American Beauty Brooke Shields Keeps It Real About Family-by Debra Lewis-Boothman

American actress, model and former child star  Brooke Shields get “REAL” in her new memoir  Brooke Shields There Was a Little Girl . Yup, I  said it. Brookie baby is the real deal. She’s a mom  who’s  not into  flooding her  children’s heads with too much adult centered family chit-chat  their  little ears don’t need to hear just yet. And I agree with her. Why  does a 6 year-old need to know all the family business anyways?  As  Brooke states once you  don’t  lie  to your kids   why does it concern them to know every little detail of family affairs that are beyond their years.  

  So  do they know what she wrote about in this memoir? “My kids were only interested to know if they were in the book or not,”  she states. “It is funny,  my youngest was like ‘you know mom, I’ve got to read it but I don’t think I want to read it now.'” Adds the actress, “They would be bored out of their minds.  They don’t want to read this!” Plus she states, “I feel that we give our kids all this information. I am like, just don’t lie.”   As  Brooke sees it, “Kids, they can’t handle it.” And boy does she knows whats she’s talking about. “My oldest is eleven  and I will talk to her about things and what she wants to talk about but it’s not as if she can handle all the information,” says the mom of two girls.

 Shields admits that she was  dependent  on her late mom Teri who died in 2012 as much as Teri was dependent on her. “I had such an enmeshed relationship with my mother that  it was really hard for me to spend nights away at someone’s  house and it is not  because  she didn’t want me to. It was because I didn’t want to,”  the actress  shared with mom bloggers on Nov 17 at a luncheon  co-hosted by  Denise Albert and Melissa Musen Gerstein co-creators of  the MOMS brand and  Mamarazzi events.  Adds Shields, “I wanted to be with her and attached to her constantly.”  

But letting go  has  allowed  her to be a different parent  from  mom Teri, a Newark, NJ native whose hard parenting and tough love has  had a direct effect on  her experiences as a mom .Experiences,  shaped and influenced predominantly by  an  alcoholic mum she adored. “I am making them[my daughters] feel as safe as they possibly can to not need me 24/7,” she says . “That hurts me much more than it hurts them because a  part of me wants them to look at me exactly the way that I looked at my mother .”  Adds the 49 year old mom, “I have spent all of these years  trying for that not to happen, just so that they can feel safe in their own skin.”

With her eldest daughter Shields says  she finds herself battling feelings of  competitevness . “She has my husband wrapped around her fingers,” says Shields of her 11-year old daddy’s little girl.  “I find myself  jealous of my 11 year-old because she gets his attention and there is an interesting way she can get  him to get her anything she wants.” Adds Shields laughingly,  “I have been through enough therapy to not be threatened by this but  it is really interesting when you watch how this little person does her thing. I don’t know what it is but I watched her work it and  she got a [cell] phone out of it.” Says the actress,  “I wanted to castrate him [ husband]. I was so over it.”

Through it all Shields says finding the courage  to write the book  was easy . “I have written diaries all my life so  I went back to my diaries from 1974 . ” Plus she adds, “It’s very familiar for me  to have my life be known for so many decades, so you get to know how to navigate it.  I didn’t feel vulnerable because I  felt it is my life and  I have a right to tell it in my own words. “

At the end of the day says  Shields   she was ” able to be honest about everything and be less self absorbed and more open.

What the future holds for her now. “I  want to go back and be in another television series. ” The actress was last seen in the  cancelled Michael J Fox  comedy series . “I think it is the place I realize I am happiest. 

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