Courteney Cox is opening up about a regret she has when it comes to how she parented her only child, daughter Coco Arquette.
Cox said on the most recent episode of the Minnie Questions podcast that she wishes she’d been a “firmer parent” to her daughter, now 19, whom she shares with ex-husband David Arquette.
The Friends actress, now 59, said that when she was a younger mom, she wasn’t able to set boundaries as much as she is now.
“That’s one of the things with age, I’ve learned to say no, I’ve learned to have boundaries,” Cox told host and fellow actress Minnie Driver. “But earlier on, when she was a kid, or not even that many years ago, I wish I’d been a firmer parent.”
Cox said she looks back at particular at times when she should have trusted her instinct to intervene.
“I wish so bad that I could have realized in the moment a way to protect Coco from things that I didn’t because of my own issues, whether it was codependency or seeing her in relationships with people that I knew, this was not good,” Cox said. “But I didn’t want to step in, even though I knew something wasn’t right, because she would get so mad at me … you know, ‘Let me deal with it mom. You don’t understand.'”
Cox continued, “I should have trusted myself and I should have stepped in.”
Cox was 40 when she gave birth to Coco, who she has shared publicly was conceived with the help of in vitro fertilization (IVF).
The actress also spoke with Driver about wishing she had stopped and “stayed in the moment” during each phase of her daughter’s childhood. “I wish I’d held on to that a little longer,” she lamented.
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