How Denise Richards Explains Charlie Sheen to Their Kids

Feb. 18, 2011— -- While Charlie Sheen is busy dishing advice to Lindsay Lohan and her mother Dina during his at-home rehab, his ex-wife Denise Richards is trying to help their daughters make sense of their father's outrageous and often public behavior.

"My concern is our kids," Richards told the co-hosts of "The View" today. Richards and Sheen have two daughters, Sam, 7, and Lola, 6.

"I've had to have a couple conversations with them at this point," she said.

Richards told "The View" that while it's easy to control what the girls hear and see on television, she can't do the same when they around their peers in school.

"It's a very difficult situation," she said. "This isn't new. This is something I've dealt with for years. There are times when his life is more colorful and more public than others. This is a subject I had hoped to talk to the children about when they got older."

Instead, Richards has turned to books to help the girls understand their father's situation. Blanking on the title of one of the books, she said, it "explains addiction to children," with "images that a child understands."

"I do the best I can and it's not easy," she said.

Richards also expressed no surprise about Sheen's troubles. "This is Charlie's lifestyle," she said. "He makes no bones about it. It is what it is."

When Joy Behar asked Richards, "What's wrong with him?" eliciting laughter from the audience, Richards, demurred: "It's honestly not my place to judge this situation. You should have him on the show."

Sheen certainly has no loss for words these days.