Sheena Easton makes enough time for performing, raising kids

I bet you didn't know soccer mom Sheena Easton just raised two kids in Las Vegas for so many years that her children are grown.

That's because the Scottish singer (famous for "Morning Train," "Sugar Walls," "For Your Eyes Only, "U Got the Look," and "We've Got Tonight") doesn't do red carpets in Vegas, she keeps a low profile, and she puts energy in family when she's not flying to gigs every other weekend or so.

"My kids are grown now. I'm the mother of two adults, can you believe that?" she said to me, and I couldn't, because it seems like yesterday when I was talking to her about Vegas life, a decade ago.

So I asked Easton — who performs Friday-Saturday at South Point — if raising children in Las Vegas posed any Vegas-y problems.

"You know, honestly, I think that raising kids is raising kids. There's no perfect place to do it, and no worse place to do it," Easton said.

"When your kids are tiny, when they're preschoolers, they're just adorable little bundles. They're like puppies or kittens," she joked.

"But once kids start to develop their own personality, that's when you realize, wow, a lot of what they're bringing into the world is themselves."

A parent, she realized, can exert only so much influence, and a child must learn to be his or her own person to do well in the world.

Easton experienced moments when she wanted to ascribe family strains to external factors.

"If you go through difficult times, you want to blame them on geography, school, weather, hormones," she said in a Scottish accent that hasn't really changed.

"But the truth is, you're gonna have easy moments, and you're gonna have tough moments no matter what, because these are humans you're living alongside."

Who are Sheena Easton's kids? I have no idea. She doesn't even use their names in this conversation in order not to infringe on their privacy, but she did confirm her son and daughter (both adopted) aren't in the Killers or some other notable execution, assuring me she's not keeping a scoop away from my prying fingertips.

She tried to raise her kids as normal as possible.

"I really try to not raise them as showbiz kids. I don't have that kind of lifestyle. I don't hang out with a bunch of celebrities and go to the places that you get your picture taken. My job is my job, and my family is my family."

Easton smartly didn't have kids when she was cultivating fame in the 1980s.

"I would never have done that when I was 20, because I would have never been able to have seen past myself at that point," she said.

"My life was all about keeping my head down and aiming for the finish line. It was all about work, and travel, and 'What's the next project?'

"I wasn't giving MYSELF a good life back then. My own life wasn't important. So I certainly couldn't have done well by a couple of kids."

She did fly her children around the world when they were younger than 5, she said.

"I asked them about it now, and they don't remember most of those trips. My son remembers being in Japan when he was really little," she said. "It's kind of a blur to them.

"They remember the bedtimes, or the picnics, or the birthday parties they see the pictures from. Or they remember, 'You sent me to my room for two days.'"

Before Easton moved to Vegas, when they were very little, she was looking at a Broadway gig that would have contracted her to New York for at least a year. She chose Vegas home life, instead, as she wasn't fond of the idea of putting their fate more fully in the hands of tutors.

After a few years of home life, she realized she needed to resume feeding her creative side, so she began touring every other weekend or so.

"That ended up being the best solution to keeping family and job together, because I was there for the during-the-week stuff: for the soccer practices, and the soccer tournaments, and God, there are billions of soccer games, and for the homework, and all that."

Her children were preteen and teenaged at that point when she resumed hitting the road more, so "they were ready for mommy to go for a couple of days."

She's happy she sacrificed career for a more balanced life with loved ones.

But the sacrifice didn't hurt so bad. Easton was ready to leap away from the constant grind of pursuing poker-hot success, which she'd done non-stop since she was 17.

"People that are in the middle of the (fame) flame realize that flame needs to be stoked for it to keep burning," she said.

"And when I was young, that's what I put 100 percent of my effort into, because that was important to me."

By the time Easton hit 30, she had accomplished everything she wanted to achieve, several times over.

"It was kind of like the novelty had worn off. It was such a cliche," she said.

Meanwhile, she felt the need to be a mother "chewing at me."

"I really started talking about it, boring my friends to death with talking about it," she said.

Now, as the kids have aged, Easton, 56, has grown too. On stage, she sings her hits to keep fans happy, as always. And soccer mom Sheena Easton bonds with crowds on a deeper level.

"I really now try to focus more on the audience, instead of myself," she said.

"My fans that have been coming to see me for 30 years, a lot of the feedback is, they enjoy me more, because they can see I'm relaxed and having a good time.

"I don't have to worry about selling a hit record. I just can go out and enjoy being onstage. This is my weekend away."