Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard told their children he is an addict

Kristen Bell and her husband Dax Shepard have been being brutally honestly with their young children, even telling them about how their ‘daddy is an addict’.

Shepard has battled substance misuse issues in the past, starting when he was a teenager.

He's sober at the moment and has been for a while, but the recovery journey is a long one, and one that has constant impact on a person's life.

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The kids are likely to find out about their parents at some point, given that they are both celebrities, so why not try to bring it slowly into their consciousness when they are young, but old enough to start to understand?

That seems to be the thinking behind the pair’s parenting methods.

Bell recently admitted that there is ‘nothing off the table’ with regards to what she’ll tell her two young daughters, including some stuff that might be ‘shocking’ to others.

Basically, Bell and Shepard haven’t shied away from the ‘hard’ stuff with their daughters, nine-year-old Lincoln and eight-year-old Delta.

Speaking to Real Simple, Bell said: “There are all these ‘hard topics’ that don’t have to be if you give the person on the other end your vulnerability and a little bit of credit.

“I hate the word ‘taboo’.

“I think it should be stricken from the dictionary.

"There should be no topic that’s off the table for people to talk about."

She also explained some of the lessons that she wants to impart to her kids, including fixing their mistakes and owning up to stuff so that they can at least be happy in themselves.

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Bell continued: “If there’s one thing I want to teach my kids, it’s how to make amends – and that it’s for themselves, so they can like who’s in the mirror a little bit more.

“Making amends and apologising is an important thing in our family, because humans leave carnage wherever they go.

“I really respect when someone does something wrong or hurtful and they apologize.

“I’m like, ‘Yeah, right on'.

“That’s important.”

In another interview last year, she spoke about how she wanted her sisters to have a close relationship and realise that they are a team, telling them that ‘you’re going to get nothing accomplished’ by fighting with each other.

She said: “I want to really instil in them, ‘You are a team’.

“We made two of you so that there would be someone for you guys when we pass, so you guys are to be the strongest relationship you have on the planet, even if you disagree.

“You don’t have to agree on everything, but you do have to maintain the sense of unconditional love for each other.”