Today, on this cool holiday afternoon, I decided to put on a documentary about Africa’s looted art.

I was not undertaking a research project, nor was I preparing to write anything. I was simply watching a well-referenced documentary account of historical facts first presented to me in another YouTube video earlier this year.

I was incredulous when the Berlin museum raised a concern about returning objects violently looted more than a century ago:

What if they later appeared back in Europe?

I stared at the screen.

Ah! So that is the worry?

While updating my website and interacting with its AI features, I found myself declaring that I am moving away from Jones—the birth surname I inherited through my father’s family—and towards Mensah-Maes. Because I am someone whose lived experience carries many contradictions, this felt like a subject worthy of exploration. And so this reflection enters the blog today.

As I begin this series, I am aware that some Flemish readers may feel analysed by what I write.

I will be noticing cultural patterns, workplace habits and familiar ways of speaking about children. But I was not standing outside the crèche with a clipboard, studying other people from a safe distance.

I was working inside it.

During a recent conversation among friends, a woman reflected, only half-jokingly, that she had failed to teach her two teenage children not to fight. Her children, seventeen and eighteen, were present. The seventeen-year-old explained that because their mother had been so against them arguing, they had learned to do it behind her back. This was what made their mother feel that she had failed. She had not succeeded in removing conflict from their relationship. She had made it less visible to her. She did, however, feel that she had successfully taught them to negotiate. She knew why this had mattered to her.

Nonviolent Communication offers one way of slowing ourselves down during conflict. We are invited to notice what happened, name how we feel and recognise what we need.

Many adults can begin with:

I feel angry when the children fight… But the more revealing part often comes after “because...”

When the children fight… I feel frightened BECAUSE I need to know that nobody will be hurt.

One child was riding a bicycle in the garden. Another child wanted it. Rather than waiting or seeking help, the second child pulled the first child away, climbed onto the bicycle and rode off. The child left behind began to cry.

My first responsibility was to attend to the child who had been pulled away. But the moment also raised another question:

How could I stay with the child who had taken the bicycle without softening what had happened or turning that child into the problem?

In busy families, classrooms and childcare settings, pausing can feel like a luxury. There are meals to prepare, transitions to manage, several children needing attention and often very little emotional or practical space around the adult.

Urgency encourages us to decide quickly what a behaviour means and what must be done about it. Yet a pause does not have to be long. It might be one breath, a hand resting against a table, or a moment of noticing the tension gathering in our shoulders before we speak.