Kristen Bell has revealed that at her latest colonoscopy appointment, her eight-year-old daughter, Lincoln, confronted her mom’s doctor about the procedure.
While appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on January 25, Bell, 41, recalled how she recently got her first routine colonoscopy, an exam that “detects any changes or abnormalities” in the rectum and large intestines, per Mayo Clinic. Before the examination began, Bell’s daughter, Lincoln, stepped in to ask the doctor a few questions.
"She was sitting there, and we were getting the paperwork or whatever,” Bell explained. “And she looks at my doctor with this sly look, because you can only see your eyes right, through a mask, and she said, ‘are you the doctor who’s going up my mom’s butt?’”
In response, the doctor said yes and asked Lincoln: “anything I should look for when I’m up there?” Lincoln then told him to look for “the rubber nut,” in reference to a phrase that Bell’s family uses a lot at home.
“Because we say up your butt with a rubber nut a lot in our household if you’re missing something,” Bell explained.
Kimmel then asked The Good Place star if this term was something she made up, and she noted that it was just “a thing in their household.”
“If you’re like, ‘where are my shoes?’...I don’t know, up your butt with a rubber nut. We say it a lot,” Bell continued.
“And that’s what she said to the doctor and it was great,” the actress added. “But the procedure went very well.”
Along with Lincoln, Bell has another daughter, Delta, seven, with her husband, Dax Shepard.
Bell’s appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! wasn’t her first time opening up about her relationship with Lincoln. Speaking to Yahoo Lifestyle this past November, Bell recalled how she and her husband had brought their kids on multiple works trips. However, Lincoln wasn’t very fond of this activity.
“She came and said, ‘This is over. I am done with this. I didn’t sign up for your lifestyle to be all over the place. I want to be in school,’” Shepard explained. The Armchair Expert host then told his daughter that this would be her last work trip.
And while she didn’t enjoy this trip, Bell noted that she and Shepard were “secretly really proud of” Lincoln for communicating her feelings the way she did.
“And also, we felt awful,” the Veronica Mars star said. “We were like, ‘Oh man, I thought they liked these trips... But they don’t. They want to do their thing. [What’s key] now is really recognizing, at all times, their autonomy. I have no ownership over them.”
She further emphasised that her children ultimately have the right to make their own decisions, as well.
“I’m simply here to support them and make sure that they have shelter and food and water,” she added. “And beyond that, I can only do the best that I can do. And if they say they don’t want to come on our work trips any more than that, that has to be respected.”
