The Honest Company founder talks about parenting and admits she enters therapy as she is struggling to work on her communication with her oldest daughter Honor.
- Jul 24, 2021
AceShowbiz - Jessica Alba and her eldest child, 13-year-old Honor, visit a therapist together to improve their communication skills.
The actress and Honest Company boss - who also shares daughter Haven, nine, and son Hayes, three, with her husband Cash Warren - previously noted she struggles to remember that though her kids are still young, they still deserve to be heard.
"I think this new way of parenting is like, (kids) want to be seen and heard as individuals basically as soon as they start having any kind of consciousness or thoughts or opinions," she tells Katherine Schwarzenegger on her Instagram series "Before, During & After Baby".
"I take the approach of making sure they understand boundaries and respect but trying to see them each individually and meet them where they are (sic)."
And to make sure she's getting on as well as she can with her teenager, they've been sharing tips from a psychiatric expert.
"I'm struggling with not treating her like a little (girl)," Jessica admits. "I want to treat them all like babies. I want to baby them. Still my tendency is to parent them as if they are little."
"I started going to therapy with her (Honor), I think, when she was 11. For me, it was really out of, I felt like my relationship really suffered with my parents because they didn't know how to communicate with me and how I needed to be parented. So I didn't want that breakdown with Honor, so we went to therapy together."
And the arrangement has been great for mum and daughter, because Honor "felt empowered to find her voice" in therapy, and the two now get on better than ever.
"(She was able to) speak her voice and own her opinions in a way and really gain confidence to say, 'Hey, Mum, I like this, I don't like this,'" she adds. "(Or) 'When you need you to guide me or when I screw up, or whatever, this is how I want to be punished. This is what I respond to, this is what I don't respond to in that way.' "
"But then on the flip (side), (Honor) was like, 'You need to spend more time with me alone without Haven around.' That was a big one. And, 'You need to treat me like I'm me and she's her. You can't mush us together.' I have to say, I kind of still struggle with that."
