“The aim is to balance the terror of being alive with the wonder of being alive.” – Carlos Castaneda

Life is terrifying. There are so many things that can go wrong with us and our kids... and often do. It's a small wonder we aren't all on drugs. Oh wait, maybe we are! The explosion of anti-depressants and tranquilisers didn't come out of nowhere. If we have any measure of intelligence we'll see how fragile we are and that ultimately we have to die. And our children have to die. Maybe the only people seeing things clearly are the ones with what we call ‘mental health problems’. We all have a mental health problem called ‘extreme denial to cope with the truth’.
 
We're all going to die.

We take it for granted that although we often feel like hitting someone else (or biting scratching or throwing a tantrum) that we are able to override this primitive drive and behave like an at least semi-civilized human being (well, most of the time anyway). We assume that this is a normal ability that everyone of all ages shares, and we therefore expect everyone else to make good use of it. Including our kids. But the physiological truth of the matter runs a little bit deeper…

Imagine that one day you wake up and get dressed and your partner takes you by the hand pops you in the car and, instead of dropping you at work, the car takes off and flies to Mars. You're already confused, right, as you were expecting to go somewhere familiar. 
 
When you get there he helps you out if the car leads you to a group of Martians and other women and turns around and leaves. You look around and everyone seems to know everyone else and they're all busying themselves about. You don't know why you're there, where to go if you need the toilet, how long you'll be there, what there is to eat, what behaviour is appropriate or not.
 
How do you think you would feel? Scared? Angry? Confused? Tearful? Panicked? All of the above? 

“I hate you I hate you I hate you” We’ve all heard that one and most of us can simply laugh it off and know that within an hour it will be all love again. We know that part of parenting involves bearing the brunt of our kids’ bad moods and lack of emotional maturity. And children need to know that it is safe to express these strong emotions without you or the world falling apart.
 
But what about when you do something or make a difficult decision and your child turns around and says “You don’t love me”. That’s a slightly more difficult pill to swallow. Particularly when all we’ve done since the day they were born is pour every inch of love possible in our beings into them.