MICRO-MANAGING MUCH?

Fiona Gibson - 16 Jan 14

Fiona Gibson is a journalist and author with twin boys, 16, and a 13 year-old daughter. And she has just about got her life back…

I used to micro-manage my twin boys. I’d plan what they ate and how we filled our days, right down to the tiniest detail. I’d arrange trips and playdates and, although I still worked – freelance, part-time – my life was really shaped around being in charge of these two little lives. I fell into believing that, if I took my eye off the ball for one second, everything around me will crumble and life would end.

I had a daughter next, and eased up a little: instead of swiftly changing her clothes if she happened to slosh food around, I’d just plop another outfit on top. Standards, clearly, were slipping. And now they’re all teenagers and, guess what? There are no standards at all. My career as a control freak is over. I wish I’d realised sooner that this is the way to be.

As my boys’ exams loom, all around me my friends are stressing like crazy, fighting with their partners and turning to drink. They’re panicking about revision schedules and spending a fortune on tutors. It seems have been drummed into us that, unless our kids gain places at top universities – ie, studying medicine at St Andrews might just about cut it – then we’re all off to hell in a handcart. When did this happen? Back in ’82, when I failed to get into art college, my parents didn’t dissolve into tears or hold a summit meeting about what should happen next. They just said, ‘Oh dear. Maybe you could be a nurse?’ Then Mum turned back to her far more interesting patchwork magazine.

It might sound neglectful now, but maybe they had the right approach. After all, trying to control kids can backfire horribly, and I’m not convinced that nagging has any effect at all. Think back to your own exams. If a parent had tried to monitor your revision, what would you have done? Hidden in your room, probably, having scattered a few books around just for effect. Maybe glanced at the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon, before becoming overcome with ennui, and calculating how much longer you’d need to stay there before you could go downstairs and watch telly.

Basically, you can’t make kids study. It’s impossible to control them in that way. Tempting though it may be, you can’t drill a little hole in their heads in order to funnel the information in.

With my teenagers, the more I nag, the more obstacles they stick in the way. So I’ve relinquished control – or, rather, it’s been gradually eased away from me, and I haven’t fought it. My boys are almost men. It feels unnecessary and wrong to try to manage their lives like an over-zealous PA.

And how life has improved! I no longer stand in our back yard, chuffing a fag and clutching a tumbler of wine, bleating to my husband, ‘D’you think he should have picked chemistry over physics?’ I’ve started having a life of my own again, instead of poring over uni websites and waking up at 3.30 am with heart palpitations about shoddy test results.

So step back, and reassure yourself that everything will be fine, probably. The bits that aren’t, you probably couldn’t have controlled anyway. Sure, I think my kids could study more instead of watching crappy movies, which usually involve some nineteen year-old bloke running around a Greek holiday resort with no trousers – but that’s up to them. Some people might reckon I’m being lazy, or shirking my responsibilities as a mum. I prefer to think of it as letting my children grow up.

5 REASONS TO STOP MICRO-MANAGING

1) It shows trust. Teenagers tend to respond well to this.

2) They can function without you. Yes, I know it can backfire, and your adorable son might disappear in a dope-fuelled haze, emerging only to get girls pregnant in bushes. But if your family’s generally been okay so far, then there’s no reason why it’ll change now.

3) You stop viewing every hiccup in their young lives as yours to sort out. Which leaves loads of time for other stuff.

4) Our parents didn’t do it. Being hugely involved is a fairly new concept; mollycoddling by another name.

5) Allowing kids to make their own choices (and mistakes) encourages self reliance. We were pretty brave, I think, as young adults, striking out into the world of manky bedsits and perilous first jobs. More than anything, I’d like mine to be too.

Fiona’s new novel, Take Mum Out, is published by Avon on March 13

Fiona Gibson

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