Emotion Island
A lot of my blog posts are about my eldest. Mostly because, with him, I am experiencing parenting at the edge – he is the one cutting the path into the jungle of life; I am just trying to keep up. The other reason he features so heavily is that he runs hot with emotions. The path he is cutting is not a smooth one, but a path torn with teeth and fingernails. So, when, on the way home from school, he started talking about an event that sent him over the Cliff of Temper into the Rapids of Craziness, I was first struck by the poetry of his words and then by the self-reflection they must require. As I listened and questioned, he constructed an island - a picture of his emotional landscape. Later, with his Mum’s help, he drew out his Emotion Island. He (and I) may find his emotions difficult sometimes, but he is finding an understanding of himself which I can only admire. I just hope that his Island becomes a map that he can use as he cuts his way through the jungle which seems, so often, to surround him.