Coping in a shifting world

Why do mamas drink wine? Children. Children are the reason. It doesn’t matter if the children are your own* or someone else’s teenager, over from the Gold Coast and staying at your place. The only way to cope with the non-stop bickering and whinging of father and son, the non-stop blasting of Drake (the lyrics of which seem to be telling a woman she has to get on your d ... or she’s not getting a ride to the supermarket), the constant want want want, is drinking, or Valium, or a pie and red bull. Whatever it takes.

I’d thought teenagers might have improved in the 20 years since I was slave to a hormonal psychopath, but I was clearly being delusional. Being a teenager in the early 2000s was so much easier and much less stressful for parents too, if you think about it. Snapchat and Instagram weren’t even a thing then, you got around without GPS and had real-life friendships. Everything took longer and was more inconvenient, which would have built a modicum of patience.

Reels have replaced Myspace and really basic internet has been replaced with high speed connections — where my teenage daughter was happy just lightly scorching a piece of local government infrastructure or doing reckless stuff on the weekend with no-one the wiser due to a lack of video or anyone knowing exactly where she was because there were no tracking apps, and texting was expensive, the internet was on a home computer, and the only available porn was a random stash of Playboys hidden in a wooded area by someone’s older brother.

Your modern-day teenager is under a huge amount of societal pressure, directly streamed to their eyeballs. If they let you follow their Instagram, you know about all the insanely dangerous stuff they are up to, and the stress gives you an ulcer. They aren’t happy unless they are jumping off a boatshed roof and getting you to film it. Or they are happy for roughly 20 minutes — immediately after you have bought them the thing they were pestering you for and before they have broken it and started hyper-fixating on the next thing.

The visit wasn’t a huge success, but not entirely a failure. There were parts of it which were even fun. We sat around the fire in the garden, spent time down the boatshed with a line in the water and a steak on the barbecue, and had a magic couple of hours watching a mummy sea lion and her pup on Smaills Beach.

We’re all navigating these new circumstances. Teenage son probably just wanted to hang out with his dad, I could probably do with not trying so hard, and Dad ... well let’s cut Dad some slack, he was exhausted trying to be everything to everybody and keep it R13. This isn’t a romcom with Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler in it, or if it is it’s the one where she wakes up every morning having forgotten who her boyfriend is because she’s got a head injury.

Dating a widower with two children was never going to be easy, even if they are both almost grown. I’m not auditioning for evil stepmother. It’s been years since I was someone’s unpaid serf — once you hit menopause it’s every woman for herself — but I love their father and that goes a long way. When I look at his youngest son, with his rap star diamond ear studs and wispy goatee, I see a vulnerable wee soul, cladding himself in swagger as defence against a world that has already hurt him.

One thing is a constant no matter the teenager or the era — no amount of will or lecturing (that’s all advice is to them) is going to prevent life giving them a licking. They need to experience the path themselves; we just have to be there to support them when the wheels fall off. Even if it’s pit crew, not parent — the more people on their team, the better.

*Not grown-up children who have a job and a home of their own and an array of colourful tattoos — they arrive from Australia once a year to bring joy into your life and anything they did when they were teenagers is wiped from the ledger.