I was widowed at 32 – letting my kids swear, punch and scream helps them cope with grief, says ex-Waterloo Road actress [Video]

WATCHING her girls sitting in front of the TV with their dinners on their laps, Holly Matthews doesn’t wish they were at the table, and neither does she care when they drop a swear word.

That’s because she ripped up the parenting rule book when she lost her husband Ross to a rare type of brain cancer when he was just 32 years old.

Her priority since then has been to help her daughters Brooke, 13, and Texas, 11, navigate the grief of losing their dad, even if that means letting them push boundaries.

The ex-Waterloo road actress 39, who played student Leigh-Ann Galloway for three episodes of the second series, said: “I am a lot less strict than I might have been had the …