«Noah has to pay the price himself if he's late in the morning»

We usually experience stress in the same situations. On Monday mornings, for example, when it's hard to get up after the weekend. Noah often remembers that he urgently needs a signature from me or hasn't done any homework. It drives me crazy because it's all so predictable.

At the same time, I know that I have to stay as calm as possible so that the whole thing doesn't escalate. And remind myself: «He's not doing this to annoy you. He's just a teenager whose whole brain is reorganising.» I then leave it to Noah to frantically gather his things, try not to comment on it, but don't intervene to help either. If he still needs a signature, he gets it from me, of course.

What helps us just before we go crazy: take a deep breath in and out, leave the room or shout out of the window.

The same applies to his time management in the morning. Here, too, I now just let him do it and take a back seat. Even when I realise that there are only ten minutes left until the lesson starts and we should actually be on our way: I no longer push him and wait in the car.

He has to pay the price if he's late, not me. Funnily enough, this tactic works pretty well. So when stress arises, my strategy is to take my foot off the gas and not respond so much to my son's suggestions. However, this presupposes that I myself am very even-tempered.

What helps when we can't get on the same page and one of us is about to lose it: take a deep breath in and out, leave the room or shout out of the window. We're now both good at defusing situations and things rarely escalate between us.

If I take a deep breath, Noah asks: «Am I stressing you out right now?» It's true: we can't educate children; they simply copy everything we do.