Jeff Lewis Is "Panicked" After Daughter Monroe Calls Her Nanny "Mom"
The Flipping Out designer isn't sure how to address the subject with his child.
Jeff Lewis isn't sure what to do about a new challenge while raising daughter Monroe.
The Flipping Out designer shared during the October 15 episode of his Radio Andy show Jeff Lewis Live that his daughter, Monroe, whom he shares with ex Gage Edward, has started calling her nanny, Cecilia, "Mom."
“Monroe started a new preschool,” he said, as reported by PEOPLE. “There’s a lot of moms there dropping off their kids. Even though Gage and I pick up and take Monroe to school and spend a lot of time with Monroe, she’s started calling our nanny, ‘Mom.’ And she’s now starting to say, ‘I want to go on the slide with Mom. I want to go out there with Mom.'”
Jeff said that he doesn't know how to handle the situation with Monroe, who was born on October 25, 2016 via surrogate. “I just sit there paralyzed and panicked, not knowing what to say, so I literally haven’t addressed it,” he said.
Jeff then asked his guest and therapist Dr. Donna Dannenfelser for some advice on how he should proceed with Monroe, who turns 3 later this month. “You can talk to her if you wanted to and you can emphasize the woman’s name is [Cecilia]. You can either let it go and let that ride out. Or it’s about the conversation, she might be looking for her mom,” she said.
The house flipper said that he thinks "it's confusing" for Monroe. “I was telling Cecilia, ‘Maybe you can say, ‘I love you, but I’m not your mom,’" Jeff told Dr. Dannenfelser. "Is that OK? I don’t want to f--k her up!”
Monroe recently started attending a new preschool after she was expelled from her previous school following negative comments Jeff made about some of the students' parents on his radio show.
Jeff is also currently embroiled in a contentious custody battle with Gage following their split after 10 years together in January. He recently confirmed that he and Gage are getting closer to reaching a custody agreement after setting a temporary custody agreement in August. However, he said has no plans to communicate directly with Gage once this arrangement is formalized.
“I’m anxious to try the new schedule and see how that works. We had, I thought, a direct line of communication about what she had for lunch and how long did she sleep, and how is she doing. And [after the conversation], I said, I no longer want to communicate with you," Jeff said in the October 10 episode of his radio show. “I want to raise my child as I see fit when she’s with me, and you can raise her how you see fit when she’s with you. I don’t need to know anything. You don’t need to know anything.”
Gage addressed Jeff's claims about their custody battle in a statement to PEOPLE on October 9: “In the interest of my daughter, I continue to have no comment on the matter."
Co-parenting has been incredibly challenging for the Flipping Out exes as of late, according to Jeff. “I have begged him to try to work this out together, but what happens is, sometimes, in all honesty, I feel like I’m co-parenting my child with a child,” he said on Jeff Lewis Live on October 8. “On Sunday, I literally put my face in my hands and thought, ‘This guy is going to torture me for the rest of my life. I’m a prisoner.’”
