My Daughter is my Hero
This is the transcript of a speech I did at the Vibecamp summer solstice celebration that I host. The theme was finding your inner child.
In case you didn’t know, we have a six-year-old daughter named Roxanne, and she is my hero. I want to be just like her when I grow up, and I think we could all stand to be a little bit more like her.
Roxanne never has a bad day. When something bad happens, she gets upset for a minute or two, fully feels her disappointment or upset, sometimes cries a little, then moves on. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her get upset for more than five minutes before she’s ready to feel better. Often she’ll be able to feel better on her own, but if she can’t she’s never too proud to ask for help.
That goes for other things too. She recognizes her limits but is always trying to improve. She craves independence and likes to be able to do things on her own. When there’s something I help her with, I know it’s only a matter of time before she’ll be able and enthusiastic about doing it herself. At the same time, she’s not afraid to ask for help when something is beyond her, or to admit when she’s scared. She waits until she’s comfortable before striking out on her own. Often I’ll tell her I think she’s able to do something on her own, but she’ll keep asking for help the next few times. Then out of the blue she’ll say she wants to do it herself.
She’s a great traveling companion. Wherever you take her, she immediately adapts to what the situation is. She looks around to see what’s there, and finds a way to enjoy herself. If we don’t have the toy she wants, she’ll be sad for a minute, then find something else fun to play with. If there’s nothing but an empty room, she’ll do cartwheels and power slides. If there are no other kids, she’ll play with her parents. If her parents are too tired, she’ll amuse herself.
People like to talk about how children are fascinated by everything. Roxanne is not fascinated by everything. She is fascinated by some things, like a cool stick or a pile of gravel. But she is also completely uninterested in other things that I think are really cool. And she’s totally unashamed of her preferences. She feels no pressure to conform or pretend. She is fully in touch with her own desires and preferences in a way that you almost never see from adults.
When she plays with other kids, she is immune to peer pressure. She plays with them as long as it’s fun, and when it stops being fun, she stops. She loves playing with other kids but she’s also comfortable doing her own thing. And whatever she’s doing, she’s doing it because it’s the most fun thing to do.
She has a very healthy relationship with vices like junk food, candy, and screen time. She’s always been able to have as much as she wants, so she never developed a scarcity mindset around any of it. She has some candy every now and then, but rarely too much. She eats intuitively when she’s hungry, and almost never overeats. She uses her phone mostly as a last resort if there’s not anything else fun to do, but is happy to put it down if we offer her almost any other activity, so long as it sounds fun.
The running theme with all of this is that she’s independent, she’s not overly attached to any specific outcome, and she’s always having a good time. I am not always having a good time. I am not always doing the thing I want to do. I often let the weight of social expectations and anxieties pressure me into conforming when I’d rather do something else. But I take inspiration from Roxanne, and if I’m ever not having a good time, I ask what she would do, and it usually points me in the right direction.