Jessica Alba has been attending therapy sessions with her oldest child, 13-year old Honor, for two years, she shared recently.
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The actress and founder of The Honest Company revealed that she and her daughter go to therapy together to work through communication barriers, reports People.
In a frank conversation on Katherine Schwarzenegger Pratt’s Instagram series about parenting, “Before, During & After Baby,” the 40-year old shared that she thinks that the modern form of parenting allows children “to be seen and heard as individuals, basically as soon as they start having any kind of consciousness or thoughts or opinions.”
Alba continued, noting that “it starts early. I take the approach of making sure that they understand boundaries and respect, but trying to see them each individually and meet them where they are.”
Going to therapy with Honor was a response to her own childhood, shared the mother of three.
“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 she really felt empowered to find her voice,” she said.
Alba also noted that one of her struggles as a mother is in not treating her oldest like a small child. “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.”
One of the topics the pair has explored in their therapy sessions is how Honor wants her mom parent her, down to how she feels would be the best form of punishment if she makes mistakes, saying things like “when you need 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,” shared Alba.
The teen has also requested that Alba not group her and her sister, 9-year old Haven, together. “‘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. But you can't mush us together.’ I have to say, I kind of still struggle with that,” admitted the actress.
Lately, Alba has been trying to schedule one-on-one time with her children where they get to choose what they do together.
“Then they’re looking forward to it, because I’m like ‘I do spend time with them, I don’t have my phone, I’m doing whatever it is they want to do,’ but they don’t necessarily feel that it’s special time,” she said. “So it’s not just doing the ‘well, we ate dinner together and we did homework together and going through the motions of day-to-day,’ but we’re going to carve out thirty minutes where we’re going to do whatever you want.”
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