Any parent of a teenager is probably all to familiar with the habits of their offspring – enclosed in their bedroom, prostrate on the floor or bed, laptop computer locked permanently to Facebook, mobile phone beside them with the constant sound of incoming text messages, and the blaring of 200 decibels of their favourite music!
We have long ago given up insisting on an open door policy in our house – why I hear you ask? Because it just makes the music even louder! And then it’s even harder for my daughter to try to go to sleep! My men-children don’t seem at all interested when I scream at them to turn it down, and when they do it’s by such a small amount I wonder why I bother. Pity our poor neighbours – I can almost hear the dulcet tones of whichever rapper and his delightful language (yes the F-word seems to be common these days) from the top of our street as I arrive home. And I know that Man-Child II once tested out his fathers original Pioneer speakers complete with multiple woofers and sub-woofers at such volume he tore holes in the padding. Clearly we weren’t home!
As my readers may know, we are currently extending upstairs to make further room for our teenage sons. Man-Child I and II will have their own zone upstairs, with a bedroom each, shared living room and bathroom. As building progresses, the excitement is palpable. I was chatting to the builder the other day, who wanted to discuss the insulation under the new flooring on the second level. He enquired if we were interested in special sound-proofing insulation, having heard the boys music on a daily basis after school (poor bloke – he might have increased his fees if he’d known he had to suffer that hideous music!). I had to chuckle to myself, as I recall jokingly suggesting special sound-proofing for upstairs in an earlier blog (along with concrete floors to hose down, and a laundry-cum-meal delivery shoot so the boys wouldn’t even have to come downstairs at all).
Well we have now had a special delivery of super-sonic, heavy-duty, rapper repellant, man-child proof insulation for upstairs. What a brilliant invention. And the best $800 I’ve ever spent. That should make us all happy, except perhaps me, because now when I scream “DINNER” from the kitchen they won’t be able to hear me. Oh well, I’ll just send them a text message! LOL.
I am sure you all know the Aretha Franklin song – “R.E.S.P.E.C.T. Want to know what it means to me? “ etc. As a child of the 80’s disco era I am all too familiar with that song, and spent my early youth singing it at the top of my lungs and dancing enthusiastically to it. Unfortunately it seems, my men-children are not at all familiar with the song, and indeed it’s message.
Like most teenagers, my men-children spend their weekends out and about with friends, in preference to being at home (especially if the “rents” (parents) are about!). We are lucky if we even find out when they are leaving the house, let alone where they might be going, with whom, and when they’ll return (normally for dinner – after all a bloke’s gotta eat right?).
Sometimes I wonder about my men-children, and whether or not their brains have completely departed their bodies temporarily. The say that the effect of the raging hormones in teenagers bodies can have certain physiological impacts, such as partial deafness (actually I think that’s a long-term male condition called “selective hearing”), or that gangly awkwardness you see in boys whose limbs are growing faster than they should, and they develop an uncoordinated gait.
Mother of a Man-Child 
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