I am a lousy cook and, as a result, when our children still lived at home my main job was to call them downstairs, from their rooms, for the evening meal. I was an expert at this; a big booming voice and a former headteacher's natural authority. I had a system and it worked seamlessly. Like the von Trapp children in that scene for The Sound of Music, my two kids would bound down the stairs, sit at the table, assume the ready position and chow down. That was, until my son was given his first pair of noise cancelling headphones on his 16th birthday. My honed method was shattered. From that moment, I had to physically climb the stairs and knock on his door. I hate technology!

Early on in this ‘brave’ new world, I knocked on the door, to no response, so I held my breath, he was a teenage boy, and walked into his den. There in front of me was what looked like a villain from a Bond film, sat, back to me, facing a bank of screens, engrossed in what looked like a battle for world domination. So engrossed was my own baby Blofeld that he wasn't aware that I had invaded his space. Luckily for me, he finished his game and span around on his chair to face me, he removed his headphones and smiled. I was half expecting him to be stroking a cat and for him to pull a lever that would drop me into a tank of sharks.

He could see the look of astonishment on my face and immediately and eloquently inquired about the reason, ‘What?’

Now to clarify at this point, I wasn't amazed or surprised by what I’d seen or even by the smell, what had shocked me was what he had been saying, while gaming, to whoever was on the other end of his audio feed.

My son had been speaking in Russian!

I needed to understand how and why; had he been recruited by the Russian state or was he a child genius?

The answer was neither. He had been playing online with a lad from just outside Moscow who, it turns out, he had met during an online tournament about a year earlier. They had become friends and had been playing games together ever since. In that year, my son had taught his Russian comrade some English and vice versa.

In that moment I was genuinely speechless, in awe. My teenage son, an academically ‘average’ student, had learnt conversational Russian, within a year, while gaming. In that moment, my world changed.

I realised immediately that similar things were going on in the teenage bedrooms of those lucky to have such virtual access and technology, all over the world. Our children are learning at an accelerated rate, things that matter to them, with incredible success, without us.