As I write, it’s 3.10pm on a sunny Sunday and a boy is still in bed in a darkened room which smells strongly of man-feet and night-farts. Having peeked at the motionless figure on the hour, every hour, for the last 4 hours, I choose to leave him to wake naturally.

I choose not to rouse this somnolent boy for fear that he erupts from his bedchamber demanding to exercise the legal rights and entitlements afforded to him now he has reached the age of 16.

I wish to delay as long as possible the risk of him springing from his bed and announcing his decision to leave school, leave home and live on unemployment benefit.

I am not keen to hear of his determination to marry at once and I’m even less keen to be put into a half-nelson while he kneels on my neck until I grant my permission for his nuptials.

I completely dread hearing that he has signed up for the army and is off to die in Afghanistan as soon as he’s completed his basic training.

And I’m simply ignoring the question of s-e-x; he seems to be so popular with girls he has to beat them off with a stick and I’m fairly confident, given that he’s over 6’2”, that he’d be more than capable of beating off with a stick any elderly queen who might press him with unwelcome attentions.

So I choose to concentrate on the slightly less worrying things my first-born may do now that he is 16. I understand, for example, that he can spend his pocket-money on a wide range of things he couldn’t buy when he was 15. Apparently he is old enough to buy himself an endless succession of small pets such as hamsters, mice, guinea pigs, rabbits and rats. I’m rather hoping he isn’t yet old enough to buy snakes, scorpions or tarantulas but I’m not banking on it.

He’s also entitled to purchase a lottery ticket and if his numbers come up he can trot back to the pet shop and spend his winnings on even more small animals if so he wishes. He might want to trawl the shops buying all the paracetamol he can carry and all the liqueur-chocolates he can guzzle. He can apparently also pick out for himself some darts, some baseball-bats and a few axes if the fancy takes him but he might still have to enlist the help of an 18-year old chum if he wishes to buy a sharp knife. Strangest of all, it is now legal for him to buy scrap metal.

My son is also entitled to choose his own GP so he may make me drive him to every medical practice in the area before we pull up to a restaurant where he can legally enjoy beer or wine with his meal. Or he may prefer to take to the open road perched giddily on a 50cc moped, but since he already rides a brute of a Moto-cross bike I don’t think he’ll be tempted by this one.

No, astonishingly, the boy in question seems either oblivious to or uninterested in all his newly-acquired rights except one: he knows he’s old enough to drive a tractor on the road and plans to obtain his provisional licence and pass his test in time to drive himself and his date to their school-prom in a JCB Fastrac tractor. Ye Gods. The young lady’s parents will be thrilled when they hear of this plan.

Anyway, while he’s in bed and asleep he’s not doing any of the above, so I’ll leave him to his slumber and for one reason above all others: my son knows and I know that he knows he is now old enough to call the Jeremy Kyle Show and could do so at any time.

I’m happy to leave him in bed until Wednesday if it means I avoid appearing on a show entitled “My mum woke me up before teatime and I want revenge!”.

Gloria Smudd

1
lenko
April 26, 2010 at 19:17

Hi Gloria… I remember my wife and myself going through the same kind of process, though her more than me. Women (mothers) worry more. There were evenings spent looking at the clock, listening for footsteps, dreading that the phone would ring. Scary…

And yet — the girl never got raped or murdered. She didn’t come home pregnant. The boy never had to tell us he was gay/in prison/in the Army. And in time, there were weddings and births and more weddings. So I guess we must have done something right, though we never found out what it was.

And a boy that wants to drive his date to the prom in a tractor has definately been brought up right. So no way will you end on the Jeremy Kyle show.

2
Gloria Smudd
April 26, 2010 at 19:47

If I’m honest lenko, right now it’s really the idea of him bringing big spiders into the house that I’m most afraid of! He knows I don’t like ‘em…. (and he’s already shoved an alarming plastic tarantula into the guttering just outside the back door for no reason other than to give me the heebeejeebees.)

3
Gloria Smudd
April 26, 2010 at 19:55

Old Mother Smudditt
Got such a shock it
Made her faint onto the floor
When spied the spider
Right there beside her
Which her son had put just near the door.

4
Joe Public
April 26, 2010 at 20:00

“…..buying all the paracetamol he can carry”

No, not even at that age……….

The 1998 legislation had placed restrictions on the maximum number of tablets allowed in a pack, and the maximum number of tablets allowed in an over the counter sale.

http://www.pharmweb.net/pwmirror/pwy/paracetamol/pharmwebpicsizeleg.html

5
Gloria Smudd
April 26, 2010 at 20:21

Phew! That’s good news then Joe Public. I knew that the legal age for buying cigarettes was raised to 18 maybe 2 or 3 years ago but I thought it was still 16 for the paracetamol.

Anyhoo, since the resident teen-boy can now choose his own GP, no doubt he can get his paracetamol quota from whichever ‘good doctor’ he chooses, since they don’t seem to prescribe anything else.

6
clochoderic
April 26, 2010 at 22:37

Superb, Gloria. I am a distant dad of a new 16 year old and had been vaguely aware from a different legal perspective of how it would change things for him. You illustrate the glorious but uncertain possibilities of the onset of adulthood in a witty and memorable way.
From another perspective – as a secondary teacher – I am sometimes asked to present often stultifyingly lessons on the issues you so so wittily bring to the light in your article.
In the spirit of admiration I ask you to answer two questions:

1) Do the laws and rights to which you refer apply to English Law?

2) D0 I have your permission to copy and use the article for educational purposes?

WOW!

7
SadButMadLad
April 26, 2010 at 22:39

A story about too much worrying and how it affects not just the one who is worried but also the one who is the subject of the worries.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1268750/LIZ-JONES-Now-I-know-I-hate—Intense-therapy-discovered-dark-secret-past.html

Yes, I know Daily Fail, but it does have occasional good reads.

8
Gloria Smudd
April 27, 2010 at 10:29

clochoderic:
1: I think so (not certain though)!
2: Yes!

9
Subrosa
April 27, 2010 at 12:56

Oh Gloria you do take me back to days gone by. Makes me think we really should insist the age of majority is 21 and in cases of the male gender 50.

10
Demetrius
April 27, 2010 at 16:33

Subrosa is being rather too optimistic. With my young ones closing 50 I might argue for a rather higher limit.

11
Surreptitious Evil
April 27, 2010 at 18:48

Oh, don’t worry. If he joins the Army tomorrow, he’ll not be at war for another couple of years at the least. UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, you see – Article 38(3) if you are actually interested.

12
Gloria Smudd
April 27, 2010 at 20:04

Thanks for that, Surreptitious. I’m fairly confident he isn’t interested in joining the armed forces since he met a shouty sergeant-type at a careers thing. I believe that the child remarked that he’d prefer not to be shot or have his legs blown off and the sergeant didn’t take too kindly to this remark… I understand the sergeant would have liked the child to complete an inhuman number of press-ups and polish 1000 boots, but luckily the boy in question could just amble away.

13
binlid
April 27, 2010 at 21:58

I remember well Number 2 son com