With six kids, rules are what keep Angelina Jolie’s head afloat.
Some are fun, like letting her kids prioritize fun over schoolwork, while others are a little more strict, such as banning sleepovers in the house.
Here are the rules that Angelina makes her kids follow.
They have to take part in her humanitarian efforts:
Angelina Jolie’s philanthropist ways have rubbed off on her kids!
She once took her daughter Shiloh to Lebanon’s Bekka Valley to meet Syrian refugees.
They have to attend family therapy:
After Angelina and Brad got divorced in 2016, family therapy was a must.
“Kids are so delicate. They absorb everything. They need to have their hands held and things explained. They need to be listened to,” Brad once told GQ Style .
They have to follow their dreams:
Angelina will support her children in whichever career they choose.
“None of my kids want to be actors. They are actually very interested in being musicians,” she told Vanity Fair .
“I suppose that just means you don’t know who your children are until they show you who they are, and they are just becoming whoever they want to be”
They can’t hear about their parents’ divorce:
This is something Jolie did for the sake of her kids, as explained to Vanity Fair .
“We’re all just healing from the events that led to the filing . . . They’re not healing from divorce. They’re healing from some . . . from life, from things in life.”
They have to be open to trying new foods:
If we heard our mom say , “See the hard part where you have the teeth? Take the fangs out,” we’d run.
But for Jolie’s kids, this is all part of trying new foods with mommy.
They have to learn new languages:
When speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, the Tomb Raider actress said that she asked them what languages they wanted to learn.
“Shi is learning Khmai, which is a Cambodian language, Pax is focusing on Vietnamese, Mad has taken to German and Russian,” she said.
“Z is speaking French, Vivienne really wanted to learn Arabic, and Knox is learning sign language.”
They have to understand how fortunate they are:
Jolie ensures that each of her kids counts their blessings.
“I’m conscious that the boys are teenage boys, and maybe they’d rather be watching TV with their friends, and they’ve been to Africa, and they may not be as excited as the little ones,” she said.
“But they don’t really challenge me. They just kind of sit on the edge of my bed and say, ‘What are we going to do there?’ ”
They can’t drink alcohol until they’re 21:
This is a major one since both Brad and Angelina have seen the dark side of drugs and alcohol.
Brad’s excess drinking even played a big role in their divorce.
They have to be her best friend:
“They really help me so much. We’re really such a unit,” she told The New York Times .
“They’re the best friends I’ve ever had. Nobody in my life has ever stood by me more.”
Aww!
They have to honor their true selves:
A huge example of this was when Shiloh asked to be called John when she was really young. Angelina chose to support her child’s wishes, 100 percent.
She told Vanity Fair : “She wants to be a boy. So we had to cut her hair. She likes to wear boys’ everything. She thinks she’s one of the brothers.”
They have to reject the notions of regular education:
“Instead of tomfoolery in the classroom, I’d rather them go to a museum and learn to play guitar and read and pick a book they love,” she said .
“I do think we live in a different age and the education system hasn’t caught up with our children and our way of life.”
They have to prioritize fun over studying:
For Angelina, street smarts trump book smarts.
“We travel, and I’m the first person to say, ‘Get the school work done as quickly as possible because let’s go out and explore,'” she said .
They had to lay low while she and Pitt got divorced:
Angelina did this to protect her children.
“I think they’re itching to get out in the world again,” she admitted in 2017.
“We’ve all been a bit in lockdown and going through some things. I think it would be good to get out there and play together.”
They can’t see Angelina cry:
“I was very worried about my mother, growing up — a lot,” she told Vanity Fair .
“I do not want my children to be worried about me. I think it’s very important to cry in the shower and not in front of them. They need to know that everything’s going to be all right even when you’re not sure it is.”
They can’t have sleepovers:
With the number of siblings each child has, Jolie reportedly believes that her kids don’t need sleepovers.
If she did, that would be a lot of kids.
They have to prioritize their health:
Angelina’s main goal as a parent is to be a good example for her children.
After losing her mother, grandmother, and aunt to cancer, the actress wrote about how she got a double mastectomy after a blood test revealed that she carried a mutation in the BRCA1 gene.
She also got her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed as a precaution.
They have to not be “perfectly behaved”:
“[My kids] all have a good rebellious streak that is wonderful and curious,” Jolie explained during an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today.
“I don’t want them to be perfectly behaved little people that just say what’s absolutely appropriate because I say so … they have to find themselves.”
We bet a lot of kids are wishing they had Angelina as their mom right about now.
They can’t have social media:
Jolie put this rule in place in order to protect them.
“We’re the last family that hasn’t gone on Facebook!” Jolie explained , while adding that they still talk about social media, though.
“The truth is that my children have seen things about themselves, even from what’s considered serious news people, that are inaccurate. So my children have a very odd sense of who’s telling the truth and what the truth really is and what they actually believe or trust.”
They have to live in America:
With the exception of Maddox, who’s currently studying abroad in South Korea, Jolie is keeping her kids in the U.S.
The reason why? They need to be close to their dad.
“I would love to live abroad and will do so as soon as my children are 18,” she told Harper’s Bazaar .
“Right now I’m having to base where their father chooses to live.”
They have to be kind:
The mom of six has no interest in raising brats.
“It’s important to be humble—know the freedoms you have and what you’ve been blessed with and make sure you help others,” she told Hello .
“And always remember your place—we’re all human and very flawed. We’re tiny pieces in a much bigger world.”
They have to be close to their grandfather:
Ever since Angelina reconnected with her estranged father, Jon Voight, she’s making sure that her kids are getting close to him, too.
“He’s been very good at understanding they needed their grandfather at this time,” she told Vanity Fair .
“I had to do a therapy meeting last night and he was just around. He knows kind of the rule—don’t make them play with you. Just be a cool grandpa who’s creative, and hang out and tell stories and read a book in the library.”
They have to spend time alone with her:
With six kids to give attention to, it’s easy for one child to eventually feel left out.
This is why Jolie prioritizes spending quality alone time with each of her kids. This is shown when she’s photographed with just one or two of them at a time.
Some had to have their names changed:
Zahara’s birth name used to be Yemsrach before she was adopted by Jolie.
After Pitt legally adopted her as well, it was changed to Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt.
The same thing happened with Pax. His birth name was Pham Quang Sang, but it was soon changed to Pax Thien after adoption.
