11 Strict Rules Angelina Jolie & Brad Pitt Make Their Six Kids Follow
Family therapy and no Googling their parents!
Featureflash Photo Agency / Isaaaack / Shutterstock When it comes to the six children that Angelina Jolie shares with ex-husband Brad Pitt, there are a few rules that Jolie put in place when it comes to making sure they're able to live a fairly normal life.
Maddox, Zahara, Shiloh, Pax, Knox, and Vivienne, three of whom were adopted and three who were birthed by Jolie, have made for a rather large home.
One of Jolie's biggest goals is making sure her children safe and happy, especially with the divorce from Pitt and the brutal custody battle that the former couple was embroiled in after splitting.
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Here are 11 strict rules Angelina Jolie makes her kids follow.
1. Angelina Jolie made sure to take time off to spend time with her children.
In an interview with People, following her divorce from Pitt, Jolie stopped working "for over a year" to take care of her children following the split.
“Everything will be around the children,” Jolie explained. “I haven’t worked for over a year now because they needed me home. Everything was just stopped.
"I’m really sitting and talking with them because everything affects them. Every location, every type of project, I’m going to have to adjust it to however much they can handle.”
2. Angelina wants her children to embrace their different heritages.
Jolie's oldest children, Maddox, Zahara, and Pax, were born in Cambodia, Ethiopia and Vietnam, respectively. One of the biggest lessons Jolie wants to teach her children is making sure they know where they came from.
"We travel often to Asia, Africa, Europe, where they were born," the actress told Vogue. "They boys know they're from Southeast Asia, and they have their food and their music and their friends, and they have a pride particular to them."
"But I want them to be just as interested in the history of their sisters' countries and Mommy's country so we don't start dividing," she said of keeping her family close.
"Instead of taking Z on a special trip, we all go to Africa and we have a great time."
3. Angelina makes sure to prioritize family therapy.
Following Jolie's divorce from Pitt, the mother-of-six made sure to prioritize therapy for her children to deal with the split of their parents.
According to People, a source said that Jolie and all of her children have started therapy, "It's been a traumatic situation."
“It was hard for all of them. They are used to more activities and more entertainment so it’s difficult for them to just stay at the house. The younger kids don’t understand what’s going on.”
4. She wants her children to follow their own passions in life.
In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Jolie shared that none of her children have any desire to be actors.
While working on the film 'Kung Fu Panda 3,' Jolie took her children with her to set one day, where they provided animal noises for some of the pandas in the animated film.
"They were kind of shy," Angelina said. "They don't really want to be actors, but I didn't want them to miss the opportunity. They came in, and they had a lot of fun with it."
According to People, Jolie said that her children are more into humanitarian efforts.
"[They’re into] business, humanitarian affairs, things like that.”
5. The children have cybersecurity experts that monitor their online presence.
Jolie only recently created an Instagram account, but for the longest time, she had a sparse social media presence.
"It's so beyond what we understand," Jolie said about herself and ex-husband Brad Pitt in 2014, according to Business Insider. "We wouldn't even know what to look for."
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The former couple decided to hire "a cybersecurity team to monitor the internet and social media content that their children encounter," according to People.
6. Angelina strictly homeschools her kids instead of attending public school.
According to People, Jolie made the important decision for her children to be homeschooled because she wanted them to learn more than they would in a public school setting.
“It bothered me how little I was taught in school,” Jolie said.
“I do worry about my children’s education. I homeschool partially because they are from around the world and it’s very … I didn’t want them to have the same education I had when it came to Vietnam or Cambodia.”
“They have tutors for all kinds of subjects, including different languages and instruments. The kids are also very physically active. They like soccer and love skateboarding, and also take self-defense classes," a source added.
7. Angelina can't interupt the kids' calls with Brad Pitt.
According to People, a judge allowed Pitt to have unrestricted phone access to his children amid the custody battle between him and Jolie.
Pitt must be allowed to have the cell phone number of each child, and can text and call with them without supervision from Jolie.
In the court documents, the judge notes that the children “not having a relationship with their father is harmful to them,” adding that “it is critical that each of them have a healthy and strong relationship with their father and mother.”
8. Angelina schedules time to hang out with each of her children individually.
Jolie finds it extremely important that she carves time out of her busy day to spend one-on-one time with each of her six children.
“I schedule individual time with each of the kids like a crazy person,” Jolie told Vogue, via The Indian Express.
According to E! News, Jolie took her older son Pax as her guest to the Golden Globes in 2018 as a way to spend quality time with him.
9. The Jolie-Pitt children aren't allowed to Google their parents.
According to People, Jolie and Pitt are extremely strict when it comes to their children having access to information about them.
“On all the kids’ computers we had our names blocked,” Pitt said. “They can’t Google their mom and dad. I don’t want to make myself dependent on what other people think.”
10. Angelina encourages her children to learn multiple languages.
“All the kids are learning different languages,” Jolie said, according to US Weekly.
“I asked them what languages they wanted to learn and Shi is learning Khmai, which is the Cambodian language, Pax is focusing on Vietnamese, Mad has taken to German and Russian, Z is speaking French, Vivienne really wanted to learn Arabic, and Knox is learning sign language.”
“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,” she added.
“It’s been my dream. They’re interested in other cultures.”
11. Angelina supports her children when it comes to their gender identity.
Jolie announced in 2010 that her oldest biological child, Shiloh, had wanted to be called John instead since they were two years old.
John has been wearing suits and other gender-nonconforming clothing for years, and Jolie even discussed embracing her child's gender identity in an interview Vanity Fair.
"She wants to be a boy," Jolie said. "So we had to cut her hair. She likes to wear boys’ everything. She thinks she’s one of the brothers."
It is unclear how Jolie's fourth child currently identifies.
Nia Tipton is a writer living in Brooklyn. She covers pop culture, social justice issues, and trending topics. Follow her on Instagram.