\"I never felt any ownership over my kids. I always felt like we just won this cosmic adoption lottery -- that we get to know this person and never like they were ours, necessarily,\" he told \"Good Morning America.\"
\"You see what they have going on in their heads and their hearts, and then you see what's going on behind their eyes that you know they're not telling you,\" he added. \"They've been dependent on you for so long, and now they have this agenda that may or may not involve you or that they may or may not tell you about. It's really just astounding.\"
Van Der Beek, 42, spoke with \"GMA\" as part of his partnership with Always and Walmart's #EndPeriodPoverty campaign, which aims to donate up to 1.5 million pads to girls in need. As the father of four girls -- Van Der Beek and his wife, 37, are parents to Olivia, 9; Joshua, 7; Annabel, 5; Emilia, 3; and Gwendolyn, 1 -- the mission was especially personal.
\"When you're younger you think about yourself quite a bit and your thinking doesn't really extend -- at least mine didn't really extend -- too far beyond my own needs. But then you have kids, and especially daughters, and you start looking at the world from a whole different perspective and things that you never thought about before all of a sudden you realize are really big issues, like period poverty,\" he said. \"No girl should ever miss out on something they love because they don't have access to period products.\"
View this post on Instagram
So... Dads. Remember when we first learned about periods in school, and everybody kind of squirmed and tried to pretend it wasn’t happening? Turns out that approach can have a detrimental effect on our daughters. So let’s step up and chip away at the stigma around this. Studies show that many young girls’ confidence plummets around the time of their first period, but that engaging in your daughter’s life, and treating her period like the normal, healthy thing that it is can help. A lot. As can not having to miss school and extracurricular activities they love because of lack of access to period products - which is currently happening to 1 in 5 girls IN THIS COUNTRY. Never really thought about that? Neither did I. But now that we know, let’s do something about it! During the month of January, for every view of the @always_brand and @walmart #EndPeriodPoverty video FROM LINK IN MY BIO, a pad donation will be made to girls in need up to 1 MILLION! You can comment or tag a dad (or coach, teacher, administrator or lawmaker or any guy you love), so they can see this video, and for every comment on or share of this post, more pads will be donated, up to half a million MORE pads. So please be sure to click the link in my bio to watch the video and also to get tips (from professionals) about how to engage with your girl on this topic. Time to normalize what’s normal!
A post shared by James Van Der Beek (@vanderjames) on Jan 14, 2020 at 5:33pm PST
He also wants to start conversations around the issue. Openness is a quality that's important to Van Der Beek, who told \"GMA\" that he also tries to be as communicative as possible with his children. The former \"Varsity Blues\" star said that he always tells his friends who ask to \"treat every moment as an opportunity for connection.\"
\"What kids ... want most is connection with their parents,\" he said. \"So whether you're trying to calm them and they're screaming at four in the morning or you're playing catch with them or you're on vacation, if you just stop and recognize, 'OK, this is an opportunity for connection,' then you're already thinking about a better way to engage with them.\"
\"They all have different demeanors, different ways about them, different things they're naturally drawn to ... They're gonna be who they're gonna be, and you can try to repress it if you want to go that route, but you're not going to succeed,\" he added. \"I think that's the real parenting lesson if I didn't recognize it before, which is... you're there to foster who they are.\"
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