Jamie Oliver’s revelation that helped him become a ‘better parent’

Jamie Oliver and his wife Jools are proud parents to their five children: daughters Poppy, Daisy and Petal, and sons Buddy and River.

However, no parent does everything perfectly, and it seems that, for the celebrity chef, learning some new things about himself has helped him better understand his children.

In a brand new interview with The Sunday Times, the 50-year-old shared that there have been various diagnoses of dyslexia, ADHD and ASD (also known as autism spectrum disorder) in his “very neurodiverse family” over the last year.

Though he did not go into any more detail than this, he said that he and Jools have in fact “learned to understand that their [children’s] behaviour is because they’re seeing things differently,” and that “being aware of that allows you to be a better parent”.

Jamie also called his family life “amazing but bonkers”, joking: “Imagine four neurodiverse people at the dinner table trying to get their point across.”

He further rebuked the attitudes taken towards neurodivergence by older generations, saying: “Older people tend to have the ‘we didn’t have that when we were young’ attitude. We just didn’t know as much about our brains 30 years ago.”

Jamie Oliver’s dyslexia documentary

The celebrity chef has been working on an hour-long documentary for Channel 4 called Jamie’s Dyslexia Revolution, which will explore the challenges facing dyslexic children and interrogate what the British government can change to support them within education.

© Ken McKay/ITV/Shutterstock

Jamie also opened up about the emotional toll that making the documentary took on him, telling the publication: “I’m unpacking quite a lot of stuff. I thought I’d buried it but it’s hitting a nerve. Genuinely, of all the things I’ve ever done, this documentary is the most viscerally painful.

“I’ve seen so many high-flying, talented, grown men cry about this – I’ve just done it to you [referring to his crying during the interview] – the concept of being worthless [when you’re] young is real. It’s really triggering.”

Though the father-of-five has been vocal and open about his struggle with the learning difficulty, especially during his school days, for a long time, he only received his official diagnosis in January of this year.