Celebrity3 min(s) read
Published 12:52 10 Feb 2023 GMT
Kristen Bell has revealed that she has a rather open approach to parenting, admitting she prefers to bring up her eight and nine-year-old children with total honesty.
The 42-year-old actress appeared as the first cover star for home and lifestyle magazine Real Simple this week, where she discussed how she leads with vulnerability and empathy in every aspect of her life.
Bell - who has been married to fellow actor Dax Shepard, 48, since 2013 - told the magazine that no topic is off limits in her household, including subjects like drugs and sex.
In fact, the Frozen actress remarked that she'd been frank with her two daughters about Shepard's previous struggles with drug and alcohol addiction, and isn't afraid to discuss "hard topics" with them.
"I know it's shocking, but I talk to my kids about drugs and the fact that their daddy is an addict and he's in recovery, and we talk about sex," Bell commented to the outlet.
"There are all these 'hard topics' that don’t have to be if you give the person on the other end your vulnerability and a little bit of credit [...] I hate the word 'taboo'. I think it should be stricken from the dictionary," she added. "There should be no topic that's off the table for people to talk about."
The Good Place actress then explained the lessons she hopes to teach her children, saying: "If there's one thing I want to teach my kids, it's how to make amends - and that it's for themselves, so they can like who's in the mirror a little bit more. Making amends and apologizing is an important thing in our family, because humans leave carnage wherever they go. I really respect when someone does something wrong or hurtful and they apologize. I'm like, 'Yeah, right on.' That's important."
As for Shepard, he's been open about his previous struggles with drugs and alcohol, saying (via PEOPLE) that having "everything" and still feeling low was "the scariest place" to be in. "I think a lot of us, we tell ourselves 'oh yeah I'm miserable, but that's because I didn't get that promotion, if I get that promotion man, I'm gonna have a ski boat, life's gonna be great … If I get that girl, if I get this.'
"All these things, you're kind of justifying your misery because you don't have this thing - well I had the luxury of getting all that s**t and it wasn't it [...] That's actually about the scariest place you can be."
In 2020, he revealed on his podcast Armchair Expert that he'd relapsed that year after 16 years of sobriety, when he became addicted to painkillers following a motorcycle accident.
The father-of-two admitted that he began purchasing his own pills after the accident, eventually realizing it was a problem when he started lying to the people around him. He admitted that he'd been scared to discuss the relapse publicly, but felt it was necessary.
