Kristen Bell's kids love husband Dax Shepard's non-alcoholic beers

Alcohol abuse is a frequent and open topic of conversation in the home that Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard share with their two young daughters. Shepard, who has been working on his sobriety for the past decade and a half, occasionally enjoys the taste of a non-alcoholic beer — specifically, O’Douls — as a substitute for the harder stuff that he abstains from since he began that work. Coincidentally, so do his seven- and five-and-a-half-year-old daughters. So much so that Bell and Shepard recently busted the girls cracking open some fake brews during a Zoom class."They have 15-minute breaks where they're allowed to jump around and grab a snack and wiggle it out. And I walk in to check on them at 9:30 and both of them are drinking an O'Doul's on their Zooms," Bell told podcast host Carla Hall (via People). "They're both just sipping their Doulies. And I'm like, 'What must these other parents and teachers think of me?' And then I remind myself, 'You don't care, Kristen. They can pretend like you're doing something wrong.' I would argue that I'm not, because it's nonalcoholic.”[video_embed id='-1']RELATED: Kristen Bell shares her kids’ sweet ‘sobriety birthday’ message for Dax Shepard[/video_embed]To be clear, the alcohol content of a beer like O’Doul’s is somewhere in the 0.5 percent range or lower (as compared to a regular beer which contains an average of 5 percent, or ten times the amount of an O’Doul’s). But Bell thinks that the girls’ taste for the beverage is a positive thing. “If anything, it opens up the discussion for why Daddy has to drink nonalcoholic beer,” Bell argued, “because some people lose their privileges with drinking. Drinking's not always safe."

 

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Today is my husband's 16th sobriety birthday. My daughter woke him up with this sign, and a sketch of the one and only Ronald Weasley(absolutely random, and also perfect). Happy birthday Daxy. Thank you for dedicating your life to the hard and wonderful work of sobriety, so that we could share it with you. Xo K, L & D

A post shared by kristen bell (@kristenanniebell) on Sep 1, 2020 at 6:13pm PDT

For her kids, the non-alcoholic beers also have a nostalgic quality. "When we first had our child and my husband would put her in the Babybjorn and we'd walk around the neighbourhood, he'd pop a nonalcoholic beer in his hand and the baby would paw at it and put the rim in her mouth. It's a sentimental thing for my girls, right? It makes them feel close to their dad." There’s also an argument to be made for removing the heavy taboo around alcohol consumption and therefore making it less of a temptation for her kids when they become teenagers.Still, Bell expects that she and Shepard will be criticized for their O’Doul’s-centred permissiveness. “You're welcome to tell me I'm a terrible parent,” she told podcast listeners. “I don't care. I'm a great parent, I think. I'm learning every day."[video_embed id='1990896']Before you go: Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard open up about how quarantine has affected their relationship[/video_embed]