After tying the knot, Gwyneth became a stepmom to Brad’s teenage children, Isabella and Brody.
The couple tried to be sensitive to their children’s needs while blending their families, even living separately for a year in order to make it a smooth transition for their kids.
But looking back, Gwyneth says she wishes she hadn’t been so hesitant when it came to certain parts of her role as a stepmom.
“There’s just no playbook for how to do it,” Gwyneth explained on a recent episode of the Goop podcast.
She continued, “I think there’s this like archetypal evil stepmother and this inference it’s going to be this fraught thing, so I came into it on tender hooks like, ‘Oh my gosh, you can only kind of do the wrong thing.'”
Gwyneth says her “one regret” is the “trepidation” she felt, noting that when she finally found her voice, it “shifted everything.”
“However many years ago I was like, ‘Fuck it, these are my kids. I love them. I’m not gonna, like, be scared to discipline them,'” Gwyneth shared.
She continued, “If someone asked me for advice on it, I would just say from day one, just really treat them as your kid.”
For her, she says she just wishes she “had done that earlier.”
You can listen to all that Gwyneth had to say here.
