Andy Cohen Shares Why Toddlers Are Harder to Deal With Than Housewives

Famous for moderating the reunions of Bravo’s most dramatic programs like VanderPump Rules and the Real Housewives, Andy Cohen, recently dished on the challenges of parenting toddlers and why he’d rather go head to head with housewives.

While chatting with parenting coach Kristin Gallant and licensed child therapist Deena Margolin on the After Bedtime with Big Little Feelings podcast the acclaimed host shared that he was running on fumes after being “emotionally exhausted” from hosting the Salt Lake City reunion show the day prior and dealing with his little ones after.

“I am very tired,” Cohen admitted. “I will say, I think dealing with toddlers is far more challenging than dealing with Housewives or Bravolebrities.” The big difference? “You can’t reason with a toddler. You can kind of reason with a Housewife,” he told the podcast hosts.

Between his duties as a host and as a father it’s a wonder the beloved Bravo bastion gets in any sleep. Cohen shared that after the Salt Lake City reunion wrapped he went out to dinner with his parents, drank “a couple tequilas” and went to bed at 11:30 p.m. Only to be awakened when his 20-month-old daughter Lucy cried on and off around 1 a.m. and his son 4-year-old son Ben woke up for the day at 6:30 a.m.

Later, Cohen said that raising a toddler “has impacted me at a lot of the reunions … I do find myself occasionally going into ‘Ben’s daddy mode’ as opposed to ‘Housewife daddy mode.’”

In dealing with wildly different personalities, Cohen tries to remember that “people just want to be heard. And that’s with little kids, and that’s with stars of reality shows or Housewives.”

Cohen’s first book to center on parenting, The Daddy Diaries: The Year I Grew Up, officially hit shelves earlier this year in May and follows Cohen from “bottle service to baby bottles in a hilarious, heartwarming and name-dropping account of the most important year of his life,” filled with fun and sometimes irreverent parenting advice.

The book opens with a hangover the morning after an “epic New Year’s Eve” broadcast and follows Cohen through his adjustment from a Manhattan socialite, out late every night on the town, to early mornings spent with Lucy and Ben, and days spent navigating playground drama and single parenting. Bravo fans will love the intermingling of juicy Housewives drama and the hijinks behind Cohen’s show “Watch What Happens Live.*

While the tome is certainly ripe with name dropping and glamorous interjections from Cohen’s life as a celebrity, it also shines a light on the complex and often unseen struggles and victories of an ordinary single dad.

In a recent interview with The Today Show, Cohen spoke about his path to parenthood and how it inspired The Daddy Diaries. “When I came out, if you were coming out in the 80s, there was no way that you were thinking of having kids as a gay guy. But also, I was never in the place that I wanted it,” he said.

“But writing the other two diaries, I got to the point that I was like, “Is that all there is?” Am I just going to a late-night party guy hosting the show? There has to be something more for me? And this was it and I feel so grounded and lucky and grateful. It’s going to take me to the next chapter. Just me and the kids,” he said.

The Daddy Diaries: The Year I Grew Up is now available on Amazon at Amazon.com.