Angela Bassett and Courtney B. Vance Took Their Twins on 26 College Tours: ‘They’re Ready’ (Exclusive)

And just like that, Angela Bassett and Courtney B. Vance’s kids are getting ready for college.

In this week’s cover of Women Changing the World , Bassett looks back at the baby photos PEOPLE snapped when their twins Bronwyn and Slater were born in 2006, calling the sweet portraits “a perfect moment.”

Now their graduates are cycling through a new rite of passage: college tours.

“We saw 26 schools, full-day tours of each school,” Vance, 63, tells PEOPLE. “And they are so ready. It’s another transition. We went down the baby aisle, now we have to go down the empty aisle and get used to them not being here.”

Celebrating her twins’ 18th birthday in January, Bassett, 65, recalls feeling “proud of the young adults they’re becoming, the friendships they’re making, the maturity they’re showing. We always kind of told them, ‘The more you do the right thing, the more freedom you’re allowed, you’re given’.”

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Courtney B. Vance, Bronwyn Vance, Slater Vance and Angela Bassett 2017.

Kevork Djansezian

Angela Bassett Opens Up About ‘Struggle’ For Her Oscar-Winning Career — And The Lessons She’s Teaching Her Twins (Exclusive)

Today, their children are “a beautiful combination of both of us, everything we put into them,” adds Vance.

The family of four attended the Governors Awards in January, posing together on the red carpet before Bassett was presented with an honorary Oscar celebrating her body of work. It was another memory after her children and husband supported her Oscar nomination at the 2023 Academy Awards for her role in the film Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

“It was great to have Courtney with me and to have my kids, and they were old enough to really experience the majesty and the greatness of that moment,” she says.

Over the years, kids have learned to understand what it means to have famous parents, says Bassett, whose new season 9-1-1 hops to ABC on March 14. “Because their father and mother are in the public eye, unfortunately or fortunately, they have to have an extra measure of discretion when it comes to people, which I think they get,” she says. “They are wise little people.”

Vance and Bassett say they were careful to rotate jobs while their children were growing up. “Our mantra was, someone will be home. We never wanted to let us both leave at the same time and have a nanny raise the kids,” says Vance, whose mother also lived with them for five years before she died of ALS in 2017.

As for their soon-to-be-empty nest, Bassett says, “For 18 years it’s been about [our kids]. So it’s going to be interesting how we keep trying to bond.” She laughed, “I don’t know, we still have a dog!”

Courtney B. Vance, Angela Bassett and their children in 2008 Noel Vasquez/Getty Angela Bassett shares the ‘Beautiful,’ ‘Full Circle Moment’ she and Chadwick Boseman had at Black panther Set (exclusive)

And as graduation approaches, friends have started giving advice to the power couple. “Someone tells me that when you take them to school, don’t go home, go on vacation, go somewhere, do something,” Vance says. “So you come back with a little taste instead of a little sadness in your mind and heart.”

But, he adds, “Our life has been preparing for this. Someone told me – If you do it right, parenting is a job that makes you work.”

As the kids spread their wings, Bassett focuses on staying positive. “I try not to worry,” she says. “I just try to pray more than worry. But it’s always a balancing act for a mom.”

For more on Angela Bassett’s life lessons, pick up this week’s issue of PEOPLE magazine, on newsstands everywhere now.

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Source: HIS Education