Sara Rue on Finding Work-Life Balance as a Mom: 'I Haven't Played Poker in a Year and a Half'

Sara Rue says sometimes the key to finding the perfect balance as a mom means giving up something you love, but don’t really need to do.

Explaining how she found a “happy medium” between her career and being a mother to her two children — daughters Adelaide, 17 months, and Talulah, 5 — the A Series of Unfortunate Events actress, 39, tells PEOPLE Now that she had to “give up on the extracurriculars.”

“I haven’t played poker in a year and a half and I love to gamble,” she continues, adding that now it would just seem “weird being like, ‘Bye kids, Mommy’s got to gamble.’ ”

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Sara Rue with husband Kevin Price and daughters Talulah and Adelaide
Sara Rue with husband Kevin Price and daughters Talulah and Adelaide

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The proud mom tells PEOPLE that she wants her children to know that it’s possible to “go after your dreams” and “fight for the career that you want to have and that you’ve worked so hard to have.”

In fact, Rue goes on to explain that her older daughter is also aware that one of the upsides to their mother having a successful career is that she makes money.

“I’ve explained, ‘I love to act and it makes me feel really good in my heart,’ which is true,” she says. “And then I also say, ‘You know, we like our house and you like wearing these clothes and it takes money to buy these things,’ and I try to explain that somebody has to go make money.”

Proving just how closely her daughter had been listening to her mother, Rue adds, “One week after I had been gone a lot and had been working, she was like, ‘Well, Mom, guess you’re good at making a lot of money.’ ”

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In 2016, Rue opened up to PEOPLE about becoming a parent for a second time after she and her husband Kevin Price adopted Adelaide.

Rue, who struggled to conceive another child, said the couple “got to a point where we really had to make a choice, and it was a pretty easy decision.”

“We just wanted another child to complete our family, and it really didn’t matter where she came from as long [as] we were her mom and dad,” she explained.