‘Texting your teenage son is like texting a guy who has no interest in you” goes a meme that has re-emerged recently, piercing in its accuracy. “I am so proud of you, I love you, have a great day,” the ur-version goes; “OK,” the son replies. Longer versions feature a litany of lengthy mum texts – offers of food, solicitous inquiries, general expressions of love – met with single-syllable son replies. Occasionally, there’s the teen son equivalent of a booty call: a request for cash (or food).
I feel the truth of it to my core, and it trails on into their 20s. I considered myself relatively sanguine about my sons leaving home: there was no sobbing into pillows or sniffing left-behind sweaters. I thought I projected unconditional yet stable maternal support and appropriate boundaries. Our WhatsApps, however, tell a different, unhinged story: my sons keep in touch in a normal, loving, if laconic way, but my messages – quantity and content – give me a full-body cringe.
There’s just so much tragic “pebbling”: sending them pictures of local fauna, or stuff I have grown, links and local gossip. I’m drearily fond of banal questions – “What’s for dinner?” “Are you surviving?” – even though it’s better to puzzle them with something weirdly specific (should I eat moss? What do you think about eels?). At my most mortifying, I’ll trot out parental thirst traps: do they need a takeaway or T-shirt? I’m “in town”, can I buy them dinner? In 2021, I see I sent my home-alone eldest 12 unanswered messages over three days: multiple hyperlinks, an annotated photo of the fridge, instructions for the dishwasher, a photo of some snow and many variations on “everything OK?” (he was fine).
I have to face facts: they are just not that into me. I need the kind of tough-love friend who deletes your hopeless crush’s number and confiscates your phone when you are drunk and desperate. That won’t be my husband: looking over his shoulder last night, I caught him urgently typing a War and Peace-length WhatsApp about amplifiers after an offhand query from our eldest. At least we’re both hopeless, I suppose.
• Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
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