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Channing Tatum Opens Up About Being a Single Dad to Daughter Everly: 'I Was Pretty Nervous'

While appearing on 'TODAY with Hoda and Jenna,' the 'Magic Mike's Last Dance' actor, 43, discussed his latest children's book, 'The One and Only Sparkella and the Big Lie'

Channing Tatum Instagram
Channing Tatum Instagram

Channing Tatum is opening up about life as a single dad.

While appearing on TODAY with Hoda and Jenna, the Magic Mike's Last Dance actor, 43, discussed his latest children's book, The One and Only Sparkella and the Big Lie and how the books helped him as a parent to daughter Everly, 10, whom he shares with ex-wife Jenna Dewan, 42.

When Kotb asked Tatum what kind of parent he is, he replied, "I have no idea, I don’t know. I’m just trying to get by. I think like every other parent, you’re just trying not to mess your kids up. But you know you’re going to."

He added, "When I knew I was going to have a kid, I was like, ‘Alright, I’m probably going to be the parent — I plan to be the parent — who was probably going to get her in more trouble than I kept her out of.’ And then as they kind of get older, you start to realize, ‘Oh, I have to set boundaries.’"

"And weirdly, kids, even though they don’t want boundaries, they do want boundaries. Her anxiety goes down, her stress level goes down when she just understands the rules. And they’re not even your rules, we call them the house rules."

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Those house rules include "you gotta always take your plate to the sink, you gotta pick up your clothes, you gotta brush your teeth — just really normal, simple stuff."

Bush Hager added that Tatum became a single dad around the time that he first started working on the Sparkella books.

Asked if the character helped him learn how to parent, the actor replied, "I didn’t plan to be a single dad, that was not in the cards [or] in my planning at the least. And I was pretty nervous. I was like, ‘She’s a girl.’ I was like looking up YouTube on how to braid her hair. I didn’t want to be the dad who was bringing her to school looking like she had just slept on the street. So yeah, this series of books kind of came from that. It was me really figuring out how to talk to a little girl."

The actor also revealed that Everly wants to see Taylor Swift in concert, to which Kotb responded, "You have to [take her]!"

His daughter is also into "Celtic Irish music. She’s a dancer, she loves Celtic Irish dancing."

He explained how Everly seemingly acquired her taste in music, saying, "She just loves anything magical — fairies, elves — and when you look on YouTube, all the clip art for Celtic Irish music is fairies, so I think that’s how we started it. And then she became obsessed with Celtic music. Now we’re doing Celtic Irish dancing, so that’s all we’ve listened to for the last two years."

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