You don’t mean to be. You try really hard. You love them so much. You want everything to be wonderful.
But you know it’s not easy to be your kid, right? It’s not easy to be anyone’s kid.
It’s not easy for lots of reasons. Gay Talese, who knew the Didion family (who we’ve been talking about a lot recently), speculates in Evelyn McDonnell’s biography of Joan Didion (signed copies here) what it must have been like to be Quintana Roo, their adopted daughter.
“Often they had their daughter with them at restaurants,” Talese said. “I knew the daughter to speak of, and she was a little daughter! I mean, can you imagine being the daughter of Joan and John? My own daughters have a little problem so I can identify with how she must have felt with those well-known people. People go vying for their attention all the time and you’re the little daughter and you’re getting no attention at all because your parents are spending their time talking to some Oscar-winning actor or some Nobel Prize-winning writer. I mean Jesus, it must be terrible.”
Terrible is a strong word, but the flipside of their success and notoriety must have been tough on a little girl. The entertaining they did, their lifestyle of fancy dinners and exotic trips, must have been so fun…but also so stressful, even alienating for a kid.
The point isn’t to judge this specific choice or that specific childhood. It’s to get you to consider—what makes it hard, even terrible, to be your kid? Where are your choices stressing them out? What are the flipsides of the privileges you’ve provided them? What must it be like to be them?
We have to think about these things, we have to be considerate, we have to be understanding. Because it’s hard to be a kid generally…and being your kid is extra on top.
P.S. Ryan Holiday spoke with Evelyn McDonnell on a recent episode of the Daily Stoic podcast (Part 1 and Part 2 here) where they discussed how staying calm can be contagious, preparing for emergencies within your family, and Evelyn’s excellent book The World According to Joan Didion (signed copies available at the Painted Porch!).
