How to be authentically manly, when you have a crazy teenage son

BECOME YOUR DAD. Deliver long, boring, interminable lectures on a variety of subjects like work ethic, trust, success etc then round it off by reminding him that you’ve said this so many times that you’re actually boring yourself thus torpedoing any chance of being taken seriously.

BECOME YOUR TEENAGE SELF by simultaneously closing off to any useful advice from friends and family. Decide not to tell them he ‘went to the park’ ten hours ago and isn’t answering your calls because it’ll just make them go on even longer. Which is the exact same reason he doesnt tell YOU anything.

CONVINCE YOURSELF that its his friends who are the ones responsible for getting him into all this. See them as the spawn of Baelzebub and ban them from the house, ban them from being outside the house, ban any mention of them in the house. Then spend the weekend on your own, because you banned his friends from the house.

DENY your inner mental health implosion by telling him jokingly that when he’s not around you lie on the couch in your underpants crying and eating microwave pizza in a drunken stupor. Because heaven forbid you tell the truth which, ironically, is pretty close to the same story. But damnit it’s authentically manly to make light of it.

TELL HIM he hasn’t got a clue about ‘the real world’ when in actual fact its YOU that is completely ignorant of the influences, expectations and complexities of the world he lives in. But f**k it, your experiences of the 70’s and 80’s MUST somehow still be relevant even though there were only 3 channels on TV and always change for the bus home.

ADMIT that you just don’t know how to fix this. Then remember that you’re a bloke so of course you can fix this. Somehow. It isnt going to be today though there’s too much other stuff going on. Never mind, you’ll figure it out.