Camila Alves on your kids meltdowns: just laugh, theres only so much you can do
Camila Alves is raising three children with her husband, Matthew McConaughey, while running both her Women of Today website and now her organic baby/toddler food line, Yummy Spoonfuls. I’m sure her food is delicious but I have an adverse reaction to the word ‘yummy’ when used by adults. (Truth be told, I can only barely accept it from people under the age of five.) Their kids, Levi, nine, Vida, seven, and Livingston, four, are very well behaved – according to Camilla. While promoting Spoonfuls, which is sold at Target, she spoke exclusively to People about how mannered her children are in others’ homes and why that is (hint: it’s her parenting).
Camila Alves considers herself “a strict parent” who also encourages her children to have fun and respect those around them — and fortunately, those lessons are manifesting even when she isn’t around.
One specific “pride moment?” Realizing her “broken record” of teaching them right and wrong isn’t so flawed after all. “You say the same things over and over and you feel like you’re failing, and then they go to somebody’s house and [adults] come back to you saying how great they behaved, how great they are using their manners, how [respectful they are], how kind they are,” she says.
The boundaries her kids are pushing at home come with the territory of being a parent — and Livingston is at that age where meltdowns are fairly common.
“He’s in a stage that that’s all he’s doing,” she admits. “I think you see the moms in the airport or public places when it happens, and everybody gets so worried about who’s watching … the first thing that goes in my head is, ‘You were once a child — once, you did that — and if you cannot understand that, something is wrong with you. If you cannot have compassion for that, then something’s wrong with your mind.’ ”
“[My] advice for moms is [to] just smile, just laugh at it,” adds Alves. “You get to a point that there’s only so much you can do when a child is having a meltdown. You can’t stop it when you’re in the middle of a meltdown, you can’t try to interrupt them and tell them stop it because they won’t, so you have to try to get them past the meltdown.”
Personally, I avoid giving mom advice. I’m fine answering questions with stories about my family and how something worked for me but beyond that, it’s wading into swampy waters. Everything is a potential time bomb in the world of parenting and most advice is received as “what you’re doing wrong is…” I don’t agree with Camilla on the tantrum thing but I get her point. I have more trouble with her, “if you cannot understand that, something is wrong with you” part. There can be degrees of compassion in these matters. If I got gussied up to go out to dinner and spent $100 for a babysitter then a child screaming at the next table will eventually get on my nerves – especially if the parents are laughing it off.
As for her kids’ behavior at other people’s houses – bless her. I do believe her kids are well behaved – because that’s what they do. They drive you bat sh-t crazy at home, using the ketchup as finger paint and shaving the dog, only to show up at The Jones acting all spit-and-polished. It’s all a part of their plan to take over your sanity. They know you’ve been sweating their entire visit, wondering exactly how much it will cost you in reparation. They know that you have complained about them to this person on countless occasions. So, they act beautifully and your friend says they will never give you another moment of sympathy because your children are “just darling.” You know what else your kids know? Exactly which electronic item they’re going to drop in the toilet as soon as they get home. The only thing I laugh off is the person who asks why I didn’t have more.
Man, they are a pretty couple
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