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If children show interests, encourage them
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eople ask me how I have raised such successful kids. I did it by
letting them follow their interests.
I love my kids, and I’m so proud of them for everything that they
have accomplished. My oldest child, Elon, is making electric cars to
save the environment and launching rockets. My middle child,
Kimbal, opened farm-to-table restaurants and is teaching children
across the country to build fruit and vegetable gardens in
underserved schools. My youngest child, Tosca, runs her own
entertainment company, producing and directing romance films
from bestselling novels. They all have different interests.
This reminds me of my siblings and me; we all went our own way.
My parents were happy to support our different interests. In the
same way, my children showed their interests at an early age, and to
this day, they continue with the same interests and love them.
When they needed it, I encouraged them and helped them. When
they wanted my advice, I gave it. I’m very short with my own
answers, although I’ve tried to make them longer for this book. Ha-
ha!
Kimbal said it quite nicely in an Instagram post. “My mother
@MayeMusk has always been a guiding light in my life. In addition
to being a CoverGirl at 70, she has two Master of Science degrees in
nutrition and has always been passionate about #realfood. She is,
and always has been, an inspiration to me. I’m so thankful for her
support @BigGreen to educate the next generation about the power
of planting, growing, and eating real food. Thank you, mom!!”
For my kids, they developed the interests that would become their
careers by age twelve.
When Elon was young, I noticed that he read everything. I was a
reader, too, but I would forget a story the moment it was done. Elon,
on the other hand, remembered everything he read. He was always
absorbing information. We called Elon the encyclopedia, because he
had read the Encyclopaedia Britannica and Colliers Encyclopedia,
and remembered everything. That’s also why we called him Genius
Boy. We could ask him anything. Remember, this was before the
internet. I guess now we would call him The Internet.
He got his first computer at twelve. It was 1983, and computers
were very, very new. He learned to use it and wrote a computer
program, BLASTAR, which was a game. I showed it to some
university students who were in my modeling school. They were
surprised that he knew all the coding shortcuts. These guys were in
their second or third year in computer science, and they were very
impressed.
I told him to submit it to a computer magazine.
He sent BLASTAR to PC Magazine, and they sent him 500 rand
($500). I don’t think they knew he was twelve. It was published
when he was thirteen. I didn’t realize what he would go on to do.
• • •
When Kimbal was little, he always loved his food. It was when he was
twelve that he took charge of mealtimes and started cooking for the
family. He wanted food that tasted delicious, and if he had to do it
himself to achieve that, he was willing. He loved to go to the grocery
store with me. I remember going to the market with him, and he
would pick up a green pepper and smell it. And I would say, “Where
do you come from?” I didn’t find cooking a joy at all. I was feeding
them healthy food, but it was quite simple: peanut butter
sandwiches, peas, and carrots.
Kimbal would pick up all these new vegetables that we had never
seen before, and he would cook with them. He would find a fresh fish
that was caught that day and then cook it on the barbecue with
tomatoes, lemons, and onions. He was a natural cook. He was great
with vegetables, which were also very affordable, so that was perfect.
Everything he made was delicious, and much better than my dull
cooking.
When we moved to Toronto, he taught Elon how to prepare
gnocchi Alfredo with crab so that he could cook for any girlfriends.
I felt very good when Kimbal told me recently that he felt that I
was always very supportive, no matter what he chose to do. He
changed his career more than a few times! He studied business,
became an internet entrepreneur, and then studied cooking at the
French Culinary Institute in New York. I would go to his school
dining room at 11:00 p.m. at the end of his shift to eat dinner with
him. When he moved to Boulder and started a restaurant called the
Kitchen in a former restaurant space, I scrubbed the stoves and
fridges to make them shine. Unfortunately, they were replaced! Oh
well . . .
Kimbal has had quite a journey. After an accident while he was
tubing with his kids, a broken neck left him with a lot of time to think
about what he really wanted to be doing with his life. Restaurants
were his passion, so he wound up opening farm-to-table restaurants
in middle America and starting the nonprofit Big Green. These are
learning gardens in underserved schools. He also started a company
called Square Roots, teaching young entrepreneurs to be urban
farmers, building gardens in recycled shipping containers in parking
lots.
Looking back at what he loved at twelve, it makes perfect sense.
• • •
When Tosca was twelve and in grade seven, her drama teacher
decided not to run the drama club anymore. So Tosca took over.
My daughter was always very much an actress. She was into
theater, dance, performing, and music at a very young age, and she
always loved movies.
In Johannesburg, we would spend Friday nights on the couch
together, watching romance movies and eating ice cream (when I
was not watching what I ate the way I do now). She was always in
every performing arts club. So of course it makes sense to me now
that she’s a director, making her own films, turning romance novels
into movies for her company, Passionflix.
I’m always thrilled to get dressed up and join her on the red carpet
for her premieres.
Parents are really stressed about their kids. I saw that in my
nutrition practice. A father or mother would be stress eating because
there were so many forms to fill out to get their kids into a good
school or university. I would tell them to let their kids complete their
own documents to get themselves into universities or jobs. They
should be responsible for their future. If they prefer to start a
business and you think it’s a good idea, support them. Teach your
children good manners. But let them decide what they want.
I could not have predicted Tesla or SpaceX or the Kitchen or Big
Green or Passionflix. But now I see that what Elon is accomplishing
with technology, what Kimbal is building in the world of food, and
what Tosca is doing with movies: all of it is rooted in what they loved
as kids.
S
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