He was furious, he came over, he shouted at me, You have an idyllic childhood a brilliant childhood, how can you say that stupid girl?

And then I just felt confused and like I got something wrong and um I didn't I didn't feel any better.

We want our Children to be happy so much that we tried to scold them into it.

But but that doesn't work if we don't accept all of our feelings, all of the child's feelings as well as just their happy ones.

We are teaching a child that great chunks of them are unacceptable.

What my dad could have done instead of telling me off for having inconvenient feelings, he could have tried to find out more about them.

So how are you feeling?

When do you feel that?

Where do you feel that?

Yeah, I can understand that.

What he missed out then was a moment of connection and what we want with our Children more than anything are moments of connection are a good relationship where we're both on the same page and we both get each other.

That is the main thrust of my philosophy actually is that we concentrate far too much on the child and correcting the child and molding the child and we don't concentrate half enough on our relationship.

How were we interacting, how we affecting each other.

We know that Children want love but they also need boundaries.

So you love someone, but then you have to tell them no, it's a very difficult thing to do uh navigate, but it's a lot easier when instead of defining the child, you are this you are that you must, we instead define ourselves.

You may be ready to take the night bus, but I'm not quite there yet.

You're gonna have to wait for me to be ready with the idea of you age 13 on a night bus because I'm not quite there yet.

But if you say you are no way capable of catching that bus on your own, how does that feel when you get that?

You just want to fight back, define yourself and not the child when it comes to putting down boundaries.

And this might be not only about catching night busses, but you know when you're with a four year old in the playground and they say I want to stay here forever and you say we're going in five minutes because you've had enough.

That's not very nice for them to hear as well, what they need to hear from you is the truth.

They need a relationship with you.

You have to be authentic.

And so although it sounds like you're being selfish, you're not hiding anything when you say I'm bored, I'm cold.

So we're going in five minutes.

And also it teaches Children emotional intelligence because emotional intelligence, a great part of it is knowing what you feel and then from that, knowing what you want and then asking for it, you might not get it, but at least, you know who you are and where your needs and wants are coming from, which is your feelings.

This might seem quite long winded because what you want to say is do this now, because that seems like really quick and gets everything done very expediently, but it doesn't help your relationship with your child, which is what your child needs above all things.

So there's no way of not investing time, invest it early first, positively, rather than try and get away with it and then have to invest an awful lot more time negatively.

Later think of it like this, you're on a train journey with a toddler and you've got coloring books, a packet of Sylvain ian families or lego or something and a little picture book and you just wish the kid would involve themselves with this stuff.

So you can get on with your novel.

I mean, that's human if you go, what have we got here and play with them so that they don't have to work to get your attention so that they know they can depend on you then that frees them up to become involved in whatever games or toys they devise from whatever there is in front of them, they might find you're not very good at talking teddy or whatever it is.

So they'll grab it off you and take over and they'll talk teddy and then they'll get on what I used to call autopilot when my daughter reach this stage.

Now this is true of independence in Children in general.

So the more you push your child to independence, the more they'll come back and want to cling to you, the more you're available and dependable, the freer they'll feel to go off and explore.

So don't push them away, just be there, be dependable, be available.

And then they'll know they can come back to you when they want to take their explorations out into the world with your kid.

You are setting up within them a blueprint for all their future relationships, not only their future relationship with you, but their future relationships with the wider family, the community society and indeed the world.

And we want a world where people listen to each other, take their feelings into account, collaborate and not a world where people are dismissed done to a manipulated people do as they are done too.

So let's do the best for our kids.

And I'm optimistic.

And it's really important to be optimistic that our kids will get where they want to be.

And I'm optimistic that we can do this, believe in your kids, that they can do this.

And I believe in you.