Welcome to So Mini Ways, Yahoo Life’s parenting sequence on the fun and challenges of childrearing.
Strictly talking, Matthew McConaughey is a father of three. Ask the Oscar winner what number of kids he and spouse Camila Alves McConaughey have, nevertheless, and you will get a distinct response.
“We’ve got Levi, Vida and Livingston as our three children that Camila and I created and Camila bore,” he says in his trademark Texas drawl. “But we’ve got four children in the house — and one of ’em is 91. That’s Mama Kay. That’s my mom.”
For the previous 4 years, McConaughey’s mom has been residing with the Dazed and Confused star — who goes by “Papai,” the Portuguese phrase for “dad,” in a nod to Camila’s Brazilian roots — and his household. (“And I suppose she’s gonna be with us ’til she moves on from this life,” he muses.) The expertise, he says, has been “really wonderful,” with Camila involving her mother-in-law in her work and on-line content material. That’s helped the McConaughey matriarch really feel “needed” and “in the game a little bit.” Her grandchildren, in the meantime, are getting a “wonderful, wonderful, wonderful lesson” in regards to the significance of taking care of your elders.
“They’ve got their grandmother living in the house. And they’ve got their own relationships each with her; they have their own arguments each with her,” he says. “Her politics can be different than ours, and we all just discuss it and have it out loud. …. It’s fun.”
Following the 2020 launch of his New York Times-bestselling memoir Greenlights, McConaughey has discovered a means to join with youthful readers. Publishing Sept. 12, his image guide Just Because guides kids via life classes introduced to life by way of playful illustrations by Renée Kurilla and the actor’s famously folksy model. “It was a Bob Dylan folk song in my head,” he says of the singsongy tone within the guide, which was impressed by conversations with associates in regards to the significance of speaking with kids as they hit their teenagers and past.
“Being a father is the one thing I always knew I wanted to be,” says McConaughey, who notes that he wrote most of the guide between the hours of 2:30 and seven a.m. whereas staying up late one evening. “Camila and I work every day to try to be the best parents we can be, and kids are on my mind a lot. And as they grow, the moral bottom line needs to be the same, but your style has to change.”
Many of the teachings — “Just because they don’t hear you, doesn’t mean you have no voice” is one — emphasize that issues typically aren’t black and white. What seems to be like a failure could be was a energy; compromise and respect could be discovered even when two individuals — like his kids and their grandma, maybe — disagree.
One message that significantly stands proud to McConaughey is “just because you’re wailing doesn’t mean that you’re a crier, and just because I lied doesn’t mean that I’m a liar.” Growing up, he had a sterner view of mendacity: To bend the reality even as soon as was to be branded, and condemned, as a “liar” — one thing that almost all relationships cannot bounce again from. He’s come to notice, and educate his kids, that as an alternative of labeling somebody and attacking their character, it is higher to name out the lie itself and have a significant dialog that hopefully rights some wrongs and repairs the friendship.
McConaughey has a larger-than-life persona, however what’s it like with having Mr. “Alright, Alright, Alright” as a dad? The star says that he and Camila are up entrance with their kids in regards to the perks, and value, that include having two dad and mom within the public eye.
“We’ve had the days where they come home from school and someone’s said, ‘Oh, I bet you live like this, blah, blah, blah ’cause your mom and dad are so-and-so,'” McConaughey says. “And they felt like, you know, they’re under our name.”
McConaughey places it to them plainly. “We tell them, ‘Look, we live a very fortunate life. We live a privileged life,'” he continues. “‘But your mom and I have worked hard to be good at our crafts to get to where we are. And we’re not apologizing for that. And don’t you ever apologize for that and never lower your head because of that. Yes, you are a McConaughey. Will that open some doors for you in life that maybe aren’t open for everybody? You know what, it probably will. But once you get in that door, you don’t rely on just a name. You have to make it for yourself. Your mom and I have made this for ourselves. That doesn’t mean the whole family, you’re all in. No — you’ve gotta go make it on your own.'”
Character, he provides, is paramount. He and Camila need their kids to know who they’re and to “not ever feel entitled by an accolade or something that your last name may lead people to treat you with.” They additionally warn their kids to look out for individuals who “befriend you just because of your affiliation and your last name.”
“‘Do they really like you, or do they just kind of want to be around you?'” McConaughey tells his kids. “You know, you’re gonna have to measure that, and that’s just part of your lot in life. That’s just how you’re gonna have to navigate forward, and let’s talk about it. But if you live up to your name — and our family and the character that we’re trying to teach you to be — it’s gonna be an asset in life … but it doesn’t mean going forward with any kind of entitlement.”
These reminders have resurfaced forward of the latest resolution to let 15-year-old Levi be part of Instagram.
“We’ve had talks for years going, ‘OK, you understand you’re gonna have a lot of followers and a lot of people that will come in really liking you because of your last name. You’ll also have people that are gonna come at you irresponsibly, without any real reason to, because of your last name,'” the actor shares.
Like so much of dad and mom, McConaughey sees social media as an enormous parenting problem.
“They’re getting so much more frequency of information and opinions, and valid or not valid, in life,” he says. “It’s so much information to try and process. How can we help them decide what’s important and what’s not? It’s really tough.
“We now have an age that we dwell in the place you create one thing, you export it, you set it out and you then wait to see what everybody thought,” he continues. “And if you happen to get so much of proverbial thumbs up, these kids exit and have a very good day. If they put out the identical product and also you get so much of thumbs down, these kids go off and have a foul day. … How can we not let what different individuals supposedly assume — despite the fact that some of ’em might not have even actually considered it, they possibly simply did not such as you and mentioned ‘enhh’ — how do you not let that have an effect on who you might be? And half of the primary half was admitting that it does have an effect on you. And I talked to them about it. I mentioned like, ‘Guys, a very good evaluate feels higher than a foul evaluate of a film I do.’ It simply does. I learn a very good evaluate, and I’m like, ‘Yeah, that individual knew what they have been speaking about.’ I learn a foul evaluate and I’m like, ‘Oh man, come on.’
“So I said, ‘I’m 53. I’m your dad. I’m a successful parent. I’m doing alright in life and it still affects me. So let’s admit that it will affect you … and then navigate and make the right choice and say, but what should I listen to out there in the world that really affects how I feel about myself’? Because this is that time where children are really finding their identity — who they are and who they’re not. And understanding who you’re not is a lot easier than for knowing who you are.”
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