Congratulations are in order for Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard’s two daughters for having “graduated” to their own bedrooms.
Over the weekend, proud mama Bell, 42, revealed that her little ones Lincoln, 9, and Delta, 7, have transitioned from sleeping on a mattress in their parents’ bedroom to officially sleeping in their own beds in their own rooms.
“We just graduated from them sleeping on the floor on this trifold mattress,” Bell told E! News. “So you can congratulate me — we did it, they now sleep in their room on beds right next to each other and they cuddle with each other instead of us.”
The actress went on to explain that when they were all sleeping in the same room, she’d give her girls a nighttime gummy with melatonin so that she and Shepard can have quality mom and dad time at night. (Melatonin, a sleep hormone, is not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in children or adolescents; it is considered relatively safe for short-term use and after consultation with a pediatrician, but more research is needed, and overdoses are possible, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.)
“It would knock them out quicker and they’d be great,” the Good Place alum said before explaining the creative ways they’ve come up with to ensure everyone gets the shut-eye they need. “We do not want to go to sleep when they want to go to sleep, so we would hook up our headphones by Bluetooth to the television, put on a show and they would be on the floor, like, trying to fall asleep.”
“So, that’s how we got out of having to go to bed at the same time,” Bell continued. Still, the girls aren’t fully independent just yet. “I desperately tried to get them to pack their own lunch, but it does not always work,” she added. “It’s like, OK, you didn’t like what I packed, you pack your lunch. And I looked in and it was, like, literally all Skittles.”
Bell and Shepard’s parenting strategies have made headlines in the past — including when they were accused of being “privileged” after cheekily sharing that they rarely bathe their kids for a variety of reasons.
In addition to sharing their bathing habits, the couple has touched on their co-sleeping setup before, on a February episode of Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast in which she confirmed that, yes, “the girls sleep on the floor of our bedroom.”
Elaborating even further in an interview with Yahoo Life last November, Bell said that prioritizing “me time” and “we time” for her and Shepard is always going to be a priority.
“You’re not failing if you take some time for yourself,” she said at the time. “That was always really hard for me because I’m habitually at a place where I’m like, ‘Well, what can I do to fix this and fix this? And I want to make sure everybody’s happy. And I realized, Oh, not only am I not making anybody happy by being this overwhelmed, I’m not happy myself.’“
She added, “In the beginning [of being a parent] that made me feel very guilty, that I wanted an hour away from my baby or my child, or I’m excited that I get to have 24 hours with just my husband. And that doesn’t mean you’re a bad mom. It just means you’re putting on your mask before you put it on anyone else.”
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