Brooke Shields: Routine is important for kids

The American actress has two daughters - Rowan, aged seven, and Grier, aged four - with television writer Chris Henchy who she married in 2001.

The 45-year-old brunette beauty said that growing up with an alcoholic mother who had a show business lifestyle was challenging and she wants more normality for her own girls.

“I guess I grew up without any kind of routine,” she told the German publication of OK! magazine. “I somehow had to live the life of my mother. She drank a lot, which was difficult for me. She is an actress and very chaotic. One minute she’d say 'We’ll fly there', the next minute we wouldn’t. The only constant thing in my life was school. My school was my resting place, my home."

Brooke now makes sure that her children follow a strict timetable even to the point of playing the same music every night before they go to sleep.

She also thinks spirituality is important and prays with her daughters on a regular basis to give their lives structure.

She believes this gives them a feeling of safety which she thinks is essential for impressionable youngsters.

“I see how important it is for my kids to go to bed the same time, to take a bath, to eat, to read books. Every evening we pray together and I ask them what the best part and the worst part of their day was. They feel safe with that routine,” she said. “And in the evening the light has to be on, the same Good-Night-CD has to play, the door has to be open a little gap - that means safety to them. They know, no matter what happens in school, they have their usual life, their rules, their home.”