Kelly Osbourne is raising her three-year-old son without ever introducing the concept of gender.
The 41-year-old television personality, who recently relocated from Los Angeles to Buckinghamshire, England, told HELLO! Magazine that she lets Sidney explore the world on his own terms. She moved back to the UK following the death of her father, Ozzy Osbourne, the Black Sabbath frontman who died last July at 76, and after splitting from her ex-fiancé Sid Wilson, the former Slipknot keyboardist.
“I’ve never explained gender to him – I don’t believe it’s a concept that a three-year-old boy needs to try to understand,” she said in the interview.
“You like what you like, and that’s it. One day he loves Gabby’s Dollhouse, and the next day we’re at Rugbytots and he’s loving every moment of the physicality and the rough play,” she continued.
Osbourne noted that her son naturally addresses people by how they present without any instruction from her. “When he meets someone, he naturally addresses them by how they present. I’ve never taught him that; he does it on his own. I think that’s so special,” she shared.
The relocation across the Atlantic was driven partly by concerns over American school safety. “I don’t ever want to have to explain to my son what to do during a gun raid,” she said. “That’s the realistic thing that you have to do in schools in America, and to me, that’s insanity.”
The past year has marked the most difficult period of Osbourne’s life, she acknowledged, following the loss of her father. “I’ll never be the person I was before my father died… a part of me died, too,” she admitted.
“Everything is different. I’m different. Everything has changed, but it’s just taking it one day at a time and putting the pieces back together in a way that you think will work,” she added.
Osbourne credited therapy, close friends, and family for helping her navigate her grief. “It’s one foot in front of the other,” she explained. “You’ve got to fix the head before you can fix the body. It’s a slow process. It’s going to take me a minute. I’m not going to be fixed in a day. I’m not going to be fixed on one therapy session. This is a lifetime of work I’ve got to do and continue to do for the rest of my life.”
She described therapy as revealing connections between her present behavior and childhood experiences. “It’s great discovering things about yourself [in therapy], and the reasons why I do certain things that stem from my childhood. You go all the way back and you’re like: ‘Oh my god, that’s why I do that. That’s crazy.’ I’m getting to know myself in a whole new way, but it’s a lot more healthy, I can tell you that.”