vendetta on me by tearing up every single photograph that I featured in.

I ignored him and his mood for the remainder of the evening until I found him back on the ipad.

“Right, no Shortland Street for you tonight either,” I declared. “Go to bed.” I’d had enough of this monster who’d taken over my son. I could only hope the monster was replaced by my nice sweet boy in the morning and I told him so, although he pretended not to listen.

It’s amazing what a good night’s sleep can do and the next morning I was greeted by my happy, charming little man.

This lasted until we got in the car to go to school. Clearly he was back in ‘pick-on-my-siblings’-mode.

“Mum did you know Jai’s name sounds like ‘vagina’? announced my bright spark of an eight-year-old. “Va-jaiii-na,” he said.

This, as you can imagine, went down well - cue World War Three.

Luckily this war abruptly ended with school drop-off. I could only wait and see what mood emerged from the gates at 3pm.