Yesterday I was sitting in a café near Alton Towers. There was a dad on the next table and he was talking to an older couple on the table behind him. The gist of the story was that he had been to the park that day with his kids and they had observed a little girl of about six or seven who was screaming and hitting out at her mum, in front of a very long queue of people. The older couple didn't ask any more questions. They knew straight away what the problem was. The child needed more discipline, more consequences, essentially her parents needed to parent her. They were doing the thing that all of us do, which is to see a behaviour and reach for the story that makes quickest sense of it. A child behaving badly must mean a parent who isn't doing their job properly. I have been thinking about that conversation ever since, and there are three things I keep coming back to. One. Some children just feel things more Nobody at that table wondered about the little girl and why she ha...