Daniel was 13 on 27 September. This blog post is perhaps a little late. Better late than never, I hear you say.

He is a musical child. He loves to listen to music. He has a sense of rhythm and he can hear when he is off key. He is a great dancer – as he says to us while dancing to the intro music on TV shows, “Look at my gyrating hips”. To be honest, we are a bit baffled as to where his dancing ability came from. Not me anyhow, that’s for sure.

He is taller than me now – a matter for great rejoicing. He likes being bigger and taller and can’t wait to be grown-up. He lost another baby tooth recently so not as old as all that. Still, he now has a deep, deep voice and a square jaw. When we went to Cork recently, all the relatives marvelled at how big he had got, even some who had seen him quite recently.

He is very conscientious which I think is a trial to him. He is often disconsolate after team events as the other members of the team just did not try hard enough. Nobody tries as hard as him which might be part of it. He has finally given up hurling and is now doing tennis on Saturdays when he doesn’t have a football match. He seems to like it much better than hurling. He is a dogged and determined player of all sports: coaches love him because he never gives up.

He cycles in and out to school every day. I have to say that I am a bit afraid as I see him off every day but he is getting more and more confident and, I suppose, after 18 months of cycling in and out on his own, he’s pretty competent even though he doesn’t do wheelies like some of his school mates. At least, I hope he doesn’t.

He has newish glasses which are very cool. He doesn’t care much but he would like to wear contact lenses so that he can play more and different sports. He has sports goggles but that is only the beginning. The optician says he needs to wait another little while to get lenses. During the year, the ophthalmologist said, basically, that he never needed to see us again, patching had worked for Dan’s astigmatism and as he was longsighted his underlying condition would only improve from now on. He also said to Daniel’s great delight, that it was one of the few eye conditions that was actually improved by watching the TV and playing on the iPad. I mean really.

He loves playing board games – long elaborate Dungeons and Dragons type things. He gets very caught up in the lives of the characters. He used to love to read all the time but now, it’s much harder to find things he likes. He still re-reads books he read when he was younger but it is hard to find new books that he gets really absorbed in. He absolutely loved “Ender’s Game” but since that success, quite a while ago, we seem to have had more misses than hits. Suggested books for a very sporty 13 year old welcome.

He loves his x-box. He is only allowed to play on Saturday and Sunday mornings, an unfairness to which he is largely resigned. He is fascinated by American Youtube videos which he finds hilarious – College Humour, I’m looking at you (I know, unsuitable, true of so much material on the internet). I find to my horror that I have turned into my father who, when I was young, used to constantly interrupt me to tell me to stop using Americanisms. I now visit the same torture on Daniel as he recounts things from the internet to me. In my defence, I didn’t have the same ear for accents that he has and my Americanisms were, at least, delivered in a Cork accent.

At school, he seems popular with the teachers – he’s quite academic and a bit of a perfectionist so I imagine that helps. There are aspects of school that he finds tedious – they are going through Romeo and Juliet at a rate of two pages per lesson and I think he may kill someone before the process concludes – but he does enjoy a number of other classes so it is not all bad.

I’d like to see him arranging to meet friends outside school more often but I think that I overestimate his organisational skills (and those of his friends) a bit sometimes and things just don’t come off for him due to a lack of appreciation that time is finite and if you’re doing a, b and c on Saturday then d may not be possible. I sometimes wonder whether this is because he is as much as a year younger than some of the other children in his year in school. On the other hand, it is not as though I am struck by the organisational skills of his friends.

He gets on like a house on fire with his brother. They still bicker a bit but it seems to me, less and less. They have loads in common. He and his sister have a more challenging relationship; it reminds me a bit of my own relationship with my brother. They can drive each other up the wall. He finds his parents and his family generally a bit of a trial – you never know when they might burst into song on the street startling other pedestrians like in an American musical. At least, this seems to be how he feels many family interactions in public look. I may have hummed as I walked is how I would characterise the same event. Still, all this is normal, your family are mortifying when you’re a teenager.

He is still a very picky eater but, in fairness to him, he is willing to try more things but the almost invariable response to a new savoury food sensation is, “No thank you, not for me.” Obviously, a big improvement of the “yuck” of younger years but still not exactly heartening. He has expanded his range of approved foods but not massively, sadly.

He quite likes getting dressed up in a shirt and trousers for an occasion but most of the time his wardrobe consists of nylon sports gear. I do not love this but he is not alone in this obsession.

He does not like my outings but he is often more inclined than his siblings to give things a go, even though he strongly suspects that any outings are doomed to disappointment. Not exactly an outing, but he and Michael attend a much loathed French class on Friday evenings and he is really reasonable about giving it a chance and not giving up and I think he even quite likes it now. Well, that may be a little optimistic but I think I can say he doesn’t hate it.

Enjoying an outing:

He and I share a liking for fantasy and science fiction so sometimes we go to the cinema together to watch things that the others can’t face which I quite enjoy.

He is polite and obliging. If asked to do work around the house he’ll do it, if not happily, then at least readily and, crucially, efficiently. When he gets annoyed he can find it hard to stop being annoyed but I’ve noticed that over the past year, he has got much, much better at getting over it when he gets annoyed. So I face into the teenage years with a certain amount of optimism.

Overall, he is, as our American friends say, “a great kid.” He’s kind and generous, hardworking and obliging and interested in all kinds of things, even, on occasion, dull outings.