'Frozen' stars Idina Menzel and Kristen Bell have some parenting advice for your (our) Elsa and Anna-obsessed children

Kevin Polowy
Updated

If you had young children when Disney's Frozen took theaters by storm in 2013 — or really any year since — it's quite possible they harbor a deep obsession with the film and its sibling heroines, Elsa and Anna. The $1.2 billion phenomenon is so beloved by young’uns that Time magazine actually dug into the psychology of why Frozen’s preteen fanbase is so fervent.

You can count me among those raising Frozen-philes. So when I caught up with stars Kristen Bell (Anna) and Idina Menzel (Elsa) at last weekend's D23 Expo in Anaheim, Calif., I asked them for help in solving a "hypothetical" (read very real) issue involving my youngest daughter, who refuses to go to sleep at night unless she's wearing one of her four Frozen nighties. They're all in the wash, and she turns into a full-blown maniac. The Froze is STRONG with her.

"You gotta be ahead of the game," said Bell, who has two kids of her own with husband Dax Shepard but has admitted in the past they're not nearly as hardcore in their Frozen fandom as most kids. "You gotta be ahead of the game. You gotta make sure one of those is in the laundry and in rotation at all times. And if not, in the same way that you can tell young kids it's their birthday on a different day because they can't look at the calendar, you could say, 'Oh my gosh, Anna or Elsa actually wore this T-shirt, they just didn't show it in the movie."

Said Menzel, who has one son with ex-husband Taye Diggs: "I think probably that they're so creative and probably they’re on a really good track if they're doing that and they're using their imagination. So that'd be the only thing I'd say is, if we don't have the costume, use your imagination. Or we could just go and get a sheet or a blue towel from the closet and we make our costumes."

So there you go. Frozen parenting advice from the stars of Frozen — and the upcoming sequel Frozen II, hitting theaters Nov. 22. Prepare your children.

Watch the cast of Frozen II talk plot details, new characters and more:

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