Gwen Stefani couldn’t be prouder of her 17-year-old son, Kingston.
“This kid is such a good songwriter and out of nowhere,” Stefani, 54, gushed during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Wednesday, February 14. “We were like, ‘You’re lying. You didn’t write that.’”
The singer told host Jimmy Kimmel that she was “freaked out” by Kingston’s talent.
“It was really exciting and it’s weird, ’cause even last night he was playing for us and I was like, ‘Wow.’ It’s mind-blowing,” she continued. “You don’t know what your kids are going to do and then all of a sudden they find themselves, and you’re like ‘Wow.'”
Stefani shares Kingston and sons Zuma, 15, and Apollo, 9, with ex-husband Gavin Rossdale. The former couple split in 2015 after nearly 13 years of marriage and finalized their divorce the following year.
Rossdale, 58, opened up about the duo’s coparenting dynamic during a June 2023 appearance on the “Not So Hollywood” podcast.
“I think you can go one of two ways: You either do everything together and really coparent, and see how that goes, or you can just parent. And I think we just parent,” the Bush frontman said. “We’re really different people, so I don’t think there’s much similarity in the way we bring them up, but I think that gives them an incredible perspective to then choose which pieces of those two lives they’d like to inherit and move on with.”
Rossdale, who also shares daughter Daisy Lowe, 35, with ex Pearl Lowe, added that he and Stefani “have some particularly opposing views,” which he sees as beneficial to their sons’ growth.
“I think it’d be really helpful for them to make [up] their own minds — as they should — as individuals,” he said. “I think that they’re now of the age where they’re starting to appreciate which elements of either house they might take on into their adulthood [or] maybe none of it? Maybe they’ll sort of, like, become something different.”
While the exes do their own thing when it comes to parenting their sons, Stefani now has support from husband Blake Shelton, whom she wed in 2021.
Shelton, 47, talked about his role as a stepparent during a November 2023 interview with Today.
“I think it’s, in some ways, harder, more difficult. I try to be careful about when to step back and be smart about when to step back and just talk, but no matter what, I’m always there if I’m needed,” he said.
The country singer previously noted that his own stepdad provided a great blueprint for him to follow with Stefani’s boys.
“I have a stepfather in my life who’s one of my heroes,” Shelton said during a February 2021 appearance on K-FROG. “I love my stepfather and I look up to him and he’s like a father to me, so I have a good inspiration in my life for how to do this and the kind of stepdad I want to be.”
