Here’s what Drew Barrymore thinks about her tween daughters’ interest in skincare

With skincare on the minds of girls at younger and younger ages, it’s important for parents to have a plan for how they’ll handle talking to their kids about beauty standards, appearance anxiety, and self-confidence. If you need some inspo, Drew Barrymore can help. As her daughters, 9-year-old Frankie and 11-year-old Olive, are beginning to dabble in skincare, Barrymore opened up to People about how she’s approaching the subject, and it sounds like she’s nailing it.

“They’re really into skincare because that’s really a lot of what they see and what their friends are into. So I’m just always trying to keep track of what products are age-appropriate and not too active for their skin,” Barrymore explained. “I know that there are also a lot of anti-aging products out there, and I just want to make sure that young girls, while they’re really invested and in love with skincare — and there are many things that they could be interested in that would be far more perilous — are making sure that their skin is safe and the messages they’re receiving are healthy.”

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She added that she keeps in mind “the mental gym and what’s inside our heads.”

“That, to me, is more important than what’s in our beauty routine,” she said. “I think the things we tell ourselves inside our minds should remind us that beauty is for everyone. We can make sure the ingredients are age-appropriate, and the messages are really about the joy of it rather than worrying about anti-aging.”

Growing up as an actor, Barrymore said she was wearing makeup for work by the time she was “8 or 9.”

“I had so much fun playing with color,” she remembered. “I think there are so many things girls can do to express themselves, but I’ve definitely seen how the trends, through social media, are so bullish on skincare.”

She added that she tries to lead by example for her daughters by “keeping it natural” with her own makeup and skincare.

“I don’t judge the process of what people want to do to make themselves feel better because life is short, and that’s a very personal decision. But I think with me, skincare is what I’ve invested in over any other treatments or things as I’ve gotten older. It’s important for me that my daughters know we embrace who we are and work with what we’ve got,” she said.

“I personally don’t even love the anti-aging messaging for myself. And I’m 49. Because there’s no such thing as anti-aging. Aging is a privilege, and aging is also inevitable. So to fight that and have anything that has the word anti already has a little bit of a sort of negative skew, and to me, that’s just not the tone that I want in my beauty routine and definitely not for my girls.”