The School of Life: An Emotional Education

by The School of Life

In an emotionally healthy childhood, we aren’t always required to be wholly good boys or girls. We are allowed to get furious and sometimes a bit revolting – at certain points to say ‘absolutely not’ and ‘because I feel like it’. The adults know their own flaws and do not expect a child to be fundamentally better than they are. We do not have to comply at every turn to be tolerated. We can let others in on our shadow sides. This period of freedom prepares us to submit one day to the demands of society without having to rebel in self-defeating ways (rebels being, at heart, people who have had to obey too much too early). We can knuckle down and toe the line when it’s in our long-term interest to do so. At the same time, we’re not overly cowed or indiscriminately obedient either. We find a sound middle ground between slavish compliance on the one hand and self-destructive defiance on the other.