Bringing up a child is hard enough, but when you realise they have their own minds, well ... How dare they!
When Ben was at nursery, I remember the nursery manager saying "In life, there are leaders and there are followers. Let's just say Ben won't be a follower." To a parent, this is pleasing to hear, of course. He'll end up being head boy at school and fast forwarding twenty years, he'll be the president of some society or other, management at work etc etc. (But actually I don't think anyone is ever going to say "He'll be the follower" to a parent!)
We like to think we are cool as parents, as individuals, as a couple. We like indie music, we listen to 6Music and we don't watch the X-Factor or any broadcast TV for that matter. We shop in Waitrose and read The Guardian (well the free Saturday edition from Waitrose covers the guinea pig hutch nicely). We don't like popular chart music. We hope Ben will be as "rebellious" as us.
Except he isn't. Well he is. He did rebel. Against us! He liked One Direction and Olly Murs. Imagine my shame! I used to tell people that he was rebelling against us to deflect the embarrassment. Thankfully that phase didn't last long before he discovered ACDC. With his electric guitar as a Christmas present, he's doing his first performance at school next week (band name Dread Zeppelin - tracks Back in Black and Sweet Child o'Mine). As indie kids, we totally accept his rock music.
So then we get to agreeing and disagreeing. At football, Ben's always, how shall we say this, had his own idea of whether the coach or ref is right. From the initial walking off the pitch (years ago) to hands up in the air (more recently) via actually arguing with his own coach, we now think we've turned a corner.
The message I got from my dad growing up was never to believe everything you are told. Something like "Believe half the people half the time, and take the rest with a pinch of salt". I question everything and although I wouldn't say I'm pessimistic or cynical, I trust nothing I read nor hear 100%. We have a funny (to us) family saying of "I know that" and I seriously dislike people saying to me "Yes, you're right you know". I KNOW I'm right, I didn't need you to confirm it!
At school, Ben has a healthy respect for his teacher and would never argue with him (or her). He is too scared he'd be sent to the head! However at football, it's a different matter. He doesn't as a rule argue anymore with referees but he will argue with his coach. We've always said to him that he has to do what his coach has asked him during game time and if he didn't agree with it, or wanted to know why, his coach would always explain his reasoning afterwards, provided he asked in a calm manner. This has happened a couple of times.
But today, I think we finally turned that corner. Ben moaned at a teammate today for not passing to him when he thought he should've. His coached shouted over that he was right not to have passed to Ben and that Ben was wrong in this instance. Ben carried on playing and we were happy that he'd been told off correctly and even happier that he didn't react badly to it.
It was only on the way home that he said he still thought he was right, his coach was wrong, but he knew he just had to get on and play because his coach had spoken. Nothing would sway him, he KNEW he was right, but he didn't argue.
That's my boy!