Julia Roberts reveals her ‘simple rules’ for parenting in a phone-obsessed era

Julia Roberts is just like any other parent when it comes to letting her kids use cell phones.

The Oscar winner, who has twins Hazel and Phinnaeus (Finn), 19, and son Henry, 16, with her husband, cinematographer Danny Moder, explains how they managed to parent in the age of technology.

“So, for us, we just had sort of simple rules where we had a charging station, where everybody’s phone goes when you get home. There’s no phones at the table, certainly,” she said on TODAY Dec. 4 in an interview with Mahershala Ali, her co-star in the upcoming Netflix movie “Leave the World Behind.”

Roberts’ kids are now older, but she says not much has changed in her approach to taking care of them.

“I parent them the same way out of the house that I parented them in the house, which is, you know, ‘Are you getting enough sleep?’ And ‘You sound like you’re sick.’ And ‘Are you drinking tea?’ And ‘Text me when you get home you get home (so) I can see that you’re home safe and sound,” she said.

“And I have an immense amount of appreciation for both of my older kids because they still allow me to be the same mom to them and it’s not eye-rolling and there’s a huge amount of understanding.”

Ali, who has a daughter, 6, with wife Amatus Sami-Karim, then asked Roberts if there’s any difference between her leaving home for work and her kids leaving home for college.

“Yeah. And it’s funny, too. Right now, me being away. And so Henry and Danny are home, and then I’m in another time zone, and then Finn is somewhere, and Hazel is somewhere,” she said.

“And we all were on a FaceTime the other day together, all of us. And it was so fun. I might’ve had a towel on my wet head. We were all so happy to be together in that way that we are still so deeply in love.”

Roberts, 56, certainly appears to be enjoying the parenting journey. Last month, she posted a throwback picture on Instagram of her holding Phinnaeus and Hazel in her lap when they were babies.

“19,” she wrote. “There are no words for the joy, the fun, the wild rumpus of life together.”

This article was originally published on TODAY.com