When perfect parenting met the new world and I sobbed in a theatre

I sat in a dark theatre last week and hoped I wouldn’t sob out loud.

The play was Inter Alia at the National. I don’t usually do theatre, but my bestie invited me, and I said yes please.

By the end, I felt like I’d been hit by a freight train.

One of the main characters was an 18-year-old boy named Harry.
My son is 18. Also Harry.

In the play, Harry is raised in a loving, high-achieving home. His parents are smart, thoughtful, deeply involved.
How could anything go wrong? I am willing Harry to be ok because his parents have everything right.

But Harry commits a devastating crime.
It makes me feel physically sick.

And as the story unravels, so do his parents.
At one point, the mother accuses the father of not preparing their son for the world.
The father breaks down and says:
“How can I explain a world I don’t understand?”

It’s the quiet panic we hear in our work every day:

• Why is my child still struggling?
• Why isn’t this working?
• What am I missing?

We are raising children in a world we were never prepared for.
So of course the old tools, the old narrative, aren’t working.

We’re still parenting from a manual built by our parents raised in war, survival, and shame.
The rules have changed.
But most parents are still running a script where behaviour is punished, not understood.

So... what now?

In our work, we go back to basics and always start with understanding biology.
Because behaviour isn’t random. It’s downstream from the body.

Before jumping to discipline or diagnosis, we ask:

• Do they struggle to sleep at night?
• Are they on a blood sugar rollercoaster?
• Is their nervous system stuck in ON mode?
• Have they had real connection today?
• Are their bodies moving enough?

Raising a child in today’s world, with what their body actually needs, is incredibly hard.
And this isn’t about perfect parenting, clean eating, or cutting screens.

It’s about learning to see what’s real.
Not what we were taught to see.
Not what the old manual says.

But what their body is trying to tell us  in a language we were never taught to understand.

Your child’s shutdowns, rage, reactivity...
They’re not manipulation.
They’re signals. From a body trying to feel safe in a world that often isn’t

What if the real work isn’t fixing their behaviour...
but learning to see their biology clearly enough to lead them through a different world?