I Raised Four Perfect Children. You Will Hate How I Did It. You’re Welcome.

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Becoming You with Suzy Welch

Episode: "I Raised Four Perfect Children. You Will Hate How I Did It. You’re Welcome."

Host: Suzy Welch
Release Date: May 5, 2026

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Episode Overview

This Mother’s Day episode features Suzy Welch candidly sharing her unorthodox approach to parenting and the philosophy behind raising what she jokingly calls her "four perfect children." Blending self-deprecating humor, raw honesty, and a healthy dose of irreverence, Suzy lays out the three core rules that guided her through the challenges of motherhood while juggling a demanding career and chaotic personal life.

With supporting anecdotes from her now-adult children, Suzy addresses universal anxieties about parenting, challenges sentimental conventions, and offers her tested—if controversial—practices for raising healthy, happy, resilient, and character-driven young adults.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introducing The Real “Kins” Family (01:00–07:00)

• Suzy’s Disclaimer & “Perfect” Claim
  Suzy is up front: "My kids are not actually perfect, but they are perfectly happy, healthy and hopeful. ... They think their mother ... is the shiz. ... You would want the relationship that I have with my kids." (01:07)

• Quick “Credential Check” with All Four Kids

  • Roscoe (Oldest Son, 36):
    "It’s very honest and intense and emotional and very important and transformational in my life." (02:45)
    Parenting style in one word: "Intense." (03:01)
  • Sophia (Second Daughter, 35): "I don't know how we could possibly be closer than we are." (04:05)
    Parenting style: "Intense." (04:24)
  • Marcus (Third Child, son):
    "You're both a mother and also ... a mentor and a coach ... also like our friend." (04:50)
    Parenting style: “Hands on. All hands on. Many hands on. Very intense. But it worked out.” (05:12)
  • Eve (Youngest Daughter, with husband Cowie):
    "We are really, really happy. ... Our relationship? So great. ... I'm so grateful for you and your heading." (05:35–05:56)
    Parenting style: “Consistent ... I can so rely on you. You're very present, and I'm very grateful for that.” (06:35)

• The Origin of "Kins":
  The children call Suzy “Kins”—a nickname rooted in affectionate sarcasm, which she later explains (see section below).

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2. Myth-Busting Maternal Instincts (07:00–10:00)

• Suzy admits: “I am the least maternal person you’ve ever met. Babies completely bore me ... I love to work.”
• The children grew up amid “chaos”: a broken marriage, divorce, remarriage to another nontraditional parent with a strong personality (“about as paternal as I was maternal”)—yet, paradoxically, the outcome was positive.
• Suzy emphasizes: success in parenting does not require a conventional personality or ideal conditions.

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3. Historical Inspiration: The Sod House Mothers (10:00–14:25)

• Suzy’s “mom mantra” was inspired by the sod house era (1860s-1890s) Great Plains homesteaders—young, isolated mothers demonstrating epic endurance and resourcefulness.
• “When I was raising my kids, I thought about the sod house mothers every day. ... There was this time when all four of my kids got chickenpox ... I was thinking ... well, at least I'm not in a sod house.” (13:26)
• This perspective gave her crucial resilience during difficult parenting moments.

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4. The Three Core Rules of Parenting

Rule #1: Obsess Over Character—Not Perfection, Popularity, or Performance

(15:48–33:45)

• “You only have to get one thing right with your kids. ... Just one freaking thing matters ... It’s not their purpose ... or self-confidence ... or well-being. ... The one thing you have to care about is their character.” (15:53)
• Suzy’s parenting north star: “I did not want to raise assholes.” (16:39)
• She deprioritized typical “mom” worries: Halloween costumes, homework details, green on St. Patrick’s Day, popularity, etc.
  • “My kids had the worst Halloween costumes. ... I did not care if they were popular. ...”
• She describes memorable discipline moments:
  • Golf caddy story: One son is rude to a golf caddy and Suzy reacts with “level five rage,” demanding he treat everyone with respect. (18:32)
  • Girlfriend confession: Her son cheated; they made him ride a bus to confess in person, refusing to make it easy. (20:00)
  • Credit card episode: Daughter secretly uses grandma’s card; Suzy responds with a yearlong clothing ban. (20:45)
  • Eve’s arrest for animal rights activism: Suzy and Jack are proud because Eve “got arrested on principle.” (22:08)
  • Roscoe’s camp story (proudest moment): Roscoe quietly carries a cabin-mate with cancer up a mountain rather than leaving him behind. He resists praise, insisting “anyone would do it.” Suzy: “He didn’t want me to know because he suspected someday I would tell it on a podcast.” (24:30)
• Real talk about parental accountability: “If you're teaching your kids character ... your character has to be really okay. ... And that’s a total pain in the ass.” (28:00)

Rule #2: Your Child Is Not a Flawed Version of You—They Are Perfectly Themselves

(33:45–40:08)

• “Your kid is not a flawed version of you. They are a perfect version of themselves.” (33:52)
• The lightbulb moment: Realizing her eldest, Roscoe, was not like her at all.
  • Mrs. Horgan, a nursery school teacher: “You’re not feeding this child enough.” Suzy, who was never a “hungry person,” had not considered Roscoe’s different needs. (34:12)
  • “You have to learn who they are and you have to celebrate and affirm who they are. … the sooner you realize that the better.” (35:20)
• “I am going to spend my whole life helping you be you. Won’t you help me be me?” (36:00)
  This principle harmonized her own intense career drive with supporting her children’s authentic selves.
• She shares examples of allowing her children’s unconventional interests/aptitudes to flourish:
  • Sophia’s obsession with TV—Suzy didn’t “fight it,” helped her move to Hollywood for a career in the industry (37:35)
  • Eve’s journey as an artist and later art therapist, motivated by a strong desire to help others (38:20)
• “I needed to make them into a big, exploding, unfettered version of themselves.” (39:53)

Rule #3: Children Should NOT Make Their Own Decisions—Parents Know Best

(40:08–52:49)

• “Children should not make decisions for themselves. They should not. They are little pleasure-seeking, pain-avoiding, single-cell amoebas with no critical thinking abilities. That’s your job.” (40:11)
• Rejects permissive parenting:
  “I have seen parents let their children pick summer camps, pick what school they should go to, pick the location of the family vacations, pick dinner every night. What the actual f.” (40:32)
• Supermarket story: Roscoe throws tantrum for sugary cereal. “Pitch it, baby, pitch it. You think you can scare me?” (41:30)
• Curfews:
  “Nothing good happens after 9 o’clock in New York City, for instance.” (43:00)
• Marcus' Europe trip: Suzy & Jack refused to let him go on high school Europe trip with wealthy friends, insisting he work at summer camp instead. “You do not, when you’re 17 years old, no matter what you’ve done ... have not earned the right to three weeks in Europe ...” (45:35)
• “I would. I never wanted to be my kid’s friend. I wanted to be the mom.” (51:47)
• Shared her "10-10-10 decision making" framework with her children—and now teaches it at NYU Stern.
  • “My job was to teach them how to make wise decisions so that when they started making decisions for themselves, they would be making decisions with less damaging consequences.” (47:50)

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5. The Story Behind “Kins” (52:50–end)

• Origin: Son Marcus, at eight, started calling her “Mummykins” to tongue-in-cheek highlight Suzy’s nontraditional parenting.
  • “He was making fun of my distinct lack of traditional parenting ... It shortened to Kins ... And now, 'The Kins wants everybody to come to dinner now.'” (53:00)
• Now, the family affectionately calls her “The Kins” as a badge of honor for her unique, loving, and sometimes tough-love approach.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "I did not want to raise assholes." (16:39)
• “If you’re teaching your kids character ... your character has to be really okay.” (28:00)
• “Your kid is not a flawed version of you. They are a perfect version of themselves.” (33:52)
• “I am going to spend my whole life helping you be you. Won’t you help me be me?” (36:00)
• “Children should not make decisions for themselves. ... That’s your job.” (40:11)
• “I never wanted to be my kid’s friend. I wanted to be the mom. I thought that was my job.” (51:47)

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Important Timestamps & Sections

• 01:00 – Suzy introduces episode theme & contacts her children
• 02:19 – 06:58 – Children share quick reflections on lives, relationships, and her parenting style
• 10:00 – 14:25 – Sod house analogy & resilience inspiration
• 15:48 – 33:45 – Rule 1: Character obsession, with illustrative stories
• 33:45 – 40:08 – Rule 2: Letting children be fully themselves
• 40:08 – 52:49 – Rule 3: “You are smarter than your kids”; decision-making philosophy & battles
• 52:50 – end – The origin of “Kins”; reflections on motherhood post-‘sod house years’

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Final Takeaways

In her signature high-energy, no-nonsense, and analytical style, Suzy Welch delivers unvarnished insights and actionable concepts for parents feeling whipsawed between cultural pressures, career demands, and the chaos of their actual lives. She insists there’s no perfect way to parent—only a hundred “right” ways and a million wrong ones—but holding a few unshakeable principles can help you survive the “sod house years” and eventually reach unfettered joy.

Happy Mother’s Day! —“The Kins”

Transcript

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[Susie Welch]

I raised four perfect children. You will hate how I did it. You're welcome. Hey, it's Susie Welch. This is my Mother's Day podcast, and I have to tell you something. You're either going to love me or hate me at the end of this podcast about motherhood. It's okay. I'm a mother and I'm used to being loved and hated and often at the exact same time. And big disclaimer. Just got to get this off my chest immediately. My kids are not actually perfect the but they are perfectly happy, healthy and hopeful. They have lives that they love with partners they trust and adore and jobs that they pursue with interest and vibrancy. And perhaps most important, for you to pay attention to what I'm about to say. They think that their mother, me, is the greatest thing since Krispy Kreme donuts, that I walk on water, that I'm the shiz. I mean, I could go on and on, but let's just say you would want the relationship that I have with my kids. That's my basis of authority before I go into the rules of how I did it. But don't take it from me. Don't let's ask them. They're in their 30s, by the way. They are fully independent for me, and no one is being held hostage. Let's call them. So first up, I'm calling my oldest son, Roscoe. He's 36. He happens to be, at this very moment, at a conference for work in Las Vegas. But he's agreed to take, as I promised, with him just a minute to talk about me. Hi, honey. How are you? Hey, Mom.

[Roscoe (Oldest Son)]

I'm doing great.

[Susie Welch]

All right? So I'm sorry to interrupt you on Your business trip. But we have important business transactions because I'm making a podcast about Mother's Day. All right, I have three quick questions for you. How's your life?

[Roscoe (Oldest Son)]

Pretty good. It's been. It's been great recently. I feel like I've had a. A really awesome turn.

[Susie Welch]

So you're happy, wouldn't you say? Yes, very much so. Okay, great. All right, so here's my second question for you. How would you describe our relationship?

[Roscoe (Oldest Son)]

It's great. It's very honest and intensity and emotional and very important and transformational in my life.

[Susie Welch]

And if you could describe my parenting style in one word. Okay, well, what would it be?

[Roscoe (Oldest Son)]

Intense. The raw power of kins. All right, Kind of emanates out into the world, and no one can defy it.

[Susie Welch]

I want to say it's somewhat sad that intense is the only word you can come up with.

[Roscoe (Oldest Son)]

No, I just. Like, there are other words, but they all bend backwards to the same point. If you only get one word, then that's probably the best one.

[Susie Welch]

You can use more words.

[Roscoe (Oldest Son)]

Very purposeful and driven, and it's like becoming you distilled into parenting. You take it very seriously.

[Susie Welch]

Sweetheart, I did not prompt you or tell you to say that. Can you confirm?

[Roscoe (Oldest Son)]

Can confirm.

[Susie Welch]

All right. You're the best. Thank you for going along with my little Mother's Day escapade here, and I will talk to you very soon.

[Roscoe (Oldest Son)]

All right, see you, kids.

[Susie Welch]

Bye. Next, we're calling my second daughter, Sophia. She's 35. She lives in LA, where she's fancy pants, studio executive. Let's hear what she has to say. How would you describe your life in general? How are you?

[Sophia (Second Daughter)]

I'm great.

[Susie Welch]

Okay.

[Sophia (Second Daughter)]

I'm great.

[Susie Welch]

All right. Happy, healthy life, right?

[Sophia (Second Daughter)]

Yes.

[Susie Welch]

Okay. We're just doing. We're just doing a credential check here for me. All right, number two, how would you describe our relationship?

[Sophia (Second Daughter)]

I would say, I don't know how we could possibly be closer than we are.

[Susie Welch]

You like me.

[Sophia (Second Daughter)]

And I would say for better and for worse.

[Susie Welch]

All right, I love you back. Number three, I want to ask you, how would you describe my mothering style when you were growing up, what did

[Sophia (Second Daughter)]

the other kids say?

[Susie Welch]

I'm not gonna tell you.

[Sophia (Second Daughter)]

I. Intense.

[Susie Welch]

All right, thank you, dear. Have a very nice day. Bye.

[Sophia (Second Daughter)]

Bye.

[Susie Welch]

All right, next up is my son Marcus, my third child, and he runs a really, really darling home goods store with his wife Eva in Brooklyn. By the way, if you're ever shopping, it's called slope home. All right, so here's my Question for you. How's your life? Are you happy?

[Marcus (Third Child)]

Yes.

[Susie Welch]

Okay, so let me just ask you a question. How would you describe our relationship?

[Marcus (Third Child)]

I mean, it's a great relationship. I mean, we're very close. Okay, let's say you're both a mother and also, like, a mentor and a coach to us kids. You're also like, our friend. I don't know. I mean, I think.

[Eve (Youngest Daughter) and Cowie]

Okay, fine.

[Susie Welch]

That's all you need to say. I don't. You're fine. I have one last question for you, and this is it, and then I'll leave you alone. How would you describe my mothering style when you were growing up?

[Marcus (Third Child)]

I would say it was hands on. All hands on. Many hands on. Very intense. But it worked out.

[Susie Welch]

Okay. Thank you very much. Have a wonderful day.

[Marcus (Third Child)]

Thanks, mom.

[Susie Welch]

Bye. And finally, let's place a call to my daughter Eve. She's with her husband Cowie right now, and let's see what they have to say. How would you describe your lives right now?

[Sophia (Second Daughter)]

We are really, really happy. We're so grateful every day.

[Susie Welch]

All right, all right. Wonderful. That's wonderful. I'm trying to establish my credibility as a mother who did not F up her kids. Okay. That's where we're going with this. Number two, how would you describe our relationship?

[Eve (Youngest Daughter) and Cowie]

So great.

[Sophia (Second Daughter)]

So good. And I'm so grateful for you and your heading.

[Susie Welch]

Our lives is. It's.

[Roscoe (Oldest Son)]

It's wonderful. You such a brilliant person and loving, kind human being.

[Susie Welch]

This is. This is why Cowie is my favorite, by the way. I mean, this is kind of Cowie. Well, cementing yourself as my favorite supportive mom.

[Sophia (Second Daughter)]

Anytime I'm having. We are having a crisis, we call you, and you always. You just put us at ease, and you have the best answers and it's worth of wisdom always.

[Susie Welch]

Number three, finally, how would you describe my parenting style? I mean, Eve, you can draw on your experiences of when you were younger, but in a word. In a word, what would you say? Consistent. Oh.

[Sophia (Second Daughter)]

Which I really appreciate. I can so rely on you. You're very present, and I'm very grateful for that. And I think one of the beauty, beautiful things about life is that you've learned and adapted to who your kids are. I realize who you are as a person and as a mom, and so then you can kind of have a much more symbiotic relationship.

[Susie Welch]

Bye.

[Eve (Youngest Daughter) and Cowie]

Bye.

[Susie Welch]

Okay. See, I'll tell you later. You might have noticed this one thing, that my whole family, or some of my kids at least, called me kins. My whole family calls me kins. And they always have. My husband called me kins. I will explain it later. It's a very funny story. At least I hope you think it's a funny story. But let's get going with this Mother's Day episode and my rules for what I did to get me to the place where had relationships like the ones you just heard. You know, actually, I want to say one last thing before we get going with my big rules. I was supposed to be a terrible mother, and my kids were supposed to be totally effed up. What is the reason for that? The reason is I am the least maternal person you've ever met. Everyone knows that about me. Babies completely bore me. Seriously, I've never seen a cute baby until I had my own grandchildren. I mean, I think my grandchildren were very cute. I didn't even think my own children were cute. And I. I love work. I live to work, and I was not. I've never been shy about the fact that if you're new to the podcast, hello, I love to work. And my kids, by the way, along with me not being maternal and me loving to work, my kids were born, all four of them, into what was at the time a terrible, fraught, very broken marriage. And their dad and I, he's now a very good friend of mine, but we were not meant to be together. And so they went through our awful divorce. And then, if that wasn't enough stuff raining down on my children's heads, I got remarried and I got married to a famous guy in business with a huge, strong personality who sincerely wanted to get step parenting right. Okay, don't get me wrong. He wanted to get step parenting right, but often he got it somewhat wrong because he was about as paternal as I was maternal. So let's just say everything I'm about to tell you about raising happy, healthy kids who end up loving you very much has nothing to do with anything being normal or easy. And in fact, while I was raising my kids, there were a lot of people watching who were like, those poor kids. Look at the freaking chaos in Susie's house. But it was not chaos. I was very clear on what I was doing. And in fact, earlier you heard my daughter Eve use the word consistent. I was consistent. I was parenting the only way I could. I didn't know it was going to work out the way it worked out, except it did. And now people look at me all the time, and they look at me and my kids and they ask, how did you do that? I'm often, as I should be, very humble about it because this parenting thing is brutally hard. And I never. I did not go into it thinking it's going to work out. I went into it like saying, please, God, let it work out. So for Mother's Day, though, because I'm asked about it enough, I have actually codified, if you will, the rules that I mothered by now, by the way, you may absolutely think that these rules are terrible, to which I say fine, because I'm 100% certain that there are about a hundred ways to get parenting right, but there also happen to be about a million ways to get it wrong. Like every day you're dodging booby traps. It's a minefield out there and with huge stakes. It's always been hard, but I think it's harder than it's ever been because of those damn screens that suck your children into them like black holes. I didn't have that fight. I didn't have that war. I also didn't have something that parents do have today, which is words, which is candor, which is a culture where parents and kids can actually talk about hard things. When I was raising my kids, my kids were born in the 90s. People just didn't talk very much. Parents and kids didn't talk very much. They didn't talk about anxiety, they didn't talk about depression, they didn't talk about bullying, they didn't talk about sexuality. They didn't talk about harming yourself and ideation around that. So whatever. I just want to tell you, parenting is very hard. But the one thing you've got going for you, you may not realize it, is the fact that there is a culture and a zeitgeist now where parents and kids can talk to each and do talk to each other about hard topics. I talk to my kids about hard topics, but that is part of the chaos that people were always stunned by in my house. So I don't know, I. Maybe. You know what? One thing, I never. I never expected it to be easy. Maybe that helped me. I actually went into parenting thinking, this is going to be the hardest thing I ever did. I never believed the BS line. Like I remember when I was before my kids were born. This may be too much tmi, but I knew I was going to nurse my kids. And so I went out to buy clothing to nurse my kids. And there was always these pictures of the women holding the little babies, like, in like pink frothy nightgowns, like they're about to nurse them. And it's looking very bucolic and I actually remember three thinking to myself, it's not going to be that way. It's going to be hard. So I knew it was going to be hard. But I have to tell you, one thing that got me through parenting every single minute of every single day was this crazy story, and that was that when I was in high school, I learned about the sod house era. Hear me out. It was between the 1860s and the 1890s, in the wake of the Homestead act of 1862. And that is like, when 3 million Americans, many of them women mothers, were raising families on the Great Plains. That's like North Dakota, South Dakota, in sod houses and dugouts carved into the earth. And I. I must have seen a photo exhibit of this era, because, I mean, it never left me. These were women, millions of them again. And many of them were really young, like, 17, 18. And they were alone because the husbands were out pioneering, or they had been. They died of illness and. And disease. And mothering in this era in these sod houses in the Plains was an act of near constant physical and emotional endurance. They raised their kids in homes that they were, like, made of packed earth, okay? Walls that, like, crumbled into dust, okay? They, like, wept mud when it rained, floors that had, like, in them, insects, and not infrequently, lots of snakes. Those snakes are deadly. And winters on the plains could. They were punishingly cold, especially in places like Nebraska and the Dakotas. And the moms had to ration food, and they had to sew clothing by hand and keep the children warm. Long nights with very little fuel. There were no iPads to let them watch tv. Summers were not very much better, by the way, because there were suffocating heat and locusts that could come in, strip a field in, like, a few hours. And there was so much isolation. There were no mommy groups, no ballet on Thursday, no school until three. You know, sometimes no adult conversations for weeks. I mean, if you think momming could be lonely now, childbirth was deadly, and you had grief. Kid got sick, a kid died, managed it alone, you know, off, like, miles away from the nearest doctor or neighbor. And yet these mothers mothered on. I mean, I saw that in high school. It never left me. When I was raising my kids, I thought about the sod house mothers every day. Is that odd? I think it's odd, but I did it. Like, there was this time when all four of my kids got chickenpox at the same time in the same week. And Sophia had it so badly that when I brought her to the pediatrician, he said to me, one more pox and this kid's gonna have to be admitted to the hospital. I mean, she looked like a little raspberry that was on fire. And I remember crying my head off. And I was bathing all four children in an oatmeal bubble bath, which was supposed to soothe the chickenpox, but really didn't work very well. And I was thinking, like, as I was crying, washing these four children in an oatmeal bubble bath, my husband, as I said, we were in a terrible marriage, nowhere to be seen. But I actually literally remember thinking, well, at least I'm not in a sod house. So thank you, sod house mothers of the Great Plains of Nebraska. Thank you for your inspiration. I have to say they saved me because I always thought it could be so much worse. So I'm done with the wind up. When things are hard, having guidelines, having rules, having a system is really helpful for me at least. I mean, I just could not wing this thing. Motherhood. I mean, I had four kids in five years. I could not wing it. So I had these rules. Here we go.

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[Lloyd Lockridge]

Hi, my name is Lloyd Lockridge and I'm the host of a new podcast from Odyssey called Family Lore. In this podcast I'm going to have people on to tell unusual and sometimes far fetched stories about their families.

[Susie Welch]

I've heard my whole life that she invented the margarita.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

And then we're going to investigate those stories and find out how much of it is true. He gets a patent one month before the Wright Brothers. Oh my God. Please follow and listen to Family Lore, an Odyssey podcast available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your shows.

[Eve (Youngest Daughter) and Cowie]

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Rule

[Susie Welch]

number one remind your children that they are not in a sod house and that they should kiss the ground you walk on for how lucky they are on their very worst day. Just kidding. Okay, that is not really. It is not the first. I'm obsessed with the thought houses and the first rule actually has nothing to do with thought houses. But I did basically remind my kids that they were very lucky and that all their problems were bougie. You know, by the way, I probably have 30 rules. In fact, I know I have 30 rules. These are just my top three. And if I'm still alive after they're sayers and I've not been killed by hate mail, maybe I'll tell you about a few more rules. Leave a review and drop it in the comments that you want more rules. Okay, Now I'm serious. Let's go. Rule one. You only have to get one thing right with your kids. Don't listen to anything or anybody about this. Just one freaking thing matters when it comes to parenting. And it's not their purpose. Maybe you thought that I was going to say it was a purpose. No, I'm not going to say that. It's not their self confidence, it's not their well being. No, no, no. The one thing that you have to care about is their character. That's all I cared about. That was my North Star. I had one goal. Here it is that if they were driving their car at age 18 and they saw a mother on the side of the road with the hood of her car open and smoking and she had a baby on her hip, they would be the ones who pulled over, not call the police, not drive by and think, oh, that's scary. No. They would cut across all three lanes. They would stop, they would call, they would go get help. That was how I was going to grade myself when all was said and done. I did not want to raise assholes. I'm sorry, I wish there was a different word. Okay, I did not want to raise assholes. Now, this meant because I was so obsessed with the character issues and that I'm obsessed, okay? This means I overtly did not care about like making the white house out of sugar cubes, okay? Which was always a homework for all four children, they handed in terrible white houses, okay? I did not care about Halloween costumes. My kids had the worst Halloween costumes. I bought them at the supermarket like two hours before Halloween. I did not care about their clothing. I didn't care if they were popular. Didn't care. Didn't care if they were invited to the right parties. Didn't care about any of that stuff. And this is why people often looked at me as a mother and said, susie is so out of the details. I mean, I one time went to a parent teacher night and there was a teacher who said, you're all very familiar with your daughter and son's assignment notebooks. And I remember thinking to myself, what assignment notebook? I wasn't paying attention. I didn't really even care about homework. In fact, I remember on one St. Patrick's Day, everyone was supposed to wear green. I missed that memo entirely. And my kids were the only ones not wearing green to school. I was just worried about other stuff. And look, I cared about where my kids got into college. I cared a lot about what happened that day when my kids were opening the letter from college. I wanted Marcus desperately to be the captain of the swim team. He didn't want to be captain of the swim team. By the way, I've told that story on this podcast before. It's not like I was la dee da about their grades, but I was interested in their grades because I thought grades reflected character. Because to get good grades, you have to do things that reflect good character, like study hard, have discipline, buckle down, and not procrastinate. Set the context. I was working full time. I mean, sometimes there were portions when I was working 60 hours a week. But I thought, if I can't be here every single time, I have to pick about what I'm going to pay attention to this one big thing that they would be. And I'm going to use a word which you could just put your fist right through whatever you're listening to in this. But I wanted my kids to be righteous. Okay, I know that's weird. I didn't know a lot of other mothers were sitting around thinking, like, how can I make my kids righteous? But I was thinking, I want my kids to have such good character if that's the last thing I do. So I talk to them about right and wrong all the time. I talk to them about how you behave to not be an asshole all the time. And I will tell you, I had one of my sons who was extremely, naturally gifted at golf. My husband Jack, and I thought golf was a sport that taught character. And so we wanted them all to play golf. And only one of them was incredibly, naturally good at it, which is golf is very, very hard. And often being good at it sort of pushes you along and keeps you with it. So I remember we sent him to golf camp, and then when he was playing golf, I remember one of the pros one time saying to us, what your kid has, we cannot teach. He was so good. And so I used to play a lot of golf with him because it gave me nine or 18 holes to go wandering with him and to talk to him and just to be with him. It was beautiful, splendid time. Anybody who does sports with their kids knows what I'm talking about. And he was probably 14 years old, and he was so good at golf that he was getting a little arrogant about it. In this period of my life, I was a. I don't want to be an obnoxious person, but I was a pretty good golfer, okay? But we would go out and play, and I would play on the ladies tees, which is not, you know, closer to the hole. This is the way the game of golf goes. There's two separate tees for ladies. And he would play back on the gold tees, which are for the, like, the super dupity, like, you know, people with, you know, who are. Who are scratch golfers, okay? Which he was at that point. And he would be at age 14, back on the gold tees, all right? And we were walking along and he hit like a beautiful shot and we picked it up. And out of the corner of the. Of my eye, I saw him hand his balls to the caddy. Without looking the caddy in the eye and saying to the caddy, thank you. He just put the balls in the caddy's hand, okay? Golfers will understand that. This is so freaking rude. It was a 14 year old kid being rude to a kid who was a little bit older than he was. He saw the look on my face. He must have wet his pants. I mean, I was coming towards him with such rage on my face. And I walked up to him really, really closely and I said to him, I just saw what you just did. You just treated that caddy like he was a, you know, a servant, that he worked for you. You did not make eye contact. That person is out here working. How dare you. And I was like, level five rage. This was a character moment. And maybe another mother would let it go. Maybe another mother wouldn't have noticed it. Maybe another mother would have mentioned it later. But I stood there with my face two inches from his face, ripping him. Not one new, you know what, but like five new. And I wanted this to be a moment he would live to regret. And I, like, really made it agonizing for him. And he looked beside himself. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I didn't even Notice I did. And I said, that's exactly the problem. And then we had to continue to play about 11 more holes with that caddy. That caddy didn't know what hit him. My treated that caddy like he was the king of the universe, the rest of the game as he should have. I mean, that's what I mean. I mean, okay, look, I have one more story about this. I had another son. I'm not gonna say if it was the same son or not. And he had a girlfriend for a long time in high school. And then they promised they were gonna be faithful to each other and they went to different colleges. It was late at night, he was home on vacation. He came in, he was clearly feeling very guilt stricken. He sat down on the side of our bed and we said, what's up, sweetheart? He said, I told her that I was gonna be faithful to her. She's being faithful to me. And I cheated on her, what should I do? And we said, you're going to get on a bus tomorrow. You're going to go to where she is, which was in one of the northeastern states. You're gonna go up there and you're gonna tell her to her face and you're gonna beg for forgiveness. And he said like, I can't do it on the phone. And we were like, no, you can't. You've done a terrible thing and you're gonna have to go tell her to the face. So the next day we got him to the bus and he wanted, like to drive the car. And we were like, no, we're not giving you the car. You did something terrible. We wanted him to feel the pain of what he did. We didn't. It was not a look. Kids cheat on each other. They were young, they weren't married, they weren't engaged, anything like that. But we wanted him to understand that what he did was wrong and we weren't going to make it easy for him afterwards. And it was over with them. And obviously his life went on. And both my sons are married to marvelous women. But we wanted him to feel the ouch of what he had done. My daughters were also had moments of having to learn that character was the most important thing. One of my daughters, when she was 13, did an unspeakable thing. She used my mother's credit card to buy a dress. And my mother called me, she said, I never bought this dress. One of the kids must have taken my credit card and bought a dress. And I found out who it was. That was it. That child did not get an article of new clothing for a year. We could have done a million things. We could have said this was wrong, this was bad, pay her back. I guess what I'm saying is, like, we just got very extreme. I want to say, actually, those. There is sort of an exception to what you would think to this story that you might be surprised by. My daughter Eve is still an animal rights activist, and when she was in high school, was an animal rights activist. At one time, Jack and I were having an absolutely marvelous Saturday, and I got a call from the New York City police, and they said, we have your daughter. She's been arrested. She was at a protest at. She went to a place that sell fur. She perhaps possibly threw some red liquid on the window and shouted at people that they were murderers when they were coming out of the fur store. And they arrested her with a bunch of other activists. And we, Jack and I, went to the precinct. There were. Somebody had tipped off the paparazzi, for lack of a better word, that Jack and I were coming into the police precinct to pick up our daughter. And so there were a lot of photographers. We walked in. We were incredibly proud. We walked out with our arms around her. I have joked many times that you're not really a parent until you've picked up one of your kids after they've been fingerprinted. I love her pictures from when she was arrested. You talk about defiant. Okay, she looks sort of like absolutely as defiant as you could possibly be. We were proud of her because it wasn't a character issue. I mean, it was a character issue. She got arrested, but we were proud why she got arrested. She got arrested on principle anyway. Sometimes you think it's going to take a long time for you to see the impact of you pouring your heart and soul into this obsession with character on your kids and think, okay, maybe this will come out when they're adults. But for me, it came out much earlier than that. This is actually my proud. Probably maybe my proudest story as a parent. I'm sorry, Roscoe, I'm going to use your name. Roscoe is a camp counselor at a camp in Maine called Kiev. At the end of the summer, I went to go pick him up and bring him to where we spent our summers, Nantucket. And I drove up and I was going to pick him up. And as I came onto the Kyiv grounds, this counselor was running towards me really fast. And I thought, oh, my God, is something wrong? And at the same time, in a further distance, Roscoe was running toward me at the Same time. So I could see Roscoe running towards me. I want you to know this was before he went to Stanford. So he was probably 17 when this happened. He was running towards me also really fast. And he was shouting, don't tell her. Don't tell her. And I thought, something crazy is going on. There was some counselor running towards me who I didn't recognize, a young woman, and Roscoe running towards me, screaming, don't tell her. Don't tell her. But the other counselor got to me first, and she started to tell me this story, and I'll just summarize it for you, but there was a kid in Roscoe's cabin who had cancer. He had started the summer with cancer, but it had been very important for him to come to this camp because it meant a lot about letting. He just had surgery, and he had undergone chemotherapy. And at the end of the summer, the kids climb a really, really tall mountain. Mount Katahdin. It's a really big thing. The cabins climb them together. They summit. They take a picture as they were climbing this mountain. The kid with cancer, it was incredibly important for him to meet you to the top of this mountain. It meant a lot to him. And he became weak, and he felt he couldn't go on. He said, somebody just needs to get me down the mountain. And instead, my son put this boy on his back, and he carried him to the top of the mountain. So there's. It's a beautiful, beautiful photograph of them at the top. And he carried him down also. The thing that's really character to me is he didn't want me to know. He didn't want me to know because he suspected that someday I would tell it on a podcast. No, he didn't want me to know. And here's why. When he got close enough to me that I could hear what he was saying, what he was saying over and over again was, anyone would do it. Anyone would do it, Mom. What he didn't understand is not anyone would do it. I loved that his impulse was there was nothing special about it. He didn't want me to know because he knew that I would tell people because I was so proud. So, look, I obsessed on it, and I saw how it played out. And all four of my kids have such fine characters. And sometimes those fine characters mean they say very, very hard things to my face. I wrote the Becoming youg book because Eve, with her very fine character, pulled me aside in the woods one day, and she said, you have this methodology, and you teach it to kids at NYU and it's not fair. You need to democratize it. I knew she was right. So, look, the hard part about this is when you're teaching your kids character and you make it an obsessive thing, it means your character has to be really okay. Like, and you have to be the example, and that's a total pain in the ass. I mean, if you're talking to your kids about character, you kind of have to demonstrate pretty good character. So that meant I had to do things like forgive people that I hated or forgive people that I feared. I had to tell the truth when it would be so much easier to tell a lie. We had a babysitter who I wanted to fire because she had a substance abuse problem. And it meant that to show character, I had to pay for her to go into rehab instead of just firing her, which is what I wanted to do because I had to tell the children. I didn't kick her out the door when she was struggling. I paid for her to get better because I could. You know, it's not easy to do this because we have to start holding ourselves to standards that are ridiculous and hard. But I have to say I did it because it was better than living in a sod house. Okay? That's rule number one. Here's the number two rule. And it is the main thing for you to understand as a mother. Your kid is not a flawed version of you. They are a perfect version of themselves. This mindset is unbelievable because it allows you to make a deal that works for everyone and everyone's happiness. I know how this rule came to me because it was when Roscoe was very young and he was a really difficult baby. My first kid, first of all, he looked incredibly different than me, with this very, very light corn silk, whitish hair and bright blue eyes. Didn't look like anybody. A little bit like my husband's father, I guess. He acted really different. He was cranky. He was snarky. He wasn't like other kids. He didn't smile. Thanks be to God. Very early on, I put him in a little date program at our church, in the basement of our church. I thought, oh, God, I hope they don't kick him out because he's such a cranky, difficult, snarky, grumpy little child. And like he was maybe when I put him in there. And Sophia was already born by that time, and she was so easygoing, I didn't understand why. I had a childhood. Such a cranky, bad personality. And the first day I picked him up, a nursery school teacher named Mrs. Horgan. I'll never forget her. I owe her a debt of gratitude. Came out and she said to me, you're not feeding this child enough. And I was like, what? This child has a full breakfast? And she said, this is a child who needs two breakfasts, two lunches. She identified him as a kid. He grew up to be a very large person, like a heavyweight wrestler kind of person. He was a kid who just. I was not feeding him enough. He was always hungry. That was the problem. And I thought, that's so bizarre. I'm never hungry. And his dad was like, just a person who food was not. We were not hungry people all the time. And it was this like, oh, by the way, your kid is not you. And yet we make this assumption. When the kid comes out, they're going to be like us. Or they're going to be like my partner, the person who I made this child with. They're going to, of course, be like us because they came from us. Guess what? No. They may not be anything like you. And the sooner you realize that they are not like you and that you have to learn who they are and you have to celebrate and affirm who they are, the better. And let me tell you why that leads to this wonderful positive mechanism that goes on. When I realized that my kids were really different, that they were. They were their own people with their own personalities. Put character aside, because they all had to have character, but they had their own personalities, their own interests, their own quirks, their own identities. As soon as you realize that, you can strike a deal with your kids, okay? And I did. When they wanted me 24 7, they wanted every piece of me, heart, mind, body and soul. I said to them, look, I am going to spend my whole life learning who you are, helping you be who you are, helping you celebrate, affirm, discover, and just lean into who you are in every way. Won't you do the same for me? We are all on a journey to self fulfillment. I will help you with self fulfillment if you help me. And they were like, we dig that deal. And you know when mothers come up to me and they say, how did you work 60 hours a week and have these four fabulous children? I say, well, very early on, I struck a deal with them. I am going to spend my whole life helping you be you. Won't you help me be me? And I used to say to them, someday you're going to grow up and go away, and I'm still going to be here. I got to be somebody. When that happens, and look, I wasn't perfect at this, but I remember by the time Marcus was born, he was my third child. I was, like, pregnant out to the ball. And I went to go pick up the older two children at nursery school, and I said in my pregnancy to the teacher that they had patting my stomach, I can't wait to meet this child. And I remember her saying to me, that is so weird. Nobody says that. And I said, well, I want to get to know who he is. I got to discover who this person is. And she said, this is not how most mothers do it. And I thought, oh, is that true? Like, I got to the point very early that I knew that the kids were going to be their own people. And that the sooner I stopped fighting them on that and tried to discover who they were and not try to force them into being Susie, the more we would get along. Then when my kids would do something really different in terms of, like, their interests, I would say, oh, let's go. I'd like to learn about your interests. Let's explore it. Instead of trying to force them into my interests or like, I'm very extroverted, but I have two of my kids are really introverted. I did not try to make them extroverts. I tried to make them feel comfortable with their introversion and help them in ways that their introversion would not be a detriment to them having good lives. It's funny because when you think about the becoming you methodology, I'm just thinking about this in the moment. When you think about the becoming you methodology, it is about helping people discover who they are standing still. I tried to understand who my kids were, and this really came to an incredible moment for us. I'll tell you this story about Sophia. Jack and I were unbelievably perplexed by the fact that Sophia was obsessed with tv. Starting very, very young, she loved watching tv. She loved thinking about tv. She would watch certain episodes of TV over and over again for me. Like, you see one episode of Mad Men, you don't need to go see it again. But she would watch one episode of Mad Men, like, five or six times at dinner. We would do this thing where we would talk about the best thing in the day and the worst thing in the day and would be talking about different things, but invariably, like, best and worst. And her day was always something like, they cast the wrong person in this role on Mad Men. And like in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there was this plot twist and we didn't understand it. We tried to get her interested in sports. She did not take to it. We tried to get her interested in a lot of different things. We quickly saw she's not interested. We tried to, you know, see if we could explore something outside of tv. Then she went to college, and she got involved in the theater program very intensely, and we thought, okay, well, that's related to tv. But then we started thinking, well, what should she do for a career? Somebody who just wants to, you know, watch TV all the time? And I remember watching her at school. I was waiting to go out to dinner with her, and she was watching a TV episode that she'd seen before, and it dawned on me, oh, my God, this is the solution. Let's lean into who she is. And when the show was over, I said to her, what do you think about going out to Hollywood for your job? She looked at me. She goes, would you? Could I? And I said, yeah, I'll go with you. She had a dog at that time. Virginia Woolf, the meanest, most obnoxious Chihuahua. She got at the pound. And we took Little Wolf under the seat, and we went out to California, and I drove around with her, going from, like, place to place to place, looking for a job in tv. She got it broken in reality TV because it was what she was supposed to do with her life. It was who she was. You cannot separate Sophia from her love of Entertainment and especially TV. To this day, I mean, it's 14, 15 years later since then. She's 35. I mean, and she's still in TV. And we didn't fight it. We didn't tell her she should become a doctor. We didn't say, why don't you do this? There's no. You know what? There's no stability in that world. We just had to help her understand how to live without stability. You've got to accept the fact that they are not flawed versions of you, flawed versions of your friends, children. That's a biggie. They are just perfect versions of themselves. And this is how to help them figure out their values. But especially in this case, you got to help them figure out what their aptitudes are. And this is why it was such a breakthrough with Roscoe when. When he was trying to figure out what to do with his life. And I asked him, you know, whose life do you want? And he was able to describe the life he wanted. I didn't say to him, go with your fancy Stanford education. Go be a consultant. Go be a banker. Because he could have done those things. It was like, honey, what is it that you need and want to do based on who you are, because guess what, it's your life. And I had to face into this when Eve said, I remember Eve saying, I don't know exactly what it is, but I need to be an artist. And I was like, oh God, okay, That's who she is. And she is, she's an artist. I mean, artists are different. She's married to an artist now and you heard that artist. They're so happy. They were describing at the beginning, how happy are they two artists together? Artists really understand each other. But an interesting thing happened in her life. She was an artist for several years and she was a rare artist because she was self supporting as an artist. She's a ceramicist. Something started to happen in her heart and she was missing very much her value of non sibi, helping other people. This is the same daughter, by the way, who got arrested in animal rights and movement. And she wanted to help people. She wants to change the world. She has a high radius value, this desire to make the world a better place. And she went back to school to become an art therapist. And she works with young people who are in very challenging times. And she's able to, as an art therapist, combine art and helping people. And I had to follow her journey. I did not lead her journey. She's not a flawed version of me. She is a perfect, perfect, perfect version of herself. And so as a mom, I mean, I don't know, this is a hard one. Maybe if you're not a parent and you're listening to this, you're thinking, how hard could it be? It is hard because you got your kids and you've got dreams for them and hopes for them and you think their life will be easier if they become a lawyer. Their life will be easier if they go to folks ex college. Their life, yeah, but their life has got to be their life. And that's the mindset that you have to have. And so my life was my life as a parent when I was not obsessing on character and again, obsessed. Okay. The second thing that I did was I walked very closely alongside my kids in a journey. An exploration of discovering who they were really, what were their values, what were their aptitudes, what were their interests, who did they, who were they? Who did they want to become? That's what I needed to learn. I did not want to make them into a little mini me, a little mini Jack. I needed to make them into a big, exploding, unfettered version of themselves. That was rule number two.

[Eve (Youngest Daughter) and Cowie]

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[Nicole Phelps]

Hi, I'm Nicole Phelps, Global Fashion News and Features Director at Vogue and co host of the Run Through Podcast. Each week on the show, our listeners get an all access pass into the world of Vogue. On Tuesdays, join me as I interview influential designers like Calvin Klein, Rachel Scott and Simone Bellotti. On Thursdays, join Chloe Mao, head of Editorial content at Vogue US and Choma Nadi, British Vogue's head of editorial content as they explore fashion through the lens of culture with guests like Doja Cat and Margot Robbie. Listen and watch the run through with Vogue wherever you get your podcasts and Vogue's YouTube channel.

[Susie Welch]

Here's the third rule. I'm sorry. I'm gonna apologize to all the people gonna disagree with me first. And I know they're out there. Children should not make decisions for themselves. They should not. They are little pleasure seeking, pain avoiding, single cell amoebas with no critical thinking abilities. Okay? That's your job. Go ahead. Let your children hate you for it. You are not their friend. You're smarter than they are and you should act like you're smarter than they are and you should own that you're smarter than they are. It drives me out of my mind. I have seen parents let their children pick summer camps, pick what school they should go to, pick the location of the family vacations, pick dinner every night. What the actual f. Are you kidding me? I mean, I don't get it. They're bear cubs. They're babies. What are we giving our children if we're letting these little tiny bear cub babies who know nothing? They're amoebas. Make important decisions? All we're doing is making them entitled. So look, I was in the supermarket. The family still tells this story. We were in the supermarket and Roscoe wanted some Captain Crunch. All the other kids at school ate Captain Crunch. I've seen mothers walk down the aisle of supermarkets and let the kids choose the cereal. Are you kidding me? Let them go hungry. You are the adult. You know what nutrition is. And he laid on the floor of the supermarket because he could not get Captain Crunch. And he wanted something else. Count Dracula, something with chocolate. And he threw a gigantic fit. And I looked at him. I had like three other kids by that time. And I looked at him and in front of like all these other parents looking on in horror, I said, pitch it, baby, pitch it. You think you can scare me? And I, like got the healthy granola and we moved on. Why would you let a 4 year old choose what he was going to put in his body? Oh, I know, go ahead, push the button and stop this thing. But I'm just trying to be real here. Do you think my kids like the fact that I said to them all the time, by the way, I'm smarter than you. I've made a ton of mistakes in my life and now I'm not going to let you at this point make those mistakes. I'm going to tell you what's right and what's wrong and I'm going to tell you the right decision here. And watch me make this decision. Learn from me making this decision, okay? But I'm not letting you make a decision that affects your life like that. This caused so many fights, okay? We were raising our kids in cities, okay, either Boston or New York. We gave our kids curfews. Nothing good happens after 9 o' clock in New York City, for instance, okay? I remember one time Eve saying to us, I am the only kid in my class. She was probably in 10th grade at this time. I am the only kid in my class who actually has a curfew. And we said, oh, well. And she was like, you don't feel embarrassed that you're the only parents who give your child a curfew. And I was like, I'm proud I'm the only parent who gives my kid a curfew. All right? And I mean like, ah, we would interrupt when they had friends. We didn't like driving. That was another one. We let them drive on the highway. We gotta drive on the highway. We gotta go to this party. You're not going to that party. I don't care if it makes you unpopular. I don't care about your popularity. I care about you hanging out with kids who are not going to be doing drugs. When Marcus graduated from high school, he had done very, very well in high school. Great student, great athlete, got into a very good school. And all of his friends, parents decided that he was in a really tight knit group of friends. They all decided they were going to send the kids, kids free of charge on a trip to Europe for like Three weeks. They were going to send it. And Mark Marcus came to us. I mean, this is Richie Rich, right? Bougie. Bougie. And he said, I want to go on the. Can I go on the trip with all these. All these boys? We knew them very, very well. To Europe for three weeks. He was like 17 years old. And we said, what do you. You got to be kidding us. And he said he made the grand mistake of saying, what's wrong? We can afford it. Oh, that was. That did not go over very well. I'll tell you that. And I. Why would we let him make the decision about what he did with his summer at age 17 years old? He didn't know it was good for him. We made him stay home and work at a local summer camp, a day camp, where he every single day suffered from 8am to like 7pm with little children screaming at him. Why? That's good experience. You need to know how to work. You do not. When you're 17 years old, no matter what you've done in your life, you have not earned the right to three weeks in Europe with your Richie Rich friends. No. And he hated it. But we did not let him make that decision for himself. He wanted to go. I see parents letting their kids make decisions all the time. To go to parties, to go to Europe. Good freaking God. What's. I don't know what's going on, Marcus. When we told him, you are not going to Europe with your friends, you're staying here, and you're working at Strong Wings, he was glum. He pouted for two weeks. He was mad about it. I think it was really, literally years later that he came to understand what we were doing. Now, this was partially a character issue. I mean, we're making it based on character. We didn't think it was going to build his character. We thought it would build his character to have menial job. But why would we ever allow a kid at that age to make that kind of decision? He hadn't earned that money. He didn't earn the right to make the decision. Now, look, the underlying premise here is that you are smarter than your kids. Now, I knew that they had to learn that actions had consequences. And maybe that's the excuse you use when you let. You let your kid make decisions. But I thought they could start doing that after they'd seen how somebody who was smarter than them made good decisions. My job was to teach them how to make wise decisions so that when they started making decisions for themselves, they would be making decisions with less Damaging consequences. I got so much heat for this. I was surrounded by people who did not especially be giving me big thumbs up for my parenting style. My own husband did, of course, but my family was not loving it. And I remember one of the cousins got married, and she got up and she gave a toast to her parents. And in the toast to her parents, she literally said, I want to thank my parents for never making a decision for me in my life. And I remember, like, this was like a direct shot at me. And I remember looking at the table and smiling, and my kids all smiling back at me. We all knew this was like. It was just like, wow. I mean, I. It's not like people thought that, you know, this was the right parenting style to have, but I did it because I thought it was my job. And to this day, my kids still call me with all of their decisions. We use this decision making methodology called 10-10-10. I'm a big believer in decision making systems. At NYU Stern, I teach a class in decision making. I teach my students 11 decision making systems. And one of them is 10-10-10, one that I made myself about looking at your decisions, making an exhaustive list of all your options, and then thinking about the upside and the downside of all of those options in 10 minutes. The immediate future, 10 months, the foreseeable future, and 10 years, the life you want to create. That's the decision making system that I used with my children. They had a hard decision. I would say to them, let me walk you through my 10-10-10 reasoning. Come up alongside me. Let's do a 10-10-10 on this decision. But I made the decision. I walked through it with them, and I showed them how I was making a decision so that they could go out and make decisions later. But while they were in my house, they were not deciding anything. They had not earned that right. That was my job as a mother. And I know it sounds like. I'm sure I'm gonna get DMs about this. You are smarter than your kids. Do not let them tell you otherwise. All right, that's it. Those are the three rules I was obsessed on. Character was all that mattered. Number two, I had the mindset that my children were not me and shouldn't be me. They were not flawed versions of me. They were perfect versions of themselves. And I needed to learn who they were so that we can help each other be authentic and live our most fulfilled, authentic lives. And number three, I just, you know, I was smarter than my kids, and I owned it. I was the Mother. I stepped into it. I didn't let them make decisions. And what I gave them, I hope, was the ability to make really good decisions with less damaging consequences. They're gonna make mistakes. They made mistakes. I make mistakes. But I. I would. I never wanted to be my kid's friend. I wanted to be the mom. I thought that was my job. And to let your kids make all the decision under minds that those are the three rules. Okay, I want to get. Finally get to the Kins story, because at the beginning, you heard my children repeatedly call me Kins. They call me Kins. My family calls me Kins. In fact, I have, like, a necklace that says Kins on it. One of my most favorite things, Marcus, I believe, came from Marcus. He was about eight. So this is probably two years, 2000, I was with him, and we were walking down the street, and he started calling me Mummy Kin. Now, here's the thing. Marcus is super funny, sarcastic, a little kind of sardonic little boy, and he started calling me Mummykins. Why? Because he was making fun of my distinct lack of traditional parenting. Okay? Mummy Kins is like, for, like, the classic mummy. And he literally was being sarcastic at 8 years old. And I admired him so much for being very bold. Bold enough to call me on my unique approach to parenting, which was obviously for the eye to see. And he felt admired when I said, oh, I can't believe you're calling me Mummykins. That's very hilarious. And so he kept it up, and he would be like, mummykins. Like, when I would do something that was very irregular, once again, to kind of point out that I was not a typical mother, and it stuck. It shortened to Kins. Okay? So then he started saying kins just to invoke it, and everybody in the family started calling me Kins. Now, here's the funny thing. They all four children started calling me Kins instead of mom, it morphed into me being called the Kins. Like, the Kins wants everybody to come to dinner now. Or the Kin says we have to walk the dog. Or the Kins is angry with us at the moment, but that's not a good one, because I was never angry with them for very long. I mean, I've described moments when I was angry with them, but how could I be angry at them? They were just kids, and they were just trying to find their way in this world. And once their characters looked to be set, and I came to know them for who they were, and I celebrated that, and they celebrated me back. And once they were old enough to be making good decisions. It got very easy. It's easy now. It's so easy. All the hard stuff is over. The Sod House years were over. They're over. And now, actually being a mom, it's just. It's truly unfettered joy. And it's fun. I wish I had known that during the Sod House years. I wish I had known it. I wish I had known it was coming. I. I didn't. But I'm here to tell it to you. It's coming. Happy Mother's Day. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe [e-mail].