I’m going to start this on a nice note: Kristen Bell is doing good work to combat children’s hunger. Her snack brand This Saves Lives was acquired by Good Worldwide, which will expand their charitable reach. I don’t approve of everything Kristen does, but she deserves credit for that. Real Simple magazine made her one of their Game Changers, with an accompanying interview. With Kristen, that means everything is on the table. Of course, her homelife with Dax Shepard came up. And their daughters Lincoln, nine, and Delta, eight. Kristen said that, like her interviews, when it came to their kids, she and Dax hold nothing back. There is no topic that they won’t go into with the girls, including Dax’s addiction and recovery, sex and any other “hard topic” they want to address.

Kristen Bell believes in keeping an open relationship with her daughters.

Appearing in REAL SIMPLE’s Game Changers print and digital issue — it’s first-ever celebrity cover — the Frozen star, 42, talked about why she thinks keeping total honesty with her kids is one of her keys to parenting.

“I hate the word ‘taboo.’ I think it should be stricken from the dictionary,” she tells the outlet. “There should be no topic that’s off the table for people to talk about.”

Bell notes that conversations she and husband Dax Shepard have with daughters Delta, 8, and Lincoln, 9½, might be “shocking” for some, but make sense for her parenting style.

“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,” she says. “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.”

The Good Place actress later discusses why some of the rules that she and the Armchair Expert co-host, 48, have for their family are about teaching life skills.

“Making amends and apologizing is an important thing in our family, because humans leave carnage wherever they go,” Bell says. “I really respect when someone does something wrong or hurtful and they apologize. I’m like, ‘Yeah, right on.’ That’s important.”

[From Real Simple via People]

In theory, I don’t have an issue with this. Technically I’m the same with my kids. When they were Kristen’s daughters’ ages, they would ask what something was or meant and I’d generally say, “it has to do with sex, do you want me to tell you?” and let them make that choice. Like Kristen, I didn’t want sex to be taboo, but I also didn’t want to put them into a discussion they weren’t ready to have. They’re very comfortable discussing sex with us now. There are boundaries but also a safe space for them to come to us with questions and concerns. I also agree with discussing Dax’s addiction. I think there’s a way to do that, but I don’t think parents should necessarily hide their issues from kids. I say that, though, not having openly discussed my eating disorder with my kids so I’m kind of a huge hypocrite.

This makes for a great segue to the making amends part of Kristen’s comments since apparently, I’ll be apologizing to my kids soon. I absolutely agree that apologizing is important. And I think that parents, if they are in fact wrong, should apologize to their kids. I wonder how this translates with the amount that Kristen and Dax talk about fighting and not speaking to each other because of fights. Are the girls witness to these blowups between Mom and Dad as well? And worse, are they dragged into them? Apologies are good when they are amends. But they lose their effectiveness when they are turned into weapons or punishments.

Photo credit: Real Simple, Instagram and Cover Images

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pLHLnpmirJOdxm%2BvzqZmcWhkZYZ5e8qroKyslaOso7HLpZail6SWuayr06iWprGPoLalv76amaitpJSxs8HGrJaappSUxKar05qjpJeRl7y2wL6snLFn