Life Interruptions...

...are never ending.

I am pulling out my hair with them all! Last Friday it was my daughter and her 'sore tummy' which remarkably turned out to be nothing judging by the very speedy recovery she made (she was scoffing sweets by 415!) and today it is the trials and tribulations of a teenage boy in his final year at school.
He wants to do - wait for this ground breaking revelations -NOTHING! Yes that's right during a conversation about his courses (the timetable's been altered yet again!) and what courses he wants to do next year, I frustratedly shouted 'You can't spend the rest of your life doing nothing!' to which the reply was 'I wish I could!'

Teenagers!

How do you counter that? How do you instill a work ethic into someone? Do you do it by example? Was spending the largest portion of the last decade in full time study insufficient? Is the fact his father spends most of his life working not enough to show him how it's done? Or has all this excess of work ethic and ambition done the opposite and turned him off the thought of doing anything with his time? Does he look at us and think - sod that? Far too much effort?

I could relate to the idea of him being fed up of school, study and education and wanting to do something completely different to experience the world - but doing nothing is not an option. Even my socialist principles balk at the thought of society paying for lazy kids to sit and do nothing!
He is currently frustrating all of the people who care about him and want him to work out a how to obtain a decent, enjoyable life for himself. All we want is for him to have choices! And he is fighting us every inch of the way! He also seems to think that when he has a free period at school he can come home? This is not acceptable given my hours of peace and quiet at home are my work hours and it is hard enough when I have absolute solitude - him appearing at odd hours during the day is just not an option.

My to do list is growing, my patience is thinning and my ideas are bogged down in the here and now mundanity of constant interruptions! I need an Island somewhere - Isolated - to write! It seems a 'room of one's own' is never truly one's own when you have kids to consider!