I have already spoken on many occasions about the responsibility that having a child means. It is not only making them and bringing them into the world (that's the easy and fun part), it also means taking care of them, feeding them, educating them and making them, in the end, useful people for society. Maybe because I understood the size of such a job, one day I decided not to have children.

But I have 5 nephews who are my life (actually now there are 4 because one died last year, at the age of 18, of bone cancer). Five nephews with whom I have shared not only their most incredible and festive moments, those that are good for taking pictures; I have also been there when they need a comfort, a hug, a loving word: in those moments in which very few people stay.

I must admit that my nieces and nephews are my weakness, my pride, the children I did not have; maybe that is why I try to teach them many things, those things that I would have taught my children. I try, and perhaps the verb try is conjugated in all tenses, to teach them that they must be conscious, responsible, happy and above all: they must believe in themselves. If they believe in what they are, in what they have, nothing and nobody will be able to stop them. Likewise, I have instilled in them the value of things, to appreciate the smallest things, to be grateful, to live in the present, to help and to give, even if you have little.

When they were kids, we had fun going to the beach, going to the movies, having an ice cream, but they also had fun doing crafts, playing, drawing, reading, creating stories. Knowing that my nieces and nephews, at some point, wanted to be teachers like me, to travel like me, to study like me, is indicative of the influence I had on them. Discovering that gives you joy, but it also gives you fear, because you know that it is a very big responsibility to serve as an example.

One day, I remember, my sisters asked our parents how they managed to provide for us, we are 5 siblings, and I thought the answer was intelligent: “We only bought them what they needed. It is part of a child's nature to want everything, but that is what adults are there for, to stop them. “Children, like plasticine, will be what adults make of them. So when we see non-conformist children, with mountains of toys, untidy, let's remember that it is the reflection of their parents.