Weather 
Serena Williams prides herself on being a mom who is present — always.
“I really try to be a present parent,” she told former First Lady Michelle Obama and her brother, Craig Robinson, on the Wednesday, May 13, episode of their “IMO” podcast. “And sometimes that’s hard, especially with the lives that we live; it’s very hard to be present, but I try to be extremely present.”
She added, “I’m never gone more than 24 hours, ever. I didn’t leave Olympia until she was 6 for 24 hours. That may have been a little extreme, but that’s who I am.”
Williams, 44, shares daughters Adira, 2, and Olympia, 8, with her husband, entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian.
Williams not leaving Olympia for more than a day is made even more impressive by her being in the midst of her professional tennis career for most of that time. Asked how she manages, Williams explained that everything she does is “around my kids.”
“I show up as much as I can every single day for the girls,” she said. “Because I feel like they mean the most to me, and I feel they need me, and they need to make sure, I wanna raise my children. I’m a person that’s raising my kids, and that’s teaching them how I want them to live and how I want them to be.”
Though Williams tries to keep her kids by her side, she has been clear that she does not want to force tennis onto them.
“I would hate her to have to deal with comparisons or expectations,” Williams said of Olympia in a 2018 interview with Vogue. “It’s so much work, and I’ve given up so much. I don’t regret it, but it’s like Sliding Doors: Go through a different door and lead a different life. I’d like her to have a normal life. I didn’t have that.”
Serena Williams is making sure her two children love themselves and also show appreciation for other people. “For me, it’s super important for them to love who they are and whatever they look like,” Williams, 42, told Entertainment Tonight in an interview published Thursday, April 4. The four-time Olympic gold medal winner and her husband, […]
She continued, “I think sometimes women limit themselves. I’m not sure why we think that way, but I know that we’re sometimes taught to not dream as big as men, not to believe we can be a president or a CEO, when in the same household, a male child is told he can be anything he wants. I’m so glad I had a daughter. I want to teach her that there are no limits.”
But there’s a difference between pressuring them to play and showing them the ropes. In November, Williams took the court with Adira for her first official lesson, sharing the moment via Instagram.
“This is me sharing my passion for tennis with my youngest daughter,” she wrote in the caption.
