Dedicated to her darlings! Madonna does everything she can to keep her kids happy.
The Grammy winner, 61, opened up about moving to Lisbon, Portugal, in 2017 as a “soccer mom” at her Thursday, September 26, concert at Brooklyn Academy of Music.
In July 2018, the English Roses author opened up about her decision to relocate for her son David’s soccer skills, telling Vogue Italia, “Any woman who is a soccer mom could say it kind of requires you to have no life in a way, because things change from week to week and games change from weekend to weekend — sometimes they’re in the city, sometimes they’re not, and we would never know until Thursday night whether they’re on Saturday or Sunday, if at 12 or later.”
She went on to say, “It’s impossible to make plans, and then you feel like you’re not being fair to your other kids, or being fair to me!”
Madonna, who adopted David, 14, in 2006, also welcomed Mercy, 13, and twins Estere and Stelle, 7, to the family. They joined Lourdes, 22, and Rocco, 19, who the Michigan native shares with her ex Guy Ritchie.
Her youngest three children danced onstage at their mom’s Thursday concert, rocking out to “Human Nature,” “Crave” and “Like a Prayer.” Mercy, Estere and Stella’s older sister Lourdes made an appearance as well, dancing in a video projected onto the stage to “Frozen” in a sequined black leotard that showed off the Mercy tattoo on her upper inner arm.
When not dancing with their famous mom, the family is transitioning well to life in Lisbon, the “Like a Virgin” singer said. “What’s amazing is how resilient they are and how they embraced all things, especially music, dance, soccer and sports — things that connect them to other people makes adaptation easier,” Madonna explained to Vogue Italia. “They learned to speak Portuguese through doing all those things with people, not by sitting in a classroom and learning in a didactic way, like writing on a chalkboard. Instead, it’s fun, it’s interactive.”
She’s trying to keep the youngest members of her brood from owning phones since she lost Lourdes and Rocco to their cells. “I made a mistake when I gave my older children phones when they were 13,” she told British Vogue in June. “It ended my relationship with them, really. Not completely, but it became a very, very big part of their lives. They became too inundated with imagery and started to compare themselves to other people, and that’s really bad for self-growth.”
With reporting by Gina Bacchiocchi
