Forget the terrible twos – it’s the double whammy of children becoming teens as menopause hits that presents the real parenting challenge. Photo / Getty Images
Forget the terrible twos – it’s the double whammy of children becoming teens as menopause hits that presents the real parenting challenge. Photo / Getty Images
OPINION:
The greatest trick the devil ever played is endowing me with three teenagers at peak hormonal efflorescence at precisely the moment my own endocrinal system is ripe for the compost.
As my son and two daughters liberally distribute more hormones than an unethical athletics coach, my gasping hormonal dregs are attempting to negotiate this new parental Olympiad with the haphazard derring-do of Eddie the Eagle. And thus, more likely every four weeks than four years, my household embarks on a series of gruelling challenges designed to test bodies and minds of all ages to the limit. Welcome, one and all, to the Hormone Olympics – and my hard-learnt rules* on how to survive them.
*These rules are subject to change with no notice, due to a complex algorithm involving prosecco, HRT and potential removal of Wi-Fi privileges.
The number one rule of the Hormone Olympics is to know your team, says Maz. Photo / Getty Images
First out of the blocks was my 16-year-old son, Lurch. His testosterone hit like a bullet from a starting gun a couple of years ago, with enthusiastic sentences reduced overnight to monosyllabic grunts, and the slightest suggestion of useful endeavour met with, “OH MY GOD, WILL YOU JUST CHILL?!”
But what life takes with one hand, it gives with another. He might not have shown me much filial affection since the Tokyo games. But he can now reach really high shelves, which isn’t an unhelpful trade.
In silver medal position is Lilith, my 15-year-old daughter. If Lurch’s hormonal evolution was the 100m sprint, Lilith’s was the 3,000m steeplechase, building slowly and haphazardly to an exhausting finale. Her record for gobby comebacks remains unbeaten. A recent request to tidy her condemnable room was met with this stinging riposte: “Jeez, Mum – don’t have the menopause about it.”
My youngest girl, Medusa, is a relative newcomer to the sport at 13, but she’s already shaping up to be quite the star player. Her specialist event is the Wither – her ability to express disdain in just a few words is truly world-beating. I only need to step out of my bedroom in an unapproved outfit to be returned to my wardrobe with a devastating eye-roll and, “Really? That? Oh-kaaaay…” When teamed with Lilith, they can be Redgrave/Pinsent. Or they can be Frazier/Ali, depending very much on the event schedule.
And then there’s me. Forty-four years middle-aged with a brain like Dickensian London and a body dispensing new symptoms daily from the perimenopausal one-armed bandit. Last week I couldn’t remember the word for curtain. The week before, I cried about soup. And yet, somehow, I’m supposed to be the captain. But, like all good leaders, I know how to play to my team’s strengths. Lilith’s volcanic ire is an outstanding disincentive for cold callers. I’d pit Medusa’s contempt against any door-stopping politico. And Lurch can at least now lug home the extraordinary amount of grocery shopping it takes to sustain him.
Rule 2: Be prepared for anything
With a multi-discipline affair on the cards, preparation is key. Photo / Getty Images
The Hormone Olympics is a multi-discipline affair and, much like a Belgian shot putter, you should gird yourself to be called on for any contest at any time. You might find yourself involved in the High Grump (whichever teammate can evince their displeasure the loudest), the Long Grump (who can sustain their mood for the most purgatorial length of time) or the Triple Grump (where at least three of us are raging simultaneously).
The relay requires a real team effort as you take it in turns to pass the anabolic baton between yourselves while running around in emotional circles. Or perhaps your crew will be rowing – same word, different pronunciation – leaving you frequently feeling as though you are in a body of effluence without a paddle. (The Husband gets involved in this sport at his peril, lest he find himself in a coxless pair.)
The one event I don’t have to worry about is Weight-Shifting. I have been ineligible for this discipline since my late 30s, which was the last time I could wear the regulation size 10 kit. My teens are also disqualified, able as they are to consume the calorific intake of a Scandinavian hammer thrower without troubling their body fat one microgram.
However, if you can stay in the game, there are many transferable skills to be gained from this emotional circuit training. If you can persuade an adolescent girl to relinquish TikTok long enough to consume solid matter, a seat at the UN awaits. If you can bargain with a teenage boy to reach a mutually acceptable trainer budget, Brian from accounts stands no chance at your next round of pay negotiations. And if you can produce the myriad exotic ingredients for Food Tech at 7 am with only the darkest recesses of your spice rack and a petrol station shop at your disposal, the zombie apocalypse needs hold no fear.
Rule 3: Participate in the discus(sion)
'If there is one tool in my training kit that has maintained sanity and excluded solicitors from our family, it is regular team talks.' Photo / Instagram
If there is one tool in my training kit that has maintained sanity and excluded solicitors from our family, it is regular team talks. This is no easy task when Lurch struggles to assemble four-word sentences, Lilith keeps to her room like a medieval hermit and Medusa communicates exclusively with her eyebrows. But if you’re to have a hope of winning the Hormone Olympics, communication is key.
Last year, the perimenopause hit me like a right hook from a heavyweight. I was a volatile wreck, with more erratic emotions and hair growth than a 1970s tennis player. I had no idea what was happening. I’d been relatively sane and stable previously – according to me, at least – and my kids were forced to endure the slings and arrows of my outrageous hormones while their own nascent endocrines were still in literal and figurative training bras.
Fortunately, the wisdom of friends a little further up the ladder, a trip to a specialist menopause clinic (my GP was about as helpful as a blindfold while swimming butterfly) and a hormone regime that could disqualify a gymnastics team have got me back on an even(ish) keel. And yet I shared none of this with my kids. Looking back, I’m rather horrified at my own internalised, shame-fuelled ageism, both about undergoing an entirely natural biological process and the entirely necessary measures I was taking to keep me out of the sanatorium and/or prison.
I quickly realised what an appalling example this was setting to my younger teammates. How could I possibly expect them to discuss and share their own issues when I was shamefully hiding bottles of Oestrogel behind the Listerine? So I sat them down and tried to explain why Mummy had been a little bit of a hairy/balding/hot/cold/teary/anxious/depressed/spotty/forgetful psychopath for the past year. This was met with mixed success. “So if I touch you when you’ve got the hormones on, will I grow boobs?” was Lurch’s considered response. “Eugh, gross,” remarked Lilith as she watched me baste myself in oestrogen like a menopausal Christmas turkey.
But the net result has been our family creating a culture where we can all speak up when our hormones hit. In the Hormone Olympics, forewarned is forearmed. Whether the Amazon man really needed to be informed that Medusa was suffering with “bitching cramps” is a moot point, but we can all set boundaries as we see fit.
Don't expect a prize – the aim is not to 'win'. Photo / Getty Images
And here’s the glorious irony of the Hormone Olympics – for all this endurance, no one is giving out prizes. But in this, as in all things, it’s the taking part that counts. Expect a lot of failures en route to success. The same training won’t always work on different days. Allow injury time for yourself and others. Expect to be called a loser. A lot.
But whether your team emerges like Team GB in 2012, or Andorra in… every games ever, call to mind the words of Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern games: “The important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win, but to take part; the important thing in life is not triumph, but the struggle; the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.”
