“Its no secret that parenting in the 21st century comes with a host of challenges, however the couple often shock fans with their candid admissions over how they are bringing up their two daughters.”, — write: www.dailymail.co.uk
Its no secret that parenting in the 21st century comes with a whole host of challenges, however the Hollywood couple often shock fans with their candid admissions over how they are bringing up their two daughters Lincoln, 12, and Delta, 10.
The pair often knock heads after a difficult 12 year marriage dealing with Dax’s struggles with addiction and sources have claimed ‘they are both pretty volatile people and can blow up over the smallest issues’.
And they are clearly raising their children to be just as feisty.
On Monday Dax admitted they are choosing to raise their girls to be ‘disrespectful and talk back’ as he admitted a close friend recently confessed she was ‘shook’ over how their children showed ‘no respect’ and were acting a ‘little entitled.’
While most parents would be downhearted to hear their children described in such way, Dax explained: ‘I want them to be disrespectful. I want them to always advocate for themselves, whether I think they’re right or wrong.’
From allowing their children to drink non-alcoholic beer, to letting them roam free in a theme park to locking them in their bedrooms – it’s not the first time the pair have caused controversy with their parenting choices and their unconventional decisions often raise eyebrows.
Free reign parenting During a holiday to Copenhagen last year, the pair let their little ones run free for the day as Kristen recalled they didn’t see them for seven hours.
Explaining how their hotel opened up onto the famous Tivoli Gardens amusement park, Kristen told talk show host Jimmy Kimmel.
‘We just were kind of like, “Are we going to free-range parenting and roll the dice here?”
‘So they woke up at like 6am every morning and scanned their bracelets to go outside. We didn’t see them for seven hours. They were just running around Copenhagen.’
As Jimmy questioned whether they were ok she continued: ‘Apparently they are both alive, we all returned home. It was heaven.’
Drinking non-alcoholic beerPerhaps one of the couple’s most controversial decisions is their choice to allow their daughters to drink non-alcoholic beer.
Kristen admitted: ‘We’ve been at restaurants where she’s said, “Do you have any non-alcoholic beer?” And I’m like, maybe we just keep that for home time.
‘But then I’m sort of like, you can judge me if you want, I’m not doing anything wrong. That’s your problem,’ she said.
The star also explained how her husband would often have a bottle of non-alcoholic beer while taking care of Lincoln, their older daughter, when she was an infant.
‘[Dax is] a recovering addict, but he likes non-alcoholic beer, so he’d pop one open, he’d have [Lincoln] on his chest, and we’d walk and look at the sunset,’ she recalled.
‘As a baby she was pawing at it, and sometimes she’d suck on the rim of it. So I think it feels to her like something special, something daddy, something family.’
Undeterred by any criticism Kristen explained: ‘What’s so cute about you [Dax] to me is that you are so logical and fact-driven and evidence-based — but if people want to be angry about something, they’re going to be angry about it.
‘When they have tried to order [non-alcoholic beers] at a restaurant or something, it’s because of a very specific connection to you.
‘Because first of all, they’re educated on addiction and what substances are and how they affect your body and how scary they are and what they can do to you,’ she said, referencing her husband’s past struggles with addiction.
Dax added: ‘If anyone has a problem that I let my kids drink NA beer sometimes, that’s fine with me.
‘I’m not going to change based on what anybody else says because this is our family and not your business.’
Bedtime routines Kristen caused an outcry when she revealed they used to lock their daughter in her room when she wouldn’t go to bed when she was just three years old.
Speaking to Parents Magazine back in 2018, she admitted: ‘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.”
‘And after about 10 minutes, she’ll wind herself down. And then, before we go to bed, obviously, we unlock it.’
‘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.’
In 2022, she updated on how their girls had finally moved out of their parents’ bedroom after they had previously slept on the floor of their room on a tri-fold mattress.
She also used sleep aids Hello Bello’s nighttime gummies to help the girls get to sleep quicker.
The sleep aids have melatonin in them, which the actress said ‘would knock them out quicker and they’d be great.’
Elsewhere Dax admitted the unique way of getting Delta to nod off: ‘I figured out that if I scratch my younger daughter’s head extremely hard — her request — she is out cold within 90 seconds.’
WashingKristen and Dax said that when their children were younger they would wait for them to be visibly dirty before bathing them.
The actress described it as ‘waiting for the stink’ as they opened up about how they would often lose track of when they had last been washed.
Dax explained: ‘We bathed our children every single night prior to bed as their routine, then somehow they just started going to sleep on their own without their routine and we had to start saying [to each other] like, “Hey, when was the last time bathed them?”‘
Kristen chimed in, ‘Yeah, we’d forget. I’m a big fan of waiting for the stink. Once you catch a whiff, that’s biology’s way of letting you know you need to clean it up.’
Toilet training The pair have also been open about how their daughter Delta was still wearing nappies at five years-old.
Speaking in 2020 they revealed their secret toilet trick. Kristen told Today’s Parent: ‘You know what we have to do? We wake her up at about 11 pm when she’s, like, a zombie and put her on the toilet.’
Dax added: ‘Yeah, we put a wet spaghetti noodle on the toilet once a night.’
‘No one should feel ashamed if their kid has an irregular pattern for potty training,’ said Kristen.
‘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.’
While Kristen clarified that Delta was only in nappies during the night, she revealed some people had been ‘mom-shaming’ her for not forcing her daughter’s transition sooner.
‘The Twitterverse was kind of mom-shaming me, which I’m not interested in,’ she revealed.
‘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!’ concluded the Golden Globe-nominated actress.
Swearing While most parents would be mortified to hear their children curse, in another controversial decision Dax revealed he is all for it.
Back in July, he explained he and Kristen encourage swearing when the occasion calls for it.
He confessed: ‘I fully swear in front of my kids. They are allowed to swear, not with impunity, but when it’s called for and they land it.
‘And it’s in the house and not out at a restaurant, it’s okay.’
He continued: ‘My defense of it is, I just told the girls, like ‘Hey, these are noises that come out of your mouth and you assign what they mean to you.’
Discipline Kristen has said she doesn’t give her daughters the satisfaction of reacting to their tantrums and that she doesn’t view their behaviour as her fault.
‘If my child is acting a fool in the grocery store, the embarrassment is on her,’ she told Babble. ‘In truth, that shouldn’t make me feel a certain way.’
‘She’s going to act the way a child acts and I’m not going to let that reflect on me or bring me down. That shouldn’t make me feel ashamed or embarrassed in any way. Only you can make you feel a certain way.’
However while they seem rather liberal in some aspects they also take no nonsense in others.
‘Nobody screams and cries in a car in this family,’ Kristen revealed in 2016.
‘Because Dad will pull the car over on the highway and say we’re not driving until people stop screaming because that’s what his mom did to him.
‘There’s no yelling involved, and the kids don’t want to sit on the edge of the highway. It’s up to them,’ she explained.