It's a Dad's Life / Adam Brophy:The missus is my moral compass. In contrast, I like to think I am her inner demon. She wants to be good and I want to be bad. Neither of us are particularly good at either, but in the best Mills and Boon fashion, we meet somewhere in the middle and are rather normal.

I want to be Kurt Cobain but lack enough talent to be pained by it, find hangovers have sharpened since turning 30, and have an aversion to needles. She wants to be Germaine Greer, but has to answer to the man so we can pay our gas bills. We have both compromised yet still we harbour ambitions to break out of our comfortably dull existences and go rage against the machine in our own different ways.

It's just cold out there at the moment. I have a deadline to meet and she has to get the shopping in before picking up the elder from her dance class. Maybe June would be a better time to start.

Being average is a comfortable glove to wear. We're reasonably interchangeable with most of our friends, we don't suffer at the plight of the world around us or have many sleepless nights because of the demands of our own ambition. When confronted with the successes of our peers we can be congratulatory rather than envious (to a point) and feel secure in our own modest achievements. We mooch along, we live by a vague code that underlies decisions we make. Doesn't everybody do this?

Then the kids come along and push you on all your hazily held notions. They will refer to others by their colour, their physical appearance, their speech. They want to be strong and seem to have an innate desire to supplant the weak. They express their desires in the most aggressive ways and wear their hurts for all to see. All of their instincts, all their inclinations, I feel at times I am burying in order that they conform.

"Don't do that", "don't say that", "don't be like that" - these phrases roll from the mouth with shocking regularity. I take great umbrage at anybody attempting to stifle my right to express how I feel, yet spend huge energy doing just that to my kids, my own personal mini-mes, so that they will be acceptable. In the same breath as I tell them to be creative, I hush them to at least do it quietly. I quell their exuberance when they are high and try to bump their spirits when they are low. Without knowing how it came to be, it appears displays of extreme emotion are not acceptable in this house.

Before the world homogenises them, I am doing a good enough job myself. If you can't fight the power at six, you've no chance at 36.

There are obvious reasons for containment. A six-year-old's society, which boils down to the playground, is a simmering pot eternally on the brink of turmoil. Without some level of guidance in how to move within this little world, anarchy could reign within moments. That is if kids really are the burgeoning homicidal maniacs that I seem to think they are.

From the moment they are born we are advised not to leave sharp objects near them for fear they may hurt themselves or others. But all evidence that I have seen points to the fact that a kid with a scissors will attempt to make something with them and then promptly offer it to you as a gift. All the restraining in the world only seems to heighten the drama. Maybe we should let them at it and rage on. Then, maybe we should join in.