Growing Up Jackson: The Eerie Upbringing of Michael Jackson’s Three Children
Michael Jackson conceived Neverland Ranch as a personal theme park where he could stay a kid forever. But choosing to raise kids on the ranch, isolated from the rest of the world, paints the Prince of Pop as a confusing father figure. Haunted by the shadows of his molestation cases — one in 1993 and one spanning 2004 and 2005 — Neverland eventually became home to Michael's three children, Prince, Paris, and Blanket (now known as Bigi) Jackson. And although the three now-grown Jacksons seem surprisingly well-adjusted, no one could argue that their upbringing in Neverland was anything short of atypical. Below, some of the most bizarre anecdotes of how the Jackson kids were raised in the one place you're not supposed to grown up — Neverland.
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![Prince jackson baby](https://www.intouchweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/prince-jackson-baby.png?fit=775%2C890&quality=86&strip=all)
When Prince was born, he was monitored by a team of six nannies and six nurses.
Hearsay is that MJ's then-wife Debbie Rowe didn't even see her son for six weeks after the baby was born. Instead, he was taken care of by a team of specially-trained Neverland staffers who worked in shifts to ensure Prince was watched by two nurses and nannies at a time. These shifts were constantly being monitored via video.
"The day-team did exercise drills with the baby to build up his strength," one former employee revealed to the Daily Mail. "The night-team read and sang to him. But it was as if he had no mother."
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All of the babies' items were routinely sterilized.
The overprotective Michael allegedly made sure that Prince's environment was free of germs or anything that could be even remotely harmful. According to one nanny, the air quality was monitored at least once an hour, and anything the baby touched needed to be clean…or thrown away.
"All the utensils had to be boiled and were all thrown away after a single use," she explained, adding that all of Prince's toys were thrown away every night and replaced the next morning.
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In infancy, Prince was spotted sporting bottle blonde hair while Paris was dressed up like a living baby-doll.
For years, there were suspicions that Michael dyed little Prince's hair to make him look angelic, even adding blush for some seriously rosy cheeks. Now, though rare, it's plausible that Prince could've been naturally white-blonde, especially if Debbie Rowe is his biological mother. But it seems more convincing that MJ bleached his babies hair to achieve an arrestingly Aryan look, concerningly cherublike.
But the doll-like appearances of Michael's two eldest children extended beyond flaxen locks. A Harper's Bazaar profile on emerging model Paris noted that as a child, Michael dressed up his daughter as "an idealized little girl—in dainty, old-fashioned pinafores and lacy collared blouses and Mary Janes." Hmmm…
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![Paris jackson llama](https://www.intouchweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/paris-jackson-llama.png?fit=800%2C687&quality=86&strip=all)
The children's home was essentially an amusement park where one could never leave.
Let's take a minute to marvel at Michael's elaborate mansion, a monstrous playground that children roamed long before he became a parent. Just skimming of the top, the Jackson kids' home included two railroads, a ferris wheel, a carousel, an arcade, and a petting zoo. On paper, it sounds like any child's paradise…but what if you were trapped there with no one to share it with?
"We didn't know a lot of kids our age," Paris shared in the 2013 documentary Remembering Michael. "We were more secluded. We never really left the ranch that often."
As for the attractions, the children were permitted to go on them as rewards.
"We couldn't just go on the rides whenever we wanted to," she explained to Rolling Stone. We actually had a pretty normal life. Like, we had school every single day, and we had to be good. And if we were good, every other weekend or so, we could choose whether we were gonna go to the movie theater or see the animals or whatever. But if you were on bad behavior, then you wouldn't get to go do all those things."
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![Paris jackson young](https://www.intouchweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/paris-jackson-young.png?fit=778%2C950&quality=86&strip=all)
Likewise, the Jacksons were home-schooled on the property, which impacted Paris' ability to socialize.
"The first 12 years of my life, I was homeschooled," she shared with Harper's Bazaar. "Which means that the only interactions I’d ever had were with family members or other adults."
As a result, Paris had difficulties interacting in the real world following her father's death. “[I] didn’t have social skills," she said. "I had to force myself to learn so fast."
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They spent years not knowing how unusual it was to be surrounded by crowds of people.
Because of their seclusion, it took the kids a long time to realize just how famous their father was, or that his name was even Michael Jackson. To them, he was just "daddy."
"He didn't really like us watching his work," Prince told Today in a 2017 interview. "We didn't really know who he was as the King of Pop until we were significantly older. When we saw a video of his concert and him performing, and then girls were passing out, and dudes were passing out, and it was crazy."
Of course, that didn't mean suspicions weren't raised beforehand.
"I remember being in Disneyland and I went to the window and there were all these fans waving and taking pictures of me. I thought it was normal, so I just waved back," Prince said in 2016.
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![Michael jackson kids mask](https://www.intouchweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/michael-jackson-kids-mask.jpg?fit=800%2C1035&quality=86&strip=all)
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The kids, as it's been well-documented, wore masks or covered their faces with scarves when they did go out in public.
The visual was always striking to the public, even outraging some. But the Jackson kids insist they were told it came from a loving place. "My dad spoke to me like an adult," Prince told the Los Angeles Times. "He told us the reason for the masks was he wanted us to have our own life without him."
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During his trial, Michael was crying to his children before bed.
Michael didn't try to shield his children from his struggles, and was particularly upfront about his anxieties during his 2005 molestation case. "My dad would cry to me at night," Paris said. To this day, it's evident that watching her father's distress shook the little girl to her core.
"Picture your parent crying to you about the world hating him for something he didn't do," she said. "And for me, he was the only thing that mattered. To see my entire world in pain, I started to hate the world because of what they were doing to him. I'm like, 'How can people be so mean?'"
Michael was found not guilty on all 14 accounts, but fled Neverland Ranch in 2004, taking his three children with him.
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