Jessica Alba highly recommends going to therapy with your children.
During a Tuesday, January 9, interview with Real Simple, Alba, 42, recalled the moment she decided to try a joint session with her eldest daughter, Honor, now 15.
“Honor was probably 11, and we were arguing all the time about dumb stuff. And I was like, ‘I don’t want to live like this. This is not fun,’” the actress explained. “I didn’t want us to have a wedge between us. As her mother, when I say something, she’s going to hear it as an argument or as me trying to control her. I wanted there to be someone who could explain things in a way I couldn’t.”
Alba admitted that hearing Honor’s perspective in a therapy setting “put [her] in check.”
She continued: “[It was] like, ‘Yeah, I totally do that. And I’m sorry. I’m going to work on that.’ It gave her a little bit of perspective too. That I’m not the bad guy, I’m just being a parent. She’ll come out the other side of it, and I’ll still be here.”
In addition to helping Alba and Honor better understand each other’s point of view, therapy also showed Alba that their dynamic was normal.
“The therapist allowed me to see that it’s natural for kids to disagree with their parents, and as a parent it’s not always about being right or rational in that moment,” she said.
Alba shares Honor, daughter Haven, 12, and son Hayes, 6, with husband Cash Warren, whom she married in 2008. She previously opened up about going to therapy with both Honor and Haven during a July 2022 interview with Glamour UK.
“Around puberty is when it’s the time I think, for me, with my girls,” she said at the time. “That’s when they started to sort of shut down and get really like, ‘I don’t want to talk any more.’ And I’m like, ‘We’re not doing this. We’ve got to keep a line of communication here. How can I be a better parent to you? How do you want me to talk to you? Don’t shut me out.’”
Alba noted that a therapist is able to be “really objective” and help to “create a safe space for your kid to really candidly tell you what’s not working about your parenting.”
The Honest Company cofounder also goes to therapy solo.
“I go to therapy so I can be kinder toward people I don’t always agree with, because I want to be happy,” Alba told Real Simple. “I still want to coexist, and I don’t want to live angry, irritated or upset with people who don’t think like me. I want to be able to live in harmony with all.”
