Kristen Bell has finally figured out how to get both her toddlers to bed at night — but the trick might not be for every parent.
"Look, I'll get controversial," the actress told Parade at the premiere of her new IMAX doc Pandas. "My 3-year-old decided to stop sleeping about nine months ago. And every night, when we put her to bed, she turns the lights on, which annoys the 4-year-old [Lincoln], and she will move furniture, and she bangs on the door with different, hard toys [so] we switched the door knob. We turned the lock on the outside."
Bell admits that her and hubby Dax Shepard’s parenting decision might not be for everyone.
"I'm sorry, I know that's controversial, but we lock it when she gets in there, and we stand outside and say, 'We love you, we will talk to you in the morning, but now, it's time for sleep,'" she explained. "And after about 10 minutes, she'll wind herself down. And then, before we go to bed, obviously, we unlock it."
Parents advisor Jodi Mindell, Ph.D., associate director of the Sleep Center at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told the magazine they agree with Bell in letting children the “chance to work it out" for themselves and seeing if they fall back to sleep without help, explaining that it could prevent creating a "sleep monster.”
Kristen previously made headlines for sharing how she empowers her daughters by altering a majority of the story books she reads them.
“I see a lot of books my daughters are given,” she told Us Weekly earlier this year. “And it’s all about the prince wanting to marry the princess and all he does is kiss her and she says ‘Yes!’ [After reading them] I say, ‘I wonder why he didn’t get to know her? I wonder why he didn’t ask her whether she wanted to marry him?’ It’s a really tiny change, but I’m definitely working toward empowering them.”
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