Alicia Silverstone is opening up about her unique way of parenting her 11-year-old son Bear. In a new interview on The Ellen Fisher Podcast, the Clueless alum, 45, revealed that she and her son still sleep in the same bed, saying that she didn’t “really care” if people judge her for that decision.
“Bear and I still sleep together,” Silverstone said on the podcast. “I’ll be in trouble for saying that and I don’t really care.” Silverstone explained that motherhood for her was the “most unbelievable experience in this world,” and that when Bear was born, she wanted to “savor every moment of his life.” The actress even wanted to have more children, but when her relationship with ex-husband, Christopher Jarecki got “messed up,” she admits it was “not a great time to bring one in.”
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“I didn’t want to have one right away because I was so in love with my Bear. I wanted to squeeze every little moment out of him so it wasn’t until he was 3 that I was ready to make another baby – and then I didn’t have a partner,” she said, referencing her 2018 divorce from the musician, “so that’s why I don’t have four babies.”
Silverstone also shared more about her experience using the “elimination communication” method with Bear to institute potty training early, noting that he “never went poop in a diaper again after 8 months.” Silverstone, who started practicing the method with her son at 6 months old, said she found success taking Bear to the toilet when she was done feeding him and when he would wake up from a nap.
“Babies wake up a lot and babies eat a lot, so if you just practice putting them to the bathroom after that, that will knock out half your diaper usage,” she said of what worked best for her. Picking up on Bear’s cues on when he needed to go to the bathroom was also a big part of the method. “There was a period of time where I was watching him naked and watching the cues,” she said of her son. “The cues part for me was really fun because I thought that he was flirting with me because he would do this little smile. That’s when he had to pee.”
Silverstone has been criticized before when it comes to her parenting methods, making headlines for her decision to raise Bear as a vegan to bathing with her son in the tub, but the Senior Year actress insisted “every choice I make is either built on instinct or deep research.” She said, “Nurturing this little monkey and having him, you know, I just wanted to do what was healthiest for him at every turn.”
