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Denise Richards on how difficult it is to co-parent with Charlie Sheen.

 

Denise Richards has spoken about the difficulties of co-parenting her two daughters with their father Charlie Sheen.

Richards opened up on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills about when Sheen said he supported her parenting choices, but undermined them when she wasn’t around.

“I took the phone away from my kid, and her dad was in total agreement on the phone with me about, and he supported it,” she told co-star Lisa Rinna.

“And then the next day – a new phone number!”

She said knowing Sheen went behind her back was “hard”.

“I think a lot of parents that are divorced are probably going through this, especially when [their children] become teenagers.”

 

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Richards also expressed worry about how she handled her often messy divorce from Sheen and the impact it may have had on their daughters Sam, 15 and Lola, 13.

“It’s surreal when you start to see your kids become adults. It makes me cry,” Richards told husband Aaron Phypers, who she married last October.

“I just feel like I f*cked up a lot with their dad. I don’t want them to look back at their childhood and remember [arguments].

“How I chose to relate to the dysfunction that was going on with their father was to hide it from the kids. I don’t know if I did a disservice or not … It just made me realise how fast it goes. Life is so short, and their childhood is so short.”

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Despite the challenges, Richards and Sheen have worked hard to have a civil relationship.

She told PEOPLE earlier this year that she had no regrets about their relationship, or the near-decade of drama that followed it.

“I was never bitter about my divorce,” she said. “Going through everything, it changed me. But I love life and I’m a glass-half-full kind of person. And I did my best to rise above it.”

“No matter what happens, Charlie can call me at any point,” Richards added. “I don’t see our relationship as a failure. It’s a journey. It went a different way than we anticipated, but that’s okay. And I will always be a good friend to him.”