The potty training hack Kristen Bell used to help her 5-year-old out of diapers

A couple of months ago Kristen Bell practically broke the internet when she publicly shared that her 5-year-old daughter was still wearing diapers at night. As Motherly reported at the time, every kid is different and every potty training experience is different, but the internet did what it does and a controversy was born.

People chimed in with all sorts of parenting and potty training tips for Bell, but in a recent interview with Today’s Parent, the celebrity mama and her husband, Dax Shepard, explained that their youngest is now done with diapers at night—so now the tables have turned and they’ve got a parenting hack to share back to the internet.

“You know what we have to do? We wake her up at about 11 p.m. when she’s like a zombie and put her on the toilet,” Bell told Today’s Parent.

Shepard added: “Yeah, we put a wet spaghetti noodle on the toilet once a night.”

According to the couple, their youngest was out of diapers a couple of weeks after the whole internet controversy, but not because of so much unsolicited advice. It was simply because she was ready.

“The Twitterverse was kind of mom-shaming me, which I’m not interested in,” said Bell. “So I kept responding with the same thing: ‘Every child is different,’ which they are. And yes, I have a five-and-a-half-year-old who still sometimes wets the bed and that’s OK! But she’s getting there.”

She continued: “I think it’s really normal and no one should feel ashamed if their kid has an irregular pattern for potty training. And if you want to try this 11 o’clock make-them-pee trick, great, there’s no shame in any of it. Sometimes it takes kids until they’re even older than five! But I’ve never met a high-schooler who pees their pants all day. It’s going to stop at some point.”

Experts agree. “In preschool, about 20% of children have daytime incontinence. But, only 5% of teenagers have these symptoms,” says pediatric nephrologist Dr. Charles Kwon of the Cleveland Clinic.

But before you decide if Bell’s trick will work for you it is worth seeking the advice of a medical professional, because according to Kwon and pediatric urologist Dr. Audrey Rhee, waking up children to urinate at night is not recommended.

These Cleveland Clinic specialists say, “Randomly waking up a child at night and asking them to urinate on demand isn’t the answer…It will only lead to more sleeplessness and frustration.”

So what is the answer? Here are the potty-training tips Kwon and Rhee recommend:

• Try an earlier bedtime… your child may be such a deep sleeper because they are not getting enough sleep.
• Schedule a bathroom break right before they go to bed.
• Figure out if your child is constipated. According to the Cleveland Clinic, about 33% of kids who wet the bed are actually constipated (the rectum is right behind the bladder so constipation can seem as a bladder problem) but they are unable to identify that as the source of their issue.

Whatever you do, remember that Kristen Bell is right about all kids being different. Your doctor can make recommendations to help, but there is no set schedule for ending bed-wetting or getting out of diapers. It could happen today, or (like in Bell’s case) two weeks from now. But have hope, mama. They will get this.

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