Sometimes as a parent, with all the advice, and opinion flung at you, you can feel a little like a leaf on the autumn breeze.

Perhaps that’s why, when parenting, it’s important that we don’t forget our roots.

Our roots draw upon our upbringing, our spiritual background, our political and financial environment, our communities, our country, the ideologies, and the laws that govern us.

It is these roots that play a large part in shaping our views of what it is to do the ‘right’ thing.

When deciding rights and wrongs within the greyer borders of life’s predicaments, we go back to our roots. What would our parents think? What is allowed in the law? What do our religious leaders state? What do our communities believe?

Sometimes moral truths become moral fiction, just because of the passing of time. We all have our different perspective but generally, we do have empathy and a desire to rub along OK with even the most unlikely of neighbours, don’t we?

I  get worried when I feel this natural human empathy is under threat, manipulated or ignored. I want my roots to spread, to make connections, to make my family stronger. I don’t want to be placed in a little pot where I might grow OK, and where it might be easier to keep me safe and out of trouble,  but where I can never truly flourish.

That’s why I believe an infrastructure that supports, protects and nourishes us all is important. It’s not just parents that form these roots: it’s family, friends, carers generally. It is us that support this whole, precarious tree of life.

We shouldn’t be at the whims of the huffing and puffing of those who seem to think they have the right to change the direction of the wind, without our consent.

We may feel like leaves being blown in the wind, but we are not. We are roots.