9781804990766

‘A highly comforting book which – while not minimizing the pressures that we’re all under to achieve – nevertheless gently reminds us that it is what we are, not what we do, that will always ultimately count.’

Alain de Botton, founder of The School of Life

‘The paradox of success is real. The things that the system tells us will make us happy often don’t. Perhaps it’s time to stop trying to win and start working to contribute instead.’

Seth Godin, author of The Song of Signi cance

‘This book changed how I think.’

Annie Macmanus, author of The Mess We’re In

‘A smart and insightful clarion call to everyone – my book of 2023.’

Farrah Storr, author of The Discomfort Zone

‘A brilliant book, and so necessary. We have to get away from the idea that happiness is just over the next hill, and that everything will be better when we’ve achieved the next big thing. This is a crucial and joyful part of that conversation.’

Rebecca Seal, author of Solo: How to Work Alone (and Not Lose Your Mind)

‘Such a powerful and thought-provoking read.’ Clover Stroud, author of The Red of My Blood

‘I inhaled it in one sitting. It made my shoulders drop three inches by the time I’d read the first chapter. Why? It is a permission slip to escape “the achievement trap”.’

Metro

‘A fresh perspective from which readers can begin to see their own paths to joyful, fulfilling lives. A wise and immensely helpful book for anyone disillusioned by the struggle to “get ahead”.’

Martha Beck, author of The Way of Integrity

‘You will not be able to put this book down.’ Independent

‘Emma is wise beyond her years and has a way of putting into words beautifully what we’re all thinking. The Success Myth is inspiring, candid and intelligent – I encourage everyone to read it.’

Elizabeth Uviebinené, author of The Reset: Ideas to Change How We Work and Live

‘A deeply personal, authentic and relatable read. It made me breathe countless, heavy sighs of relief.’

Sian Clifford, Actor

‘I don’t think I have ever needed a book more than I needed this book.’

Dr Sophie Mort, Sunday Times bestselling author of A Manual for Being Human

‘[Emma Gannon] casts a critical eye on the conventional milestones of success – high-status jobs, a large salary, marriage and children. Her own burnout came, ironically, just as she had completed the first draft of the book; the final edit is all the richer for the honest account of her experience.’

Harper’s Bazaar

‘A helpful, perspective-offering book . . . valuable and earnestly-argued.’

Cal Flyn, award-winning author of Islands of Abandonment

‘Explores the reality behind the hustle [in a] warm, empathetic tone.’

Irish Independent

The Success Myth

Letting Go of Having It All

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First published in Great Britain in 2023 by Torva an imprint of Transworld Publishers

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For everyone, no matter where you’re at, or where you’re going

‘Even if you achieve things that seem outwardly fabulous, an unhealed emotional injury will make you experience them as empty and unappealing. By contrast, recovering your emotional health will su use even small successes with joy, long before you achieve anything obviously spectacular.’

MARThA bECK, FINDING YOUR OWN NORTH STAR

A Note

Before we begin, I am aware that we are living through heavy, scary, strange times. The cost of living is going up. The news is constant and seemingly always bad. Politics is a circus. Climate change is real. Social media is a minefield; we log on not knowing what will trigger us, or when. Record numbers of people are suffering from exhaustion and burnout. The Covid pandemic has left a whirlwind of mess in its wake. It’s also true that, on the whole, it’s a pretty good time to be alive. We have more now in this modern society than ever before. Evolving technology, which in turn opens up greater opportunity, growing literacy, quicker global transport, scientific breakthroughs and less extreme poverty. In so many ways, we are so lucky to be alive now, right now, on this planet.

The world is going through a vast amount of change in a very short period of time. It feels like turbulence on a plane.

I believe that before we tell ourselves that we’re broken and need to change, we should consider whether it is actually the society we live in that is broken and needs to change. I also believe that by easing the demands we keep putting on ourselves, we can in tandem stop putting so much demand on the planet, on our natural resources. Yes, this book is about unpicking society’s definitions of success and at the same time looking at what we truly want for ourselves, but it’s also about the bigger picture. If we want to make change in a big way – it has to start with us going inwards. That doesn’t mean putting the onus just on the individual to fix all the bigger systemic problems, but we can start somewhere. We can sit with ourselves; we can ask ourselves some big questions.

Let’s take a collective breath for one moment. I’m going to tell you why I believe this book is needed and why it’s actually more important than ever before to talk about the myths of ‘success’ (and how we are at risk of being conned along the way).

Introduction

Success Junkies

It was June 2018, and I’d been invited to give a keynote speech about my latest book at a conference on the Isle of Man. I was chauffeured to the airport in a silent black car with spotless leather seats, and I was being paid more for this one half-an-hour talk than I had earned for the entire previous month. I was wearing a new outfit and holding a new handbag. I looked the part, and my life was panning out exactly how I had imagined it. As I gazed out of the window with the radio playing and London’s buildings rolling past, I felt successful. If I was going to have a ‘girlboss’ moment (sorry ), then this would be it: the moment all the self-help business books had told me about. Entrepreneurial! Glamorous! Instagram followers! Agents, book deals, success! I remember boarding the flight and finding my seat next to a

woman wearing pink lipstick and a beaded necklace. It was a short flight, and she was chatty, explaining to me that there was always a bumpy landing on to the island because of the sea winds and the dinky plane. We observed a woman in the seat in front of us ordering countless mini bottles of vodka while gripping on to the armrests, clearly prepping herself for a roller coaster ride. She obviously knew about the bumpy ride too.

‘I always think it is going to be the end of my life on this flight,’ the woman in front turned around to us to say, with terror in her voice.

‘Well, I hope not!’ I replied loudly, laughing nervously, looking out of the window at the wing. The plane was indeed small, and the wind was picking up.

The woman in lipstick next to me smiled. ‘Well, if it does go down, I wouldn’t mind too much. I’ve achieved everything I want to achieve,’ she said peacefully, leaning back. ‘I am content.’

Suddenly, I felt gripped by terror, like the woman with the mini vodkas. I’m only just getting started, I thought.

I have this keynote speech to deliver, for starters!

I have lots of things I need to SUCCEED at.

I am on a path to SUCCESS!

The captain spoke to us through the tannoy, sounding calm but laying down the facts, telling us to not leave our seats and

keep our seat belts on. The turbulence was wild. Passengers were screaming. The woman beside me had warned me that the landing would be bumpy, but it really was. The plane touched down on what felt like just one wobbly wheel. The woman in front was now shaking, but the woman next to me was smiling. She really didn’t seem afraid. Later that day, I thought about her, and what she meant by ‘achieved everything she wanted to achieve’. She said she was ‘content’. What did that even mean? Had she lost her marbles?

At that point, my entire identity revolved around my job. It was all that mattered, and all that I had. A few friends had casually pointed out to me that I was working a lot, and I would be very defensive. How dare they comment on my workload? How dare they pester me to come to the pub? I didn’t have time for fun. I was on a mission. I would bat those comments away. If anyone even hinted that I was overworking, I would assume they were trying to distract me or ‘didn’t understand’ my level of ambition. I was my achievements; I was a walking billboard of the ‘things I was working on’. I was on the career ladder, and I wanted to be successful. I was competitive, driven, single-minded, and I had a lot to show for it on paper – and on social media.

Since the first day I entered the workplace, aged twentyone, in a huge open-plan office with phones ringing and

loud bosses and goals and praise, I had been seduced by the idea of success, ambition, growth and winning. I started thriving almost immediately, and I was intrigued by all the different people I was meeting with diverse opinions and backgrounds. This felt different to my identity at school, which was a place where I always felt behind, but in the working world I was zooming ahead. I started off at social media agencies, working for big shiny brands, then moved to Condé Nast, working for big shiny magazines. The fastpaced environment suited me, and I loved it. I wore heeled boots to the office. I worked late into the night during each office job in my twenties, with the offer of free pizza if you worked past nine p.m., which I loved because I preferred to be in the office than at home. I wanted to stay at work for as long as was possible. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was my own form of escapism. I felt safe inside the walls of the office. On Friday evenings, when my colleagues went home to their families for dinner, I would wander out into the street and think, Now what? It would take me a while to calm down physically from the adrenaline racing through my body from all the meetings and calls and dings and pings.

Moving to London was a big ‘tick’ on my list of dreams, and as my confidence grew, I felt like myself for the first time. Then I decided to go it alone, becoming self-employed, and a new success treadmill began. I had my own desk at

home, and I’d work until it got dark, then I’d take my laptop to the sofa and work until the early hours, eating dinner there too. I might have been free from the corporate world, but as my own boss I was no better, I was still glued to the machine, to the industry, to the grind, to my own autopilot. If anything, I was even more hung up on success, as though I had something to prove. I wanted to show people they were wrong: those people who doubted I could ever make ‘working for myself’ a success.

However, after a few years of growing my business successfully, something was niggling at me inside. There was the first quiet whisper of something not being quite right. But I found I could shout loudly over it. This inner voice was nudging me, but it was being drowned out by talks, clapping audiences, Instagram likes and posting pictures of myself online. In reality, I felt like if someone prodded me hard enough, I would fall over, and everything would come crashing down around me. It was becoming harder and harder to ignore the feeling inside. There was one night in particular I knew something had to change.

Which brings us back to that evening on the Isle of Man. After I’d delivered my talk, taking off my Britney mic that had boomed throughout the huge auditorium, I went back to my hotel room and sat on the white sheets of the bed. I

wasn’t feeling relieved, or heightened, or joyful, or full of adrenaline. I felt completely flat. (If you google ‘what is the opposite of “content”?’ you get ‘discontent’. My thesaurus gives me these synonyms: joyless, downcast, unpleased, dissatisfied.) I lowered my head into my hands, and I just sobbed. I looked around the room and felt incredibly . . . alone. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen a friend, or remembered a birthday, or had done something for myself outside of work. People didn’t ask how I was, because the assumption was that I was living the life I wanted. No one was checking in on me much, because why would they? My Instagram feed looked full, busy and exciting. I wore expensive suits, red lipstick and a big smile. Friends were messaging me saying ‘you’re killing it’. What was the ‘it’ I was killing? My soul, probably.

That night, I fell asleep to the voice of a friend who had sent me a long WhatsApp voice note in the middle of the night, detailing how she was doing, having just given birth, and updating me on what it was all like. She was tired, up late, her life had changed, going to the loo was a military operation, but she sounded good. I loved hearing from her and felt honoured to get the full story. She had just been through something life-changing. She was sleep-deprived. She was my friend. She still made time for me even though she was feeding a baby. And where had I been? Why was I not

checking in with anyone? What exactly was this life that I was hell-bent on living?

I was lucky enough to enjoy what I did for a living for the most part and felt an inherent privilege that I could earn money as a ‘knowledge worker’, meaning I could set myself up independently as a ‘digital nomad’, working from anywhere as long as I had my laptop and Wi-Fi. I loved that my career was always there, like a buoyancy aid, something that I could lean on when I needed to, and it did make me happy sometimes. But I hadn’t quite recognized the truth: that your job will never really love you back. Yes, it could support you financially, but it would never be there for you emotionally. It is not the comfort blanket you think it is. Even if you love something, if it takes over your life and starts to make you unwell, it is by definition an addiction of some sort. My obsession with outward success had gone so far that I would socialize mostly with acquaintances, rather than close friends, and only if I was feeling on form, hardly ever letting anyone see my vulnerable side. I always had to be working on something new. I felt as though I needed to be having a good day to be worthy of seeing people. I had become what digital-media consultant Jennifer Romolini calls ‘an ambition monster’. Essentially, I was scared of being seen for who I really was. I wore a suit of success

armour. I had to figure out how to get my life back. This is what this book is about.

What Is Success?

Many of us have access to lots of things : fast fashion, free online content, hundreds of cuisines on apps, next-day delivery, Black Friday sales, yet the statistics say quite clearly that we are not happy. Anxiety, burnout and depression rates are growing. The planet itself doesn’t look too happy either, whether that’s the rise in microplastics or climate change impacting our oceans and coastal ecosystems.

There is an irony at play here: as a society we are still craving the lofty heights of success like never before, yet our world does not look very ‘successful’ or ‘happy’ on paper. It doesn’t seem to be working. The cultural rat race for success (however that looks to each of us) can often be never-ending: a distraction, a marketing technique, an obstacle course we didn’t choose, a way to always be adding on more without taking a minute to breathe. A stick to beat ourselves with. We never feel like we’re doing it right. How do we navigate our own definition of success when we see other people’s successes play out on a loop every day via our phones?

This book is about getting to the root of what we actually

want from our own lives right now: not what looks good at a dinner party, not what gets you the most online validation, not what makes your parents proud, but figuring out what success looks like to you day to day. We are at a crucial turning point. It’s time to ask ourselves what we want (not just materialistically) and work backwards to try and find it.

My hope in writing this book is not to try and convince you that reaching for the stars and following dreams isn’t a good idea (it is – life is of course about moving forwards and having celebratory moments!)  but to remind us all that society’s expectations around big goals, milestones and trophies aren’t always in line with the realities of what makes us feel individually satisfied. From my experience, the shiniest bits we see online, hear about, or see in the news are hardly ever the shiniest bits behind the scenes. Instagram has been said to be other people’s ‘highlight reels’– and the very concept of ‘success’ marketing in society is the collective highlight reel that sucks us in. How would you like your life to look, if you didn’t have to advertise it to others?

Everywhere I go, people around me are uprooting their lives. Record numbers of people have left their jobs since the beginning of the pandemic. Are we finally waking up to the fact that so much of life happens in the cracks between the chasing of success: that money, fame and endless materialism won’t save us, that they won’t be the answer to our

problems? Are we noticing that the ‘gurus’ and idols and high achievers who sell the key to success actually don’t possess the formula for our own individual happiness?

The Missing Link

For the past six years, I’ve been conducting a weekly interview on my podcast, Ctrl Alt Delete, with someone who has ‘succeeded’ in their (usually creative) field. It’s a careers podcast without the corporate bullshit, and I get to gently interrogate my guest about how on earth they’ve climbed their own ladder and designed their own lives, and pick up any additional pointers on how they’ve stayed sane. It’s been hugely enjoyable, not only to probe these interviewees with personal questions but also to meet them in person, which means I have heard memorable stories both on and off the mic. I have now interviewed over four hundred outwardly successful people, including activists who have changed laws, politicians making big decisions, Oscar-winning scriptwriters, sports stars, famous writers, experts in their field of niche research, philosophers, psychologists, spiritual teachers, actors, doctors, singers; you name it. There are a variety of stories, including people who have come from nothing, people who have come from huge privilege, people who

have won awards, been bereaved, walked the red carpet, lost everything, gained everything, started again, reached millions, had panic attacks, spoken on huge stages, and held the world’s attention and had its adoration. Without realizing it, I’ve become an accidental expert in interviewing and analyzing people on their outward ‘success’ while also being privy to their internal thoughts ‘behind the scenes’, and all the flaws and imperfections that come with being human. I’ve noticed that some people would confidently share their achievements, while others would shy away from them; some interviewees would exaggerate their achievements, while a few wouldn’t even seem to care about them. Some people took complete responsibility for their success, putting it down to hard work only, while others put it down to luck; some owned their talent, some had major impostor syndrome, some put it down to God, and some accepted that it was a mixture of many things. Many attributed their success to the love and support of their parents, teachers or just one person who believed in them. It’s been fascinating to find patterns and common threads to pull on.

I started the podcast because I wanted to know the secrets to success. I wanted to peek behind the curtain and figure out what makes someone successful at what they do. Are all these people, with their glowing Wikipedia pages, financial security and full award cabinets, happier and more fulfilled

than everyone else? Do they feel as though they’ve ascended to another level of life?

I quickly realized that most of the time, in short, the answer is no. No matter how high up the ladder of society’s definition of success people climb, I’ve seen the same insecurities, doubts, health problems, domestic stress, creative block and uncertainty over the future. I’ve seen people reach their life’s goal and realize that instead of a marching band celebrating the long-awaited milestone, they just want to crawl into bed in a dark room for a week. I’ve had people admit that when they finally reached their dreams, it was then that their life started to fall apart. I’ve heard stories of people who look like they’re ‘smashing it’ but are actually having an internal crisis. I’ve heard stories of how influxes of money can tear relationships apart, and about how money makes you paranoid. And now I feel compelled to open up the conversation. Is being outwardly successful everything it’s cracked up to be? Is the ‘Great Resignation’ (a term coined by Professor Anthony Klotz, describing the record number of people quitting their jobs since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic) happening because we are all finally exhausted from the endless, relentless hustle?

On and off the mic, there is one thing most of my guests had in common: a surprising sense of I’ve done all this stu and I still don’t feel like I’m enough. When I was growing up, I

felt successful people had an air about them that suggested they’d solved life’s riddle, that they had cracked the code! And yet, once I’d met them in person, it didn’t really feel that way at all. I was deflated by this: there is a reason a rags-toriches story sells. We want to hear that it’s possible to change our whole life in three simple steps and live happily ever after. We like happy endings. They are neat; they are easier to understand.

So many of us were taught to keep climbing up the ladder (school, university, work, promotions, family, home, success), so we believe that, surely, there is an end point, a moment where you feel like you’ve made it. This is what I was wanting from these interviews: for people to say that there is a moment of relief at a ‘finish line’, a comforting assurance that one day we will find the treasure at the end of the rainbow and live happily ever after. But not once did I ever get the sense that there is that golden, everlasting moment. In fact, on the other side of the ‘success’ coin, there was something much darker lurking. A loss of self. A loss of relationships, or relationships that became purely transactional. A loss of trust. Mental health problems. Boundaries being overstepped. A skewed sense of self-worth. Online threats and trolling. Falling into the trap of prioritizing the opinions of strangers. Situations that would retrigger macro- or microtrauma. An existential crisis. I was astounded by just

how many ‘successful’ people whispered to me, ‘None of this impressive stu has made my inner problems go away.’ We still struggle to believe this because success is so seductive. Of course, we could list many worse or different positions to be in, but this topic of society’s obsession with success is still worthy of analyzing and unpicking. Everything is relative, and with context and sensitivity all our modern issues are worth discussing. I can’t help but be curious about this. Why not question why so many ‘successful’ people suffer too? There seems to be a missing link.

A Wake- up Call

Peeking behind the curtain of so many of these people’s lives and careers led me to feel even more curious about the wider subject of success. It inspired me to look into my own definition of success, my own gremlins, my own narratives, my own preconceptions. Does my ego believe I should be more successful? Am I chasing success for a particular reason? Has my life changed since achieving some of my shiny exterior goals? How ambitious am I actually? How often does our definition of success change? These were questions I was asking myself pre-pandemic, and then when the world shut down for months at a time, many of us were forced to

look at our lives in closer detail. We asked ourselves some big questions while our plans were put on pause. Do we even like our jobs? Do we even like ourselves? What does success mean when we’re all stuck at home, alone? What does collective success look like? These are the juicy questions I’ll be diving into throughout this book’s chapters on happiness, money, work and beyond.

Before the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, I was busy. Looking back, I wasn’t necessarily happy, but I was distracted. My life looked good on the outside, and I had no reason to open a can of worms. But once lockdown hit, I realized something felt off. Yes, it was a pandemic, so I was not leaving the house much, but I was staying in most nights (even when the lockdown rules eased up), numbing out with wine, shying away from any interesting opportunities, and I blamed my withdrawal on being ‘introverted’. I kept social contact to a minimum and I just stayed in my cocoon, not wanting to come out. I was a caterpillar and had no clue why I wasn’t interested in finding ways to emerge and spread my wings. Change was occurring externally, but massive change was also starting to happen inside.

The pandemic was awful in so many ways, truly terrible –  and for many of us it was also a chance to look closely at our lives. It was a pause that we wouldn’t have had otherwise.

For me, it really was a jolt of realization. I was lucky; I had no real personal dramas, no major illness, I was simply offered the opportunity to slow down and spend a lot of time reflecting on my life. I was able to realize how much I was drifting, lost, retreating inwards. I wanted to rip everything up, cancel my old definition of success, interrogate everything, start again, work out what my boundaries were and who my core friends were. I was starting to slowly realize that the maths wasn’t adding up, but I was still very afraid to confess it externally. I felt guilty. What do you mean all your dreams came true and you’re still not happy? My inner critic was bleating things like: What on earth is wrong with you? You know other people have it much worse? You should be happy. But that’s not how happiness works. You can’t demand it, or force it, or magic it into existence. It was time to change my prepandemic idea of success. I had to kill off that former version of myself, which meant leaning into change and grieving my past life. It felt scary, uncomfortable and painful to say goodbye to an identity that no longer served me.

Not knowing where to turn, I got in touch with a life coach. ‘I think I’m a workaholic,’ I said to her. She quizzed me lightly. Does my self-worth come from output? Is my identity tied to work? Do I feel guilty for resting? Am I hard on myself? Do I crack the work whip even when I am in need of a holiday? Does work come first, before anything

else? I answered yes to pretty much everything. But surely workaholics are men in suits who don’t want to see their families, who hide away in their sad office buildings and have affairs with receptionists? Whereas I’m a writer and creator who mostly works from home. How could I fit that stereotype? In the worst of it, I remember listening to a podcast with a self-proclaimed workaholic New York art critic who said he only likes to socialize with people who he can talk about work with, as he finds all other conversation unstimulating and boring. I remember nodding along in agreement. Crikey.

This book blends my personal experience with the findings from my most fascinating interviews. I am a recovering success addict. Past descriptions of my former self feel totally alien to me now. Having come out the other side of a definite obsession around maintaining success and achievement (with the help of talking therapy, life coaching, friends and family), I’ve been able to pinpoint why I felt like I could wrap a cloak of success around myself in order to try and mask some other deeper problems and avoid dealing with them. I’ve also been able to see why I never quite felt like I had ‘arrived’, despite achieving my wildest dreams. I have realized that desperate need for success is often covering up some deeper stuff that is worth exploring with loved ones, through different kinds of therapy or even by writing a

journal (to start with). There can be an inherent feeling of guilt attached to not feeling grateful for what we have. Guilt can really eat away at us. I hope by opening up the conversation in this book, we can shed the guilt, start to feel less alone in our emotions, and feel lighter, no matter where we are at.

A Raised Eyebrow

Perhaps you also already have some preconceptions about this topic: What is there really to say about success? Come on, stop moaning, can’t you just enjoy it? Surely the more successful you are, the happier you are? What’s wrong with spending your whole life chasing traditional success? Or even, Don’t we need an idea of success to give us hope? Before I picked up my pen to write this book, these points gave me pause, and I’ve kept them in mind as I’ve written each chapter. But I’ve realized that when we perpetuate stereotypes about success (i.e. that person has XYZ so they’re set for life, end of) we are missing so much nuance – and nuance is a very crucial and forgotten element of this conversation.

Of course, in many ways, success enables us to become more comfortable: financially, materially and physically. But being more comfortable is different to being happier. Starting from a place of comfort, I want to acknowledge that

unpicking and analyzing the topic of success is a huge privilege in itself. I have the time and space to sit around pondering it, writing this book on it, talking at length with my interviewees, which isn’t possible when you’re existing in survival mode. I understand this and see this. This is not my outlet to moan about the downsides of success, like an out-of-touch celebrity not realizing their mic is on; instead it’s an intimate look at why we are so seduced by it, and a place to offer some advice on how we can break free from the things that end up trapping us. A place to look at it objectively as a thing being sold to us on every corner. If anything, it’s the book that I would like to have read all those years ago, when the bookshelves were only full of perfect women with perfect lives, because hearing the subtleties and conflicting emotions of other people’s experiences may have helped me go a little easier on myself. It might have saved me from a few sleepless nights and two a.m. crises thinking about how I was doing everything wrong and everyone else was doing it right. It might help a few more people learn to reframe their definition of success, enjoy achieving their goals and also enjoy getting there. It might have stopped me from having a burnout breakdown through overwork.

We start to receive cultural messages from early childhood on what success looks like: praise, rewards, climbing, claps.

I’ve seen some five-year-olds even have a ‘graduation ceremony’ from nursery, wearing a miniature mortar board, being praised for their achievements. These moments are positive, of course, but they also start us off on the bottom rung of the success ladder, one that we continue chasing in other ways for our entire adulthood. We are told to strive and strive in an upwards motion, but we are not equipped to deal with the realities of our day-to-day lives. We keep hitting various milestones and feel deflated. Oftentimes, dreams don’t tend to match up with reality. When we finally figure out that our drive for ‘success’ isn’t making us feel good in the long run, the question we start to ask is: are we even chasing after the right thing?

Success changes from culture to culture, but on the whole, when I asked podcast interviewees, friends and strangers a series of questions about success for this book, including ‘What did you think success meant, when you were growing up?’, the answers that came back were along the same lines:

• Obtaining material things.

• Getting a degree.

• Buying a house.

• Getting a good job.

• Finding a life partner/getting married.

• Having kids.