tuesday, november 12 , 2019. the washington post eZ re C3
what he needed. His teachers, oth-
er adults, I think they just thought
his reclusiveness was part of him
being an artist. At 17, he had his first
psychotic break. He was hearing
voices and thought people were out
to get him. We w ere able to get him
into a psychiatric hospital.
You have to educate yourself.
I’ve done so many interviews, and
when I ask, “Do you know what
schizophrenia is? Do you know
what it looks like?” People don’t
know the true definition because
we don’t focus on mental health.
You can look very normal and still
be suffering.
And we have to listen. When my
son was telling me he was hearing
voices, I kept telling him the voices
weren’t real. I wish I would have
acknowledged his reality. I wish I
would have told him to stand up to
that voice, to fight it. If your kid tells
you they’re depressed, don’t say,
“oh, come on, you got this. W hat do
you have to be sad about?” We all
can suffer, and when no one be-
lieves us, that only makes us feel
alone. Don’t try to talk your child
out of their feelings.
When you h ave one s ick c hild in
the f amily, a ll the attention g oes to
that child. my daughter, Paris, has
suffered greatly because of this,
and we’re still dealing with the
repercussions. But we’re closer
than we’ve ever been. It takes all
my energy to take care of her, so I
have to ask for help. I have to be
well to focus on her now. I see a
therapist, go to support groups, I
constantly meditate. And all the
time, we talk about resilience. I
have learned to listen more and
have more empathy. I’m the fight-
er. I want get out there and do
something, but sometimes your
child just wants you to listen.Climate change:
Jonathan Safran Foer
The 4 2-year-old novelist is best
known f or his 2 002 breakout
“Everything Is Illuminated.” We
spoke while Foer was on a book
tour for “We Are the Weather:
Saving the Planet Begins at
Breakfast,” his s econd n onfiction
book focused o n animal
agriculture, our diet and our
moral obligation to do s omething
about the climate c risis. When t hetheir family. I wanted them to un-
derstand that drugs c an b e a trigger.
I talked to them in the car on the
way to school, on the way home, at
breakfast, at dinner. of course,
th ere were times when they were
like, “oh, mom, don’t worry.” But
that’s not my personality. I’m a
strong-willed person, and I just felt
that anytime was the right time.
They never thought it would
happen to them until it happened
to them. my son started smoking
weed. He’d been an active, happy
kid, an artist who played sports.
But at 14, he quit everything. He
was sleeping all the time. I had a
background in psychology, so all
the alarms went off. We took him to
doctors and therapists, but I felt
like we were fighting to get himfive years, that resiliency h as been
tested. I n 2014, her s on, Julian,
committed suicide a fter suffering
from bipolar d isorder and
schizophrenia. A nd earlier this
year, her ex-husband and “ The
Young and the Restless” actor
Kristoff St. John died of
hypertrophic heart disease. Since
Julian’s first symptoms, she’s
become a champion of mental
health reform.I started talking to my kids at a
very young age about addiction a nd
mental illness. Paris was probably
10; Julian, 12. I t old them about my
own addiction and fight to stay
sober. I told them they can’t use
drugs, smoke marijuana or drink
alcohol because addiction runs inabout sexual assault when she was
a 4-year-old, I said: “mommy
doesn’t want to scare you, but not
everybody is a good person, e ven if
they seem that w ay. It h appened t o
mommy, and I didn’t know what
to do at t he t ime. And I want you to
know. Nobody has the right to put
their hands on you — unless some-
one i s trying t o push y ou out of the
way of traffic or your shirt is on
fire.” Even when we go t o the p edi-
atrician, I’m in the room with her
and the doctor. There’s never an
occasion when our daughter is
alone with an adult. But I cannot
be with her at all times, nor do I
want to be, because then I’m not
raising a self-reliant human being.
Every September, starting with
pre-K, I’ve said — and I try to say it
in an age-appropriate way — “If
anyone touches you — whether
they are your teacher, principal,
policeman, nurse, friend of your
dad, relative of your mom, anyone
— or makes you touch them in
your privates or their privates
with t heir mouth or their hands o r
somehow makes you feel uncom-
fortable, you immediately say ‘No!’
really loudly and go and tell a
grown-up who you f eel safe w ith.”
It’s gotten to the point, just this
past September as she was start-
ing fourth grade, t hat when I say to
he r, “Now remember,” s he’ll say, “I
know mom. I know.”
I tell her: “You have to know
that as you get older, it will h appen
in more subtle ways.” We’re start-
ing to talk about puberty, and
that’s happening earlier for girls.
She’s full of questions. She has no
reluctance. She’s very bold. I’m
confident that i f she h ad any ques-
tions, she would ask me. And
there’s a point that I can’t make
enough, no matter how tired she
gets of me saying it: Even if you’re
wrong and you misunderstand
someone’s intentions, mommy
won’t be mad. I have your back.
You will not get in trouble for
standing up to an adult for doing
something that you feel is not
okay. You will not b e shamed.Mental illness: Mia St. John
A former w orld champion boxer,
the 52-year-old knows about
getting knocked d own and
bouncing b ack. But i n the p astaudience i s his two sons, 13 and
10, h owever, h e prefers t o lead b y
action, skip t he moralizing and
just let them just be kids.I’m sure my s ons started t alking
about it before I did. That’s the
incredibly s ad n ature of this crisis.
They’ve had a growing awareness
of the student movement. And
they’ve always been vegetarians.
I don’t talk about it more than
the amount that feels right. The
Post co-sponsored a poll that
found that more than half of teen-
agers are scared about climate
change. It’s one thing to offload
the responsibility, but we’ve also
been offloading the emotions of
this crisis to our children. That’s
terribly unfair. So when I do bring
it up with my k ids, I talk a bout i t in
the c ontext of w hat we c an do. I t ry
not to make them cynical about
adults or orient the conversation
toward fear but toward empower-
ment — which is not quite the
same thing as hopefulness but in-
stead determination.
I don’t think they’re actively
scared. for most people, kids and
adults, climate change feels dis-
tant. It feels geographically dis-
tant and temporally distant. It’s a
thing that will happen one day,
somewhere. The problem is that
the solutions feel distant. So it’s
my j ob to make decisions k nowing
this is s omething h appening now.
So many of the choices that
happen in a family, kids aren’t
aware of and t hey don’t need to be
aware of. If we decide to take a
train on winter break instead of a
plane, we can just have a wonder-
ful v acation without making t hem
scared to take planes because of
the c arbon impact. And they d on’t
need to judge other families who
take planes.
my s ons know I ’ve taken this on.
They understand that Dad had to
miss the first day of school because
he was doing a book t our about t he
climate. They know I am doing all
this, making sure people care
about t he f uture — their future.
The most important thing is to
model g ood behavior — not just to
say the right things, but to do the
right things, and p erhaps even say
fewer things while you’re doing
the right things. If treating the
planet well is just how your family
behaves, your kids will grow up
modeling t hat.Financial independence:
Kimora Lee Simmons
This year, the designer and m odel
retook the helm a t Baby Phat, t he
’90s fashion brand she l aunched
with ex-husband R ussell Simmons,
and s ent daughter A oki L ee off to
her f reshman y ear a t Harvard.
Aoki Lee and h er older sister M ing
Lee will b e creative directors a t
Baby Phat. Although it’s d efinitely
a family business, Simmons, 44,
isn’t about to l et her four kids ride
on her h ustle. Or as s he says, “You
can’t c heck o ff under occupation:
“Mom’s gonna cover it.”I’ve been working since I was 11.
I was getting a check for modeling
where I could: Purina, Ta rget, get-
ting paid by the hour. So there’s
always been that idea of being fis-
cally responsible. I’ve always
watched what I had and appreciat-
ed what it took to earn that money.
That turned into me paying my
bills, even paying my mom’s bills
and putting myself through col-
lege. The kids always say to me,
“mom, it’s so bad, everyone thinks
we’re so rich, but really, we’re the
broke-est ones on the block.” Good!
my oldest, ming, is in her sec-
ond year at NYU, so she’s living in
— and furnishing — an apartment.
I tell her all the time: “Stop order-
ing stuff from Bed, Bath and Be-
yond.” It must be some rite of
passage for college to buy every
plastic spatula at Bed, Bath and
Beyond! I j ust told h er: “You’re not
really living like a college student;
you’re living like you’re on ‘Sex and
the City’!” All kids need to get that
message: that mom and Dad will
be there for them, but mom and
Dad’s m oney i sn’t t heirs.
The girls do both have a plat-
form: modeling, blogging and g et-
ting sponsored on social media.
But that’s not the same kind of
working I was doing. With all the
opportunities of social media,
there are also more risks and a
different level of scrutiny. You
have to be careful where your
bread is buttered. Young girls are
willing to do anything to be Insta-
famous, and that will come and
bite you in your butt. You have to
know your own worth.
I have a very close-knit relation-
ship with all my kids and talk to
them a lot about this, even my
youngest, who is 4. I always give
them a bit of tough love. You are not
a rich kid. You were born into this
life, and anything beyond that you
have to earn. If you aren’t serving
up that humble pie to your kids
about the value of work, it’s g oing to
smack them in the face. Someone
else is going to teach i t to them, and
they’ll wish mom and Dad had told
them they weren’t a ll that.
[email protected]you to be married?” Kids will let
you know when they don’t under-
stand things — because they don’t
understand a lot of things — but
they really do understand things
more than we think. She under-
stood what happened there. Basi-
cally it’s true: They didn’t believe
the woman I was talking to could
be a member o f my f amily.
After the “This American Life”
piece aired, I realized I actually
had to do the thing I said I would:
talk about racism, not just race. I
went to the Internet and looked up
kids’ books about racism. I got a
biography about Harriet Tubman
for kids, one about martin Luther
King Jr., a picture book that men-
tions slavery and how black peo-
ple could be sold “like a sack of
potatoes.” It was a good way to get
into it, and then as a parent, I
could annotate and footnote,
knowing what my kids could han-
dle. A lot of it is making sure the
media they take in is having the
conversation and represents fami-
lies like ours. It doesn’t mean
that’s all they watch, but they’re
definitely in the rotation. I’m fa-
mously pro-“Doc mcStuffins,” but
there are plenty of shows like that
now, not as many as there should
be, b ut m ore than there used to be.
Every parent — not just parents
of color, who I feel are already talk-
ing about it — should be having a
version of this discussion: “You’re
white and here’s what that means.”
White parents need to be talking to
white kids about white privilege. my
8-year-old has the typical mixed-
girl, light brown, “Erykah Badu
would be jealous” Afro. The first
time she wore it out to her new
school, kids wanted to touch it. And
some did. Even though the kids
don’t see it as such, for me, that’s an
act of white supremacy, just think-
ing you have that access. my daugh-
ter stopped wanting to wear i t out. I
get that. I couldn’t be like, “You’re
going to wear your hair out because
you’re black and you’re proud.” But
when she did start wearing it out
again, I was like, “Yeah!”
Juno is significantly more light-
skinned. In her eyes, she’s the
same color as my wife. We have to
explain, “Yes, you’re light like
mama, however, you’re black, be-
cause Dada is black.” It’s confus-
ing. We h ave to go o ver it a lot. B ut
it basically becomes, on some lev-
el, an issue of life or death. I want
her to know that she’s connected
to the o ld black lady w ho says hello
to her on the street. It’s about
making sure she recognizes that
connection, even though she’ll
likely be in situations where peo-
ple t hink she’s w hite.
I recently went to Juno’s k inder-
garten, and they had the kids d raw
self-portraits. She colored hers
with a brown marker. okay, she’s
not that color, but what I saw was
that she was taking in all this
information and she understands
her identity is not necessarily
linked to what she looks like. mis-
sion accomplished.
Sexual assault:
p adma Lakshmi
The “ Top C hef” h ost, 4 9, d oesn’t
mince words on- or off-camera —
especially about i ssues i n which
silence h as for t oo l ong b een t he
default. D uring t he Brett M.
Kavanaugh Supreme Court
hearings last y ear, she wrote a n op-
ed about being r aped at age 16 and
keeping s ilent about it. In t he piece,
and since, she’s e mphasized that
her most c rucial audience m ember
was h er 9-year-old daughter,
Krishna, to w hom s he’s determined
to give the strength, conviction a nd
voice to s ay what she couldn’t.
I took the position very early in
Krishna’s development to talk to
her a bout sexual assault a nd s exu-
al molestation, even as she was
going to preschool. At that time,
there were p eople who questioned
my decision because they love
Krishna. I understand that reluc-
tance. It is something that’s sinis-
ter and not on their radar. I want
my daughter to fend for herself
when a family member i sn’t t here.
I’m someone who found myself in
a sticky situation and didn’t have
the w ords or knowledge t o protect
myself. S o while I do want t o shield
my daughter from knowing about
all the a trocities in t he w orld e arli-
er than she needs to, I prefer to
arm her. If there’s a choice be-
tween shielding or arming her, I
choose to a rm her.
As a child, you don’t even have
the language; it’s not even in your
consciousness until it happens.
You’re so used to adults picking
you up, carrying you to bed when
you’re tired, telling you when to
eat. You’re taught to just be quiet
and put up with it. You have so
little control. That’s been my goal
with Krishna: to instill a sense of
possessiveness of her body, of full
dominion. And by the way, it hap-
pens to boys, too, so regardless of
gender, I want to underscore that
children have to know that their
bodies a re t heir own.
When I first explained to her
parenting from C1
How celebrity parents t alk to kids about di∞cult subjects
illustrations by Josée bisaillon for the Washington Post