Kristen Bell Believes in ‘Waiting for the Stink’ to Bathe Her Kids
Kristen Bell has a go-to parenting rule: only bathe the kids when they smell.
Recently on his Armchair Expert podcast, Bell's husband Dax Shepard interviewed Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis about how often parents should bathe their children. Their unconventional answer went viral and sparked a discussion.
On Tuesday (Aug. 4), Bell and Shepard stopped by The View, where they weighed in on their beliefs about kid hygiene. As it turns out, their kids' bathing routine has drastically changed over the years. (The couple have two daughters, 8-year-old Lincoln and 6-year-old Delta.)
"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 you bathed them?'" Shepard revealed on the talk show.
Bell admitted that she and Shepard would sometimes forget to give their kids a bath and only remember when they began to smell funky.
"I'm a big fan of waiting for the stink," Bell shared. "Once you catch a whiff, that's biology's way of letting you know you need to clean it up. There's a red flag. Honestly, it's just bacteria; once you get bacteria you gotta be like, 'Get in the tub or the shower.' So I don't hate what [Kunis and Kutcher] are doing. I wait for the stink."
Meanwhile, Kutcher and Kunis' mantra is: "If you can see the dirt on them, clean them. Otherwise, there's no point." They also don't use soap every day so that they can keep their bodies' natural oils intact.