Celebrity parents are homeschooling their kids and struggling, just like us
From Carrie Bickmore to Duchess Catherine, no one is finding homeschooling easy.
They might be sitting in their mansions complete with swimming pools and home movie theatres but even A-list celebrities are struggling to homeschool their children.
While Australians are urged to stay home and several countries are in lock down, mums and dads all around the world are adjusting to the daily grind of being both the teacher and the parent and it’s hard. Really hard.
Here, some of our favourite celebrities share their homeschooling highs and lows.
Davis Cup-winning tennis player Mark Philippoussis stunned Australia this week when it was revealed that he was the smooth-sounding Echidna belting out George Michael’s Faith on The Masked Singer.
A gig which saw his six-year-old son Nicholas crown him ‘”The coolest dad in the world!”
But it hasn’t all been parenting wins lately. Speaking with Who following his early exit from the Aussie talent show, the 43 year old father-of-two confessed that home-schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic had been a struggle for himself and wife, Silvana who share Nicholas and two-year-old daughter Maia.
“Home-schooling for a six-year-old is hard! Not being able to see his friends and go to school, that’s what makes me sad about the situation,” the Melbourne-based dad admitted.
“I feel more sorry for the kids in a situation like this. Yeah, my wife and I get a little stir-crazy at times but having kids, where they have endless energy and are unable to leave the house except for one-hour a day is tough,” confessed the tennis champion.
“Then you have to stay within 5 kilometres so it’s like the same route, the same block, the same walk… It’s not easy!”
Reese Witherspoon is all of us as she tries to manage WFH/Homeschooling with 7yo son, Tennessee
Big, Little Lies star, and mum-of-three, Reese Witherspoon is finding herself struggling with the epic balance of trying to homeschool and work from home simultaneously as much as the rest of us.
The 44-year-old shared images in which she appeared to be taking a work call on her outdoor egg seat while her son, Tennessee decided to mount it and use it as a swing.
“Really nailing this WFH/homeschooling life. #CanICallYouBack?” she captioned the hilarious shots.
It’s not the first time she’s given us a glimpse into isolation home life with Tennessee either. She’s previously shared a moment depicting her trying to read with him, while he did headstands on his bed, captioned, “Story time is going very well today…”
Oh Reese, we feel you.
Reese shares Tennessee with husband, Jim Toth and is also a mum to daughter Ava, 20, and son, Deacon, 16, with ex-husband, Ryan Phillippe.
Kristen Bell
“Homeschool’s going okay,” the The Good Place actress captions this way too relatable image.
Kristen is sitting in front of a laptop (probably trying to log into her child’s Zoom meeting), she has a dog on curled up on her lap, a child sitting as close as physically possible next to her and another literally sitting on top of her.
Oh Kristen, if this sight wasn’t so familiar we’d laugh. But, it’s not funny… definitely not.
On a recent episode of her web series, Momsplaining, Kristen got real with model mum, Ashley Graham about how homeschooling was going.
“Of course, we’ve all come to know the two worst words in the human language: Home schooling,” she joked.
“There are a few people that have come out victorious in this situation though. Germaphobes, stay-at-home moms, they’re all like, ‘I told you how fucking hard this is.’”
“But doing schoolwork with them (daughters Delta, five and Lincoln, seven), it is absolutely miserable,” she added.
“When we started this quarantine, the first math worksheet I gave my daughter, in all the answer lines she wrote, ‘No. No. No. No. No.’”
Kim Kardashian
While appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon: At Home Edition, the reality star opened up about the struggle to homeschool her children North, six, Saint, four, Chicago, two, and Psalm, 10 months.
“To be the teacher to four young kids, well, two are in school… I’m hiding from them,” Kim said to Jimmy.
“They have to stop for P.E. to go run up and down the backyard. They do this, like, Pokemon yoga or princess yoga. It’s insane.”
Carrie Bickmore
The Project host is currently self isolating at home in Melbourne with her partner Chris Walker and their daughters Evie and Adelaide (nicknamed Addie), along with Carrie’s son from her first marriage to her late husband Greg Lange, Ollie.
“Parenting through the corona crisis is proving to be a roller coaster ride! It’s like doing normal life but without all the scaffolding,” she wrote to her Instagram fans.
“No routine, no school, no weekly activities, no extended family, no friends, no familiar faces, no distractions and not many breaks to catch our breath.
“There are moments that make your heart sing, beautiful moments that we wouldn’t normally get, and moments that are incredibly tough.”
Alongside an image of pencils strewn all over the floor – perhaps the aftermath of a homeschooling session, Carrie wrote:
“ISO LIFE. Every time we tidy a room they destroy it.”
Drew Barrymore
Actress Drew Barrymore recently told the US Today Show that she has cried every day since having to homeschool her kids.
The mum-of-two daughters, Olive, seven and Frankie, five, first tried to focus on activities to do together as a family.
“Go on a bike ride, take a car ride, break out the choc and do hop-scotch, board games, do seeding things in little cups and make signs and be inventive,” she said.
“And then school started. And it all went out the window. I cried every day, all day long.
“It was the messiest plate I’ve ever held in my life to be the teacher, the parent, the disciplinarian, the caretaker.”
Drew, on behalf of parents everywhere, we see you, we hear you and we feel you!
Ada Nicodemou
Home and Away star, Ada Nicodemou has her seven-year-old son, Johnas wearing his school uniform at home, in a ploy to keep him focussed.
Sharing a selfie to Instagram of herself smiling while Johnas diligently works, Ada wrote:
“Home schooling day 2 😀 Thought I’d put a school uniform on Johnas to help him get more focused. How’s everyone going at home?”
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge
Kate and Prince William have let slip in an interview with the BBC that they didn’t tell their three children, George, six, Charlotte, four, and Louis, almost two, that it was the Easter holidays, instead choosing to carry on homeschooling.
“Don’t tell the children but we’ve actually kept it going through the holidays, I feel very mean,” laughed Kate.
In a rare television interview on This Morning Kate also shared that Prince George has been wanting to steal Charlotte’s ‘cooler’ homeschool projects.
Roxy Jacenko
PR maven, Roxy Jacenko has shared how she’s helping her five-year-old son, Hunter and Pixie, eight to complete their school work at home.
In an Instagram video, Roxy said that she’s getting education packs from Get Ready For School Australia.
“I absolutely love how engaging the activities are for both children and their learning levels,” she says in a testimonial on the company’s website.
