Alicia Silverstone Reveals That a Simple 'No Thank You' Is All It Takes to Reprimand Her Son
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The next time your tiny human starts misbehaving, perhaps you should borrow the way Alicia Silverstone reprimands her son. Whenever Bear Blu, 8 ½, starts to act up, the actress course-corrects with three simple words: “No thank you.” Could manners be the answer to dealing with the daily drama kids can drum up? According to Silverstone, her success rate with this form of discipline is high.
Speaking with People, The 43-year-old mom-of-one shared a bit of insight into her parenting methods — which she says are rooted in the mutual “respect” she and Bear have for each other. “Because of the healthy lifestyle that we lead, he didn’t go through terrible twos and terrible threes. There wasn’t really much of that. When you’re really meeting their needs, and you really understand what they want and need… I didn’t find any of that,” Silverstone said, although she did point out that the two have had “moments where there were things we had to redirect and correct.”
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But doing so didn’t entail any big temper tantrums or meltdowns. “The most I have to say is, ‘No thank you, Bear,’ and he goes, ‘Okay,'” she shared. “That’s my reprimanding. And he’s got it. Because he respects me and I respect him.”
A post shared by Alicia Silverstone (@aliciasilverstone) on Jul 14, 2019 at 3:06pm PDT
Silverstone explained that since welcoming Bear in 2012 — the little boy’s father is Silverstone’s ex-husband Christopher Jarecki — she has learned to be “absolutely present” in the moment. This means focusing her attention 100 percent on him when they’re together. “It’s not some kind of spoiled thing. It’s just that when you love someone, you want to take them in and soak them in. And many of us didn’t get that. If he starts to cry, I listen. If he’s upset about something, I stop and I talk to him about it.”
Of course, it’s important to point out that if you aren’t reprimanding your children with manners, it doesn’t mean you don’t respect them. Or, if they require more than a simple “no thank you,” that they don’t respect you. When it comes to parenting, it’s pretty much a matter of throwing different approaches and ideas at the wall until something sticks, right?
So, it’s nice that Silverstone has found something that seems to be a fit for her and Bear. A mother-and-son relationship full of manners and mutual kindness? That’s a “yes, please” in our books.
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