London - Hell hath no fury like a teenager revising (or in my case a pre-teen).
As far as I can tell, there is no human moodier, no person more impatient and no family member as unpredictable.
It’s like living with a hot-tempered grizzly bear that some fool has accidentally woken in the middle of hibernation.
My 12-year-old was supposed to spend her half-term revising for mock exams this week. But each time I tried surreptitiously to check on her progress, she was doing anything but revising and responded angrily to any implication she should be studying.
She’d efficiently drawn up a revision timetable, stuck it to the wall and proudly colour-coded it by subject. As far as I could tell, though, she was mostly making numerous between-meal cheese and ham toasties, doing handstands in the lounge, watching nitwit YouTubers or Googling cats playing ping pong. Little cramming seemed to be occurring.
All this made me anxious and I started stress-eating chocolate Hobnobs on her behalf because she didn’t seem to be taking these impending exams seriously.
“Listen,” she informed me one night, “I’m going to get over 60 percent in all the subjects I like, so you don’t need to worry.”
Is she trying to reassure me with this youthful logic or wind me up? Either way, it put my teeth on edge and made me suck in air nervously.
“She only wants to get 60 percent,” I whisper to Mr Candy later on. “Just over half.”
I’m no Tiger Mother but 60 percent feels a smidgen unambitious. However, revision is virgin territory for us as parents so we don’t know the rules. Also, as my eldest keeps pointing out, these are only mocks (I’m going to start stockpiling Valium for the real exams).
The experts I read say you have to leave your children to it, supplying nothing more than healthy snacks and encouraging words. And don’t wish them luck, apparently that makes them think exams are out of their control and this freaks them out.
But the pressure of the revision timetable has turned me into something between a prison guard, tempted to chain her and her books to the kitchen table, and a motivational speaker uttering nonsense about “positivity, positivity, positivity”.
I did find out early on in the revision maelstrom that you can’t go straight in and start shouting. That doesn’t work. Also, there is no such thing as “sending someone to revision camp”, this only exists in my head, apparently.
I’ve become “nagger in chief”, trying not to put any pressure on while checking she has at least read the school’s list of what to revise.
I have also developed “the look” for the moments when I see her settling down to watch TV after a hard day not revising. But “the look” only works on the dog and Mr Candy, both of whom leap to attention when I give it to them.
The pre-teen and the other three kids are immune to it. The eldest just gives me “a look” back and mutters: “What is the reason for your face?” That doesn’t end well for either of us.
It’s a conundrum, and I wonder if my eldest daughter’s relaxed attitude has flicked an emotional switch which says more about me than her. I have had an anxiety dream about her exams, while she seems unruffled by this impending academic hurdle.
I don’t have any qualifications and remember revising so hard for my O-levels in the Eighties that it made me ill.
After that, I decided to get a job rather than do A-levels and go to university, so maybe I am imposing a few of my “could-have-beens” on her.
I hate to be underprepared for anything in life but she seems more confident about her abilities than I ever was, so could it be that I’m a little jealous of her “what’s the worst that can happen” attitude.
Maybe aiming for a reasonable mark, rather than a higher one, is an easier way to approach the whole task. We shall find out when the results are in.
And I think I am on to something with revision camp: seeing as teenagers are more inclined to do what someone else’s parents say than their own, perhaps we could all just swap offspring during exam week?
Daily Mail
LORRAINE Candy is editor-in-chief of Elle magazine.