Sometimes it is the innocent conversations that teach you the most.

I was driving into town yesterday with four of the five kids in the car. Charlotte was in the front so the soundtrack from Tangled was chosen to be the in-car entertainment for the trip. We'd just listened all the way through both Mother knows best and the reprise, sung by the old witch Mother Gothel and I innocently commented that she was a bit of a bitch. Still singing along happily and innocently Charlotte stated, quite calmly and unmoved 'Yeah, she always reminds me of papa'. I quietly left her to elaborate. She commented on the way she undermines Rapunzel, the way she builds her confidence and knocks it down in the one sentence, her paranoid fluctuations between loving and downright nasty, her condescending attitude, her mad possessive steak and finally the glee she takes in telling her no one will want her.

Often when I hear how my kids talk about their father, I am shocked that he allowed their relationship to deteriorate to that level. Nothing should have been more important to him than them but by allowing his own madness to become more important than them, he lost them somewhere along the way. I would be devastated if this sort of song reminded my kids of me.