Victoria Beckham has explained how she and David created a ‘safe’ environment for their children to discuss mental health.
The former Spice Girl, 51, revealed that she has previously had therapy and believes good communication is key.
As a result, she and her husband do their best to sit down with their children Romeo, 23, Cruz, 20, and Harper, 14, every night to share any concerns.
They are currently estranged from eldest son Brooklyn, 26, who lives in Los Angeles with his wife Nicola Peltz, 30.
Victoria explained: ‘The way we’ve brought up our kids is all about communication. It’s good to talk.
‘As a family we try to have dinner together every night. It’s phones down and “What has everyone done today?” Just making sure that it’s a safe forum for everybody to be honest and talk and laugh.’
Victoria Beckham has explained how she and David created a ‘safe’ environment for their children to discuss mental health (pictured at her Netflix show premiere this week)
The Spice Girl revealed that she and her husband do their best to sit down with their children Romeo, 23, Cruz, 20, and Harper, 14, every night so they can share any concerns
Victoria also told The Sun about her own experience with mental health, adding: ‘Yes, I’ve had therapy. I think it’s really healthy. It’s something that’s so acceptable and positive to talk about out now. I’m happy to say I’ve had it.’
She noted that filming her recent Netflix series was ‘like therapy’ because it brought up ‘triggering’ topics for her.
Notably, in the thee-part docuseries, Victoria opens up about her lifelong battle with an eating disorder.
Victoria said: ‘I really started to doubt myself and not like myself and because I let it affect me, I didn’t know what I saw when I looked in the mirror.
‘Was I fat? Was I thin? I don’t know, you lose all sense of reality. I was just very critical of myself. I didn’t like what I saw. I have been everything from porky posh to skinny posh, I mean, it’s been a lot and that’s hard.
‘I had no control over what was being written about me or the pictures that were being taken and I suppose I wanted to control that. I could control it with the clothing, I could control my weight. I was controlling my weight in an incredibly unhealthy way.
‘When you have an eating disorder you become very good at lying. And I was never honest about it with my parents.
‘I never spoke about it publicly, it really affects you. When you’re told constantly you’re not good enough. And I suppose that’s been with me my whole life.’
She said filming her Netflix series was ‘like therapy’ because it brought up ‘triggering’ topics for her. Notably, she opens up about her eating disorder (pictured during her Spice Girls audition)
Victoria, who catapulted to fame in the mid-90s with the Spice Girls, also recalled a moment when she was weighed by live on television by Chris Evans on his Channel 4 show TFI Friday to see if she had lost her baby weight just months after giving birth to her eldest son Brooklyn back in 1999.
While at the time she was all smiles, she explained how it took its toll on her as a young mother.
‘I was weighed on national television,’ she said. ‘Get on those scales, have you lost the weight?’ we laugh about it and we joke about it but I was really, really young and that hurts.’
Victoria’s body confidence agony began when she was just a teenager and won a place at the Laine Theatre school in Epsom, Surrey – which her parents funded by remortgaging their house in Goffs Oak, Hertfordshire.
She said despite her hard work she wasn’t the best dancer, or indeed singer. But she also told how she looked different to her classmates.
‘I didn’t look like a lot of the other girls,’ she recalled. ‘That’s where I started getting a lot of criticism about my appearance, my weight.
‘I remember the principle of the theatre school saying to me, you know, at the end of the show we are going to just fly in. “You girls can be flown in” meaning that we weren’t looking as aesthetically pleasing as some of the others, “so we’ll just fly you in the back.”
Victoria’s mother Jackie added that the star was told ‘you’re overweight. You’ll be at the back.’
She continued: ‘It must have affected her, it’s a very silly thing to say to someone, “you’re fat”.’
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Victoria said: ‘I really started to doubt myself and not like myself and because I let it affect me, I didn’t know what I saw when I looked in the mirror’ (pictured in 2006)
