My little boy has been replaced by a ‘teenager’

PERHAPS this bizarre phenomenon has also happened in your household. See if any of this sounds familiar — if it does, it would be a great comfort to me. Not as schadenfreude, of course, but more as a reassurance that we are not, you know, freaks.

You see, recently, my 11-year-old son went into his room, and while in there some kind of abduction took place. The boy who re-emerged from my son’s room, while wearing his clothes, was someone else. This new boy wears sunglasses at the breakfast table (“Why? Because I’m a badass, Mother”), has had his room designated an EU biohazard due to Lynx misuse, and no longer speaks in sentences, but in a strange hybrid of grunts, text-speak and rap shout-outs.

I wonder, I say out loud, what happened to the kid who used to live in that room — the one who used to come to football matches, and whom I used to follow around clothes shops, proffering my debit card as required? The cheery, huggy kid who liked people? This new kid looks at me over the top of his sunglasses and mouths the words ‘Jog on, oldie’.