You, your partner and your children: get those three right, and you have a family. That’s the part of life that lives inside you.

Family is a bike with training wheels. It’s where a person learns to balance before riding off alone.

And parenting takes less than you think. I’m for minimum parenting. Don’t wear yourself out trying to engineer the perfect child: they’ll grow up like you anyway, so the work to do is on yourself.

Don’t raise your kids — they’ll turn out like you regardless. Work on yourself. — Stoyanov

Berne wrote a whole book about it: children living out their parents’ script. And you hand that script down by example; lectures have nothing to do with it.

So set a modest goal, and the right one. You’ve done your job if your kids can support themselves, grew up decent people, and don’t blame you for everything that’s wrong in their lives.

One more thing: don’t let them make you stop liking them. Relax. You and the kids will be just fine.

The inside is in order. Time to turn outward.

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