Expert says Brangelinas traveling isnt good for their kids

About a week ago, I wrote an article about Maddox Jolie-Pitt leaving his school after only six weeks because Brangelina were moving to Los Angeles for Angie’s new movie. I speculated that it couldn’t be great for Maddox to have to leave schools after such a short period of time. Several commenters pointed out that Army kids move a lot, which is very true. I’m under the impression that they generally don’t have to move several times a year, and if nothing else, their parents don’t have quite the same ability to choose not to move as Angelina and Brad do. What I have to say on the issue doesn’t really matter because I’m just some random person, but the New York Daily News has decided to get a professional to jump on board.

BRAD PITT and Angelina Jolie may not be doing their four children any favors by constantly schlepping them from city to city around the world. The nomadic superstars, who have lived in at least a half-dozen cities in two years, may be hurting their eldest son, Maddox, 6, by pulling him from schools and the younger three by “not creating a stable environment outside the family unit,” said Manhattan-based psychotherapist/social worker Puja Hall, who’s been practicing for 21 years. “Maddox is an adopted child, so he already has a sense of abandonment,” said Hall. “Kids that constantly move are like army brats, in that very often they don’t want to open up to people. They feel loss, and there is a problem with attachment.”

So far, the Jolie-Pitt clan has lived in New Orleans, Paris, Namibia, Berlin and, most recently, New York, where Maddox attended the prestigious Lyce Francais for just six weeks. Now they’re in L.A., where Jolie is shooting “The Changeling.” Pitt and Jolie are rumored to have enrolled at least one of the kids at Universal Studio’s child-care center. “With the moves, the kids just don’t invest in relationships, because they’re going to lose them anyway,” Hall told Page Six’s Marianne Garvey. “They think: ‘Why bother I’m not gonna stick around. We’re gonna pick up and go, and the loss of friends is painful.’ ”

Hall added that before Pax, 3, Zahara, 2, and Shiloh, 16 months, get any older, Angelina and Brad need to decide where to settle down. “It needs to be weighed,” said Hall. “At some point, they will have to make some important choices so the kids can form those bonds and keep them.”

That’s not the only problem - the kids also seem to be skipping the waiting lists at the schools. “We would most likely not take a child for [just] a few months, because we have a waiting list. If we take them for two months and you pay for two months, we lose money and someone on the waiting list loses a spot,” said an employee at Lyce Francais, where the yearly tuition is $18,000 plus a $2,000 contract-signing fee. “You still have to pay for at least half the year,” the staff member said.

[From the Daily News]

So it would have behooved the expert to mention that he’s (presumably) never met nor treated Brangelina’s kids, so everything he’s saying is professional conjecture, though it still carries some weight. I remember hearing a psychologist once say that human beings aren’t nearly as original as we like to think we are - for the most part, we tend to react in pretty predictable ways. Still, if Brangelina manage to instill a love of adventure in their kids from an early age, they could thrive under their unique circumstances. Angelina’s rep also noted that Maddox only attends Lyce schools (which are located throughout the country and the world), which may mean there’s more stability than we thought. It’s possible that if Maddox cycles between the same few schools through the years, he might maintain friendships with kids he meets often enough. One would also hope this means there’s a little bit of similarity between the curricula, so perhaps Maddox’s unique circumstances mean his moves aren’t as jarring as one would think.

 [Date: 19-Oct-07 ]

Written by TechniCool on October 20th, 2007 with no comments.
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Brangelina Going Postal

Brangelina are going to be on a stamp. Which is astounding, but I like it. Shiloh will be featured on the stamp as well. A few are asking about the other kids, but how big do you think a stamp is

Superstars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are set to join the Queen, the Pope and the nation’s sporting heroes by being immortalised in an Australia Post stamp.

The Hollywood A-List couple were featured on the cover of a recent best-selling edition of New Idea, the magazine which this week received top honours at the 10th Annual Magazine of the Year Awards.

Australia Post, as major sponsor of the awards, plans to reproduce the best-selling New Idea cover in the form of a 50c stamp.

It shows a smiling Brad and Angelina with their newborn baby girl Shiloh.

“I dont know of any other country in the world that has ever had Brad and Angelina on a stamp,” a New Idea spokesman said.

“Whatever the case, these stamps are sure to become instantly collectable and be sought after by philatelists around the country.”

Sydney Morning Herald

A 50c samp only allows you to post a letter within Australia, making these stamps a little harder to get overseas. If you want some badly enough, you can probably use a few of the stamps on your envelopes. Or just pay 50c and put it inside an envelope! The stamp will actually feature a reproduction of a New Idea cover, featuring the first pictures of baby Shiloh.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are rumoured to be breaking up, which their rep denies, and Ange says the only thing they argue about is politics. Which must be a lie, because anyone in the world who has kids argues about who’s turn it is next to change that smelly nappy. A joke in Australia (and probably other countries) is saying “I’ll do the next one - the next baby!”

They also cancelled vacation plans, and Maddox tuned six. Happy Birthday Mad!

 [Date: 06-Aug-07 ]

Written by TechniCool on August 7th, 2007 with no comments.
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Brangelina cant win. Now they supposedly dont want the kids to see them fighting

Brad and Angelina have said several times that they take turns watching the children to give each other a break. Despite the fact that they are said to have four nannies, one for each child, you often see them out with their children, you rarely if ever see a nanny and they seem to be very hands-on parents. Life & Style, which has featured fake cover stories of them splitting up several times in an attempt to move magazines, is now jumping on the fact that Brad and Angelina have been out photographed separately with their children. They do it so the kids don’t sense the tension between them, Life & Style ridiculously suggests:

As photos surface of Brad Pitt, 43, picking up his children from school in Prague or Angelina Jolie taking her sons to an aquarium in France, one element is constant: Angie and Brad are never with each other while they’re with their kids.

In fact, insiders reveal, Brad and Angie, 31, have made a conscious decision to alternate time with Maddox, Pax, Zahara and Shiloh so that they don’t expose their children to the tension that the couple feel when they’re together. “Brad and Angie have decided to take the parenting duties in turn, feeling the kids deserve to be spared the stress of their parents’ fighting,” says a friend close to Brad.

In our cover story this week, Life & Style explores Brad and Angelina’s novel parenting arrangement — and again raises the question of whether the couple can sustain their relationship as they face the demands of raising four children and traveling the world to meet their professional obligations. Do you think Brad and Angie will make it

The only way these two can escape constant speculation like this is if they stop getting so much publicity. With dual movies coming out, that’s kind of impossible for them.

Angelina has an interview in the upcoming issue of Marie Claire this month, and she says a lot of cute things about her family, including the fact that Zahara tries to be manipulative and that she finds Brad sexiest when he’s with the kids. I’ll cover that shortly.

Thanks to InfDaily for the header photo of Angelina with Zahara and Pax. Used with permission.

 [Date: 02-Jun-07 ]

Written by TechniCool on June 3rd, 2007 with no comments.
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Brangelina to adopt new child & have one more the old fashioned way

Life & Style says that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie plan to adopt another child from Africa and have one more biological child this year. This could be why Angelina made a public statement that she would take a year off working to spend time with her family - it’s going to grow even more.

Brad and Angelina hope to add two children to the Jolie-Pitt clan within the next year - one through adoption, and the other via pregnancy, reports In Touch Weekly. The plan is to ‘balance their family, with one black adopted child and one white natural born child. The report claims that the pair are ready to go and are not wasting any time. Brad,43, and Angelina have begun the process of adopting another boy - this time from Africa - once she has finished filming Wanted in June, insiders say.

They’ve discussed visiting an orphanage in Ethiopia, where Zahara was born, or Namibia, where they spent last spring and had Shiloh. “The idea of finding a child from Darfur refugee camp has also been mentioned,” says a friend. They hope to bring home a child by the end of the summer.

If this report is true, it means that they’ll have six kids. They’ve made no secret of the fact that they want a large family, with Angelina talking about balancing out the faces in her family, and Brad joking that they want a soccer team. Aren’t there 11 players on a soccer team They’ve got a while to go.

Brad and Angelina may be working on that new bio-baby already. They were seen kissing in the back of a car after the premiere of Oceans 13 at Cannes. Much ado was made over that little makeout session, with all sorts of speculation over whether it was “staged” or real. They were just at a big movie premiere and everyone was fussing over them. Of course they were feeling a little randy afterwards.

Brad is currently in Montreal filming, while Angelina remains in Prague. She was seen dropping off Maddox at school this morning. Angelina looked quite happy and was smiling while walking with her bodyguard, Mickey Brett. Thanks to INFDaily for this photo.

 [Date: 01-Jun-07 ]

Written by TechniCool on June 1st, 2007 with no comments.
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Jennifer Aniston says Brangelina is a joke Links

- Jennifer Aniston thinks Brangelina is a joke [Celebwarship]
- Did Brad and Angelina have a threesome [popbytes]
- Is Heff’s main girlfriend Holly pregnant [Evil Beet]
- Scarlet Johansson and Ryan Reynolds were seen all over each other at a club [DListed]
- Jessica Biel and Justin Timberlake kiss [ICYDK]
- Sienna and Keira on the set of The Best Time of our Lives [PopSugar]
- Elisha Cuthbert without makeup (site NSFW) [Drunken Stepfather]
- Charlize Theron struts outside of a restaurant, elicits groans [The Blemish]
- Peter Andre is recovering from menigitis [The Shallow End]
- Paris Hilton and her Hello Kitty diary [Celebslam]
- Is Nicole Kidman jealous of Katie Holmes [Seriously OMG! WTF]
- Denise Richards lied to OK! Magazine [Hollywood Rag]
- Trading Spaces makes people pay taxes on all the work they do, and they still end up with Hildi’s designs [Best Week Ever]
- Foxy Brown almost hit a baby in a stroller with her car [Celebworm]
- Worst Eurovision Ever [Agent Bedhead]
- Nicole Kidman on the set of her film Australia [I’m Not Obsessed]
- Shania Twain at the Academy of Country Music Awards [Bastardly]
- Jessica Alba photo heaven [CityRag]
- Oprah’s extra toe [Bossip]
- Dina Lohan Doesn’t Deny Lindsay Does Coke [Socialite’s Life]
- Prince Harry is not going to Iraq after all [Mollygood]
- Is a Pamela Anderson nipple slip still interesting [Egotastic]
- Reese Witherspoon looking moderately calm while being photographed with her kids [Celebrity Baby Scoop]
- Mel B has a new boyfriend [Rhymes with Snitch]
- Avril Lavigne sort-of topless in Blender [Derek Hail]
- ABC is putting out a show about bingo where you can play for a chance to win. Anything’s better than “The Bachelor” [Pajiba]

 [Date: 17-May-07 ]

Written by TechniCool on May 17th, 2007 with no comments.
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Brangelina looking annoyed, Star reporting fights over Angies brother

Brad and Angelina looked pissed off to be photographed while out in Prague, but I would say it’s more of a mutual annoyance at the paparazzi rather than being pissed at each other. Their body language suggests that they’re united in their gloom and are just trying to go out undisturbed.

Another week, another “Brad and Angelina are having trouble!” story from the tabloids. Star capitalizes on a recent picture of Angelina out with her brother, James Haven, in NY during the Tribeca film festival to speculate on how he may be affecting their marriage. Brad is mighty pissed that Haven sold stories to the British rags, they say, and he’s suspicious of their close relationship.

All Star seems to do is make up conflict based on the old story that Angelina and James were kissing at the Oscars and the known fact that James has been blabbling about them:

“Brad knows how close Angie and James are,” says a friend. “But as hard as he tried to keep his life with Angelina out of the public eye, James talks about them, and it’s gotten Brad hot under the collar.”

Nevertheless, Star has learned that no matter how upset Brad gets, Angelina defends James, heating up tensions with Brad even more.

“I’ve heard that Brad has confided to his family that he doesn’t like “Angelina and James’ behavior,” says a source. “He must think it’s odd. He probably thinks James is odd. He can’t like the way they kiss hello and the way they’re so touchy-feeling. Brad’s got to be disturbed by it…”

Angie and James flaunted their uncommonly close bond long before Brad came into her life, sharing what many considered a bizarre full-on kiss at the 2000 Academy Awards. And now, sources say, Brad feels it’s inappropriate for James to have blabbed to a European magazine, giving details about his relationship with Angelina…

“I think Brad was peeved,” the friend says. “He asked Angelina when James because their spokesperson.” Angelina told him that her brother can say whatever he wants. When Brad said he felt James should keep his thoughts about them to himself, Angelina got so angry, the friend said, she didn’t speak to Brad for the rest of the day.

[From Star Magazine, print edition, May 14, 2007]

It could be true that they fought over that candid interview James gave, but the wording of the quotes is rather tentative, with the “friend” speculating on how they “think” Brad took it.

Here are pictures of Brad and Angelina in Prague. Pictures [via]

 [Date: 08-May-07 ]

Written by TechniCool on May 8th, 2007 with no comments.
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Brangelina not welcome at this years World Economic Forum

I read this in the local Swiss newspaper, and I haven’t read it anywhere else yet, so it’s a sort-of exclusive. Organizers of the World Economic Forum regret inviting Brad and Angelina to last year’s event in Davos, Switzerland. They say that everyone paid attention to the pretty celebrities and no one reported on the important issues they covered. As a result, they’re only inviting Bono and all the paparazzi-targets have to stay away.

Two years ago, Sharon Stone had a spectacular appearance, a year ago, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were the big attraction. That was a mistake, the organizers of the WEF now say.

The director, Andre Schneider, says Angelina Jolie was invited because she was actively working for refugee causes. In that area, she had something to contribute as well. Unfortunately the media almost exclusively presented the famous actress. The participation of Angelina Jolie at the open forum became a people [celebrity]-event, which we never intended. The World Economic forum is not a people [celebrity] or glamour event…

Schneider says in this case the media prefers to present Hollywood stars over complex topics which make up about 99% of the meeting in Davos. Obviously that was to the regret of some WEF participants…

As a consequence, this year’s WEF will be practically Hollywood free, with the single exemption of U2 singer Bono. Schneider says that hopefully the position of the decision-makers on the important problems in the world will be the focus.

[Roughly translated from German from the Basellandschaftliche Zeitung, print version. January 24, 2007]

The NY Times has an article about this year’s WEF and who is invited. It has a careful quote from the organizer about how the event was hijacked by the celebrities last year, but doesn’t really get into it.

Davos also says it is shunning Hollywood celebrities, even though they have lent this sober event a dash of sex appeal. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, who stopped moguls and ministers in their tracks last year, will not be here, leaving Bono, the Irish rock star who has assumed a statesman’s mantle, to twinkle on his own.

“We noticed there was undue publicity given to the attendance of those celebrities at the last meeting,” Mr. Schwab said. “We have to be careful that we are not hijacked by the celebrity world.”

It seems that the organizers made a conscious decision to exclude the secret agents this year. Indeed, Angelina was annoyed that she was the focus of all the attention instead of the issues. She asked participants in one of last year’s roundtable discussions to concentrate on the situation in Dafur instead of staring at her.

Here’s Angelina picking up Maddox at school in New Orleans. Pictures from I’m Not Obsessed.

 [Date: 25-Jan-07 ]

Written by TechniCool on January 25th, 2007 with no comments.
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The Brangelina family in Hello

The beautiful Brangelina family, complete with their littlest one, is on the cover of Hello! Magazine’s December 19th issue. I love how Maddox looks protective of baby Shiloh. It’s nice to see her with the family as she’s not usually out with them in public. People wonder if there’s some kind of strategy on Brad and Angelina’s part to keep Shiloh out of the spotlight while bringing out Maddox and Zahara, but it could be also be a matter of convenience.

Angelina Jolie has said that she wants to have “many more” children, and that it makes her sad when people offer to take her children places she can never go as a famous celebrity, like Disneyland. She said she tries to give her family as much a normal life as possible:

“I’m very, very lucky. I love the different elements of my life. I love working abroad, and I love being with my kids and I love being with Brad,” Jolie, 31, said Friday at a press event for her movie The Good Shepherd. “I’d like to add many more children and many more obstacles and many more things to my life.”

Asked if she’d ever again work with Pitt, with whom she costarred in last year’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith, she replied with a laugh: “Who’s going to watch the children”

Indeed, she chooses her films with Maddox, 5, Zahara, 23 months, and Shiloh, 6 months, in mind. “I don’t think that I’ve shot for more than seven weeks on a movie in two years,” she said. “I need to make sure that I have time with my kids.”

And she makes every effort to give her children a normal life, despite her own fame. “I’ve made a point to not let it change the way that I live my life, other than I carefully plan my holidays or where we go or where we stay or things like that to try to ensure some kind of quality of life that is private and nice for the kids. But we simply don’t let it affect us.”

She does admit, though, that there are challenges: “I think that the only time that it is hard is when the kids want to go somewhere and want to see something. I’ve had so many people offer to take my children to Disneyland or places that I can’t take them. And they don’t understand how upsetting that is.

“People offered to take my kids trick or treating or take my kids to whatever - things that they assume my kids can’t do. So we plan to find ways to do all of those things. There are worse problems and so we’re okay.”

Pictures from JJB.

 [Date: 13-Dec-06 ]

Written by TechniCool on December 13th, 2006 with no comments.
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New Orleans has nothing but praise for the Brangelinas

It’s nice to hear a positive story about the Brangelinas. Life & Style reports that their security team is being kept in line and they’re behaving graciously while they’re in New Orleans for Brad to shoot his new film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons.

Angelina is said to have told her security brutes to step off when they tried to bar a hotel worker from entering an elevator with her. She said hi to a surprised shopper at Saks, and she’s visiting Brad on set with the kids between takes. Brad also went to a bar and happily posed for pictures with the locals. That’s not really sensational news, and maybe that’s why none of the other gossip rags are carrying it:

An insider at the 4-star InterContinental Hotel, where Brad and Angie are occupying the entire 14th floor, tells Life & Style, “One night, I was about to step into the elevator when a big, surly man said nastily, You can’t come in here!’ Then I heard a woman’s voice say, For goodness sake, let her do her job!’ I entered the elevator and it was Angelina Jolie! She grabbed both my hands and said she was so sorry for the way her security guy had treated me!”

The down-to-earth family begins its busy days with a healthy meal of spinach omelets for Brad and Angie and cereal for the kids, says another hotel insider.

And even though Brad works long hours ” some days from 8 a.m. to 2 a.m. ” Angie makes sure the kids get to see their doting dad.

“One day she stayed in a building opposite the set, feeding the kids while Brad was shooting,” says an on-set insider. “He would go across in between takes to check on them. It was moving to see how close they all are.”

Locals have another reason to be impressed with Hollywood’s reigning royalty: Brad and Angie are determined to help the city recover from Hurricane Katrina.

“Brad told us he’s really committed to helping rebuild the city,” says one local insider, who met Brad when he went to a neighborhood bar to watch the New Orleans Saints play the Atlanta Falcons.

“He was really kind and posed for tons of photos,” says the insider. “People loved it - especially because he was rooting for the Saints!”

Angie impressed the locals just as much when she was spotted shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue with the kids.

“She’s so normal - and so damn beautiful,” said one shopper. “She was really sweet and said hi to me. I couldn’t believe how pleasant she was.”

If all that is true it seems like Brad and Angelina are taking a page from Johnny Depp, who is known to be the nicest most fan-friendly celebrity. Depp, on the other hand, has insisted on having the biggest trailer on the set of his new movie in London, Sweeney Todd, and wants it decorated to look like a Moroccan harem at a cost of $50k. Brangelina is approachable and Depp is a diva. I’m all confused now.

Don’t their kids look annoyed in that header photo

Thanks to Just Jared for these pictures of Brad Pitt bald on set, and We Smirch for the story. Header image from Life & Style.

 [Date: 07-Dec-06 ]