I need to tell you something that happened in our home that I am only now able to laugh about freely. It took some time. And a revelation. And the slow, humbling realisation that my husband and I, two grown, educated adults, had been completely and thoroughly colonized. By a four-year-old and a seven-year-old.

Allow me to explain.

It started innocently enough, as these things always do. One evening the children wandered into our room with those particular faces they put on, you know the ones. Wide eyes. Sweet voices. "Mummy, Daddy, can we sleep in your room tonight?"

We said no. They persisted. We negotiated, stood firm for a reasonable amount of time, and then, as parents everywhere will understand, we gave up. We made them a comfortable little bed on the floor with duvets and sheets, they curled up happily, and peace was restored.

The next evening, they appeared again. Same request. Same faces. Same outcome. And the evening after that.

At some point during those evenings, a small logistical adjustment crept in. The children would go to bed earlier than us, and rather than move them around at that hour, we would say: "Just sleep in our bed for now, when we come, we'll make the floor bed and you can move over." Perfectly sensible. Very practical.

Except that by the time we came to bed, they were fast asleep. And they looked so peaceful. And we did not want to disturb them. So we made the floor bed ourselves. And we slept on it.

Months passed. I am not exaggerating when I say months.

Until one night I looked around and said to my husband, "Wait. What is happening here?" Our children were sleeping comfortably in our bed, snuggled under our duvets, heads on our pillows, completely at home. And the two of us were on the floor.

"We have been colonized," I told my husband.

Because that is precisely how it happens, is it not? The Europeans did not arrive on African shores with weapons drawn and demands shouted. They came with gifts. With trade. With warmth and things that glittered. And by the time the full picture became clear, the ships were being loaded. I am not saying my children planned this. I am saying that the mechanism is the same.

You do not always walk into a situation. Sometimes a situation walks into your room, puts on a sweet face, and you wake up months later on the floor wondering how you got there.

There are people in your life who are in situations you do not fully understand. Situations that, from the outside, seem avoidable. Situations you might be tempted to judge swiftly and certainly. But I thought I could see clearly too. I was wrong. It took me months to catch the revelation.

Some situations do not announce themselves. They accumulate, one small, reasonable, understandable decision at a time, until the morning you look up and realise you are not where you thought you were. People need a revelation before they can make a change. And revelations come in their own time.

So before you judge, pause. Ask yourself whether you have ever found yourself somewhere you did not intend to be. Ask yourself whether grace was extended to you in that moment. And then extend it.

Judge not. Not because people are without responsibility for their choices, but because most of us are far more vulnerable to slow, gentle, incremental drift than we would ever like to admit. Even the most alert among us can end up sleeping on the floor.

P.S. We did eventually reclaim our bed. It required a firm and united parental front, a good deal of consistency, and approximately one week of very sad faces from the children. We survived. So will you.