Actress Charlize Theron has her own way of raising her kids! When she attended ELLE‘s Women in Hollywood Celebration on Monday, October 14, she revealed all the best lessons that she tries to teach her kids as they get older.

“You know, I think a big thing for me is kindness and knowing we live by our religion, which is do unto others the way you want to be done to you,” she told Closer Weekly and other reporters at the star-studded event at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. “So we’re big on respect and thinking of others before we think of ourselves.”

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Charlize, 44, is a proud parent to her two adorable kids — Jackson, 7, and August, 4. In an April 2019 interview with The Daily Mail, the Monster star opened up about her oldest child being transgender and how she dealt with that.

“[My kids] were born who they are and exactly where in the world both of them get to find themselves as they grow up, and who they want to be, is not for me to decide,” Charlize said. “My job as a parent is to celebrate them and to love them and to make sure that they have everything they need in order to be what they want to be. And I will do everything in my power for my kids to have that right and to be protected within that.”

Charlize learned everything that she knows from her own mother, Gerda Jacoba Aletta Maritz, and she hopes to carry on Gerda’s lessons with her two kids. The last thing the Oscar winner wants is for Jackson and August to not have the ability to open up and express themselves.

Charlize Theron gets in the Halloween spirit as she heads to Disneyland in a witch costume with her kids and mother
Marksman/ Snorlax / MEGA

“I grew up in a country where people lived with half-truths and lies and whispers and nobody said anything outright, and I was raised very specifically not to be like that,” Charlize explained. “I was taught by my mom that you have to speak up; you have to be able to know that, when this life is over, you’ll have lived the truth you’re comfortable with, and that nothing negative can come from that.”

Charlize’s kids are so lucky to have this lovely woman as their mom!