FAMILY THERAPY

My children are so horrified at the thought of family therapy they have completely taken matters into their own hands and have transformed themselves (for a brief moment) into lovely specimens. My teenage son who is already on his half-term break said “no bloody way” and proceeded to clean the kitchen and vaguely bond with his 7 year old brother (for “vaguely bonding” read: tickled him until he was nearly sick and threw a rugby ball far too hard at him and made him fall over). My daughter is using avoidance tactics in an effort not to be at all rude and my youngest son came out of school saying “everything is fine now”. Apparently he wasn’t rude to anybody, didn’t roll his eyes in class and didn’t get angry. “I did what you said”, he told me, “every time somebody was mean to me I took a really deep breath and luckily I didn’t do what I did last time, remember?” “Yes, I remember…” I said. He’d tried deep breathing and then holding his breath until his face went bright red because one of his mates had told him it would be a good idea. He then keeled over, on top of several of his classmates and got shouted at by the teacher and sent out of the room. “She sent me to see the deputy headmaster, but I didn’t know what to tell him, so I said I hadn’t been listening because I don’t think she noticed that everything went black”.