1. Alicia Silverstone chewed all of her son’s food for him

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Clueless star Alicia Silverstone wrote a blog post that was met with a collective ‘wtf?’ back in 2012, when she shared that she ‘pre-chews’ her sons food. A video of her passing soup (yes, she ‘pre-chewed’ soup) from her own mouth to the child’s went viral around that time too. She defended her actions:

People have been feeding their kids that way for thousands of years. It’s a weaning process. I think it’s adorable and it makes me laugh every time he does it.

When Silverstone shared the video, she wrote that her son Bear crawls across the room to ‘attack her mouth’ if she’s eating.

The American Center for Disease Control didn’t think as highly of pre-chewing as Silverstone, saying ‘just because something has been done in the past doesn’t mean that it’s the best thing to do now’, asserting that it can transmit strep and tooth decay.

2. Scientologist John Travolta and his wife Kelly Preston opted for a ‘silent birth’

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The Church of Scientology advises ‘silent birth’, a mandatory practice in which ‘everyone attending the birth should refrain from spoken words as much as possible’.  When Preston gave birth to her son Benjamin in 2010, nobody was allowed to talk.

This probably would have come in handy for Robbie Williams’ wife when she had to endure him recording himself singing his own songs while she watched on in agony.

3. Hilary Duff kept her newborn baby’s belly button stump in her makeup drawer.

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Despite the disgust of her husband, Duff decided to secretly hold on to the child’s belly button stump after it fell off. She put it in a Ziploc bag and hid it at the back of her makeup drawer. Imagine reaching in for a makeup brush and accidentally grabbing the bag of your child’s decomposing flesh. Lovely.

4. Madonna’s children were only allowed to drink Kabbalah water that was blessed for the modest price of $10,000 a month.

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According to Just Jared, in 2008 Madonna was spending $10,000 a month on water that cost $5 a bottle. On top of this, she enforced a macrobiotic diet that included no sweets and had grains for every meal. Sugar was banned entirely, as was cheese, cream, salt and preservatives.

The kids reportedly weren’t allowed to watch TV or read newspapers or play with toys that were considered ‘spiritually unsound’. It was even reported that a long list of rules written for Guy Ritchie by Madonna following their split said that he was only allowed to read them ‘The English Roses’ at bedtime, which is a series of books written by Madonna.

5. Gisele Bundchen’s son was reportedly potty trained by the age of six months.

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The Boston Herald wrote in 2010 that the supermodel’s infant had an extremely early start on using the jacks. While most kids aren’t comfortable using a toilet until they’re 18-36 months old, Bundchen’s 6-month-old son with Tom Brady was allegedly using a potty.

The LA Times reported that the model ‘learned to respond immediately to the sings of a baby’s impending bladder or bowel release by holding him over a toilet and giving a vocal or hand signal’.

Advocates of this unusual practice say it’s better for the environment because it saves money on nappies, but realistically very few new parents have the time, energy or resources to stand over a toilet holding a baby until it does its business several times a day.

6. Penelope Cruz engaged in RIE parenting, a philosophy in which you treat your baby as an adult.

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RIE (Resources for Infant Educarers) is a parenting method which ‘doesn’t believe in praise’ and especially does not believe in ‘treating children like children’. Tobey Maguire and Jamie Lee Curtis have also opted for this method, which was formulated in Hungary in the 1940s.

While on the phone to your child, you’re instructed to have long adult conversations with no ‘baby talk’. No sippy cups, no bouncers, no high chairs,no strollers and no baby walkers because these all ‘disrespect’ a baby’s true emotions and make them ‘zone out to stop annoying you’.

This is definitely not a realistic option for the vast majority of ordinary people and seems unfair. Babies will eventually spend their entire lives working and having adult conversations, no harm in letting them have some semblance of joy in their lives at some point.

7. Tom Cruise had planned to eat Katie Holmes’ placenta after she gave birth.

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The actor said that the placenta and umbilical cord would be ‘very nutritious‘ to GQ, and added “I’m gonna eat the placenta. I thought that would be good.” Shortly after, Cruise backtracked on his comments. Speaking to Diane Sawyer, he joked “Yeah, we’re going to do it that – a whole family thing. Isn’t that normal and natural? No, we’re not eating it.”

As Scientologists, naturally this pair went with a silent birth too.

8. Alanis Morrissette said she would only stop breastfeeding her son ‘when he asked’.

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Breastfeeding is great, there’s no doubt about it. However, leaving it up to your child to decide when they want to stop is a bit of a strange concept.

If you have done something literally every single day of your entire life, then why would you ever even consider that you could stop, or decide that you were ready to? Much less if you’re a six-year-old, who sees no merits in stopping.

Of course plenty of kids naturally stop, but we’ve all seen those Pick Me Up magazine type stories where somebody still breastfeeds their 31-year-old son. What would Penelope Cruz think of this?

 9. And finally, of course, there’s Gwyneth Paltrow.

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A woman who refers to breaking up with her husband as ‘conscious uncoupling’ is naturally going to have a few parenting quirks. Her daughter Apple and son Moses are only allowed to watch television if it’s in French or Spanish.

The household was temporarily macrobiotic like Madonna’s and they occasionally go coffee-free, alcohol-free, dairy-free, egg-free, sugar-free, shellfish-free, meat-free, soy-free and wheat-free.

She also has previously spoken out about her concerns (which experts have immediately shot down), that using shampoo on children causes cancer. In a blog post, she said she was ‘seized with fear’ about research that (wrongly) claimed that household hygiene products are responsible for autism, cancer and asthma. So no shampoo in the Paltrow house anyway.

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