Just like a normal boy

On his first day of school this year, Conor earned 3-and-a-half smiley faces out of a possible 4. "Way to go" I said and high-fived him. "What a good start to the new year".

"Yes", he said, "maybe this year I will be like any normal kid".

For all my reading of parenting books, thoughtfulness about how to bring him up, and conversations with his therapist, I was speechless.

Luckily he took up the conversation, about how he used to be in the principal's office every week when he was in Kindergarten, and he was there only twice in the whole of 2011. We noted how much better he was doing every year, and how he had fewer angry, hurting feelings and was much better at coping with them.

What is saddest, of course, is that he doesn't know that he IS just like any normal kid. Because we all work with the 'shadow', that dark part of us that Carl Jung identified, that we suppress and reject. We all have darkness inside of us, from uncharitable thoughts through to road rage and wishing that you could shoot the person that just cut in front of you. In other words, the anger and pain of living in this life. The point is, that if you acknowledge it and treat it well, you can befriend it and tame it. And Conor is taming his. I am so proud of him.