RULE 50

Learn to appreciate the qualities that remind you of someone else

When my daughter was younger, she reminded me of both her grandmothers. Now, I don’t want to get personal in any way, but given a choice that’s not who I’d have chosen to create (not both rolled into one, anyway). As she got older – well, she reminded me even more of her grandmothers. Of course she had some of their good points, but I didn’t really notice that. It was the bad points that kept throwing themselves in front of me.

The thing is, though, she was my daughter. And I loved her unconditionally. So I learnt to love those qualities in her that had, at first, been hard to take. It’s not easy to do, but it has to be done because you can’t blame your kids for their genetic make-up. If anything, it made me more sympathetic to her grandmothers.

The hardest thing to learn to love is any quality that reminds you of your ex. If you’re divorced or split up, your kids will constantly remind you of your ex-partner, and you have got to learn to love that side of them, even if you hate it in their other parent.

Look, I haven’t got all the answers, and this one is really tough. But I can tell you what helps me. I’ve come to realize that there is no such thing as a bad quality; it’s only how people use their natural characteristics that matters. I knew a kid who was unbelievably stubborn as a child. I mean, off the normal scale. She grew up and became an activist for good causes. You have to be unbelievably stubborn and determined to drive through important changes in the face of politicians who don’t seem to care. Meanwhile she mellowed in her personal life, of course, and became a charming young woman. So is stubbornness a bad quality? Not in her case.

Just because your child reminds you of her mother or your dad or Great Auntie Betty, it doesn’t mean they’ll make the same use of those qualities. So there’s no need to resent them. You know what you have to do: instil the values that will ensure they use their natural talents wisely.