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Nothing escapes the kids… to then be mangled by their unsophisticated comprehension of the world.

Recently, I have started taking supplements to counteract my foggy mind. They seem to be helping to some degree, my mind sharper and more alert.

But the unexpected: the kids have read the label on the jar, and discovering the words, “Mental Performance” now taunt me, “Dad’s taking pills for his mental health!”

Kids can be awfully mean when they’re in a bad mood, completely indifferent to the feelings of others. Any fragment of truth once kindly shared — a story from childhood or our youth — will be deployed as ammunition in these moments of frenzy.

Yesterday afternoon I went out for a couple of hours to drink coffee with a friend. On my return home, I found my beloved distraught, reeling from the coarse words of a teenager consumed by rage, reminding her of a story she had once innocently shared merely to provide perspective.

In moments like these, we learn not to utter a word about our past, realising that it will only be used against us in times of heightened emotions. We learn the hard way that young people don’t do or understand empathy. Right now, everything is about their ascendency.

Thus must old photos be closely guarded. Otherwise one of them will chant a biting barb in the midst of a heated conversation about homework, revision or behaviour. Thus do we learn not to speak of our youth, thinking to empathise with them in their problems.

When they say, “What would you know? You couldn’t possibly understand!” we must resist the urge to say, “Actually, I understand completely. More than you could ever possibly know.” Instead, we must pretend that we were created as adults, fully formed: that this is all we have ever known.

To one another, parent to parent, we console ourselves: “All of this will pass.” Hopefully, inshallah, in another decade, they will have grown out of these petty battles, and will have grown so as to see people whole, developing empathy and self-awareness, rising beyond their ego.

That’s our hope anyway. Until then, all of our secrets must remain tightly guarded, kept close. We must teach them not from experience, but from abstract binary notions, easily digested, and preferably uttered by a teacher, presumed to be far wiser than their daft parents, who of course are illiterate imbeciles. Nothing escapes the kids.