Bored Little Boys.

I spent last week at the Parents Lodge in deepest Cornwall. It is about six miles from the sea, with not a lot between it and the Atlantic. The parents were in Switzerland with the Great Grandaughter, I was therefore responsible for The Git over half term. He usually buggers off to the parents for every weekend/holiday and I am left to be ill in peace. Add to this the fact that The Git had been off school for two weeks due to a bad chest infection...difficult!

I do try to be a good parent...honest. But three weeks in the company of my son was pushing my sanity to the limit. We started out quite well. I live in a three bed 60's house with virtually no heating and am used to wandering around in the evening looking like a homeless person. Scarf, check! Furry boots, check! Large cardi, check! Fingerless gloves, check! The Lodge has state of the art heating, insulation and is fecking boiling. I spent a week hanging out of a window with my face in a force nine gale blustering off the Atlantic. Seriously though the weather was horizontal rain and a force nine ALL week. Pretty awful for the poor Git.

We went to McDonalds, the Beach and the Aquarium. Tried the swimming pools but they were all closed and I was not going to wander around a very small Zoo looking at grumpy, wet and fed up animals! A further complication was that there was no landline, no mobile signal and as for Broadband...forget it! This meant we had sporadic electricity, a TV and ourselves.

The Git was really good but bored little boys are not the easiest to deal with. I suppose the whole week made me appreciate how insular we have all become. All readers of this Blog know that I did not have a TV as a child due to the many postings abroad. I did not know any better and am very grateful for that. Instead I buried my head in books. The Git has slowly grown into the age of the Internet and now knows more about 'Putes than I have forgotten. This is a reality check for me as a parent.

The Git does not spend hours on games, online. He spreads himself around, talking to friends, shopping, playing the odd game and editing his You Tube page which is all about skate boarding. I don't play games online and also spread myself about doing different things. Okay...so we are using the net in a positive way but we are not communicating. This all smacks of BAD mother. Yeah! I agree, he is my third child, perhaps I am not able to parent as I once did. I remember, as the eldest of five kids, my little sister Jax, was at one point in her teenage years, allowed to stay out until two in the morning! I actually had a row with my mother about it as I was given a curfew of 10.30.

There are two sides to the coin here. Do you realise that times change and become a more relaxed parent? Or do you understand that you must step up to the mark, embrace the change and still instill values and routine in your child?

Talking of 'Bored Little Boys' and the Internet. I have quoted this on my Blog before but this quote is so topical at the moment.

The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.
Eric Schmidt

We have a lot of 'Bored Little Boys' in the Middle East at the moment and as this is not a political Blog, I shall just say that watching certain people smack a load of propoganda on the Net and sitting back to watch it explode is interesting to say the least.

Be careful What You Wish For.

Muse x