Knocked Up Celebs

Kirstie Alley is premiering her new show soon, Kirstie’s Big Life, where she deals with her weight battle publicly. She recently talked to Babble about her parenting philosophy and her biggest challenge as a mom to daughter Lillie, 15 and son, True, 17. Here are the highlights:

On her parenting philosophy: To do whatever I have to do to support my children. It’s 100% my responsibility to [release] them into the world with as much knowledge and survival tactics as I possibly can. Also — and maybe this came from being an older mother — just love them! No matter what they do, love them but don’t spoil them and make them into brats — that does them a great disservice. [My kids] aren’t going to be entitled or get anything they want in life; they’re going to earn it.

On the best advice her parent’s gave her: My dad said, “Buy everything in cash and don’t lie.” At first I said, “Don’t lie? This guy’s nuts. That’s not going to make a difference.” [But] it does.

On her biggest challenge as parent: It hasn’t been particularly challenging. That’s probably where scientology helps a family, because as scientologists we’re taught that you are responsible for what’s going on in your life. And that’s great because kids — especially teenagers — have secrets that they don’t feel like they can tell you. In scientology, we learn to make a space safe for our kids to tell us anything so that the kid knows that he’s not going to get nailed when he tells you. If the kid doesn’t [feel safe], they’ll just draw away from you. So with my kids, sooner or later they’ll come to me and say, “I smoked a cigarette or I did this…” And I have to bite my tongue and say, “Okay, I’m glad you told me that” because I am. It keeps you close. So challenge-wise, sometimes my son is a little too brutally honest and it’s too much information, but I’d rather have that than the opposite.

On being close to John Travolta and Kelly Preston: John’s like he’s my husband, [especially] with financial affairs. He’ll call me out of the blue and say, “How much do you have in your savings account? If you didn’t work for three years, what would you do?” He’s my sounding board.

[Image by PNP/WENN.com]

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