DeVito offers secret to good parenting

NEW YORK, Dec. 8 (UPI) -- When it comes to parenting, Danny DeVito offers the following advice: a watched pot never boils.

"Follow me for a second," the father of three told reporters in New York recently. "I'm a doting father, but not in an overbearing way. But, if you are in tune with your children ... day by day and you have your eye on them and they have their eye on you, you grow together.

"As soon as you look away, for any length of time, that pot starts boiling in its own direction, in its own way. When you look back, it's a whole other ball game."

Noting people's interests and personalities constantly evolve, DeVito added: "If you look away, there's a gap that forms. You don't know this child when you turn back to them and look at them. So, that's how I deal with my kids. I try to talk to them every day no matter where they are."

DeVito is currently co-starring in "Big Fish," Tim Burton's fantastic story of a UPI journalist (Billy Crudup) struggling to understand his tall tale-loving father (Albert Finney) before the older man dies.