Honestly, we totally understand giving this advice out, even if it's not the best.
It can be easy to forget that celebrities are people, too. But sometimes they share a story that’s so relatable it helps to normalize some of the struggles we all face. Mila Kunis recently spoke about a time she “failed” as a parent, and it’s another parenting confession that is super relatable to everyone who has ever wanted to punch back at a bully.
Actress Mila Kunis is a mama to two kids, 6-year-old daughter Wyatt Isabelle, and 4-year-old son Dimitri Portwood. She and her husband, Ashton Kutcher, seem to be really down-to-earth kind of parents. Even though both are celebrities, Mila and Ashton are not afraid to share the parenting strategies they rely on.
The last confession – that they don’t bathe their kids every day – had the whole internet talking. And Mila might have sparked another conversation, this time about teaching her daughter to stand up for herself.
As a guest on Ellen Digital’s Mom Confessions web series, Mila opened up about a time that she gave her daughter some advice. Advice that Ashton didn’t agree with that she’s now calling a “fail.”
“There was a little kid in my kid’s preschool that wasn’t very kind and pushed my daughter,” Mila begins. “My daughter came back and was like, ‘Such and such little kiddo pushed me.’ And I instinctually said, ‘Did you push her back?’ And my daughter’s like, ‘No!’ ”
Knowing her confession might “get [her] in trouble,” Mila said that she told her daughter how to handle the situation in the future. “Push her back next time,” she said, “and say no thank you and walk away.”
Her husband overheard the conversation and Mila recalls “seeing Ashton’s face and he’s like, ‘No!’” Apparently, he was shocked with the advice, and so she walked it back a bit.
“You stand up for yourself and say no thank you,” she remembers adding to the conversation with her daughter. “Don’t push her off of a ladder, off of a swing, or off of a slide, but on the ground, even Steven, you push her back.”
“I’d say that that’s a parenting fail,” she confessed.
There’s no guiding handbook for parents that cover everything we should – or shouldn’t – teach our kids. So, we do the best we can, infusing what worked when we were growing up and any new tips we learn along the way. When it comes to teaching our kids about standing up for themselves, it’s not always clear what the best advice is. And even if it may not be totally kosher to advise a kid to resort to being physical when they’re being bullied, it is totally understandable to give that advice… and definitely more than a little funny.
