Madonna seeks parenting advice from sister

The 56-year-old singer – who was just five years old when her mother died of cancer – admits she often makes “mistakes” with raising Lourdes, 18, Rocco, 14, David and Mercy, both nine, so turns to those she thinks are doing a good job with their own children.

She said: “I try to be the mother that I didn’t have, I try to be all of those things that I wanted…sometimes I make mistakes, sometimes things don’t go the way I planned. I ask my sister for her advice because she was raised by my grandmother and she’s a good mother.”

The ‘Hung Up’ hitmaker admits mourning her mother was difficult for her and her five siblings because of the way their father reacted.

She told Sirius XM DJ Howard Stern: “He never said how do you feel about it, we never had a group hug, we never had a cry. My father’s very stoic and old school….I don’t think he had words for his pain.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Madonna discussed her friendship with the late Michael Jackson – who was her date to the 1990 Oscars – and her belief her pal was “eternally tortured”.

She said: “I could certainly relate to him on many levels, but he was also a very shy person.

“He was famous since he was a child and didn’t really have a childhood. He was painfully shy. We didn’t really have a relationship about me revealing myself to him, but making fun of the crazy world we were living and working in. We didn’t talk about our childhoods.

“I think he felt eternally tortured. It was hard for him to look into people’s eyes.”