As 'Dr. Pimple Popper,' Dr. Sandra Lee has found TV fame treating gnarly skin issues. Here's what she's like as a mom.
Welcome to So Mini Ways, Yahoo Life's parenting series on the joys and challenges of childrearing. Read past interviews with celebrity parents here.
There’s not much that fazes Dr. Sandra Lee, the dermatologist and surgeon better known as Dr. Pimple Popper. When her two sons, now 17 and 19, were younger, she had “no qualms” about dashing across the room to catch their vomit in her hands. Once, shortly after her young son climbed into her bed at 5 a.m. she felt a warm trickle. “I knew if I got up to change the sheets I would miss out on an hour of sleep, so I just stayed there,” Lee tells Yahoo Life.
However, Lee, who has removed everything from worm-like substances to huge fatty lumps from her patients’ skin, is squeamish in the kitchen. “I can’t handle raw chicken without gloves. It reminds me too much of what I pop out of patients,” she says. That isn’t too much of a problem for the busy doctor, influencer and TV star. Lee, who has also developed her own line of skincare products called SLMD, says that she doesn’t often have time to cook.
Instead, Lee’s family goes to her mother’s house for dinner up to three times a week. On other days, her husband or their housekeeper makes dinner. When no one is around to cook, they get take-out or go out to eat.
Even though Lee usually outsources food prep, she still values mealtimes with her family. “We play card games at dinner,” she says, “We play big two, which is a strategy game.” The proud mom says that she and her husband used to win easily, but now her sons “are kicking butt.” Lee doesn’t mind. “You want your kids to be smarter than you,” she says.
As Lee’s professional responsibilities grew, she began outsourcing more than just dinner. When her sons were younger, she had a nanny, tutors and a housekeeper. She also relied on her parents to provide care and acknowledges that her husband, who is also a dermatologist, has been “very supportive” of her career.
“I don’t really run my household,” Lee says. The freedom from the many responsibilities that usually fall to mothers allows her take on “more roles,” she says. “I am very lucky that I have a village,” she adds, recognizing that she is also fortunate that she can hire help.
Lee thinks it’s important for her sons to see that she can accomplish a lot through hard work. Nevertheless, she says that there is “always guilt, as a woman, as a mother, as a wife.” Although Lee wasn’t always the one driving her kids to sports or helping them with their homework when they were younger, she tried to carve out time for her sons each day. “I enjoyed driving them to school. That was our little moment,” she says.
As a mother, Lee describes herself as “pretty laid-back,” noting that she doesn’t think her children “are scared of me.” She says that she doesn’t fit the “Tiger Mom” stereotype associated with many Asian parents because she is not “very strict and very controlling.” Still, she set high expectations for her children and made sure they were always surrounded by “people who influence them in positive ways.”
When her oldest son was still a newborn, Lee started asking her patients for advice. Many of them told her her the same thing: that children should “always have chores” so that they would understand that “things aren’t just given to them.” She took that advice to heart and made sure her sons were assigned tasks early on. When Lee’s boys were still young teens, they were responsible for their laundry.
Lee does her best to help her sons “figure things out on their own” and always “pushed them to go out and explore.” And even though medicine is a family affair, since both her husband and father are also dermatologists, she never pressured her sons to go to medical school.
Lee also never pushed her sons to become involved in her public life as Dr. Pimple Popper; the boys’ role in their mother’s high-profile career is mostly limited to snapping photos of Lee with fans when they go out together. Lee’s oldest son can’t stand watching her videos. “I can’t handle this,” he tells her. Lee’s younger son watches his mom at work, but she thinks he doesn’t really like the videos and only watches them “to be supportive.” Both of her sons, however, know they can go to their mom for anything, including skin issues. Lee has popped a giant blackhead on one of her son’s ears and successfully treated her other son’s acne with a treatment she developed.
With her oldest son no longer at home and her younger son in his senior year at high school, Lee says she’s “getting ready to be an empty nester.” It’s not an easy process, she admits. “It’s a little bit heartbreaking,” the famed dermatologist shares.
