We hate mom-shaming. Kristen Bell hates mom-shaming. We hope you hate mom-shaming. What, then, are we to make of the fact that mom-shaming may have been what motivated Bell and husband Dax Shepard to get 5-year-old daughter Delta out of diapers?
This latest diaper update from the couple who not-so-coincidentally, founded diaper and baby care company Hello Bello, is in their interview with Canadian outlet Today’s Parent.
“I started talking about it, and people were like, ‘You have a 5-year-old who’s still in overnight diapers?!’” Bell told the magazine, beginning to outline their strategy.
But Shepard interrupted her to say, “Hold on. That was a really kind representation of people saying that to you.”
Bell conceded. “Yeah, that’s true. The Twitterverse was kind of mom-shaming me, which I’m not interested in. So I kept responding with the same thing: ‘Every child is different,’ which they are.”
Still, she and Shepard decided Delta was ready to be done with diapers; she just needed a little help from her parents.
“We wake her up at about 11 p.m., when she’s like a zombie, and put her on the toilet,” Bell said. With his typical metaphorical flair, Shepard said, “Yeah, we put a wet spaghetti noodle on the toilet once a night.”
That’s a pretty good method — and not so unusual. But Bell was also adamantly opposed to anyone else thinking their kids should feel pressured to get out of diapers at any set age.
The couple also spoke about how they’ve gotten to know Lincoln and Delta better during quarantine.
“I have definitely spent more time with my girls in the last three months than my dad did with me the entire ride, for sure,” Shepard said.
That quality time meant that they were able to make another judgment call about their daughters’ needs. While they previously assumed their daughters would enjoy going to summer camp this year, Bell said she realized this wasn’t what would make them happy and withdrew them. Her decision had nothing directly to do with coronavirus.
“They’re 5 and 7 and their personalities are coming out, and we’re learning that they’re homebodies,” the actor explained. “They are really, really, really happy playing in a corner by themselves; they aren’t like, ‘We’re dying to go to camp.’ So we’re trying to support the people they’re becoming, and maybe they’re a little bit more introverted than we are, and that’s fine.”
Once again, Bell has proven to be the parenting guru we all need and probably don’t deserve.
This seems like a good time for us all to enjoy Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell’s most relatable parenting quotes.
Source: Read Full Article