“Well, here’s a story that’s about to get me in trouble,” Mila Kunis said during The Ellen DeGeneres Show’s “Mom Confessions” segment posted to YouTube on Tuesday (Oct. 20). The prompt was “What’s your biggest parenting fail?”, and Mila, 38, began to spin a tale involving her and Ashton Kutcher’s 7-year-old daughter, Wyatt. “There was a little kid in my kids’ preschool that wasn’t very kind and pushed my daughter. My daughter came back, and she was like, ‘Such-and-such little kiddo pushed me.’ And I instinctively said, ‘did you push her back?’ And my daughter’s like, ‘No!’ And I was like, ‘Push her back next time. Push her back and say, no thank you, and you walk away.'”
“And I turn around,” continued Mila, “and I see Ashton’s face and he’s like, ‘NOOOOO.’ But, I was like, ‘you stand up for yourself, and you say NO THANK YOU.'” Mila did clarify that she told Wyatt not to push anyone “off of a ladder or off a swing or off of a slide, but on the ground, even-steven? You push them back.’ I’d say that that’s a parenting fail.” Mila also dished on how she “can’t lie to my kids” because there are two of them – Wyatt and 4-year-old Dimitri. “It’s those little white lies you want to tell one but not tell the other. It’s that instinct to say, ‘don’t tell your brother. You and I are going to get ice cream.’ [It] instinctually tells them it’s okay to lie, and so, I’ve had to not do that, which has been oddly hard for me.”
Mila and Ashton, 43, were at the center of a parenting controversy over the summer. While appearing on Dax Shepard and Monica Padman’s Armchair Expert podcast, the two shared the dirt on their kids’ bathing schedule. “I didn’t have hot water growing up as a child, so I didn’t shower much anyway,” Mila said. “But when I had children, I also didn’t wash them every day. I wasn’t that parent that bathed my newborns — ever.” Ashton later added, “Now, here’s the thing: If you can see the dirt on them, clean them. Otherwise, there’s no point.” The couple also divulged their own bathing habits, which led to some fans posting their shocked reactions online.
Mila later clarified during a September 2021 appearance on Ellen that she “showers every day.” She also said her “intent every day is to bathe [her] children,” but plans sometimes change. “I wake up every day, like, ‘Today I’m going to shower my kids,'” Mila insisted. “And then bedtime happens, and I forgot to feed them…and just—” She added a shrug for comedic effect.