Demi Lovato Won’t Let Her Future Daughter Get Into Entertainment Before Age 18: ‘I Want You to Have a Childhood’

Demi Lovato‘s future children won’t go down the same path she did.

Ahead of releasing her new Child Star documentary, the 31-year-old singer and actress (who uses she/they pronouns) opened up to The Hollywood Reporter about why she’ll keep her future daughter away from the entertainment industry until she’s an adult.

Asked how she’d react to her child asking to become a performer, Lovato told the outlet, “I’d say, ‘Let’s study music theory and prepare you for the day you turn 18, because it’s not happening before that. Not because I don’t believe in you or love you or want you to be happy, but because I want you to have a childhood, the childhood that I didn’t have.'”

The “Heart Attack” performer said she’d also encourage finding a “backup plan” — “something I wish I’d done because sometimes I think it’s time for me to move on, but I’m in this weird position in my career because I still rely on music for my income.”

Lovato entered the world of child stardom at a very young age, first notably appearing on Barney and Friends before landing the lead role in Disney Channel’s Camp Rock as a teenager and swiftly propelling to superstar status.

Now, she’s opening up about the experience of working in Hollywood as a minor in the upcoming Hulu film Child Star, which drops Sept. 17 and features Lovato chatting with fellow former young celebrities including Raven-Symoné, Kenan Thompson, Christina Ricci, Drew Barrymore, Alyson Stoner and JoJo Siwa.

Elsewhere in the THR interview, Lovato spoke about how working as a child complicated her family dynamic: “Having the child be the breadwinner almost inherently changes the dynamic of a family, and then it becomes, like, how do you discipline that breadwinner?”

Her mom Dianna De La Garza and stepfather Eddie De La Garza, who raised Demi following her father Patrick’s 2013 death, would “try to ground me,” she recalled. “But I was an egotistical child star, and I thought I was on top of the world. I’d be like, ‘But I pay the bills,’ and what do you say to that?”

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Looking back from a present-day perspective, Lovato has an idea about why she craved success in Hollywood and attention as a child. “I think part of me always thought that if I made it in the industry that I would get the love from my birth dad that I didn’t have,” she said.

Lovato continued, “And he was troubled, and I think I always chased success because I knew it would put me in his line of sight again and it would make him proud of me.”

“But now that I’ve dealt with those daddy issues, I don’t need the industry as much as I once did, and I’m proud of myself for getting here,” she added.