Standing outside my daughter’s school, students spilling out from their end-of-year celebrations, I start chatting to a fellow parent. I knew Marc back when I was a teenager. He was one of the cutest boys in the village. Long, dark lashes. Cheeky smile. I can still see him down on the Tins – the wasteland near Beach Road, or swinging on the bars outside the park. Now we’re in our 50s waiting for our own teenagers, and it seems suddenly, comically implausible.I’m thinking this as I look sidelong at Marc, still seeing the teenage boy he once was. Life moves fast, as that great philosopher Ferris Bueller once said. One minute we were drinking flagons of cider in a field and playing spin the bottle – the next we’re wondering what our own children are up to.The truth is, I don’t do much wondering what my children are up to. I know where they are at all times. I see them, blue dots moving around the location tracker on my phone. They go from the bus stop to school. They are in their friend’s house in Sutton or they are at music lessons or a favourite cafe or at a house party. They are out on adventures all the time – lately they seem to be mostly living their best lives on Portmarnock strand – but they have nothing to hide.I don’t check the location tracker that much, but if I want to know when to put the dinner on, it’s handy to know the exact number of minutes before they are home so that I can time the fish fingers, beans and waffles to perfection. I would have had quite a different teenage life if my mother knew where I was at all times. I spent a lot of those years doing things I didn’t want her to know about. Some of it was fun. A lot of it was traumatic. A good bit of it was illegal. Plenty more of it is blurry on account of the naggins of vodka involved. She didn’t have a location tracker, but one night, after I snuck out to go to a local pub, she suddenly appeared and reefed me out. Sometimes a mother’s spidey senses are the most powerful technology. It doesn’t seem to occur to my teenagers to sneak around. Or maybe they have a whole secret life I don’t know about. When I ask them about this, they suggest I am trying to reverse-shame them. “Oh, what, you want us to be doing dodgy things behind your back, do you?” they say. “Are we too wholesome for you, is that it?” It’s an interesting question. I don’t want them to get in harm’s way, but I am fascinated by their sensible approach to life and their definition of a teenage good time. I don’t like putting a whole generation in a box but, according to some studies, Gen Z are more socially conservative. The pressure to drink and to be sexually active at a younger age, the kind that existed when I was a teenager, doesn’t seem as prevalent. Commenting on a YouGov study in Britain last year that showed Gen Z drink far less than their parents, Laura Fenton from the school of medicine and population health at the University of Sheffield suggested this younger generation believes that risk is “something to be avoided altogether, whereas in the past risk was something to be managed”. The possibility of everything they do being posted on social media is a factor. Fenton added that “there simply isn’t the same extent of peer pressure that might have existed in the past … this generation doesn’t think it is cool to judge people.”[ Róisín Ingle: Dublin is a different place. Sandymount a different village. I’m happiest on the other side nowOpens in new window ]Back at the school, when one of my daughters finally emerges from the gym hall, I introduce her to Marc. I explain that we used to hang around together when we were kids. And then Marc, for some reason best known to himself, blurts out: “Your mam is the first person I kissed.” I am mortified. My daughter is unalived by this announcement. The worst part is that I don’t even remember this kiss, which feels disloyal to Marc. I’m sure it was memorable at the time. I grab my daughter and we half run to the car park.I am relieved that she’s managed to get herself to 17 having had the most fun teenage times, without facing the kind of embarrassing/scary/dangerous situations I managed to surviveIn the car she is full of questions about the kissing business. She wants to know how old I was (13 probably). Where it went on (No memory). How far it went (It was just a kiss, I am nearly sure!!!). Then she wants to know everything. “Seriously, though, what on Earth were you up to as a teenager, Mum?” I feel, suddenly, judged. (I thought they didn’t judge?) I suppose I could tell her what exactly I was up to, disclose all my risky behaviours – but I don’t want to set a bad example or give her any ideas. Also, I am relieved that she’s managed to get herself to 17 having had the most fun teenage times, without facing the kind of embarrassing/scary/dangerous situations I managed to survive. I decide it’s probably best if she doesn’t know the half of it. I respond as I did back in the day when my mother would ask what I’d been up to. “Nothing much,” I lie. “Nothing much at all.”[ Róisín Ingle: Here’s what happened when I lost my phone ... againOpens in new window ]