Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher appeared on at home version of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. They’re promoting their Quarantine Wine, which is apparently very successful, having raised about $1M so far. Since all the profits go to four really good charities, I’m very happy it’s making the money it is. I’d be even happier if Mila and Ashton would stop talking over each other to tell us about it, though. Mila and Ashton are parents to daughter Wyatt, five, and son Dimitri, three. Since it is teacher appreciation week, Jimmy asked them about how their homeschooling efforts were going. Mila said she was a great TA but that Ashton had really found a love of teaching. They’re also calling in friends via Zoom to teach their kids any lesson of their choice.
How are you with the home schooling?
Mila: The one thing we did do, which I feel is a good hack, is we enlisted our friends to do like 20-minute zoom sessions with our kids. It’d be like – teach our kids anything. And it could be anything from making flower arrangements to architecture to anything. And so that gives us 20 minutes of not parenting and also allows our kids to have another type of interaction.
Ashton: And it works really well with people who are single and they’re home, they’re alone, they don’t have kids that they’re chasing around all day. So they’ve got a free 20 or 30 minutes and the kid just engage(s) in them. And so we did like one architecture lesson and we did one recyclable energy lesson and we baked cookies for one, we did a flower arranging for one.
Mila: But we piggy-back off of our kids curriculum. I don’t want to take away, their schools are amazing at helping the parents every week.
[From YouTube via Just Jared]
Ashton explained their next lesson is about how the human body works with a focus on how long it takes to make poop. Enlisting one’s friend to help teach is a good idea. I remember, long before lockdown when our kids were about Wyatt and Dimitri’s age, my local friend group discussed whether we could make a homeschool situation work with each of us taking a subject. We, of course, thought we were on the precipice of an educational revolution – until we acknowledged we could handle maybe a week of it and it would all fall apart. But one 20-minute Zoom session on anything I want to teach is right up my alley. I know a lot of grandparents that are reading stories to their grandchildren via Zoom or FaceTime. The families coordinate and get the same books and the child follows along as they grandparent reads. Everyone is so thrilled with it, I know they’ll continue post lockdown. And, as Mila said, it gives the parents a small respite.
I’m sure everyone readily agreed to this arrangement but listening to Ashton describe it (the video is posted below), he almost sounds like he thinks his single friends owe his kids a 20-minute lesson because they have nothing better to do. If his intent was to say that his single friends are stuck at home, alone and desperate for company so they jumped at the opportunity to put together a lesson plan, then great. But if they’re hitting their friends up and guilting them in to giving them a break, they better send a case of their Quarantine Wine as payment for the single person’s time.
Here’s the interview with homeschool comments:
They also did this voice swapping bit Jimmy asked them to do. They found it much funnier than I did, but they had a lot of fun with it so that was nice:
Photo credit: YouTube and Getty Images
I used to really like Mila, but Ashton’s douchebaggery has rubbed off on her 🙁
There have been multiple interviews where she comes off as insufferable, not sure if it started pre-Ashton or not, but yeah..youre totally right
I feel the opposite – I think she has made him more likable. I never could stand him, but I just watched that whole interview and he didn’t really bug me.
I love that the Quarantine Wine idea and am glad it’s so successfully raising money, and the friends teaching via zoom is probably fun for all.
This reminds me of Ari Shapiro from NPR doing homeschooling lessons for his nieces or nephews, how fun would that be to hear about current events and other media related topics from him? He put it on YouTube so anyone can watch them.
I think Mila and Ashton’s idea is cool, even though I also think their kids are still at ages where teaching/helping them yourself is probably pretty manageable. It was 3rd, 4th, 5th grade where the stakes definitely got higher and if my kids were that ages I think I’d be looking for all the help I could get during the quarantine.
Yup, mine is in 4th grade and he’s pretty disciplined in doing his distance leaning assignments and managing his workload. Occasionally he’ll pop in with a question or ask for help. It’s always math, which….he got those same lack of math skills from me, so it’s like the blind leading the blind sometimes lol. On the plus side, I’m now the queen of manipulating mixed fractions! The Shapiro lessons sound cool. What a great idea. I’m going to check them out
What a great attitude, sounds like you have a lovely kid as well
I feel for my friends who have older kids, the one’s son is has an advanced math class, and she’s having to learn it all over again to understand what he’s doing!
I think the teaching thing with Mila and Ashton’s kids is more to give the kids someone else to interact with, and give their friends something to do to break up their day a bit, rather than actual school lessons, but it actually sounds like they’re learning all types of stuff too.
F*ck that ! Your kids are YOUR responsibility. Stop assuming those of us who are single and don’t have kids have all the free time in the world.
yup yup. exactly my thinking. like they are doing them a favour or something. maybe check-in with them and ask them what they need? how they can support them?? wtf.
“Stop assuming those of us who are single and don’t have kids have all the free time in the world.”
Well said, bravo! Totally agree!
And stop assuming that single people who don’t have children even want to spend their time on yours.
exactly this
Yes, because they definitely forced this on their non-willing single friends who were powerless to object……………..
Some people don’t have kids for whatever reason but actually enjoy spending time with them and feel happy to impart their wisdom and skills.
News flash— that is what a couple looks like when they actually like each other and know how not to take each other too seriously.
And if they have single friends that are not doing anything a 20 minute zoom session is hardly an arm twist. We are all in this together, yeah? Or would that get in the way of binge watching shitty TV?
What are the parents doing that THEY can’t teach their own kids? Single friends are not babysitters. They have NO obligation to spend time with YOUR kids.
Nobody’s teaching a 5 and a 2 year old anything. It’s purely for entertainment.
Sorry, why would we all “be in together” on raising someone else’s kids? It’s fine if you want to, but don’t assume that everyone wants to be involved in raising other people’s kids, either.
Who said anything about raising kids? Presumably those people have relationships with the kids and want to chat with them. Given that the example is about poop, it’s unlikely that anyone is treating this as more than a diversion.
It takes a village.
Children aren’t raised by one or two people alone, as much as some martyrs think they might be.
I actually saw her at Target (pre-quarantine) with her kids, and she was so engaged, patient and cute with them. So I’m a fan.