Kristen Bell and Dax Shepherd have made a cottage industry out of oversharing about their relationship, their two daughters and their questionable parenting decisions. They’ve shared that they let their daughters, now aged 9 and 11, drink nonalcoholic beer, and that they don’t bathe them until they smell bad. In a recent interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Bell talked about how they let their daughters roam around an amusement park in Copenhagen by themselves for entire days, reasoning that it was fine because “they’re alive.”
Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard gave “free-range parenting” a try in Denmark.
While vacationing with daughters Lincoln, 11, and Delta, 9, the couple let the little ones roam around Tivoli Gardens on their own for hours at a time, Bell confessed on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Thursday.
“We stayed at this hotel that was right at Tivoli Gardens,” the actress, 44, explained to viewers of the seven-acre amusement park.
“The hotel opens up into the theme park and so we just were kind of like, ‘Are we going to free-range parenting and roll the die here?’” she recalled. “They woke up at like 6:00 every morning.
“They scanned their bracelets to go outside,” she continued. “[We] didn’t see them for seven hours. Just running around Copenhagen.”
The Golden Globe nominee called the experience “heaven,” explaining, “We just had coffee, we played Spades, and then around 3:00 we’d be like, ‘Anybody see them?’ And then one of them would run up and need a Band-Aid or whatever.”
When host Jimmy Kimmel asked whether “that was OK,” Bell joked that their children are “both alive” and the whole family “returned home.”
The “Veronica Mars” alum noted that the girls were “allowed on the rides without an adult” since “it’s real loosey goosey over there.”
Did the girls have cell phones that work in Europe and did they check in with them? (Update: probably not.) I guess it doesn’t matter because Bell is just going to tell a parenting story to get people outraged and then sit back and act like it’s everyone else’s problem. When my son was little we lived in Switzerland and Germany. Kids would regularly ride the public buses and trams by themselves, but they did so with a group of their friends. I would not let my son be alone at 9 or 11, even with a sibling, all day at an amusement park. An hour or two maybe, but I’m American and don’t adapt that easily. Plus I watch too much true crime. People argue that these places are safer than America and that it’s culturally acceptable to leave your kids to their own devices, similar to how it used to be in the US. I wouldn’t put it past Bell and Shepherd to have researched this park and taken this vacation just to have a story to tell about leaving their kids alone. It’s probably fine and it worked out fine, but this woman knows what she’s doing telling this story.
In another interview, with E! News, Bell said, of her 11-year marriage to Shepard, “We argue about absolutely everything, but there is a foundational trust that we’ve built that keeps us together and is quite stimulated by one another’s opinions.” That sounds kind of miserable to me.
Photos credit: Getty images for Netflix, Xavier Collin / Image Press Agency / Avalon
As children my sister and I spent hours roaming the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen alone while our parents sat in a restaurant. We did that every year – and nothing bad ever happened. Also, the Tivoli Gardens is quite small for an amusement park. It is over a century old and is right in the center of the city. It is really beautiful with some great old buildings.
Yes, the Tivoli Gardens is pretty small and for sure contained. As a teacher, we have trips for middle school students where they’re allowed to freely roam in parks and different large venues. Kids used to be able to do roam like this years ago. My parents would drop me off at the Mall of America as a middle schooler and let me roam with a friend or small group. That said, as a mother myself now, would I let me elementary child wander around with out me? Probably not. Logically, I know everything would likely be fine, but I’m too afraid to take that chance. Cue the Michael Moore Bowling for Columbine argument that we’re so afraid of a threat that may not even exist.
Ah yes, everyone knows pedophiles are only in the US
Coming from a generation whose parents’ needed to be reminded they had kids at 10 PM every night, I see absolutely nothing wrong with letting kids roam around an amusement park.
Same generation here. This is totally fine.
Same, I’m 59, but I do think of that British family with their kids in bed and them in the restaurant downstairs in Portugal (was it). That child still missing. I wouldn’t do that these days.
@Pink Tutu there is quite a difference between a child who is eleven and a child who is three.
Yes, I agree. I remember that PSA announcement! I had forgotten about it until someone on Twitter or the like mentioned it a while back and got thousands of likes and comments. Yeah, looking back, that was wild. When I was about 10 my sisters were high school age. One night I was watching TV with my mother and that ad came on. “It’s 10 O’clock. Do you know where your children are?” My mother actually laughed and said “No, I don’t!” And my parents were by no means neglectful.
This article has me flashing back to being 7 years old, under the care of my 8 year old brother, roaming around an amusement park alone for an entire day 😭 It was actually a horrible experience for me because I had to go on every ride that he did, so that neither of us was “alone,” but I am afraid of all rides and it was and totally mentally scarring 😬 Plenty of more intrepid kids loved doing this tho, and sure, we survived.
I did not let my own kids go free range till they were 8th grade-ish, and they had cell phones.
Lol, my parents let me take my newborn brother out for walks in my Toronto neighbourhood when I was 7. This is fine.
Also, Kate, if you’re worried about pedophiles, check out the statistics. Stranger danger is a vanishingly small part of the problem.
i don’t see the problem or outrage.
I can’t believe I am defending her parenting lol because FFS bathe your children people lol but…yes it’s a little young but I am assuming they had phones and a plan to meet somewhere if they are separated etc. My kid and I used to have a secret password and he once would not leave pre-k with a friend of mine (who he knew very well) when I was held up at the dentist’s office and running late to pick him up because she didn’t know the password. Funniest call I ever got. He dug his heels and would not walk out of the building with her. I’m a little bit less judgey of this one cause I don’t know the kids and how paranoid they are about strangers.
Personally I loved Sweden cause my kid (then 13) and his friends could just get on the e-scooters and ride all over Stockholm without me having to helicopter and they did this until nighttime. I was checking in with him via cell phone regularly. I can tell he loved the freedom. It’s something I would NEVER have done in the US in a big city.
BTW Kirsten Bell is so good in the Netflix film Queenpins. The movie is hilarious and it is perfectly cast like every single person in it is amazing. I recommend it!
I see no problem with this.
I live in Berlin, and no, 9&11 year olds maybe “roam” around their own streets or go to school on their own but definitely not all day alone in the city or amusement parks. Things happen, not only criminals. They can get hurt, lost – and no parent in sight, also in a city full of foreigners who may or may not speak English. Nope.
Exactly. Hopefully, they at least had phones that could be used to contact the parents in case of an emergency. With parents who are rich and well known, you would think that kidnapping or deranged fans would be an issue also.
My American friend moved to Germany for five years. She enrolled her 8 year old in the local German school and they would routinely send the child home without calling the parents and without transportation. The child had to walk home alone and a few times her mom wasn’t home (out running errands) and was locked out of the house. My friend put her kid in an American/international school. My friend was terrified her daughter would be taken by someone. I wonder if there WAS a schedule for early release and there was just a language barrier.
I don’t know what this was like in Berlin a decade ago or so, but my kids’ school (primary, 1-6) would never let children leave school without the parents’ approval, in writing.
Bell has got to be a miserable human being right? She just seems to be an intentional agitator for shits and giggles. Happy, mature or grateful people don’t act this way. I don’t even want to talk about her husband. Yikes.
Some places are safer for kids though. My parents lived a cosmopolitan life due to their jobs, and I played outside as a kid, even by myself, in Prague, Budapest and Tokyo, where I saw a lot of children playing outside, in parks or in the streets, without parents or adult supervisors.
Different strokes for different folks but my parents did the same thing in the early nineties and I definitely didn’t have a cell phone. They dropped us off at the front gates of six flags with 10 bucks each for lunch I was 10 and my sister was 12. I guess it depends on your kids and their awareness. I grew up in a major city so my head was already always on the swivel so it wasn’t like I was going to follow one of the workers into a back room or anything like that.
I feel divided about this. First off, a big nope to the nonalcoholic beer (why train that taste when water or tea is better?) and minimal bathing (not hygienic if they have to smell!).
Next, my kids went to school with classmates who biked a couple kilometers aline without their parents or siblings or friends at the age of six! I was the one who had issues with that—not the Dutchies. This with Tivoli sounds like something people I know might do, and I consider them great parents. My older kid had a friend who biked 300km through the NLs at 14 and went camping. She had to text that she arrived at a campsite each evening, but was otherwise alone. I couldn’t do that, but this isn’t totally unusual here.
Tivoli is a rather small and enclosed amusement park in the center of Copenhagen. As I child I spent hours there unsupervised and that was before the age of mobile phones.
My Hungarian grandparents use to serve us kids real beer in a sherry cup at lunch every Sunday specifically so we could get used to it and consume it moderately. Different strokes.
While I agree she said this for sensationalism I don’t actually see anything wrong with it. Point of reference: I was born in the 80’s and raised in NYC.
I don’t really have a problem with this but she and her husband honestly just sound exhausting in general.
I find her so hard to take even though I love some stuff she’s been in.. Her pod thing /vibe sucks. As a 59 year old I was free range through my childhood even in a big city. I didn’t have a lot of friends so I’d take off solo all over the place, ride trains, buses. But as a non parent I have no idea today. Other than I’m sure they had phones and they’re in a safe country but still? Yeah, I find it weird. Or actually lying about it.
I’m from a very small town in Italy and when i was young i used to run around playing all day with my friends (in summer) and be back only for dinner.
But times changes and i don’t know if i would comfortable doing that now.
I have close family and friends that are from Denmark or currently live there. Kids have a level of independence that they don’t have in the US. Even babies can be left in their strollers by themselves outside a store. Kids as young as kindergarten age walk to school by themselves, so it’s pretty OK to leave your kids alone at Tivoli.
Denmark is much safer than the US. Rather than being outraged, maybe we should ask why it’s safer? Their schools also don’t have fences, security, or gates due to a lack of school violence or shootings. It’s really nice actually.
Yeah, it is pretty safe in Denmark and in most areas of Copenhagen. The weapons laws are incredibly strict, for both guns and knives.
I do think that children are a bit more monitored today than when I grew up, maybe because they all have mobile phones now.
The Tivoli Gardens are rather small and enclosed in the center of the city – and there are enough fun rides, etc. to entertain children of that age without them being enticed to leave the park to explore the city itself.
We would stay in a smaller amusement park where we had like a cottage, and when I was 10 and my sister 7 my parents would be like “see you at 11.30 at the ferris wheel” and I was responsible enough to look after both of us. That was in the early 80s though and definitely not in a big city.
This actually makes me sad for how things were when I was little. My best friend and I would ride our bikes around our city neighborhood for hours when we were around ages 10/11 and just have to check in at home periodically. My little is only 3 so I’m not there yet, but my friend who lives in the same neighborhood as me whose kids are a bit older told me that people will call CPS on parents if they see other people’s kids riding their bikes by themselves up and down the street. Really?
Yeah my bigger concern with my kids having the same kind of autonomy that I did at their age isn’t a safety issue – there is very little that indicates kids are less safe today than kids were 20, 30, 40 years ago – but other parents definitely judge and will call CPS etc. It’s not such an issue where I am because my area is kind of 1950s in terms of kids just roaming all over but I’ve heard in some neighborhoods/towns where its very prevalent (calling the cops or CPS etc.)
One thing I don’t hear much about in the “free range” discourse is gender … in my neighborhood, you see groups of elementary-age boys, some as young as 5 or 6, riding their bikes with their friends around the neighborhood, playing in parks, without an adult. But you don’t see groups of girls doing that, at all. Vs growing up in the 1980s, kids of all genders were allowed to roam around on their bikes, with friends or alone. I definitely rode around with other girls.
Otoh it was not infrequent that adults in cars hurled racist slurs at Black and Brown kids if we were alone, so overall I’m not nostalgic for that world.
I grew up in Greenwich Village, and from the age of 7, I made my own way to and from school on the UES every day (though I had to meet up with a friend and her mom a couple blocks from school, because we were supposed to be accompanied by an adult until I think 6th grade) and sometimes went to museums and such after school because I was a giant nerd. This was in the ‘90s-early ‘00s. My half brothers had done the same in the late ‘60s-early ‘80s, and my dad saw no problem in me doing the same, especially since the city was arguably safer by then and I also had a phone and could check in more easily. For a long time, I didn’t totally realize how wild it would seem to most people. I don’t know if I’d let my stepdaughter do it, but I also don’t think it’s too outrageous. 🤷♀️
This seems fine to me. It doesn’t sound like their kids were actually just running around Copenhagen by themselves – they were at the amusement park while Kristen and Dax were at the hotel that literally opened into the amusement park. I think she’s trying to make it sound like they had free range over all Copenhagen but I don’t think that’s actually what happened based on her description of the hotel etc.
I grew up in the 60s and 70s and I did not nor did any of my friends get dropped off unaccompanied at places like amusement parks at aged 9 and 11. Either a parent, grandparent or older sibling went along. It was one thing to ride your bike in the neighborhood where everyone knew each other and someone would say “Aren’t you Miss So-and-So’s child?” But at things like fairs or big parks, no way. Now maybe Kristen felt comfortable doing this because their hotel was adjacent to the park so the kids would know where to go if there was an emergency. But still, I wouldn’t do it, trafficking is a real thing. Plus, I wonder if she just said this to get attention as usual.
It’s important to allow kids independence, but with boundaries and protection. Give them a time to come home and a way to get in contact with them. They need to know you care about them. And in an emergency, how are they going to get help? Just because 1000 kids have been safe somewhere doesn’t guarantee your child will.
While I agree that the pendulum has probably swung too far in the direction of over bubble wrapping children nowadays…I was a child of the 80’s and 90’s when we still roamed free and it wasn’t always a good thing! Bad stuff happened sometimes and children need some supervision and support and behavior coaching or things can get real “Lord of the Flies” real fast (not to mention unsavory adults who might take advantage). Just because everyone is alive doesn’t mean everyone is ok, alive is a pretty low bar for parenting in my estimation. In some regards I have given my own children probably more freedom some, but that has always been accompanied with appropriate bumper lanes. High expectations require high support!
I side-eye Kristen and Dax when it comes to not bathing their kids or giving them virgin beer. But when it comes to this? It sounds fine. It’s a fairly small enclosed park in a generally safe European city. It was daytime, not night. The older one is a tween; it’s not like they’re 5 and 7. They probably have cell phones. It actually sounds like a good opportunity for a free range “experiment.”
So much of this is about context. In some settings and situations it is OK to let your kids be on their own, and in others it’s not. When my son was about 11, he was in an international soccer tournament that was held in our city that year. I hosted three kids from Mexico City. Their first day there my son suggested they walk over to the Little League fields about six blocks away, get something from the snack bar and watch a game. They were all stunned that they were allowed to go without an adult. At home they had to be driven everywhere, to school, to friend’s homes, to activities. We just live in that kind of neighborhood, and my son was used to walking to school, etc.
I wouldn’t have let them loose in the city at large, but again, this was a contained situation. There was a perimeter.
She and her husband need a lot of attention.
So they are mature enough to go out alone for hours yet come to their parents for a bandaid? I dunno this sounds like she’s trying to stir up some parenting outrage drama. I feel bad that she uses her kids for attention like this. As far as actual experience, I grew up in the 80s/90s and was *not* free range. I remember going to the mall with my mom and we would separate and meet back up at a certain time. But I was probably 12 or 13 at least. There was no playing outside until the streetlights came on.
Here’s the thing. Bell and Shepard have publicly maintained that they did not have nannies for their children. They did (and do) have family (Dax’s sister mainly), nannies, and babysitters. Their most famous nanny was Monica Padman who they did eventually put on display as traveling with them. Padman was pictured as “one of the girls,” but she was the nanny. They tried for years to say that Padman was not the nanny, but it eventually came out that she was.
There is nothing wrong with having help with raising children. I believe it does take a village, but they insist on not telling the truth. Having a multiple child helpers contrasts with their downhome image.
They were also traveling in Scandinavia with friends because one of them posted photos on Instagram. The friends are wealthy and also have a child but I believe is slightly older than the B/S children, so that right there is someone overseeing their children.
Don’t believe anything these people say. They are two of the absolute biggest liars in Hollywood who insist on telling stories and then further insist on saying they are always truthful.