"I was crying," said Miss 14.
"I had water in my eyes," said Master 12, "but I didn't let it fall."
The subject of healthy emotions rests in the collective mental library of our whanau.
My advice seesaws between 'be tough' and 'be tender'. And know when each one is appropriate.
Miss 14 and I reminded the sole male occupant of the car, crying is, in fact, okay.
"If you keep your feelings bottled up, you might find yourself exploding in anger – a lot. And you won't realise why you're doing it."
Pop Psych Mum rides again.
You've seen this in your own life, haven't you?
The stoicism, the plight of "she'll be right", where the only acceptable sentiment is anger.
It's reflected in cinematic tropes: Bruce Willis' character John McClane makes 73 kills during five Die Hard movies; Uma Thurman's The Bride murders 76 people in a single movie, Kill Bill. This is not to blame media for real-life murders; screen stories scratch the primal itch for which chimpanzees, humans and even fish are hard-wired: lashing out. Maybe that's why we fantasise about roughing up and assassinating villains. Fights and murders look easy and justified on screen.
It's worth asking whether we're reflexive with our emotions, defaulting to what we learned as kids from grown-ups and TV, or whether we allow more nuanced expressions of grief, disappointment and heartache.
What do we teach our children and grandchildren when we affirm feelings besides anger?
Psychologist Judith Eve Lipton wrote a book with biologist husband David Barash called Payback: Why We Retaliate, Redirect Aggression and Take Revenge. Lipton said almost every depression has anger in it.
"They go together like peanut butter and jelly."
Sigmund Freud called depression "anger turned inward".
After the latest mass school shooting in the United States, an article last week in Harper's Bazaar makes the case anger, tied to masculinity, is killing us.
The author wrote that of all mass shootings in the US since 1982, only three have been committed by women, and many mass murderers have a history of domestic violence.
While New Zealanders don't live under a cloud of weekly mass shootings, we do have the worst rate of family and intimate partner violence in the world (though experts say 80 per cent of incidents go unreported).
Police family violence investigations reached a record high in 2016. Women were primary victims in 98 per cent of intimate partner deaths with a recorded history of abuse.
We worry about terrorists – mostly the kind who kill while shouting about Allah – yet a much greater threat to the lives and well-being of Kiwis resides within the fists and four walls of home.
Can we raise a generation of boys and girls committed to healing rather than hitting, stabbing or shooting?
Does every child, regardless of exemplary or absent parenting, have a caring adult they can trust for advice and encouragement? Does every child have access to healthy activities, ie, those not involving junk food or a screen?
I encourage both my sport-mad children to funnel surging adolescent hormones into movement. I prod them to tell me what's wrong – to please, please, dig beneath the surface.
Use an excavator if you must, to unearth the root of trouble instead of swatting its symptoms.
In the end, I might still screw up this parenting thing. I'm doing the best I can with the information and experience I have.
Our human history of aggression means extra vigilance is required when it comes to raising my son from cheeky boy into well-balanced man.
I want to teach him to channel physical strength, using instinct and adrenaline to defend other people, rather than attacking those who've bruised his ego.
Our children deserve to feel equal and empowered. They deserve to own feelings that smash cultural stereotypes and statistics of violent, vengeful men and meek women who suffer anxiety and eating disorders. Each of us can live into a rainbow of emotion – not tearfully approaching strangers, but trusting ourselves to share sadness with people we love.
Men often dismiss suggestions to open up emotionally, especially when those suggestions come from women.
"They're trying to emasculate us," they'll say.
"They want our balls in a jar."
Not at all. I don't want gonads in formaldehyde.
I want staunch men in my life. Men tough enough to show vulnerability.
That's not a feminine trait. It's a human one that, if deployed more often, might save lives.
