Choice Blog

Spending quality time with adult children

My son has been back this weekend to get his suit for a group presentation he is doing early next week at University. He came back early afternoon on the Saturday and it has been great to see him. We had a lovely afternoon, not doing much but snuggling with the cats and dogs in the lounge watching cartoons. You may not think an 18 year old would enjoy watching cartoons, but apparently there are plenty of cartoons written for adults these days with a slightly twisted sense of humour.It just felt like about 10 years ago, when he watched things on The Disney Channel, oddly comforting although the content was anything but.

My son and I have the same ‘TV watching style’ if there is such a thing and usually a similar taste in American TV Series. We ‘binge’ watch whenever we get into a program. During the holidays this is easier to do when work and school don’t get in the way and we would watch one episode after the other saying to each other, “Just one more?” on numerous occasions. Maybe after 4 in a row we might saturate ourselves a bit with it and need a break but we have been known to stay up much later than everyone else to get to the end of an episode.‘The American Office’ was a surprise favourite of ours last summer and we felt a strange disappointment when we got to the last episode.

Before he left earlier today he got his suit out of his cupboard and apparently shouted out for me. I was marking books in the kitchen, listening to Spotify on my iPad through headphones so didn’t hear the distressed sounds from my second born child. He came in wearing the suit jacket and explained to me that the cats had gotten into his cupboard and scratched down the sleeves of his suit jacket on the hanger. They must have had a fantastic time as it was almost shredded in places.

Quick calls to various local Marks and Spencer stores followed to try and source the same suit jacket, with luckily one that was on his way back having the exact same one in the right size. That was a £75 mistake I won’t make again. As I am writing this he has just texted that he forgot to take his shoes so more money to fork out. I will not write what expletive he texted when I sent him a photo of a nice pair of brogues, that they had in his local M&S, for the not very student friendly price of £75 - so I suggested ASDA.

Jean Donald, Guest blogger for Choice magazine

Jean was born in 1966 and grew up in Scotland as the youngest of 3 with two elder brothers. She trained as a nurse in Glasgow and retrained as a teacher in Somerset. She works full time as a primary teacher and is studying for a Master’s degree part time. She has a daughter who is 21 and a son who is 18 and both are at University. When she isn’t working, studying or going to the cinema with her husband, then Jean enjoys walking with her dogs, Badminton, Pilates and writing.