Things My Son Needs to Know About The World: From the New York Times Bestselling Author of Anxious People and My Friends

by Fredrik Backman

Every other generation of parents could just say they ‘didn’t know’. That’s what our parents do. Drank wine while you were breast-feeding? ‘Didn’t know’. Let us eat cinnamon buns for breakfast? ‘Didn’t know’. Put us in the back seat without a seat belt? Took just a little bit of LSD while you were pregnant? ‘Please, we didn’t k-n-o-w. It was the seventies, you know. LSD wasn’t dangerous back then!’

So indescribably scared of not being good enough. Because we spent so long being the biggest narcissists in world history before we became parents and realized how unimportant we really were.

The realization that you will, from that moment on, draw all your breaths through someone else’s lungs hits you harder when you aren’t prepared.

So you can just imagine the modern interpretation of Swan Lake it takes to be able to turn them back on when you have a nappy as heavy as a dumbbell in one hand and half a pack of moist wipes in the other, standing on one leg to stop your baby from falling off the changing table with one knee. And it’s right then, at that very moment, that I feel like my generation

I just want you to know that I love you. Once you’re older, you’ll realize that I made an endless line of mistakes during your childhood. I know that. I’ve resigned myself to it. But I just want you to know that I did my very, very best. I left it all on the field. I gave this every ounce of everything I had. I googled like hell.

Believe me. You’re a Backman. Regardless of how many shortcomings the person you fall in love with might have, I can guarantee that you still come out on top of that bargain. So find someone who doesn’t love you for the person you are, but despite the person you are. And when you’re standing there, in the storage section at IKEA, don’t focus too much on the furniture. Focus on the fact that you’ve actually found someone who can see themselves storing their crap in the same place as your crap. Because, hand on heart: you have a lot of crap.

And we can never allow stuff to become more important than people. Like you. I mean, I’ve thrown away all my best stuff to make room for your stuff. Because your stuff is more important.

I want you to always remember that you can become whatever you want to become, but that’s nowhere near as important as knowing that you can be exactly who you are.

As long as you are kind to your mother and don’t murder or steal or start supporting Manchester City or any other horrible thing like that, I genuinely don’t care whether your moral compass is shaped by an old book or a box of jam doughnuts.

I think of you a bit like I think of the T. rex in Jurassic Park. At five thirty in the morning, when you’re staring at me, I know only one thing. The tiniest. Little. Movement. And it’s all over.

This parenthood thing didn’t come with instructions, that’s all I’m saying. You spit on the napkin. Then you wipe the child’s face with the napkin. You don’t spit straight on to the child. My bad.

All we want is for your psychologists to mutter, in twenty years’ time, that it might not be e-n-t-i-r-e-l-y our fault.

you’ll meet people who constantly place those around them into two groups: the strong and the weak. But between these two groups there will be a gap, and in this gap there will be ten other people. The most dangerous group. Terrified of tumbling down the hierarchy.

And I’m just like every other parent. I’m terrified you’ll be the child in the corner of the playground. Equally terrified you’ll be the one being hit and that you’ll be the one doing the hitting. I’ve been both, and it hurts in different places but in the same way.

He even jumped into the ring and started to fight on a number of occasions, but The Undertaker just took his blows without so much as raising a pinkie finger in defence. Even though maybe The Undertaker SHOULD have! You get where I’m going? I mean … I’m not telling you to beat up your sibling. I know that might be how it sounds right now. And when I think about it, maybe this wasn’t the best example. But what I’m trying to say is that sometimes the strongest person isn’t the one who hits. It’s the one who doesn’t hit back. All right? You

And at some point in time, in a playground or in an office with panoramic windows at an advertising agency, I hope you’ll realize that the brave person isn’t the one who starts a fight even though he doesn’t know whether he’ll win or lose. The brave person is the one who knows he would win and still holds back.

Never keep your mouth shut. Don’t look away. Never be mean just because you can be. Never mistake kindness for weakness. Don’t become the kind of person who stands in an office with panoramic windows in an advertising firm and thinks that ‘nice’ is an insult.