Luckily for Seinfeld, his kids dig his brand of humor just fine — with some caveats. “They can be a tough audience,” he explains. “I had this joke the other day that I tried on them that I thought was really funny which was: ‘Here’s a statement never heard in the history of New York City: ‘Hey why don’t we get a new awning?’ ”
“They just looked at me and they went, ‘Dad, that’s not funny at all,’ ” he recalls. “They were wrong. I tried it at a nightclub and it got a huge laugh.”
But have his kids ever seen Seinfeld?
“My daughter did and I’d watch her watching it, but I don’t know what she thought of it,” he says. “And I don’t know if my sons have watched it. I’m really trying to give them just a little bit of the privacy that I had as a child.”
Explains the star, “My parents had no idea what I was up to, ever. I think that’s good. They should have their own life that I don’t know anything about.”
He continues, “I’m not that involved in their school stuff. I’m not involved in their social stuff. I am just always around them and I’m very good at drawing them out, you know? I think some fathers struggle with, ‘My kid doesn’t want to talk to me,’ or, ‘I can’t get them to engage with me in conversations,’ especially as they get into the teen years. I’m always able to get that conversation going.”
You won’t see Seinfeld dressed super down anytime soon, as the father and husband (he’s been married to wife Jessica for 17 years) doesn’t really connect with the style standards he sees many other dads adhering to.
“[Dads sometimes] think they’re off the market and it doesn’t matter anymore, and they couldn’t be more wrong. [What you’re wearing] always matters,” he says.
“Flip-flops and tank tops on planes, for example, are just so offensive. I always wear a sports jacket on a plane. Always. And I cannot walk into a hotel lobby without a sports jacket. I just don’t feel good.”
This story originally appeared on PEOPLE.com.