After 21 years of parenting, Kate Hudson, 45, finally understands the power of being humble around her kids.
The Running Point star had the realization after reading the “game changer” of a parenting book, The Conscious Parent by Shefali Tsabary, which Oprah Winfrey personally recommended to her.
“Of course, I read it immediately,” Hudson told Kylie Kelcie while appearing as a guest on her Not Gonna Lie podcast on March 6.
The thing that really stood out to her, said the mom of three—sons Ryder, 21, and Bingham, 13, and daughter Rani, 6—was the idea that “our own traumas come out while raising our kids.” Being aware of that, she says, is extremely important.
The Almost Famous icon offered a recent example. “The other day, Bing and I—he’s in that teenage phase—we had that head butt moment of, I want him to do something, he refuses to do it.”
In that moment, she explained, “I got triggered. It wasn’t about him. It was about my own inability to resolve or walk away from the moment that was happening. Instead, I became competitive with my 13-year-old, which is like, ‘Where is that going to get us?’ But it happens all the time as a parent.”
It’s only when she is able to walk away from such a situation, Hudson admitted, that “you can recognize where you might have created more of a problem than you did a lesson.”
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That’s where Hudson, who called herself “a veteran mother,” got to call upon her hard-won wisdom. She knew what she had to do.
“Being able to tell your kids that you could do better, that ‘I could have handled that situation better,’ actually models much more for them than being stubborn and saying, ‘No, I can’t admit that I was wrong,’” she said. “I think that’s the biggest lesson for me—knowing when to do that.”
It’s important, she shared, “to admit you’re going to make mistakes…and to share your imperfections with your kids… To be able to say to your kids, ‘I could have handled that better, and I’m sorry, because you don’t deserve me to get that angry at you right now.’”
The ability for a parent to humble themselves in that way, she believes, will make any parent-child connection stronger.
Because “parenting is hard,” said Hudson—who credited her own parents, Goldie Hawn and Bill Hudson, for maintaining a close connection with her and her siblings, even while out in public and dealing with paparazzi.
“You are going to mess your kids up. I feel like no matter what you do and how you try to do it, it’s like you’re going to do it wrong. You’re going to make mistakes,” she told Kelce. “At some point, you’re going to do something that’s going to feel traumatizing to them that you didn’t realize felt traumatizing to them… Even in the most loving, connected, healthy, attached parental situation, you’re still going to mess up.”
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