Kaiser covered Jennifer Aniston’s Interview spread yesterday, the one in which she chatted with her friend Sandra Bullock and talked about seeing snapshots of her future. During that piece, Sandra talked about her future as well. Sandra’s is not so much about relaxing at the beach as it is stalking her children whenever they go. She (jokingly) said that she has given her kids a list of colleges they can attend based on where she wants to live, because she plans to be right next to wherever they end up.
Close to her kids! Sandra Bullock is already planning how she’ll handle her children leaving home for college.
“I gave them the places where they can go … because that’s where Mommy feels comfortable living,” the actress, 55, joked with Jennifer Aniston of Louis, 10, and Laila, 8, in the Friends alum’s March 2020 Interview cover story, published on Tuesday, February 11. “I said, ‘You can go to these three colleges because I’m going to buy an apartment down the street.’”
Aniston, 51, said that the Bird Box star should start “building a college at the bottom of the hill right now.” The Los Angeles native explained, “By the time Louis and Laila are at the right ages, it’ll be: ‘I’ll just drive you there every single day. We can even walk and make it a physical experience.’”
This really made me laugh. Trying to come to terms with your children not living under your roof is kind of hard to grapple with. I strongly believe that living away for college is a good experience for anyone that can do it (and I realize not everyone can). But good googley-moogley, I remember the heartbreak of my brothers going off to school, what am I going to do when it’s the little beasts I raised? Although, if I send them far enough away that they cannot return to have me do their laundry, that’ll ease the pain some.
Sandra also talked about bringing up kids in this electronic age:
Bullock went on to share her anxieties about raising little ones in a world where “screens are everywhere,” telling Aniston, “I look at everyone who is trying to raise kids, and I go, ‘How are we supposed to raise children outside of a bubble? And show them the difference between right and wrong, and what kindness looks like, when it’s really hard to find it with all the noise on a screen?’ Do you just keep pointing to a higher power, going: ‘You have to answer to that thing. Don’t look at anything here on Earth. Just point up there’?”
I don’t have any answers because my kids aren’t adults yet so who knows how they will turn out. But we have access to the same media they do. So if a parent can keep a kid talking to them, find out what they are watching and listening to, we can still check it out, see what information is coming at them, find ways to discuss it. It’s scary, absolutely, but it isn’t unnavigable. But, yeah, I’ve asked myself, “How are we supposed to raise children outside of a bubble?” many times, as I’m sure my folks did before me.
Photo credit: WENN/Avalon
Oh, I feel this. My best friend and I told our daughters (who are also best friends) that we were going to get apartments in the college towns they are in so we could come visit. It’s hard when they are not in your house. I am not gonna lie. Luckily I am close enough with my kids that they text and SnapChat throughout the day and they WANT me to know what is going on with them. It helps to ease the sadness of them not being around.
Yep, I relate. My oldest boy is heading off next year, and I’m already feeling it. But I’m so happy for him to spread his wings and fly, even if I’m going to be sobbing into pints of Ben & Jerry’s.
Although sometimes after living through the adolescent years, you’re really ready for them to head off . . .
Hahahaha! I miss mine, and love having them come home, but…
Not gonna lie, I deserve this me time!!!
Normally, I would hate that ochre dress, but on her? I love it. She is magical.
Obviously Sandra is joking, and she’s darling, but I have a cousin who goes to visit her college-junior son every weekend at college. His school is about 4 hours away from her, but she drives up there to be with him. I feel so sorry for the kid.
Oh man, I feel the same way. I’m a single mom and I’m even considering renting an apartment where ever my daughter ends up after college just so I can see her regularly. I’ll be retired and either doing remote freelance work or volunteering. My kid is going to HATE this idea when she’s older I’m sure.
My kids are only a year apart in school so we went half, then full empty nest over the last two years. It was initially less difficult than I imagined. I kept telling myself they are where they need to be. But after having them both home for a few weeks for winter break, I was really sad in January. Semi-relieved to have a quiet house again but really missing their presences.
The key seems to be keeping busy. I have a bigger job now, some new hobbies/volunteer gigs and am being more social again. It’s nice to see them grow into adulthood.
A friend & her husband could never agree on schools for their son for pre-school, elementary, & high school and the kid would always choose to attend the school both parents opposed. When he started to look at colleges, she would say that it seemed very nice but she didn’t understand why he dragged her half way across the country to look at a school when the only one she would pay for was the one down the street and he would walk to his classes. Well, he did finally choose the school down the street but she’s not paying tuition because Harvard gave him a full ride but he does walk to classes because he’s in the dorms. She sees him for lunch once a week.
a full ride at Harvard? parents must be THRILLED!
and that kid must be quite accomplished. good for him.
He’s brilliant and very caring but quite shy and a little awkward; he’s a science nerd. The school suggested he live on campus to help improve his social skills. Yes, they are quite proud of him.
We just do. We can’t keep them away from screens, but because we’ve raised them, we have been the ones talking to them about everything. On the way to school, they ask questions and we talk. On the way home, something happened to us and we talk. Every night, every morning, every day we’re talking about anything and everything around us. When they discover something funny online and they share, we’re there. When we do the same, they’re included. It’s common sense, but parenting isn’t about lectures. It’s about living life, discussing the rights and wrongs of the world, feelings, frustrations…all of it. And because we do that for 18 years, when they move out, when decisions come their way, how do they break it down? In exactly the same way they did at home. Everything they do, we are in the back of their mind. Always. They’ll learn from everything we’ve done throughout their lives, and they’ll tweak parameters stemming from mistakes we’ve made. It’s a very long emotional rollercoaster that is ironically over too fast. But living with today’s tech is a miracle to be embraced because at any moment, any second of any day, we can instantly reach out to one another for more phases of sharing life and love.
Beautifully put!!
Yes, there is college but what about when they graduate and get a job on the other side of the country. My friend has two daughters who graduated college and work on opposite sides of the country. It’s great that they have good jobs, but it’s heartbreaking when travel is expensive and you barely know your grand-children.
Louis is 10 now. It just feels like a couple years ago he and Sandra were on the cover of People Magazine.
Ha! My partner and I happen to have a little camper trailer, and we always tell our daughter and her boyfriend that we’re going to come park it in the driveway of their house when they get one–which is probably why they stay in a high-rise apartment! 🙂 We do sometimes camp near the city where they live when we visit, and we forced them to come out to make s’mores one time. Yes, we are those corny moms.
My friend’s family actually moved out to California when she got into Stanford. She HATED it. They were around all the time and for holidays in college while the rest of us flew home to the city we grew up in, she was stuck in California. I know her parents got her to where she was, but I felt that that decision was selfish and stifling.
Kids are supposed to go off and have their own lives. Doesn’t mean parents can’t keep in contact and be close but the point of parenting is to raise self-sufficient, well-adjusted young people. Boundaries.
My friend literally did this. She moved their whole family to the town where her eldest child went to college. Then she talked the second child into going to the same college (I’m not convinced it was the best school for them but at least the kid loved it). Then there was even more following-around AFTER college (moving to the city where the eldest went to grad school). Now she’s back where the second child lives (who got a job near-ish the college). I just don’t know that it’s healthy, but the kids seem all right.
Better to have parents that care than ones that aren’t present at all. Some just kick their kids out at 18 and those poor kids have to fend for themselves. Lucky are the ones whose parents care so much as they want to be close and make sure the kids stay on the right path. As long as you let your child still have some space and learn to “adult” as much as possible…I say it’s all good.
One of the basics of having children, IMO, is to raise them to be functioning, reasonably autonomous and independent adults. It may break our hearts when they happily skip out the door to college, saying, “See ya, Mom!” with barely a look back, but that means we did our job.
I love Sandra as an actress and what I think I know of her as a person. That said, I wish she, Nicole, and even Rene would lay off the Botox. It’s painful to watch their faces not move. They all look beautiful from a distance, but those close ups are so painful to look at — they’re so stiff it’s like they have rigor mortis. I understand the media they work in makes it difficult to age, but there are very successful actresses who can still move their face muscles
I like Sandra but that’s so unhealthy. She’ll change her mind or have her mind changed when they hit 18. No one wants their parents hanging around like that. Get a life!
I have always liked her. And have felt since she adopted her kids that she was probably a really good mom, in terms of shielding her kids from the craziness of how she must have to live her life, and how they live theirs. White people adopting black kids is a hot button topic, my sister’s best friends did that and it has not been an easy ride in terms of trying to figure out where they need to be, what they need to do, what they need to learn to make their daughter safe and happy. But the most important thing in their lives are those goals, in a fully conscious and committed way. I think that is as good as it gets.