Life Is Not a Reality Show

by Kyle Richards

  I always wanted a traditional upbringing for my children, and that’s why they’re not actors. They don’t want to be actors. No, I want a family sitting down together at dinner every night. Well, almost every night. Mauricio and I get a lot of invitations, but we have a rule: we have to be home more nights than we’re out. So in a crazy-busy week that would be three nights out, tops. I believe children need their parents’ presence.

  Here in Beverly Hills, a lot of women let nannies raise the children and the drivers take the kids everywhere. There’s too much of that, and it’s very sad to me. Even outside of Beverly Hills, I’ve noticed some moms make their social life a priority and leave their kids with babysitters or their older children. Children crave your attention. They soak it up like a sponge.

  If there’s one overall piece of advice I could give to parents, it’s this: be there. Simply be there with your children and for your children as much as you can. You get out of your children what you put into them.

  I see my children as such an incredible gift. They’re my favorite people in the world to spend time with and I don’t want to miss a moment. With my crazy schedule, I’m always scared that I will, especially with the baby. I’m so fortunate to be doing a reality show, because it allows her to be with me while I work.

  * * *

  My Mom Suggestions

  These are the things I believe and try to do to raise good, happy children—and not go completely bonkers in the process!

  » Physically be there for your kids.

  » Treasure each moment you have with them.

  » You’re the all-powerful mom, so take charge and don’t let others take over!

  » Teach your kids as much as you can.

  » Give your kids a spiritual or ethical grounding.

  » Punish without getting physical.

  » Build confidence by letting them talk and hearing them out.

  » Make them mind their manners.

  » Use positive reinforcement!!!

  » Resort to scare tactics if necessary.

  » Make sure your child has time to be a child—and save yourself some drive time too. Ha!

  » Delegate.

  » Make things easier for yourself and have people come to you.

  » Create boundaries for your children.

  » Learn to say no to things that aren’t really important.

  » Accept that you’re not perfect, and give yourself a break!

  » Respect your children. They will respect you in return.

  * * *

  One reason that I like to do things for myself, like my hair and nails, is that I really don’t want to leave my children for several hours. By the time I go to a salon and get my hair washed, done, and come back, four hours have gone by and I’ve just lost a huge chunk of time with my kids.

  I admit that I might be a little extreme about not leaving my children. I’ve never let them go away for more than a few days for a school trip. It’s very hard for me to be apart from them; I have separation anxiety. I feel so much for women who have to go to work and don’t have a choice; they have to spend a big part of their day away from their children. They work so hard and then come home and have to do the laundry and the cooking and make a house look nice. I admire their hard work so much, and I feel they don’t get enough credit for it. I just love that about women—being able to do it all. I dare any man to try to keep up with us! Ha-ha!

  I do have a housekeeper, as I’ve mentioned. And it’s wonderful to have her help. But just because there’s someone there to do things for me doesn’t mean she should be doing everything for me—especially when it comes to the kids.

  For example, I learned the hard way that I have to pack my kids’ lunches myself. My mom always told me, “Honey, if you’re lucky enough to have a housekeeper, never let her make your kids’ lunch. You need to be in charge of what they’re being fed.” Okay, so for a long time I never let the housekeeper pack the lunches.

  Then one morning—during the time my mom was ill and I was feeling overwhelmed—I came downstairs and the housekeeper had already packed up the kids’ snacks for the day, because she wanted to be helpful. I was wary, but I checked inside the bags, and thought, Oh, she’s packed exactly what I would have! She kept making the snacks every morning and I’d check and, yep, she was doing it right. So what’s the big deal then, I thought—even though I’d hear my mother’s voice in my head saying, Always do it yourself!

  Then one day when I dropped Sophia off at her preschool the teacher pulled me aside. She said, “Um, I think you need to reconsider Sophia’s snack—the Weight Watchers bars are really not a good idea!”

  Oh my God! I was mortified! I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry! That’s when I realized what my mom was talking about. I thought the same things were going into the bag that I would have put in there, but no. From that day on, I made sure I was the only one packing my daughters’ lunches and snacks. I’m the one who knows what’s healthy for them and which things they actually like so they are less likely to trade with their friends at school—although they still trade anyway. When I find unfamiliar things in their lunch bags, I ask, “Where did this come from?” and they tell me, “Oh, I traded.”

  * * *

  What’s to Eat?

  I strive to teach my girls the same philosophies about food that I maintain for myself: try to make good choices and eat as healthily as possible. If you want to have a little something that’s not so healthy, fine. But be aware of what you put in your body, because it affects your health, your hair, your skin, everything.

  I try not to make a big deal about what my kids should or shouldn’t eat, though, because I do have girls, and there’s so much subliminal pressure in our society for them to be thin, which I don’t want to add to. Sure, eat wisely, but don’t keep talking about it. Just make it a way of life.

  Parents are in control of what goes in the refrigerator. You do the shopping. So unless they’re out with their friends, when they’re going to grab what they want, you control what goes in their mouths.

  I like to have a ton of fruits and vegetables in the fridge, along with yogurts and cheeses. And I often make pretty healthy dinners like grilled salmon and veggies. I do get requests for fun stuff, and usually I will get it, because I don’t want the kids to rebel. And there’s always chocolate around our house—not just for the kids!

  With Farrah I always used to go to the health food store and buy healthier versions of sugary cereal. Instead of Froot Loops, for example, I might get Fruity O’s. And that was fine with Farrah, because that’s all she knew. I could get away with it. But once you start having more kids and they hear from their friends, “Hey, this isn’t Froot Loops!” you’re busted—they want the real thing.

  Still, I am trying something else right now. I buy the Fruity O’s at the health food store but put them in Froot Loops box. So far it’s working—we’ll see. Shh!

  * * *

  “I picked these things according to what you asked for and you still traded?” It drives me nuts! I don’t have any advice for that, but if you have any tips for me, let me know! Ha-ha!

  The point is, you’re the mom. You know best, so make sure you’re in charge!

  My mother definitely knew best about most things, though as you can see I didn’t always accept it at first. My mom was always trying to teach me something. Every time she opened her mouth, there was a lesson. When I was young, I thought, God, my mom is annoying, always trying to tell me things all the time! But then as you get older, you realize that if you as the mother aren’t going to tell your kids these things, who will?

  That goes not just for the big life lessons but small things too. Every time my mom cooked, she’d say, “Clean up as you go along.” I mean, she said that till the day she died. I used to think, Why does she have to say that all the time? What does she care? And now whenever I’m in the kitchen and everything’s piling up around me I hear her voice and think, Yes, now I know why she said that!
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  TV Time

  It may sound strange coming from someone who appears on a TV show, and in fact first appeared on a TV show when she was five years old—but I don’t like my kids watching too much television.

  It’s very easy to use television as a babysitter, and believe me, I know it’s a good babysitter! There are definitely times when I pop in a video if I want to keep Portia distracted. It is, on occasion, unavoidable! But I really don’t like to do that too much.

  My kids have restricted television viewing. They’re only allowed to have certain channels on the TVs in their rooms, and Portia doesn’t have a TV at all and won’t for awhile. I’d rather they be reading books than watching TV. Portia loves books, and I’d much rather be reading to her than zonking her out with a video. I realize some kids take to reading more than others.

  Television can be okay. Some channels can be educational and can truly help a child learn their ABCs or even life skills. I don’t think you should forbid TV entirely. But I am very strict about my kids not watching anything that is R-rated or remotely questionable in its suitability for kids.

  I’m dating myself here, but I will never forget the brown cable box in my house when I was a kid and the Z channel at the very end of the lineup. I knew that when my mom left the house, I could watch Emmanuelle, or whatever racy stuff was on in those days. I do not want my daughters seeing that. Kids grow up too fast today, and I want to keep mine as young as possible for as long as possible.

  I don’t let my kids watch MTV either. What about these teenagers who become pregnant? I guess those shows are supposed to serve as cautionary tales, but when the teen moms end up being glorified on the covers of magazines, that’s not a cautionary tale. I don’t even want those ideas in my daughters’ heads.

  For certain shows I’ll use my oldest daughter as a gauge. I said to Farrah once, for example, “Alexia really wants to watch Gossip Girl. What do you think? Because I don’t watch the show.”

  Farrah said, “Absolutely not!” For other things, she might say I’m being a little too neurotic, so I’ll be more open to thinking about it. But she’s young and hip, so if she says no Gossip Girl, it’s no Gossip Girl!

  One TV show the girls have absolutely no interest in watching is Little House on the Prairie. Because the show is still in syndication I get residual checks for it. But some of them are so small—like 99 cents! Occasionally I’ll catch Little House reruns on TV. It brings back a lot of good childhood memories.

  I’ve tried and tried to get my kids to watch, but they couldn’t care less. I would think they’d want to see me when I was little, but apparently not. They’re bored by that kind of entertainment, as I think their whole generation is, which really saddens me. But I suppose when you go to school the next day and everyone is talking about Gossip Girl, what are you going to be talking about—Laura Ingalls? My girls may not get to watch Gossip Girl but they’re not exactly TiVo-ing Little House on the Prairie either! I guess they don’t want to be the nerds of the group.

  My other show—Real Housewives—is another story. That I’d prefer they not watch—at least Portia, unless it’s just light, fun stuff. It’s funny because I was away and I guess my husband and one of the girls let Portia watch part of the dinner-party-from-hell episode—the one I mentioned before, when I got into an argument with the psychic.

  A few days or so after I returned from my trip, I was sitting with Farrah and Portia, and Portia said, “Let’s play a game!”

  “Alright, go ahead, you start,” I said.

  Portia said, “Does Mommy have two legs?”

  Farrah and I looked at each other like, “What?” and then I remembered during that dinner-party episode, the psychic had said to my friend Faye, “You had two legs last time we checked. Why don’t you use them!” Ha-ha! That’s where it came from. That’s when I figured out someone let her watch the show!

  In that same episode Faye said to the psychic, “Is that what you do? Is that what you do?” I don’t even remember what she was referring to. So one day Portia turned to her sister and said, “Is that what you do?” We all fell over laughing. But I thought, Oh my God, what have I done!

  To tell you the truth, I really think my daughters see the person on Real Housewives as somebody else, and they see me as Mommy. The personality in me that comes out on the show does not come out like that all the time with my family.

  One day I was getting ready and I looked in the mirror, and as I told you earlier, I usually have my hair in a ponytail or a clip, with no makeup on. I took my hair down and Portia said to me, “Oh, you look like Kyle Richards right now!” Which is so funny to me! She doesn’t think of me as Kyle Richards. I’m just Mommy.

  Speaking of that stressful, and kind of embarrassing, dinner-party episode (embarrassing because I was so outspoken in it)—a lot of people assume the show is scripted. You have no idea how many times I’ve thought, I should just start lying and say, “Yes, they made me say that!” I would love to blame a script for what I said in that episode. Ha-ha!

  * * *

  Even after I grew up, my mom had plenty to teach me. She came to my house once before she passed away and said, “Honey, when was the last time you cleaned the chandelier?”

  I said, “Um, well … I didn’t know you were supposed to! How do you even do it?” She wanted to teach me as much as possible before she left. She said, “It’s not fair. You’re too young for me to be leaving already.”

  I want to teach my kids everything I can while I can. Parents have so much knowledge that they can pass on to their children to improve their lives. Even trivial things. Just this morning I was in the shower and realized I’d never told my girls to brush their hair before they get in the shower, to take all those loose hairs that come out into the brush and throw them in the trash so they don’t clog up the drain. Plus it’s good for their hair. So I called the girls together and told them. They just kind of stood there with blank stares, probably thinking the same thing I did about my mom: how annoying! But they’re going to look back and realize why I do those things.

  Share your knowledge with your kids. Feed them lessons all the time. One day they’ll thank you for it!

  That goes double, even triple for the values you impart to your children—the biggie lessons. What we’re all concerned with as parents is giving our kids the fundamental principles and ethics to grow into mature, well-functioning adults who can take life on and win. A solid foundation is the most valuable thing you can provide for your children, and if you raise your kids right, they will definitely appreciate it—eventually, at least!

  In fact, right at the top of my values list is appreciation, along with gratitude. I always say to the kids, “Your dad works really hard to enable us to have the things we have. We’re very fortunate, because there are people who are literally worried about where there next meal is coming from.”

  Now they’re seeing me work hard too. I’ve continued acting on and off since starting my family, but now I’m very busy with Real Housewives. Even though I’m on a reality show about my life, it’s very time-consuming. I want my daughters to understand that all the material stuff doesn’t just come to you automatically. It certainly didn’t for us.

  I tell my daughters I hope to God they go to college and become successful on their own and marry someone successful, but they don’t know what the future holds. I just try to impress upon them that they have to work hard to get things, and that they should never, ever take what they have for granted.

  But material goods are not the be-all and end-all of life, either, and Mauricio and I are determined that our kids understand that too. I don’t want them to think that this is it—you get an education, you work and get money, and that’s it. They’ve got to feel there’s more to life than this. That’s one reason we’ve made spirituality a priority for our family and particularly for our kids.

  Sometimes I get tired of all the superficiality of this Beverly Hills culture and think, I go
tta get my kids outta here. I suppose there are problems everywhere; you hear about kids in small towns getting bored and taking drugs. But you have to work extra hard in this environment to teach kids meaningful values. I have my daughters in a religious school because I think it helps remind them that there is a higher power and that there are higher principles to strive for in life.

  No matter your religion, or whether you even subscribe to any religion, I believe it’s crucial to expose your kids to the meaning of life beyond material possessions. A firm ethical grounding gives them strength for coping with their lives and moral courage to be a good and kind person—which is what you want, right?

  As you can tell, some of my child-raising philosophies are rooted in what you might call old-fashioned notions, you know, about religion and tradition. But when it comes to discipline, I’m not so old-fashioned. I do not believe in spanking. Not at all. You see kids biting or pinching or hitting another child and then the parents spank them as punishment. What kind of mixed message does that send? Violence is not good, so now I’m going to spank you? To me, it’s unnecessary and creates resentment in your child. My kids think the scariest thing they’ve ever seen is when I raise my voice. Then they know I’m mad. I don’t need to hit them!

  It is true that my husband and I, now and then, do fall into the trap of wanting to be the nice guy and the nice mom and have a hard time saying no. We do say no adamantly to certain things, but only if they’re truly important to us. Do we spoil our kids? No, I don’t think so, unless you mean spoil them with love. I don’t ever think you can spoil your kids with too much love!

  For example, sometimes one of my daughters will say, “Mom, I’m not feeling good. I’m really tired. Can I go to school late?” Sure. I see no problem with that. I try to be open-minded and understanding. I try to respect my children, and hopefully in return they’ll respect me too.