Tyler Perry explained to Michelle Obama that he once got so choked up while disciplining his 8-year-old son, Aman, that he had to leave and cry in another room.
The movie mogul is the latest to sit for the former first lady’s platform, “Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast,” in which he recalled how radically different his own parenting style is from the jarring upbringing he was subjected to.
“I walk in the room and we have a nanny who was helping us out and [Aman’s] just giving them business, he didn’t want to brush his teeth. He’s about 5 or 6 then and didn’t want to brush his teeth,” Perry recalls.
“He didn’t know I was in the door, I watched him for a minute, and then I had the nanny leave and I got down eye-to-eye and talked to him. I said, ‘Listen to me, you are not going to be this way. We love you.
“We are your parents. You will not behave this way. We taught you better than this. You are a better kid than this. You’re going to be a better man than this.’ And I’m talking to him. I started to get emotional in the moment and I had to leave the room.”
Perry, 53, told Obama, 59, that his son capitulated to his wishes and brushed his teeth. More important, however, is the fact that the episode became a cathartic moment for Perry that helped him heal from the brusque and traumatizing way his mother and elders reared him.
“I went out on the balcony. I was in tears because I realized that nobody had ever talked, got down and talked to me eye-to-eye and had a conversation with me that I could understand,” Perry said. “There was just yelling and cussing and what you’re not and what you’re never going to be.”
It occurred to Perry in that moment that he was his own therapist, and that he was actually bandaging his deeply entrenched emotional wounds while providing structure for his son.
“So, to have a moment where I had a chance to have a conversation with a child, who is my spitting image, I was not only correcting and leading him the right way but helping my own little boy inside of me heal, it was a beautiful moment,” he said.
