The Tough-Love Approach To Parenting: Reese Witherspoon Approves!
Recently, mom-of-three Reese Witherspoon talked at length about her ‘tough-love’ parenting style on a podcast (Good Inside with Dr. Becky). The actress co-parents 19-year-old Deacon and 24-year-old Ava with her former husband, Ryan Phillippe, and 11-year-old Tennessee with her former husband, Jim Toth.
During the show, she said, “I don’t know when we stopped letting our kids fail.”
In this context, she also told the world about her own childhood, “Like, I learned so much from the paper I didn’t turn in or the demerits I got, so I got detention. I was suspended from school when I was in fifth grade for talking in class and being disruptive. And writing creative notes and passing them to my friends. And my parents didn’t say, ‘Uh, she didn’t deserve that,’ Witherspoon continued, adding they didn’t take her out of school, but instead, she said, ‘They actually let me sit in it and feel uncomfortable.’ So I think learning from failure is actually a valuable tool that you can’t take away from kids, right? You rob them if you don’t let them sit in the discomfort of the experience.”
She further mentioned, “I think learning from failure is actually a valuable tool that you can’t take away from kids, right? You rob them if you don’t let them sit in the discomfort of the experience.”
It’s Important To Know What You Are Good At. Period!
The Cruel Intentions actor further explained how she did not really try to cushion the blow too much when her daughter, Ava, did not score any baskets in a game. Rather, Witherspoon told her girl, “Yeah, I know. I know, that probably feels really bad. You know what also, maybe you’re not good at basketball?”
Witherspoon simply laughed that her daughter actually questioned whether her mother was allowed to talk about something she was not really good at, but the Legally Blonde actor said, “It’s actually really important to learn what you’re not good at.”
Actually, going back to the basic idea that you cannot be good at everything, we can safely agree that something The Morning Show star is really good at – acting, and it seems like parenting also.
Meanwhile, it is nice to know that another mother out there is on the same page about being completely straight with our children when things don’t end up going their way while also celebrating their wins and helping them to flourish in areas where it’s difficult to shine.
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