20 Relatable Things Celebs Have Said About Homeschooling During Quarantine

During a comedy sketch with actor Stephen Fry, Prince William "joked" that homeschooling his three kids had been "a bit of a nightmare really." It may be no wonder that William is reportedly letting his wife run point on the teaching thing, especially with George, whose work is a bit more challenging than that of his younger siblings.

While Kate Middleton has been leading the homeschool operation, she made the executive decision not to tell the children they were technically on Easter break. She just kept the routine going to keep the little ones occupied.

"Don't tell the children, we've actually kept it going through the holidays," Kate said in an interview this past spring. "I feel very mean. The children have got such stamina, I don't know how. Honestly, you get to the end of the day and you write down the list of all the things that you've done in that day."

Avengers actor Chris Hemsworth told Jimmy Kimmel that he's a total pushover in the homeschooling department. So, he's resorted to bribing his kids to get them to do their work. "I'm trying. I'm failing miserably. It's sort of, you know, four or five hours of negotiation and bribery and then 20 minutes of actual work, if that," he said. We feel that.

Is it just us or are kids learning completely different math these days? How can we be expected to help them with their homework if we never learned it this way? Jennifer Lopez feels our pain. "Have you seen the math they make the kids do now? … It's a new math. It's crazy, and so half the time, I'm like, 'OK, let's look up that word. What does that mean?' It's been an experience for sure," she told Ellen DeGeneres.

With no classroom to go to, kids are doing their science experiments right at home. Jennifer Garner snapped a picture of what she walked into in her kitchen one day. It was an egg in a dish next to a hand drawn sign that said, "SCIENCE EXPERIMENT IN PROGRESS. NO TOUCH!"

"The fun never stops around here," the actress joked in her photo caption.

Kate Middleton would probably appreciate how Snooki has approached distance learning. She's not letting it be slack-off time for anyone. "Told my kids to call me Mrs.LaValle, since I'll be their teacher for the next few weeks," Snooki wrote on Instagram. "They have to raise their hands & ask for bathroom passes. We'll have lunch & recess and if anyone acts up, I’m sending them to the [principal]." In this case, the princpal is her husband Jionni LaValle.

For any parent who finds themselves a little more emotional these days trying to juggle everything plus homeschooling, Drew Barrymore is right there, too. She said on The Today Show that she'd finally figured out a good routine with her kids, and then "school started. And it all went out the window. I cried every day, all day long." It's a lot, we get it.

One silver lining to this whole distanced learning thing is that we can use it as a chance to teach our kids some things they may not necessarily learn in school. Kerry Washington has been doing that with her children, telling People magazine, "We're actually doing lots of studying of Africa at home right now. We were just building pyramids out of sugar cubes because we're talking about Egypt. It's figuring out how to celebrate Black identity and Black lives outside of a context of struggle."

Sure, routines can be great, but Teen Mom 2 star Kailyn Lowry is also all about giving herself grace if her homeschooling day doesn't go exactly according to plan. "Some days we get up on time & start school right away, sometimes we play outside first, then have school a little later. The truth is, maintaining a regular schedule has just been hard in this season," she said, summing up all of our thoughts these past several months.

In addition to schooling from home, many of us are also working from home — and not even celebs have that work-life balance down yet. Reese Witherspoon posted this photo of her son interrupting a business call and captioned it, "Really nailing this WFH/homeschooling life." Her and us both.

As if there's not enough stress coming from every other aspect of the world right now, homeschooling is just adding to it. Actress Charlize Theron admitted the whole distance learning thing had been getting to her, according to Us Weekly. "I'd say the biggest challenge for me is just homeschooling," she said. "It was an incredibly stressful time for me, and I will make any action movie over and over and over again before I homeschool again."

Kim Kardashian admitted on Jimmy Fallon's show that she's been hiding from her children when she needs a minute to herself away from homeschooling. Sure enough, when she was filming a video for Instagram one day, North discovered her hiding spot and Kim was flummoxed. "I'm hiding in the guest room, you guys. I'm hiding in the guest room because my kids will not leave me alone," she said.

Mike Tindall, the queen's grandson-in-law, got real about how frustrating it was to try to teach his daughter, Mia. "[She] can be brilliant one minute, and then something you've seen her do a thousand times she'll just go, 'I don't know how to do that.' And then you go, 'Well, I know you do.'" Ah, the joy of stubborn children.

Our houses are schools now and we have to make do with what we have. That's what Bradley Cooper's been doing as he says he's been running a "one-man preschool" out of his house. "Thankfully there's a backyard," he said, adding, "We get up, we do swim class in the bathtub." Hey, whatever it takes.

Late night host James Cordon admitted to Ryan Seacrest that homeschooling is the most tiring thing he's ever done. "I will never come home from work ever again and say that I am exhausted," James said. "The homeschooling is horrific. If somebody came down from a different planet and observed me and my son and then were asked 'Which of these is the teacher?' they would never choose me."

We're all just doing our best here, so the kids' screen time may be a little higher than usual these days. But, hey, no worries! Sarah Michelle Gellar says that watching TV can become eductional in a snap. "If you turn the closed captions on … then you can brag to all your friends that your kids spent the entire day reading."

Genius!

Hamilton's Lin-Manuel Miranda finds himself backseat Zooming to encourage his kids to pay attention during virtual lessons. "I'm sure every parent has had the experience of feeling like a creeper in the room being like, 'Your teacher can see you. Look at the screen. Stop flopping around!" he said in a recent interview.

Now that we're all being extra hands-on with the schoolwork, it feels sort of like a personal attack when the teacher doesn't like what our kids turn in. Christina Milian summed it up best when she said, "I think the parents all think we're doing a good enough job, but then you almost take it personally if she's not getting straight As because you're like, 'Wait, hold on, I'm helping do all of this."

Poor Kristen Bell was all of us when she posted this picture of how her virtual learning day was going. She's sitting at the table with the computer open, the dog on her lap, her kids climbing on her, breakfast still out, and still in her jammies. "Homeschool's going okay," Kristen captionded the pic. Girl, us too.

For as difficult as our end of the homeschooling has been, it's probably been even tougher on the teachers who went virtual this year. "There should be a special place in heaven for teachers," Tamera Mowry-Housley told Us Weekly. "I think the most challenging part is getting the kids to stay interested in schoolwork while being at home. They want to do other things within 30 minutes because they see the things they would rather be doing right in front of them — their TV, their backyard."

And somehow the teachers are making it work just like we are. We're all in this together.