Coco Austin’s Surprisingly Gentle Method for Dealing with Daughter Chanel’s Bullies Is a Lesson for All of Us
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Usually when someone hurts our baby, our protective mama bear instincts come out. But when Coco Austin and Ice-T’s daughter Chanel, 8, encountered a bully, the model had a different approach to dealing with it — and everyone should take notes.
“We had one bully conversation and it was actually in kindergarten,” Austin said in a new interview with E! News. “This little girl was bullying [Chanel], and she used to come home and say, ‘Mommy, I don’t like this girl. She’s mean to me.'”
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That breaks my heart! But instead of marching up to the school and sharing words with that little girl who hurt her daughter, Austin took a more gentle approach. At first, she decided to let things play out and see if this was just typical 5-year-old drama. But when she attended a school function, she noticed the girl and her mom acting funny when they saw her and Chanel.
“When I saw this parent, I killed her with kindness,” Austin explained. “And her whole opinion changed of me, and she probably had a conversation with her daughter [because] Chanel didn’t have a problem the rest of the year.”
She continued, “As a matter of fact, she was asking Chanel, ‘Can I come to your parties? Can I come to your house?’ And that’s all it takes: You just have to kill them with kindness.”
Let moms, like Coco Austin, enjoy these precious moments without judgment. https://t.co/XBmxMYHzqY
— SheKnows (@SheKnows) August 22, 2023
Hello, mom of the year right here! That is absolutely beautiful — and don’t you just love when you take the high road and give a good example to your kids, and it actually pay off?! Not every bully will back down with a few kind words, but regardless, it’s absolutely the best way to handle any situation.
Austin has her fair share of dealing with bullies and critics for ridiculous reasons, like pushing her daughter in a stroller or kissing her.
“You have to be out of your mind to care with someone else has to say,” Ice-T told PEOPLE in August. “I guess the thing is that to become successful, you can’t pay attention to anybody but yourself. I think the trick is you take that like this: I don’t know you personally, so I can’t take anything personally. The only thing that would bother me is if somebody I cared about said something.”
He continued, “You got to remember this: for anything anybody says about me and Coco, there’s a million billion people that are like f— that. So are you gonna listen to the negative? I always say you’re insulated by love. You got so many people out there that love you. You can’t pay attention to the idiots, you know? So none of that affects us and you can tell.”
To sum it up: ignore the haters, and if you do encounter them, kill ’em with kindness. We’ll be passing this down to our kids!
Before you go, check out these celebrity parents who have defended their kids against bullies.
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