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Good morning The popular American drama, Succession, has just reached its epic finale. Watching the ups and downs of the on-screen family has kept viewers gripped and guessing to the very end. Many reviewers have spoken of how skilfully it has explored the impact of their childhood on all four of the siblings of the fictional media tycoon family. Being a drama of course, we've been entertained by the mostly dysfunctional and harmful legacies of their upbringing but also weaved in are moments of the need for love and belonging and the impacts when that is present or not. As I come to the end of qualifying to become a life coach, I’ve been reflecting on just how much our childhood experiences will affect us all through our whole life. On one level I knew it but studying in more detail the work of Dr Gabor Mate and others in the field of trauma and healing, the research gets clearer, the evidence is very compelling. Dr Mate points out, the needs of children are actually simple, how we respond to that as the adults around them is really key to how they develop. Children need to feel a loving attachment to those caring for them, they need to feel safe and secure, to be able to express their emotions and to have the opportunity to develop through play. Those basic needs are the same for every child and when in place, a child can thrive. Prophet Muhammad was often seen playing with his grandchildren and always encouraged children to be brought to the Mosque. He once said “I sometimes start a congregational prayer, intending it to be long but on hearing the cries of a child, I shorten the prayer because I know that the cries will be difficult for the mother” Nelson Mandela said “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way it treats its children” In his book, A Manifesto for Hope, The Reverend Steve Chalke draws on his forty years of experience working in communities and supporting families. He speaks powerfully about how the basic needs of children are overlooked and how so often officials will sit around a room making important decisions, none of them having even met the child the meeting is about. So as much as we know that Succession was just fiction, as with any art done well, it can teach us. We can learn lessons that can help us navigate our own lives in our families and communities and re-commit ourselves to ensuring the start our young people are given is as stable and loving as it needs to be.