Dax Shepard Reveals the Very Unconventional Hack He Learned to Get His Daughter to Sleep
Dax Shepard might have the ultimate parenting hack.
In a recent PEOPLE and Parents magazine video, Shepard, 46, and wife Kristen Bell — who share daughters Lincoln, 8, and Delta, 6 — discuss the wins and losses they've faced as mom and dad.
Shepard raves that one of his most recent wins was figuring out an unconventional method to help his daughter fall asleep instantly.
"I figured out that if I scratch my younger daughter's head extremely hard — her request — she is out cold within 90 seconds," he says.
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Despite the major win, he also admits to his latest miss: "I gave a 'no TV for the weekend' consequence, which was later revealed to be a barbaric punishment for us."
"Yeah, that will never happen again," Bell, 41, chimes in.
The actors also share some of the various things they wish they knew before becoming parents, like the inevitable noise and mess in the house.
"I guess I thought they're littler people, right? They might be less loud. And they're not," Bell says. "The volume is three times what a normal person should be, and the problem is it's not just volume, it's the consistency of noise. It's like having NPR on all the time — so two stations of NPR on all the time — but if it were all questions. No answers, no fun stories, just all questions. And that's a lot."
Meanwhile, Shepard wishes he had been a little more prepared for the clutter that comes with raising kids.
"I wish someone had let me know that I will never have anything nice again. That would've been a good heads-up," he shares. "If you like that there are no crumbs and toys on your floor, say goodbye to it. The quicker you come to accept that you're gonna live in a pigsty and that everything will be vaguely broken — the quicker you can accept that, the happier the experience is. We fought it for like six months."
"It's not worth the stress," Bell adds. You just gotta surrender, because if you spend your whole time, you're gonna lose and you're gonna be mentally fatigued. Then your kids see that you're stressed 'cause objects are in different places."