Alison Craig: The day Teenwolf let the cat out of the bag

Keeping a teenager on-side is hard work at the best of times, but recently things have hit an all-time low. As the days get longer, the sun makes more than an occasional appearance, birds sing, people smile at each other in the street and the waft of barbecues float through the window - all signs that used to put a smile on my face.

This year they elicit a grinding of teeth and a fraught look which have nothing to do with nature and everything to with the dreaded exams.

I have wondered since I was a 16-year-old myself why on earth exams are scheduled for this time of year. Scotland is dark for about six months of the year and even when not dark, cold. So for months on end teenagers are confined indoors, pressing their sebum-damp noses against their bedroom windows waiting for spring, just dying to get out and fool around.

It seems like a typically Calvinist plan: OK, young people, you will stay indoors of your own volition when it's cold, dark and wintery - and then when it gets bright and warm and there is fun to be had you will stay indoors too, because I say so. And, to add insult to injury, you will study.

I confess I am torn. Torn as to whether I should just say "Och, out you go, you're at school all day, you can't work all night too". Or, after listening to other parents who put the fear of God into me that I am too lax, getting a bolt, lock, all-night lamp attached to a desk and stand over him with a cane, making him study until his eyes bleed and his brain fries. If I am to believe what I hear, a slightly less dramatic version of this actually happens in this very city.

No matter which way we approach it, we are in a no-win situation. Even the calm, "Hey, please yourself" way abruptly ends when I realise nothing is being done, and rapidly turns into the "Are you ever going to put your head down and do some work?" approach. Which, of course, is the precursor to a snap back from Teenwolf: "You think I do no work at all!" And I agree with him, go easy for a while, and it all kicks off again . . .

But I do sympathise. Imagine having to deal with the distractions of MP3 player, Facebook, mobile and blog. Way back in the olden days, as Teenwolf calls them, all we had was a TV with three channels - and my dad decided what we were watching.

Then again, exams were just part of life, not as some would have us believe today, the be-all and the end-all. In my experience no one was slavishly attached to books for hours and hours - and if anyone was, that would be the class swot.

I never heard any of the endless gum-bumping about the importance of exams, the hideous things that will befall those kids who don't study hard and do well, or where they will end up if they don't get an A-star in their exams.

Of course, they didn't have A-stars in my day . . . in fact in my particular case they didn't have As at all.

The stress and drama that the pressure of exams has wreaked upon us this year puts all previous family discussions - aka fights - into a cocked hat. The mere word "exam" now causes a stramash in our house.

But even with flak flying, I am still trying to be a responsible parent and encouraging Teenwolf to get down to some serious revision.

We had reached a near-equilibrium until last week, when he found one of my old school reports.

The comments were far from complimentary. "If Alison did less talking and more work she might stand a chance at passing an exam", said one. And then under the column in which teachers recorded the number of absences for each pupil they had just written the sign for infinity.

Yes, not your ideal role model and now the cat is out of the bag.

Luckily, the long-suffering husband was good at school, so he is the pariah and I am just the hairy hormonal old bag. I never thought that would be a good thing but, hey ho, I never thought I would be such a hypocrite either.