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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LOL both my boys – perfect angels at the homes of others. They saved the terrorizing for me, especially my youngest. I just theorize that’s where they feel safest and more comfortable melting down. Lucky me! LOL
Exactly, I read that somewhere that they let all of their emotions out around you because they trust and are most comfortable around you.
As for the laughing a tantrum off I do it all day long at home. Out in public it’s different. I will try and stop it and if that doesn’t work we’re outta there. If someone has brought their child to a fancy restaurant and they misbehave and the parents laugh? Aren’t those the only kinds of parents that bring their terrible kids to a fancy restaurant? The kind that laugh off bad behavior? There are people that have well behaved kids and they take them nice places but I bet they behave well and if they don’t it’s not tolerated. It’s the people who don’t want to parent their kids that will bring them there and then just laugh when the child misbehaves and disrupts everyone else. It’s called common curtesy but I feel like that too is going by the wayside these days.
I used to pretend my daughter was Invisible when she had a meltdown, I would say, ‘where did she go?’ I can’t see her, She was just here a minute ago? and I would proceed to look all over for her, she would pull on my pants and I would still act like she was invisible, then she would not like that so she would say Here I am ! and if she was calm then I would say, Oh There you are ! It worked every time. She didn’t like being Invisible.
Omg, I’m glad I’m not the only one that has a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Yeah, it’s called “company manners.”
Yup. My 4 year old too. Very different outside and at home. In school when we’re waiting for class to start we’re always early coz he doesn’t want to be late anyway while waiting he will sit beside me quietly and won’t run around like the others but if he’s home he can’t stop jumping and running around
She sounds like someone whose parenting philosophies I agree with.
Also I was once told I looked like her after I posted my pic on a fashion forum, I had no idea who she was back then but the google image search result showed it was a very definite compliment (I guess I’m bragging even though she’s much more beautiful than I’ll ever be)
“…’You were once a child — once, you did that….”
Um, my good woman, I most certainly did not do that or I would’ve been slapped into ancient times and left there; as such, I agree with Hecate’s example of getting dressed and going to go trouble of going somewhere nice and a set of parents next to me is laughing off their child screaming like a banshee, I would be annoyed to say the least.
I have three boys, with plenty of years between each. I discovered I had to handle each meltdown separately on a case-by-case basis. Yeah, sure there was public me and private me, but it was hard because I wear my emotions on my sleeves lol. They knew, however, that public meltdowns would result in leaving restaurants, theaters, grocery stores…wherever. Even if I had a full cart which included goodies for them, they pull some kind of tantrum on me, we were o.u.t. I certainly wouldn’t stand or sit there and ‘laugh it off.’ It got handled and handled post haste.
Jesus…”Livingston”? I don’t think I could say that name with a straight face. It’s as bad as Gwen Stefani naming her kid “Kingston.”
Nowhere in the excerpt did she say anything about laughing it off in a fancy restaurant or the like; she said, “…airport or other public places”. Hecate is the one who made the leap from an airport meltdown to an expensive restaurant somehow (??). Stop shaming this woman for pointing out that kids have meltdowns and you can’t reason with a toddler, simply because Hecate exaggerated the scenario.