Just how is fatherhood treating Tyler Perry? Quite well. The director talks about his son, Aman Tyler Perry, and the joys of parenting that come every day.
“I love once he goes to sleep because he’s just at that age where he’s very curious about everything,” Perry tells PEOPLE. “This is the thing he does: ‘Can a cheetah beat a rancher? Can a cheetah beat a car? Can a cheetah beat a bird? Can a cheetah beat a leaf falling?’ By the time we go through all of, ‘Can a cheetah beat?’, I’m beat,” the celebrity father muses. “But no, it’s just joy. Just watching him learn and discover and yeah, it’s wonderful.”
Parenting Aman is not all fun and games. In fact, Tyler Perry recalls a time when he recently disciplined his son for disrespecting the nanny.
“I was in the other room writing and he had just given the nanny fits,” the celebrity father explains. “He didn’t know I was there listening to him. He’s just going at her. … I get down to this level, eye to eye. We’re talking, we’re having a conversation. I’m saying how disappointed I was, how he shouldn’t behave that way.”
What happened next brought Tyler Perry to tears. “I watched this child, who’s very smart, get it and apologize — apologize to the nanny, apologize to Mom, apologize to me. I watched this child get it and I had to rush out of the room because I lost it.”
Perry, who was physically abused as a child, was able to give his son something that he had not experienced during his upbringing: humanity. “I’m in tears because nobody had ever spoken to me that way as a child,” Perry shares. “Nobody had ever spoken to me as a person.”
Aman is Tyler Perry and girlfriend Gelila Bekele’s only child. Stay tuned for more celebrity kids news!
Photo: Getty Images
