Kristen Bell Says Mom-Shaming Pushed Her to Potty Train Her 5-Year-Old

A few weeks ago, Kristen Bell, actress and mom of two, made headlines when she admitted on her show, “Momsplaining with Kristen Bell,” that her 5-year-old daughter still wore diapers. Now, she’s opening about why she’s pushing her daughter a little further on her potty training journey.

In a recent interview with Today’s Parent, while discussing their product line, Hello Bello Bell and her husband, podcaster and actor Dax Shepard, revealed that their younger daughter, Delta, is no longer wearing diapers. “You know what’s so funny? I started talking about it and people were like, ‘You have a five year old who’s still in overnight diapers?!’ And then it was, like, two weeks later that we pushed her a little farther,” Bell said.

Shepard clarified, however, that people actually mom-shamed her for it. “Yeah, that’s true. The Twitterverse was kind of mom-shaming me, which I’m not interested in,” Bell responded. “So I kept responding with the same thing: ‘Every child is different,’ which they are. And yes, I have a five-and-a-half-year-old who still sometimes wets the bed and that’s OK! But she’s getting there.”

When asked how they got Delta to finally potty train, the couple said they wake her up every night before going to bed. “We wake her up at about 11 p.m. when she’s like a zombie and put her on the toilet,” Bell explained, to which Shepard jokingly added, “Yeah, we put a wet spaghetti noodle on the toilet once a night.”

She added that, while she had pushed her daughter a little farther, she still believes no one should be shamed or made to feel bad about how they’re parenting their child. “I think it’s really normal and no one should feel ashamed if their kid has an irregular pattern for potty training,” Bell continued. “And if you want to try this 11 o’clock make-them-pee trick, great, there’s no shame in any of it. Sometimes it takes kids until they’re even older than five! But I’ve never met a high-schooler who pees their pants all day. It’s going to stop at some point.”

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