Rosie's blog: Next Steps

This July saw my eldest son’s last day at our lovely village primary school. In September he is heading to secondary school and so begins a new and exciting chapter in his life. It is extraordinary how fast this moment of childhood passes.

The next few years will be interesting and brilliant for him and although my working assumption is that I will have more time to devote to work, I wonder whether the teenage years can sometimes require parents to be more hands-on to coach and encourage a person through this time of transition. I am reminded of how this will fall to me; for the past few weeks my ex husband has failed to answer our calls to find out if he’ll be attending any of the children’s events at the end of term. It’s frustrating but not unusual – naturally I dislike the disappointment for my sons but we talk about their feelings and the fact that sometimes (as for so many families) only one parent can attend.

More and more I see sudden glimpses of maturity in my son, and he is nearly taller than me. At eleven, my calm and relaxed boy seems to be looking forward to his new school and the opportunities it will provide. He also seems to have outgrown his current school and the broader peer group, although there are a handful of close friends. Whilst I am sure that he will look back on these early school days with nostalgia, it is certainly the case that the best is yet to come.

This transition seems to be accompanied by an amount of idling which I accept probably comes with the territory and expect that when GCSEs or A Levels are over in years to come this may also be the norm. Undoubtedly the first weeks in senior school will seem very active after this prolonged period of leisure he is enjoying!  On more than one occasion lately he has queried whether getting dressed was strictly necessary, whereas his younger brother is still delighted to be raring to go from 630 am.

I am astonished by the assertiveness of this not-even teen. Only last evening, we had a long discussion relating to the relative merits of adults or children being “in charge” (maybe over the past month or so we may have all wondered similarly). I worry that these are the seeds of rebelliousness or discontent, perhaps at all ages we are just trying to make sense of the world and at this particular time, he feels he has a lot to work out. A current favourite is the “rights and responsibilities” talk and it seems helpful that for now we can talk objectively about parameters, demonstrating a grown-up attitude and how you get the “rights” you seek. We explain this where the world is full of examples of immediate gratification and some mixed messages. I can see that this next stage could be tricky!

Whilst this has been a period of mixed emotions, overwhelmingly I am so hopeful for my son and his class of 2016 as they move on to pastures new, of the great adventure that awaits them.

Rosie is a partner in a City law firm with two sons aged 11 and 9. She is a single parent and works at her office in the City and at home.