Reflections from the Road: Repairing the Rupture

Across classrooms in Bangkok, family meetings in Belgrade, and conferences on the windswept coasts of Scotland, I’ve noticed the same thing: young people are struggling. Rising anxiety, behavioural challenges, fractured focus, emotional overwhelm—it’s not just happening in isolated pockets. It’s everywhere.

This is more than a crisis of behaviour. It’s a sign of rupture—a fraying of the invisible threads that connect us to ourselves, to one another, and to the environments where learning is meant to flourish.

But if rupture is real, so is repair.

Drawing on the work of Dr. Ed Tronick and Dr. Claudia Gold, this post explores the Repair Theory of Human Development—the idea that healthy relationships aren’t about perfection, but about the ongoing, messy, human process of disconnection and reconnection. We don’t need to get it right all the time—just enough of the time to try again.

Because in the end, it’s not flawless strategies that change lives.
It’s connection.