One of Mandy Moore’s biggest parenting lessons came from the LA fires that badly damaged her home earlier this year.
Moore has two sons and a daughter with her husband, Taylor Goldsmith. Her daughter was three months old when the fires happened. In an interview with Parents published on Thursday, the actor spoke about how she guided her family through the crisis.
“You realize that, of course, everyone is incredibly resilient — the kids especially,” Moore told Parents. “We just treated it as a big adventure. You have to model the behavior to them because they pick up on your energy, they’re little energy sponges.”
Moore said she broke the news gently to her kids by steering their attention toward how exciting their new home would be.
“We told the boys we were going to stay somewhere else for a little while because the fire hurt our house — ‘but look at this incredible bunk bed at this new house that you guys get to sleep in. This is so much fun!'” Moore said, recalling her words. “That was a total distraction, and they loved it.”
Seeing her kids adapt to the change made her realize that “home is truly just where they are,” she said.
Her in-laws also lost their home in the fires.
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“We’ve all been under the same roof during these past eight months, and we never would’ve spent that kind of time with each other otherwise,” Moore said.
“We’ve all tried to find the silver lining, and that definitely has been it for us. There’s so much peace in being grateful that we’re OK, our animals are OK, and stuff is just stuff,” she added.
In January, multiple wildfires swept through the Los Angeles area, burning over 40,000 acres and forcing over 200,000 people to evacuate.
The largest of the wildfires ripped through the wealthy Pacific Palisades neighborhood, destroying homes belonging to celebrities including Paris Hilton, Miles Teller, and Anthony Hopkins.
In an Instagram post in January, Moore said the fires destroyed her family’s studio, garage, and back house. Although the main house remained, it was “not livable,” she wrote in her caption.
A representative for Moore did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular hours.
