Since welcoming daughters Lincoln, 12, and Delta, 10, into the world, Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell have come under fire for more than one of their parenting decisions … and it sounds like there’s another to add to the list. On this week’s episode of Dax’s Armchair Expert podcast, he admitted he and Kristen allow their girls to swear, but there are certain conditions that have to be met when they do.
“I fully swear in front of my kids,” Dax said. It sounds like he’s comfortable doing that because his kids are extended the same permission to swear in front of him … well, kind of.
“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 OK,” he said.
Dax also went on to explain that he’s emphasizing the fact that words only have the meaning we give them.
“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,'” he said.
People seem to have pretty mixed opinions about Dax’s policy around swear words, according to the comments on the E! News Instagram post about what he said.
“My dad always told me ‘profanity is a lack of vocabulary’ … I believed it then and I still believe it is 100% true,” one person wrote.
Another commenter added: “Terrible parenting. Home won’t be the only place they swear! What’s wrong with celebrities and their parenting skills? They don’t teach morals, respect, kindness. They do teach entitlement, and disrespect.”
Others think Dax and Kristen are doing the right thing.
“I think this is smart parenting,” one person wrote. “If you take things from your kids and don’t let them express what they’re going to express behind your back anyways, then they’re going to be a lot worse with it. Teach them emotional intelligence along with what they want to do anyways and you win. Suppressing expressions leads to really bad mistakes.”
