Megan Fox’s Kids Learn That ‘Plants Have Feelings,’ Grow Their Own Food at Vegan School

(Getty Images | Jason Merritt)

For actress Megan Fox and her husband, Brian Austin Green, parenting is about letting their three kids be themselves. It’s also about teaching them compassion through the way they interact with living things.

Fox, 33, and Green, 46, send their three young boys—Noah, 7; Bodhi, 5; Journey, 3—to a vegan school where they can learn how food is grown, believing that “plants are sentient beings.”

Speaking to People, the actress explained: “We send them to an organic, sustainable, vegan school where they’re seed-to-table, they plant their own food.”

The three boys are involved in the process of growing and harvesting crops, at which point the food is sold to local restaurants. “[T]hey understand how all of that works,” Fox said.

Fox has long been an advocate of the vegan lifestyle. According to Italy’s Amica magazine, the actress followed an all-vegan diet based on raw fruits and vegetables herself back in 2011. The diet also restricted “bread, sugar, and coffee,” Fox explained, as quoted by the Daily Mail. “But I had lost too much weight. So now I eat a bit of everything.”

Fox and Green arrive at the 70th Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, California, on Jan. 13, 2013. (©Getty Images | Jason Merritt)

Since Fox and Green welcomed their three boys, Noah, Bodhi, and Journey’s education has extended beyond the classroom and into the family home, particularly when it comes to the welfare of plants and animals.

“We don’t step on ants; we don’t do things like that,” Fox told People. “We don’t rip flowers out of the ground, because we think they’re beautiful. I teach them that plants are sentient beings—they have feelings, thoughts, and emotions—so that’s what we’re doing.”

The close-knit family even held a funeral ceremony for a bug that one of the boys accidentally stepped on, Fox revealed, recalling, “[H]e was devastated.”

While the famous parents have occasionally faced criticism from people who disapprove of their liberal attitudes, Fox and Green stick by their principles.

“It’s about releasing control, right? That’s all it is,” Fox reflected, speaking to People of their parenting philosophy. “It’s allowing them to be who they are and relinquishing control, because they were born to be who they are.

“[I]t’s my job to support that process,” the mom of three continued, “not to get involved and micromanage and mold them into what I think they should be.”

Choosing to uphold the belief that children are more profound teachers than their parents, Fox continued: “We’re here to keep them alive, but we’re learning all the lessons from them.”