35 Times Kristen Bell & Dax Shepard Were the Most Relatable Parents in Hollywood

Leading By Example

In April 2021, Shepard opened up about candidly explaining his drug relapse to his daughters after being sober for 16 years. During a conversation with Chelsea Clinton, he shared, “We explained, ‘Well, Daddy was on these pills for a surgery and then Daddy was a bad boy. He started getting his own pills.”

Shepard continued, “Yeah, we tell them the whole thing. The proudest I am of my children ever is when they admit something and say sorry. That to me is the single most impressive thing a little person can do, because it’s the bravest thing to own your shortcomings. … They know that dad goes to an AA meeting every Tuesday and Thursday.”

Shifting into ‘Acceptance Mode’

Bell shared a parenting pro-tip with Us Weekly in 2016: “I just let my car get granola all over it because I’m like, ‘Well, this is the time in my life where my car is just going to be covered in granola,’ and I can either fight that for the next five years or I can just surrender and be OK with it, and I’ve chosen to surrender — everything is easier in acceptance mode.”

Totally Unimpressed by Their Parents’ Careers

It doesn’t matter that Mommy is Princess Anna on the big screen — Bell’s glitzy profession is about as sparkly as a construction worker’s in the eyes of her kids. In 2015, the Frozen star told Us Weekly, “[Lincoln] is not my biggest fan. She just doesn’t know what I do for a living! She couldn’t care less. [It] is extremely humbling to come home to someone who couldn’t care less about what you do!”

Showing How to Resolve a Conflict

In 2018, Shepard told Us Weekly, “You know, generally, kids see their parents get in a fight and then parents sort it out in a bedroom and then later they’re fine, so the kid never learns, how do you de-escalate? How do you apologize? So we try, as often as possible, to do that in front of them. If we fought in front of them, we want to also make up in front of them.”

On Pregnancy Anxiety

Talking to Flare in 2013, Bell shared, “I kept saying to Dax in all sincerity during my pregnancy, ‘I just don’t know how I’m going to like her as much as I like the dogs.’ I was being serious, because I f—king love my dogs; they are my children.”

She continued, “I love people the more I know them, and I didn’t know her. It could’ve been a water bottle in my belly, that’s about how connected I felt to her during my pregnancy. But within about 24 hours after she came out, my hormones reset, and they reprogrammed my feelings about her.”

Treat Others the Way You Want to be Treated

Bell told Us Weekly in 2016, “We have very strict rules in our family about how we treat people with respect, especially our family members. … We are going to be with each other in the long haul, so it’s important to always be respectful and treat your sister the way you want to be treated.”

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

Sharing another A++ parenting strategy, Bell told Us Weekly in 2017, “We tag team. We switch kids all the time.” She continued, “If I’m talking to the 2-and-a-half-year-old and I’m done, I’ll just be like, ‘We’ve got to switch. I don’t want to talk to this kid anymore.’ It’s not about perfection, but it is about being thoughtful and not reactive. So in order to not be reactive, we switch kids a lot.”

No Big Brood for Bell & Shepard

In 2016 during a Jimmy Kimmel Live! appearance, Shepard shared his mental spiral when Bell thought she might have been pregnant again. “I was like, ‘We’re going to turn into Jon & Kate Plus 8 or something. We already have no life! This is going to be not worth living,'” he relayed.

So what did he do? “I freaked out. It was so bad. For eight hours I was, like, imagining my life with all these kids. That was Tuesday. I flew home Wednesday for a meeting. Thursday morning I had a vasectomy.”

It Pays to Have a Car Enthusiast as a Parenting Partner

Sharing a hysterical photo of herself posing next to a bed on a car jack, Bell wrote on her Instagram Story in 2019, “If your daughter ever pukes on the carpet and you can’t lift that bed up by yourself to get the rug out, jack it up. Jack that bed up.”

Navigating Tough Questions

During a 2020 appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers, Bell shared, “Our daughter, when she was 5, said, ‘Am I gonna die?’ and … the air got sucked out of the room. We were like, ‘This is it. What do we do? There are so many roads. Like, do we make up a story? Do we say we don’t know? Do we say we know and then actually not know?’ We just said, ‘Yes, you’re gonna die.’ And she went, ‘Ugh.’ And then we said, ‘And we really don’t know what happens when you die. You may just become flowers.’ And she went, ‘OK,’ and we were so relieved.”

Birthdays are… Flexible

Working parents will relate to this hilarious strategy Bell and Shepard use if needed when it comes to birthdays: “If it’s, like, a Wednesday and we can’t celebrate and we’re both working late, then — guess what — your birthday is on a Saturday,” Bell revealed during a September 2018 appearance on Today, adding, “They don’t know.” 

Trying to Convey Their ‘Cool’ Factor

After explaining to E! that their daughters think the Jonas Brothers are much cooler than her & Shepard, the mom of two shared, “My husband … makes good pancakes or [when he] lifts something heavy, he’ll always look at them and go, ‘Ooh the Jonas Brothers wish they could be me.’”

She continued, “We’re always trying to tell our kids, ‘Look, we’re very cool. You don’t think that right now, but let me just tell you something — we’re really cool,’ and they’re like, ‘No.'”

Disciplining 101

“They can be real sh*ts,” Bell said during a 2019 episode of #Momsplaining With Kristen Bell. She shared one of Shepard’s crisis mode strategies: “Sometimes when they’re having a tantrum, treat them like the hot girl in high school. Just ignore them and they’ll come to you.”

ER Visits are, Unfortunately, Inevitable

“First emergency room visit,” the Good Place actress captioned an August 2019 Instagram post. She continued in comically disgusting detail, “One hairline fracture and a finger smushed so hard in the door it popped like a jelly donut. Thank you to all who helped my baby. PS I’m not attaching a pic of the finger because there was literally burger popping out all over and it as pretty gross.”

Mom Fails Happen, & That’s Okay

“We should get a badge for every judgment we face,” Bell said during a Momsplaining With Kristen Bell episode in 2020. “Left my kid with an iPad for five hours. Left my kid in the parking lot. I accidentally said, ‘F—k’ in front of my kids. I should have a few of those.”

Christmas Traditions

Bell explained during her December 2019/January 2020 Woman’s Day cover story, “Dax introduced the idea of opening gifts on Christmas morning from youngest to oldest, which I really like. I’m able to talk my daughters through who gave them each gift. I try to reiterate that these presents don’t just fall from the sky; they came from a thoughtful individual whom we need to thank.”

Grateful for Them Being Grateful

“I am shocked at how into [practicing gratitude] our girls have gotten,” Bell told attendees at the Advertising Week 2020 virtual summit. “We’re in the bed sometimes at night, they will say, ‘Does anyone want to talk about what they’re grateful for?’ And immediately [my] mom heart goes crazy, and I’m like, ‘Sure, if you do,’ trying to act cool.”

Pandemic Homeschooling Woes

“Of course, we’ve all come to know the two worst words in the human language: Home schooling,” Bell said on Momsplaining during quarantine.

She shared her woes during an appearance on The Ellen Show, saying, “I gave up, to be honest. I threw in the towel. I attempted to give her some math problems in the beginning of this quarantine. She answered the first and second one, and then she got really sassy and wrote, ‘No’ … in the answer grid.”

Taking Mini-Me to the Next Level

“I love this man so much,” Bell captioned a video of Shepard shaving half his head to match his daughter’s haircut. “He wanted to twin with our daughter.”

C-Sections Are Kind of Horrifying

“There’s a sheet, and then [doctors] go, ‘The baby’s here,’ and then you peek around the sheet, and they’re lifting out the baby — but then you notice your wife is completely disassembled,” Shepard told Ellen DeGeneres.

With his signature humor, the actor added, “I can see inside of her. I was like, ‘It’s a girl! Your liver’s out, I think! And those are definitely intestines. And she has your eyes. Oh, my God, put her back together correctly!’ After seeing this autopsy, I would rather see a school bus drive out of her vagina.”

Overcoming Demons for Their Daughters

After Shepard admitted to relapsing into his painkillers addiction in September 2020, he turned to his wife for help. Bell told Ellen DeGeneres, “He was like, ‘I don’t want to risk this family and I did. So let’s put new things in place to make sure it doesn’t happen again.'” Sometimes it takes more strength than we know to put our kids first when we’re facing down demons, but Shepard managed to do it again, and we applaud him for that. 

Potty Training Is Easy… Until It Isn’t

“Currently, my youngest is five-and-a-half, still in diapers,” Bell admitted on her Momsplaining video series. “My oldest daughter at 21 months, we merely suggested that she use the toilet in the other room, and [she] never wore another diaper beyond that. We were lying in bed giggling about this, my husband and I, like, ‘Why does everyone make a big deal out of this potty training? It’s so easy. Just tell the kid to use the toilet.’” 

Wanting a Good Life for Their Kids

“There are a lot of actors who don’t want their kids to go into that as adults, and I assume those actors haven’t had real jobs, because they’re lousy for the most part,” Shepard told E!. “I roofed and washed cars and de-tasseled corn. Acting is much nicer.”

They’re Cringy, but also Human

“Anytime I see my child yell at another kid or treat them less than 100%, I feel so embarrassed,” Bell told SheKnows. “Turns out they are human too and make mistakes just like all of us.”

Raising Sex-Positive Kids

“It’s funny because I tell myself I have a narrative I’m spinning about how I’m going to be as a father of two daughters,” Shepard said on an episode of his Armchair Expert podcast. “Currently, I’m of the opinion, I’m super pro-sex. I am anti-having sex to get approval. I am anti-having sex to get someone to like you or to gain status in a social circle, but if my daughters are horny and they have decided they want to have sex, I am very pro-sex.”

The Perfect Mother’s Day

“I didn’t wipe a single butt in the morning because I slept in, and Dax got up with the kids,” Bell told us of an ideal Mother’s Day she had. “I got a really good egg sandwich in bed and my littlest daughter put a bunch of barrettes in my hair. I went to the Rose Bowl Flea Market. I walked around with my girlfriends, we ate food truck food, we grabbed coffees and we tchotchke shopped. It was so wonderful. I didn’t think about feeding anyone or schedules and I loved it.”

Someone Has to Be the ‘Mean’ Parent

“I don’t mind if they’re mad at me,” Shepard told Fatherly. “I know they’ll feel differently in three hours. It does impact Kristen more. That’s the best part of her. She is endlessly nurturing and endlessly available.”

Kindness Over Math Skills

“My kids are kind,” Bell said when her girls guessed her age as anywhere between 12 and 89. “I don’t care if they can’t do math.”

Making Babies Affordable to All

“I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder, a class warfare chip from growing up modestly,” Shepard told Fatherly of why Hello Bello is affordable. “I was raised by a single mom. Three kids. Working full time. And then we had an unlimited budget when we had our babies. My wife was so meticulous about what we put on our kids. I thought it was unfair that my friends in Michigan didn’t have that option. I call it a product line that has mom standards and dad prices.”

Forget the Birds & the Bees

“We said, ‘Well, mom has a vagina, and dad has a penis and there’s sperm, and an ovum and then they connect and it makes a baby,” Bell told Us Weekly. “Truly, by the second sentence, they had walked outside.” 

Screen Time Rules for Parents, Too

“It is still hard for me to put down my phone, whether it’s for work — which a lot of it is — or whether it’s just zoning out because I like looking at funny animal Instagram videos,” Bell told SheKnows. “It has to be a constant reminder to put it down, look in the sky, go in the pool with my kids… Just stay present.”

Watching Them Grow Is a Bittersweet Privilege

“I was really hoping when I had kids, I got the two that wouldn’t grow up. But I didn’t,” Bell told Us Weekly. “You can either look at it like you’re losing something, like she’s never going to be a baby again, or you can change your glasses and look at it positively. It is [bittersweet]… Like I now get to know this human being. I’m allowed to get to know this person who will have her own opinions and ideas. That’s something I’m really looking forward to.”

Instagram vs. Reality

“In the age of social media, when you can edit your life in beautiful pictures, it’s important to remind moms that all of us are wearing yogurt and all of our hands smell like urine,” Bell told Redbook. “When you present an unrealistic idea of perfection to people, it’s not fair.”

Birth Plans… They Never Go As Planned!

“Lincoln was born via C-section, but with Delta, I wanted a vaginal birth, because I wanted to be able to come home and carry Lincoln,” Bell told Good Housekeeping.

She continued, “I did not want my toddler to feel rejected because Mommy couldn’t lift her for five or six weeks or whatever. That was my priority. … I was so disappointed [I needed a C-section again]. I tried really hard! But she came out beautifully. They put her on my chest, and I was so happy that everybody was safe and sound. The gift of the Magi is that when I got home, Lincoln didn’t care that I couldn’t pick her up! She couldn’t have cared less.”

Choosing to Vaccinate to Keep All Kids Safe

“Kids with autoimmune diseases, kids who are receiving cancer treatments — they can’t be vaccinated because their immune systems [can’t handle it],” Bell said in Good Housekeeping. “If your kid has leukemia, he can’t get vaccinations; if he then goes to school with my kid and I chose not to give my kid vaccinations, I’m putting your kid at risk. To me, that’s unacceptable. There are the weak among us whom we have to protect. As moms, our responsibility is not just to our kids — it’s to all the other kids, too.”