Robert Downey Jr. isn’t a new father – he already has an 18-year-old son with ex-wife Deborah Falconer, but that doesn’t mean that welcoming his second son with Susan Levin was any easier. The couple’s new son, Exton Elias is now 2-months old and Robert has revealed that at first he was nervous about the baby, but now that he has arrived, he no longer has these fears because it feels like his son has always been around:
”There was all this trepidation, all this projection, all this anticipation and goodwill and a good vibe about it. But what you’re squeezing to the side – or what’s in the glove box – is these thousands of forms of fear. And then he was born and they’ve all just kind of scattered now. It seems like he’s always been here.”
Robert says that although he doesn’t know everything about being a parent, he doesn’t want his child to know that he doesn’t always have the answers:
”Am I going to know what to do with them? Does any new parent, even if you’re not a first-time parent, ever really know what to do? Only thing you have to do, the only requirement, if you can hack it, is to not transfer your own discomfort in the moment to this fresh soul, right? You got to be mindful.”
He believes that good parenting is all about striking a balance that doesn’t affect the child negatively, while still teaching the child the right thing to do and looking out for them:
”I don’t want to be so confident in myself. It’s that balance between being relaxed enough to not be communicating anxiety and present enough to not be creating the very thing that you were anxious about by being so relaxed – because I’ve seen that parenting style, too.”
