Channing Tatum on setting boundaries with his daughter as single father

Channing Tatum talked about parenting his daughter as a single father and how he learnt to raise her with the help of his Sparkella books.

During an appearance on Today show, the Magic Mike star dished on his latest children's book, The One and Only Sparkella and the Big Lie, and the role it played in helping him understanding fatherhood.

The host of the show, Hoda Kotb, asked the Hollywood star about the kind of parent he is to his girl, Everly, whom he shares with ex-wife Jenna Dewan, 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.

Tatum continued: "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,” he shared.

Sharing the house rules on the show, Tatum said it includes "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."

Another host on the show, Bush Hager, said that Channing Tatum had his daughter around the same time he started working on the Sparkella books and asked him if they helped him understand parenting.

"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,” Tatum shared.

“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," he said.