Attention, underarm sweat!
"It starts just before his 12th birthday. When my eldest plays with two friends in his room for an hour, it smells like a reptile house in a zoo. I'm suddenly struck by the realisation that these clouds of scent are the end of childhood. The end of cotton-soft paws and knobbly toes. Instead: sweaty hands, sticky hair and size 42 shoes.
I remember my own teenage years with horror, volcanic sebaceous glands and rotten days when I listened to Nirvana non-stop, spent my pocket money on sad books and dreamed of a back tattoo that my tolerance-impaired parents unfortunately wouldn't let me have. Ah, being young has always been difficult.
I look at my son, who is sitting tall, handsome and a little big-nosed at the table, shovelling in his third plate of spaghetti and telling me the most important events of his morning with pinpoint accuracy: «Nicolai got into another fight.» «Arabella thought Hitler was a footballer.» «I urgently need new indoor shoes, Mumaa!» The way he emphasises the «a» in it doesn't fail to have an effect. My oxytocin level swells, scent mark or not. What a clever boy! And so pretty! And how sweetly he asks! No, the so-called difficult years are still a long way off. Because he and his siblings still come hopping joyfully when I come home. He thanks me for the spaghetti. I also don't have to cross the road yet when we meet by chance. Kisses are allowed, even encouraged in the home, especially in the evening. Hach.
The pre-pubescent child senses my sentimentality, clears his throat and says: «Mum, it's my birthday soon. And you know what: I want an iPhone 6 with all my heart. Really. 64 GB. In black. It costs around 800 francs, but you can raid my children's account. Mum, I absolutely need it. My happiness depends on it.'
I think about whether I should delete the prefix. I shudder. We've discussed the mobile phone issue repeatedly. I thought he would get one when he started sixth form. So next year. So I try to be ironic: 'Does it have to be an iPhone? You know, the metals in it are destroying entire countries in Africa and poor women in China are toiling for a pittance for it.» My son gives me a pitying look. «A Huaweidingsbums like that is total rubbish. I'd rather do without! It has to be an iPhone, otherwise I'll make a mockery of myself! Everyone else has a mobile phone, everyone!»
Taking his indignation as an opportunity, I sneak into the neighbourhood of the school building one morning, walking the dog and using a forgotten gym bag as an excuse. Sure enough, during the breaks, all the fifth and sixth graders pull their mobile phones out of their bags and show each other their screens. But they're not talking on their phones, they're looking at them, grinning or pontificating about IOS 8 and 9 with the fervour of newly in love.
I realise that mobile phones are the number one status symbol for prepubescents. So for his birthday, my son gets a mobile phone whose inner workings come from the Congo. He is the first to have an iPhone 6, making him something of a playground king. However, our quiet life is suddenly over. Because every two minutes: Ping! «Hi», writes someone from the class chat, to which 25 others immediately reply with - Ping! - «Hi». Or: «No!» «Yes!» «Crass»! Ping!
It starts in the morning, continues at lunchtime and intensifies in the evening. Even Netflix gets annoyed and reacts with disruptions because our Wi-Fi is completely hijacked by the eruptive stream of text messages. My request to keep to mobile phone times is ignored - so much for my pedagogical effectiveness. I say things I never wanted to say: «You're always playing on your mobile phone, why don't you go outside, don't watch so much YouTube, no, Facebook doesn't exist yet.» I even go so far as to threaten to cancel several thousand years of mobile phone time, knowing full well that it will be completely ineffective (although I secretly like the excessiveness of it).
I realise that the bigger the gesture, the smaller the effect. In parenting anyway and even more so in puberty.
My son screeches that we adults are total spoilsports because we ourselves constantly give in to the temptations of smartphone entertainment, but forbid our offspring to fiddle with any gadgets.
As it happens in the educational escalation, there is a mobile phone-free day, the mobile phone is confiscated and finally hidden away. The child suffers gasping for breath, I pay an exorbitant mobile phone bill, everyone sulks.
Then the holidays come, the mobile phone stays at home and when we return home, I have forgotten where I hid it in my toddler-like behaviour. I couldn't find it in the oven glove, in the tea box or in the mattress of the discarded cot in the cellar. Despite countless parental searches and fervent prayers from the mobile phone owner, it remains as if swallowed up by the earth.
We start to miss it, especially in the evening. The glass Ping! had suited Claire Underwood so well. Plagued by a guilty conscience, I secretly order a new smartphone. As soon as I press the OK button, a child coughs miserably, I look for the syrup and find my son's mobile phone in the medicine cabinet behind the globules and Grüffelo plasters.
I realise that the bigger the gesture, the smaller the effect. In parenting anyway and even more so in puberty.
But everyone goes through roughly the same thing. The child smells, the mother hides mobile phones. As soon as the phone is back, the child would rather talk to the lifestyle mobile phone than to their mother. This stresses out the mum, and now the mum smells too. Maybe the child will soon be hiding the mum. It can't be ruled out."
Read more:
- Puberty: ... because they don't know what they're doing
- «For me, puberty is ...»
- Intimate puberty - four myths about sex
- «Mr Juul, do boys go through puberty differently to girls?»
- «Mrs Märki, why are punishments no longer useful during puberty?»
About the author:
Claudia Landolt Starck is a journalist and mother of four boys. She is determined to see her eldest son's approaching puberty as a kind of free psychotherapy, according to the motto: puberty is when parents start to get weird. Our photo shows the author with her children.