Lovebirds Matthew McConaughey and Camila Alves are giving their three kids — Levi, 11, Vida, 10, and Livingston, 7 — “tough love” in order to teach them right from wrong.

“Sometimes loving your kids means giving them just what they want,” Matthew, 50, explained to E! News on Wednesday, June 17. “Other times it means tough love. Affluent people can give their kids everything they want, but they’re not usually going to get what they need. Loving a child is a lot harder if you really give a damn. ‘No’ takes a lot more energy. It’s a lot easier to say ‘yes.'”

Matthew McConaughey's kids
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Although the Serenity star knows that you shouldn’t spoil your kids, his wife, Camila, jokingly revealed the actor would give in to his children’s demands every now and then. “From the snicker that my wife’s giving me, it seems that I’m more consistently the yes guy,” he laughed. “She’s probably right.”

Can you blame him though? Matthew and his kids have an incredible bond and he even takes them wherever he travels for work. “If I go, we all go,” the Academy Award winner told Australia’s TODAY in November 2019. He explained that having his children around is anything but stressful because they “listen” to him “most of the time.”

“The kids seem to like me,” he gushed. In fact, when the Dallas Buyers Club star welcomed his oldest son in July 2008, his whole world changed. He told GQ in 2014 that it “definitely” made him a more “selfish,” but “compassionate” guy because he loved Levi so much.

“Never is a man more of a man than when he is the father of a newborn … You know what’s important,” the doting dad said. “It’s the one thing I’ve always wanted to be.”

In September 2018, Matthew opened up about the terrible feeling he got when Levi was in harm’s way. He told host Jimmy Fallon that his son was about to get charged by a raging mountain ram as a baby.

The brown-haired hunk revealed his family encountered the ram when they were having a picnic at the edge of the Grand Canyon. While trying to act fast, Matthew tossed baby Levi to his wife who started to head toward the bottom of the hill, and once he was sure they were safe, he scared the ram away and followed after them.

Matthew doesn’t mess around when it comes to his family!