15 Celebrity Moms Share Their Totally Genius Parenting Hacks

Oooh, we love this idea! Everyone's favorite celeb mom, Jennifer Garner, shared this good boredom buster for her kids back in 2019, and it looks like the perfect plan for a rainy day or for when we want to have a screen-free day with our littler kids. Plus, all the little animals are so cute!

Gwyneth Paltrow's kids are almost all grown-up now, but we still think her hack for helping them learn languages is really smart. In 2012, Yahoo News reported that Gwyneth used cartoons in French and Spanish to help daughter Apple and son Moses become multilingual. And evidently, she went directly to the source to find them. "When I'm in France, I go to Beaumarchais and buy all their cartoons," she said at the time.

Any tip, trick, or hack that encourages moms to not be so hard on themselves is genius in our book. Mindy Kaling told the Today show that she's made peace with understanding that she can't do everything on her own as a single mom.

"Yes, I am the parent of my two children — but there are all these other caregivers in the form of family, friends, and nannies. I couldn’t do it without the village. Absolving myself of guilt for depending on others has been the biggest piece of advice that has helped me," she shared.

There is nothing scarier than when a kid bolts away from the car in a crowded parking lot. That's why this idea shared by Kristen Bell is so smart. As she explained, kids are instructed to use a special phrase when they get out of the car. "'Hands on the circle' (the circle is the gas tank cover) was invented by my brilliant sister-in-law, and has thus far kept my kids safe from any oncoming traffic while I unload the trunk," she said.

Just like the rest of us, celebrity moms worry about how to make sure their kids will survive a plane flight without losing their minds. Unlike the rest of us, they get their parenting hacks from fellow celebs like Nicole Kidman.

"The best piece of advice that I ever got for traveling with a kid was from Nicole Kidman my first year in Nashville," actress Connie Britton shared during a 2020 radio interview. "She said we have it down to a science because they have an iPad that they are only allowed to use on the plane. So the only time [my son] uses an iPad is on the plane. He sits down in his seat. He's like, 'Mom, can I look at my iPad?' I'm like, 'Yeah.' We don't speak the entire plane ride. Instead of giving him multiple doses of Benadryl, just do the iPad and then it goes back in his backpack when we land."

Being a parent of teens means realizing that sometimes (always?) they are paying far more attention to their phones than they are to boring old Mom — even if Mom is Reese Witherspoon! We love that the Legally Blonde star uses social media, including this Snapchat picture, to communicate with her teens. Gotta meet them where they're at!

Listen, we have to be honest: We're not totally against lying to kids. Especially when it comes to getting a little guy to actually eat some lunch and it only involves having to pretend that their favorite character is also a big fan of whatever we might be serving.

Celebs may have more money than the rest of us, but we love that Sarah Michelle Gellar is determined to raise kids who aren't wasteful or spoiled. In a 2017 interview with the Today show, she shared her hack for making sure her kids aren't wasteful. "My daughter was doing this thing lately where she was asking me for a cup of milk and not drinking it. So I told her that every time she'd ask me for a cup of milk and not drink it, I would take a quarter out of her piggy bank. Someone has to pay for that milk," she explained.

It isn't unusual for siblings to compete with each other, so why not follow Busy Philipps' lead and use that rivalry for good? "I use sibling rivalry. I'm like, 'I feel like Cricket's going to finish her broccoli first,' and then Birdie's like, 'I can finish it first,'" the actress and activist told Us Weekly.

We all know the importance of having a change of clothes for the baby when we travel, but Hilary Duff learned her hack (that moms need a backup shirt, too) the hard way! Back in 2015, she told Buzzfeed about her poop fail and hard-learned lesson. "I was flying to New York with Luca, and he had an extra outfit, but I didn't. That was an interesting last hour and a half of the plane ride. He was clean, he was good … I wasn't. So I've shoved an extra T-shirt into my bag ever since."

When little ones are first learning to walk, they want to practice that new skill everywhere. But what to do if there isn't a good sidewalk or safe place near the house to let a toddler roam? Jenna Fischer has a hack for that.

"We lived on a hill and we didn't have sidewalks, so we would drive to Ikea when Weston was a little toddler," she recounted to HelloGiggles in 2018. "We would get coffee, and then we would let him toddle through Ikea, and then we would end with an ice cream. It was super safe, everything was really soft. But also, he loved that there were arrows on the ground, he loved following the arrows, and then there's the kids' section. Ikea really is the Disneyland for 18-month-olds."

A bout of a gas is no fun for anyone, but it can make even the happiest baby a very unhappy camper. Gabrielle Union's hack is to get the gas out via some bicycle legs set to a banging beat. We're here for the musical moves that get gas bubbles busted!

Finding time to squeeze in a workout can be a challenge for a lot of moms, so we think Halle Berry might be onto something with her fitness hack. As she explained to Women's Health in 2020, she takes her kids' boundless energy and turns it into a workout time for everyone. "Most days, I just try to get moving with my kids because you'd better believe they're bouncing off the walls," she said. "We'll play around the house or get really into playing air hockey — whatever we can do to be active together in a way that doesn't feel like an actual workout (because they do not want to work out with me)."

Kim Kardashian was pretty open about the fact that her eldest daughter, North, was a jealous big sister when son Saint came along, including when it came to Kim's attention. The Skims founder told the Ellen DeGeneres Show that North would get jealous when she nursed her son so she came up with a smart solution. "When I was breastfeeding Saint, [North] was so jealous that I had to get a little milk box and put it in the other bra with a straw. So she would drink and he would drink."

To be a parent means that there will inevitably be temper tantrums. Actress Debra Messing told Us Weekly her super easy hack for ending a tantrum: DISTRACTION! "Singing Broadway musicals is a really great distraction from temper tantrums," she said. We hope there are bonus points for being off-key!