Gwyneth Paltrow loves that her two children, Apple and Moses, are growing up with plenty of self-confidence.
“I think both my kids really know themselves very well and that’s a trait about them that I both love and admire,” Paltrow, 51, said during a Friday, July 19, Instagram Story Q&A. “And I guess one I worry about for both of them is anxiety. This is, as we know, the anxious generation.”
Paltrow is the mother of daughter Apple, 20, and son Moses, 18. While the Oscar winner admires how self-assured her kids are, it is something that she is personally “still” working on within herself.
“[If] I’ve f–ked something up or made a mistake or behaved in a way retrospectively that is upsetting, I feel like … We’re human and so we make errors,” she said in a follow-up Story slide. “We do human things. It’s easy to feel good or accept yourself when you’re in a good moment with yourself but when you’re not, I think that’s when all the work comes in and all the tools and really forgiving yourself and understanding your humanity and being gentle with yourself and also try to meditate on what’s really truly at your essence and how to stay connected to that.”
Paltrow has tried to teach such lessons and tools to Apple and Moses, whom she shares with ex-husband Chris Martin. The actress and the Coldplay singer, 47, split in 2014 but have remained focused on amicably coparenting Apple and Moses.
“Chris and I committed to putting them first and that’s harder than it looks because some days you really don’t want to be with the person that you are getting divorced from,” Paltrow said on The Drew Barrymore Show in September 2020. “But if you’re committed to having family dinner then you do it. You take a deep breath, and you look the person in the eye, and you remember your pact, and you smile, and you hug and you recommit to this new relationship that you are trying to foster.”
Apple and Moses have also bonded with their respective stepparents. (Paltrow married Glee producer Brad Falchuk in 2016, while Martin is currently engaged to actress Dakota Johnson.)
“I love those kids like my life depends on it. With all my heart,” Johnson, 34, told Bustle in March. “I grew up in a family that was so big, and I just believe in the saying ‘Blood is thicker than water.’ The actual saying is ‘The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb,’ which means that the connections with people you choose are more solid than the connections to the people you’re actually born to.”
