Keke Palmer's motherhood journey is serving up a sweet lesson in life on behalf of her baby boy.

Since her breakout role in "Akeelah and the Bee" at age 12, she's conquered all areas of Hollywood, reinforcing herself as a quadruple threat who acts, sings, dances, and hosts. Last year, she added a new role to her repertoire as a mom. In her latest interview with PEOPLE, which dropped on Tuesday (March 12), Palmer got candid on how her son, Leo, is teaching her to live life out loud.

As a child actor, Palmer said she sacrificed a lot to have the career she's worked hard at for the past 18 years.

“Leo's teaching me that I have a right to enjoy life,” she explained of her son, 1, whom she shares with ex-boyfriend Darius Jackson. “I gave up a big part of my childhood for what my family and I have the freedoms to do now. We all put off parts of our lives for this career and for this opportunity to find generational wealth … So for me, there was often the feeling [with] my childhood of, ‘Damn, I'm never going to get that moment back,’ that moment that everybody has where they just get to say ‘to hell with it’ and be irresponsible and just be a kid.” 

She continued, “I didn't have that moment, because I was always having to show up, be on time and hold my own,” she continued. “With my son — not that I'm going to be irresponsible — but my son has given me the permission to explore some of those things I felt I missed out on. And I get to do it with him. We get to have fun together, let our hair down together, and he's just given me the opportunity to remember what it was like to be a kid again.”

The doting mom also clarified that she has no intentions of retiring anytime soon.

"People took that literally, but I was thinking in like 20 years!” she said of comments she made earlier this year. “But also, what I will say is I meant a different type of ‘slowing down.’ I think there's a version of me that really wants to do more producing, that really wants to do more directing, that wants to do even more work, not only in front of the camera."

"I'll be still doing stuff, but I don't know if I'm going to always want to be doing three movies a year," she noted. "That's amazing. Thank god I am doing that. But I don't know if I always want to be doing it at that level or that way.”