Macaulay Culkin and Brenda Song are using Culkin’s most iconic film to their advantage while parenting their two sons.
Song, 37, recently shared how she and Culkin, 45, have shown their sons, Carson, 3, and Dakota, 4, Culkin’s hit film, Home Alone. But rather than telling their boys their dad is the star, the film serves as an important lesson in “stranger danger.”
Song told E! News that while the two preschoolers enjoy the movie’s “hijinks” and its elaborate “traps,” they “have no real concept” of the danger in the movie. She noted that their elder son, Dakota, “gets it more” than Carson.
She recalled that after they finished watching the movie, she turned to her boys and said, “ ‘See, your mama’s here right next to you. Don’t you want to give me a hug? I didn’t leave.’ ”
“I’m so terrible, but I feel like your children have to be a little scared,” she told E! News. “Fear goes a long way.”
She’s persistent with teaching their boys about stranger danger, telling the outlet that she’s told them, “ ‘They’re a stranger if you don’t know their name.’ ”
“I was like, ‘It doesn’t matter if they’re someone’s parents. If you don’t know their name, or you’ve never seen them before at our house, they are a stranger,’ ” she shared.
The mother of two has also been working with her sons on learning their surroundings, and “teaching them exit signs.”
“Everywhere we go, I’m like, ‘How do we get home?’” she recalled. “Every building we go in, like, ‘How did we get here? How do we get out?’ ”
But the Operation Taco Gary’s actress confessed her husband thinks she’s “absolutely crazy about it.”
In November 2025, Culkin celebrated the 35th anniversary of the film and revealed that despite watching the movie with their sons “often,” they have yet to make the connection that Kevin is Culkin at age 10.
They “really love” Home Alone, and now Culkin has a “completely different experience” watching the film with them. “They have no idea that I’m Kevin,” he said, but he wants “to keep up that illusion as long as possible.”
He noted that Dakota has begun to piece things together. He asked Culkin about his siblings, and Culkin showed his son an old family photo of all seven of his brothers and sisters. “[He] immediately looks at me and goes, ‘That kid looks like Kevin.’”
Culkin decided to quickly move on from the observation and noted that Dakota also thinks he himself is Kevin.
“‘Do you remember when you kicked burglars out?’ And he’s like, ‘Yep.’ ‘You slide down the stairs?’ ‘I sure do.’ I was like, ‘You liar! That was me,’ ” he recalled of the father-son moment.
