Chip and Joanna Gaines reveal ‘house rule’ for their 5 kids and social media
Chip and Joanna Gaines may be social media stars, but most of their children aren't following them online.
The former HGTV stars and Magnolia Market founders have a strict rule about kids and social media, which they revealed when they visited TODAY on May 29 to talk about their new Magnolia Network series “Fixer Upper: The Lakehouse.”
“Our house rule is you get social media the summer before you go to college .... so 18,” said Joanna Gaines, 46, who shares five children, ranging in age from a kindergartener to a college student, with her husband Chip, 49.
"But it's a challenge," Chip Gaines interjected. "You can tell these kids want it before that. It's not like it's this agreed place to where we've all decided roughly 18 and they're like, 'Oh, thank goodness. I didn't want it to begin with.'"
"They wanted it at 12, 13, 14," he added.
Joanna Gaines said the couple's four minor children have been "kind of quiet" about wanting to join social media during the past year. "I think they just know the heart behind it, which is hard, I think because all their other friends have it," she said.
Still, the former "Fixer Upper" star says her kids have plenty of perks other kids would envy.
"I feel like for us it's kind of one of those things where we can say, 'You have these other things that are really great. Our life is a little different and we care about this specific thing,'" she said.
The couple, who will celebrate their 21st wedding anniversary on May 31, also talked about how much they've learned about parenting over the past two decades.
The pair's youngest child, 5-year-old son Crew, is benefitting from their years of experience, the pair said.
"Our insecurity is you do realize the mistakes you made with No. 1 and No. 2 and it's real," said Chip Gaines. "I mean, you've got four kids and it's just like four businesses or four at-bats... You have to practice this thing in order to get really good at it.
"So here we are on No. 5 and we do feel obviously in some ways like we're starting all over again," he added. "But the flip side is that we've had a little experience and maybe we're getting a little bit better at it."
Earlier this month, Joanna Gaines opened up about fulfilling her own childhood dream of riding a horse at age 46.
The home renovation expert described the experience in the summer 2024 issue of Magnolia Journal. She explained that as much as she always wanted to ride a horse, she's hesitated, fearing that she might be involved in a horse riding accident.
That all changed when her son Crew began taking riding lessons last fall.
“A few weeks into watching him trot around on a pony named Violet, I asked his coach if she might have room for one more student,” she wrote in her article.
“As I write this, I’m only a couple of months into lessons — and trust me, you’ve never seen a horse move slower," she continued.
Though she says a prayer every time she mounts a horse, Gaines wrote, she is slowly learning to let go of her fears.
“I’m relearning what it feels like to get out of my head and let instinct take the reins, which for me looks like living more curiously, more courageously," she wrote.
"There was a time when I would have convinced myself it would be wise to play it safe. But today, I’m surer than ever that the best thing for me looks like getting on a horse that might scare me — and yet — still letting instinct tell us both where to go.”
This article was originally published on TODAY.com