#867: Dr. Becky Kennedy — Parenting Strategies for Raising Resilient Kids, Plus Word-for-Word Scripts for Repairing Relationships, Setting Boundaries, and More (Repost)

We're for more than a decade. It has been my job to deconstruct world class performers

“from different disciplines, all different disciplines. To tease out the frameworks, the favorite books,”

the routines. And in this case, the word for words scripts that you can apply to your own lives. My guest today is Dr. Becky Kennedy. She is the founder and CEO of Good Inside, a parenting movement with members and more than 100 countries that overturns a lot of conventional modern parenting advice to actually empower parents to become sturdy, confident leaders. We'll

explain what that means and raise sturdy, confident kids. Of course, there are a million people out there

giving parenting advice and Dr. Becky Kennedy's advice. Her thinking on this has resonated incredibly well with me and that is why for years I've wanted to have her on. She is the author of the number one bestselling book by the same name. Good Inside, a chart topping podcast, Good Inside with Becky. You can see the theme here. A TED talk with nearly 4 million views on the power of repair. We'll discuss what that means and what it looks like. And in children's book,

that's my truck. A good inside story about hitting. Maybe I could use that too. You can find her online at goodinside.com and on Instagram @doctorbecky@goodinside. I have mine before my hands start shaking. Well, let's start with what popped into my head and we'll just keep rolling with that thread. Love it and see if it goes. We're interesting. If it's a dead end, I'll get us out of the dead end.

But I want to talk perhaps about your TED talk on the power of repair. Why do you think this struck a chord with people and what resonated with people from them? Classic example is you yell at your kid for something, right? So I'll use this example, which is different than the one of my TED talk, because it also leads to some common question. So I kids stalling in the morning. I got to get my kid to school because also when I drop my kid at school, I have to get to work and my kids later on

my whole thing were also rushed. And my kid is saying, you know, I don't know whatever they're saying. I'm not going to school today. You can't make me go to school. I'm not putting on my shoes. You put

“on my shoes and you're thinking, I have an eight-year-old like that, but on their shoes, right?”

And then we get to some crescendo moment where as a parent, and I'll say me myself, because I have this too. I just yell, scream at my kid. What is wrong with you? Can you don't do anything? You're eight

years old? You know, you're never going to amount to anything in your life. You can't put on your

shoes or, you know, you're so selfish. You're going to make me late. You turn me into a monster. Why can't you listen the first time? We say this thing, depending on our kids' temperament, they react in different ways. If they're kind of in the more people pleasing type that immediately stops them, they would go, no, my parents mad at me. You know, I'm going to be good, mostly just because I really need to see that they reflect that I'm a good kid. I need that. If you have

another temperament kid, they use this as a way of like, oh, we want to fight. I'll show you a fight. And they're like, I am not putting on my shoes. You know, that was me. Right. That is my third kid, not him. What would or are you? I'm first. You're first. Okay. But I was pretty defiant like

“a point. And so then you get through the moment. You get through it. And then I think after drop off,”

there's just like immense heaviness as a parent. And you're cycling through different things. That again, whatever your voice is, might be your own voice. So it's probably the voice you've internalized from your own upbringing. In terms of how people would have responded to you, if you were your kid in that moment. But it's some version of blame. It's either blame in or blame out. It's either I'm an awful parent. Why can't I stay calm? And why can't I just get to the

morning? And then that usually cycles with Ivan awful kid. And my kid's a sociopath and they're going to go to jail and they're going to amount to anything. And either way, you're blaming. Where repair would be saying to your kid, some point, hey, I screamed at you earlier. That probably felt scary. And this will be the kind of maybe maybe the start, something controversial.

It's never your fault when I yell. And I'm working on staying calmer. So even when I'm frustrated,

I can use a calmer voice. Like, I'm sorry. That would be a repair. I'm kind of going back to a moment that felt bad. Kind of like reopening that part of the chapter. I'm taking responsibility for my behavior. I'm giving my kid a story to understand what happened. And I'm kind of talking about what I would do differently at the next time. All right. This is great. Chris for the Mill. And part of the reason we talked about this

little bit before recording that I was excited to have you on and have a conversation is that

people would not necessarily associate with parenting. Like, Jaco Willink, navy seal commander, extreme ownership. And there are many other examples that I could give where I feel like what we will discuss in our conversation can be applied many different places, many different dojos for very similar tools and tool kits. With that said, I suspect one line where people maybe

got stuck and you know exactly what I'm going to say is it's never your fault when I yell at you.

Yes. All right. Part of me loves that because just to invoke the great name of Jaco again, who did his first ever podcast, first ever interview on this podcast a hundred years ago. When you own things, you give yourself a degree of agency. Yes. All right. But also overly blaming yourself can be the flip side of maybe taking on excessive responsibility for other people's actions and feelings and so on, meaning sort of codependent or otherwise.

So I heard of you that you said, but I suppose like some listeners, I was like,

“always never these episodes are very strong words. Why say that particular line?”

And when I share a script to me, it's often words that are representative of kind of principles

and never like to get to stuck on words. I actually gave those words an example in part because I

think it does bring up a lot of questions. But I never want someone to hear this and think, okay, I got to write down that exact word. In general, take responsibility for your actions, give your kid a story, say what you do differently the next time. And I actually would hope anyone listening would say, I think I have my own brand of that. Amazing. That's better for you and your kid than my brand. So with that in mind, it's never your fault when I yell. Here's why I think that's

powerful even if you don't say it to discuss and really think about the way we react to our kid. Yes, has to do with the situation in front of us. But we actually react to the set of feelings

“in our own body, combined with the circuitry we have to manage those feelings. And I think the”

biggest thing to think about is that circuitry, those skills we have to manage emotions, literally predated our kid's existence. That was there so far before them. Now, when my kid doesn't listen and the morning is delayed, I feel frustrated. And that feeling is definitely co-created with my kid. Separating frustration from my ability to manage the frustration are two really different things. And telling a kid basically, you make me yell. You turn me into a monster,

is actually holding your kid responsible for your set of skills to manage your feelings. And the

other reason, and then I'll be quiet for right now, that I think it's so powerful. As I think about

my son, I don't know, could be my daughter, whatever he's married one day. Let's say, he has some partner and I don't need a really bad day at work. And he comes home and for some reason about his house visiting and his partners, oh man, I forgot to get to a paper from the store and then he sits down for dinner and maybe his partner like ordered him the wrong thing. I don't know he yells at her. I hear him saying, like, well, if you just got toilet paper and ordered me the

right thing, I wouldn't be yelling at you. And I picture the cream. Oh my god, that's like the creepy thing. Like seriously did I install that stuff? And when we hear ourselves say to our kids all the time, if you just listen to the first time, I wouldn't have yelled. Or like, okay, well, if you were just calmly playing with your sister, then you wouldn't get this reaction for me. And if that creeps us out down the line, like if we wouldn't say, I would be so proud to hear my kid say that to a partner,

then I don't know why we think that's a good idea to say to our kids when they're young. So there are many different branches off of this that we could explore. Let's maybe back up or zoom out, choose your favorite metaphor. And perhaps you could just in your supposed framework

“or worldview, what it means to be a good parent. Could you define this or just speak to that?”

Yeah. And then we can use that as a foundation from which we can launch into a bunch of other stuff. Yeah, I should have a really succinct, really solid answer that question right now, but I fortunately, we have a lot of time. Maybe part of what I struggle with is I think we probably think about that word or that term good parent is like, what I'm doing on the surface is something observable or I think a core principle that I think about is actually separating kind of who you

are in terms of your identity, which is not observable from what you do in your actions, which is observable, separating those two. I mean, but I think a good parent probably sees parenting as a journey of self growth and discovery as much as they see it about anything related to your kids growth. So I think that's number one. Number two, I think a good parent really activates curiosity

that really being the sturdiest leader for your kid involves equal parts, very firm boundaries and parental authority as it does kind of warm validating connection. You mentioned curiosity over judgment. Now, when people hear this word judgment, they probably assume that is a negative judgment, but a judgment could also be something like good job, right? So what would curiosity look like in place of either a negative or a positive

judgment? Yeah, I think the word is good job. I've gotten a lot of press or parents. I can also say good job. Say good job. That's not going to do damage to your kid. I think there's a lot we can unpack there against there's deeper principles, right? I'm like, oh, what do kids really need when they have accomplishments? Yeah, I like how you zoom out because it's not the

“whether you're using like crayons or the oil paints or the acrylics or charcoal, you have to”

learn the fundamentals of like drawing and to do that, you need to learn how to see things. So it's like returning to those first principles. That's right. Right. Exactly right. So I think judgment, it can be positive, but I would say in parenting, actually in any relationship, it's just so easy to see someone's behavior that feels bad or feels less than ideal and we just activate our judgment about the behavior. And usually when you judge behavior, what you're unconsciously doing

is you're seeing behavior as a sign of who someone is. That's why you're judging it's person such a selfish person. Right. My friend didn't call me back. Oh, they're so selfish. Or my kid keeps hitting on the playground, even though I say no hitting. And then we don't even realize

going to like, what's wrong with my kid? Why does such a bad kid? You know, my kid is never going

to figure things out. I'm a bad parent. You just see something on the surface and you kind of feel like you know everything about it. I actually think I never thought about that. That's really what it means to judge something. I see something that's probably part of a larger story.

“And instead, I think it's the whole thing. To me, the opposite of judgment and any relationship”

is curiosity. And I think curiosity is when you see something and you're just wonder about it. To me, that's like one of the best words for parents, wonder. I wonder why my kid is hitting. As soon as you use the word wonder, you're unable to judge because you're thinking and kind of conjuring up this bigger picture. Now, we're parents usually go when they hear me say that. It's like, oh, so it's just okay. My kid's hitting. And there's this, again, judgment. We even do there.

We're still a Sony people, Sony's trying to finance. Well, I get it. I have so much empathy for parents and even understand their skepticism of our approach because we have had shoved down our throat. This very, very behavior first, punishment first. We call it discipline. It actually choked to me in any other area of life. If we allowed CEOs and coaches to talk to the people in our

organizations, like we think parents do to kids. And then we call it discipline. It would never fly.

And those people would be fired. But we've had that shoved down our throats. And so anything new

“always feels uncomfortable. And these are very new ideas. But I think about with other areas, even with”

kids, if your kid isn't learning how to swim, you teach them how to swim. And nobody says, oh, you just think it's okay that they're not swimming. It's like, oh, we could be like, what? I'm just teaching them how to swim. So I have a bunch of thoughts on this good job thing. I know that. Let's do it. I like your potential replacements for that. Could you just just to get people a concrete example? Like, what might you say instead of a good job? A kid comes to us and let's say they,

I know, young could bring us a painting. And we could say, oh, good job. It's amazing. Right? Or let's say an older kid brings us some paper. They wrote, and they got a good grade. And we say, good job. Okay, again, good job does not damage kids. But I think in those moments, we want as parents to kind of double down on building our kids confidence. That's usually the goal we're optimizing for. So then to me, the question is, is that like the best of

all options, or at least we have other tools in our toolbox? And the thing that really builds kids' confidence is learning to gaze in before you gaze out. We're in a world that is priming us to gaze out before we gaze in. And I'm like, look, what I've done. And can someone in the world tell me, it's such I am good enough. That's basically the world we live in. And it makes you very empty and very fragile, very, very anxious. I'm talking about social media. I took some media

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“and start selling with Shopify. And if I think about this moment, and again, I'm often very”

long-term thinking, but my kids over and over show me things. What's going to help them down the road? Well, I know when you're in your 20s and 30s, what's really helpful down the road. When you produce something, maybe it's art, maybe it's a project. Being able to give yourself some estimation of that before others do is very helpful to your whole self-concept and protective of anxiety and depression. I think I did a good job in this project. It's true. I didn't hear

back from my boss yet, but I'm a little anxious about what my boss is going to say, but the fact that someone didn't tell me something isn't going to spiral me. And I think about the yearning and the searching and the desperation for a good job. Well, if every time my kid produces something, again, what they wire next to that is someone telling them good job, then they go into the world unable to give them self that type of validation and searching for someone to say they're good enough.

So what do I like better? Anything helps your kid share more about themselves, actually ends up

“feeling better to your kid also. So I think about, you know, a little while ago, my daughter”

paints stuff and she did, she gave me this painting and it was a horrible artist. So anything

she does is amazing. But what I said to her first is said, oh, like, tell me about the painting. Like,

what made you pick red there? She told me this whole story, this whole story about how she has never really seen a red police car and whatever it was, they're just in, she shared her story with me. Same thing, I'm thinking about a kid giving us a paper. Oh, how do you think it comes up with that topic? Oh, what made you start it that way? Oh, what was it like writing that? Whatever the questions are, and I know it sounds like annoying at first. I get it, like it's a

paranoid. Oh, really? Can I just say good job? And of course, you can. But then again, I go to an adult example. Like, let's say to me, we did your house. Okay, and I visited and you really worked hard on it, and I came and go, oh, I love your house. Good job. It's actually kind of a conversation under her. I feel like you'd say to me, thank you. But if instead, I said, how did you pick that color wall with that couch? You would, oh, okay. Well, let me tell you, and let me show you my Pinterest board

or whatever it was, and even if I never said good job, I bet you would feel more lit up inside and

almost better than if I had just kind of ended the conversation that way. Yeah, for sure. I have a number of friends. I mean, I have a lot of friends with kids, but one who comes to mind I'm not kind of name him, but he's very good at this. And one of the best learners of any skill I've ever met is just an incredible human. The other thing that he did, and this was even prior to books

“like grit, I think that's Angela Duckworth. But instead of saying good job, another thing he would do”

is say something, I'm making this up as an example, but he would be like, I'm so proud of you. You work so hard on that to reinforce the effort, the process over the outcome. That's right. Which seems to make sense, right? And you're not suggesting your path is the one only toolkit of purity and redemption in the sense that it can combine with other things. But the first principles

feel like some percentage of the time, you're like, great job. That's cool. That's awesome. Okay. But those questions process over product, asking for a kid's story, asking them to tell you, once you get started, it's easier. And yes, it actually focuses on what's more in a kid's control.

And then setting up your kids to feel good about themselves, even if they're not always getting

100, this is just such a massive privilege. And it actually makes them more Carter, because their focus on their effort and process instead of just on a result. What is your opinion of parents focusing or viewing their job is making their kids happy, optimizing for happiness, right? Because who's going to poo poo happiness? I mean, silence. All right. All right. So let's wait into the deep water. It's something people say is a throwaway comment. If my husband always jokes,

“I think you're out like a dinner party, someone's like, you just want your kids to be happy, right?”

And I'll look at me and think, Becky, please don't really just let me know in a moment. Don't take the bait. And I always do. No, I very much would say a parent's job is not to make

it get happy. And again, because we struggle to hold multiplicity, people will say,

you want your kids to be unhappy? No, I don't, I don't try to make my kids unhappy. Can I just stop to say, you're not, I mean, I kind of like this, maybe like, why are people so stupid? And just like want to fight, it's like, obviously you don't mean that. We think in these extremes, we see that in all areas. And holding two things as true or holding nuance is increasingly hard in this world, which is why it's even more important to kind of have some of these ideas in our homes. So

you use the word optimizing. And I think about that a lot. So zooming out against, again, about kind of good and side in general, as I would say, our parenting approach is just very long term greedy. Because I just think my kids are going to be out of my house for way longer than they're in my

house. They're going to choose whether they want to be in a relationship with me way longer than

they're locked into a relationship with me. And however, high the stakes feel when they're eight and ten and seventeen, we know the stakes in life just get higher. And so when we think about making our kids happy, what we're actually saying is I am prioritizing my kids short term ease. I am making my kids life easy and comfortable in the short term. And what ends up happening, not going to do that a couple of times, but as a pattern, is you actually narrow the range of

emotions, kids believe they can cope with. 100% for sure. True and partnerships, too. True and yes, anyway. You end up having adults who are remarkably anxious. So prioritizing happiness for kids leads to adulthood full of a ton of anxiety. Because you're protecting them from a broader band of emotional exposure. And so they don't develop the confidence that they can handle those broader ranges. I have to sometimes use hyperbolic language with myself to like really get me to do something

“that's hard, but I think good for my kids. Like I see my kid, you know, who's left out of a social”

event or who, oh, got the school project in a group or all of his friends are together and my kid is the only one not with his friends. So, or my kid is struggling to do a puzzle. And one of the things I say to myself is Becky, do not deprive my child of finding their capability, do not steal it, do not steal their capability. A kid doesn't feel capable when they do something easy. A kid doesn't even feel capable when they're doing something hard. Kids develop capability

after watching themselves survive something that was really difficult and just get through it. And so, if I say to my kid, I'll call the school and I'll switch to the school group for you. Oh, I'll do that puzzle for you because I just don't want to deal with you having a meltdown. Not once, but over and over, I'm actually stealing their capability. Capability really is the antidote to anxiety and going forward when I think about my kids

going into the world. What's more important than feeling like I can be capable in a wide range,

“not very narrow, bubbled cushion range of situations? What does it mean to be a sturdy leader?”

I love the word sturdy. Like, there's certain words I love because even though my psychologist now have a lot of words as hey, I actually think very visually and to me the words that makes sense like a vote in a motion that I can access, the word sturdy just does that for me. And again, I think sturdy leadership is what we want in a CEO, so we want in a partner, so we want in a coach, it's definitely what we want in a pilot. So does that mean reliable, dependable?

I think there's a couple ways, I think it's a leader who is equally boundaryed as they are connected to you. They're actually equally as connected to themselves. What do I want? What are my values? What are my limitations? As they are able to connect to you? Oh, you might be different, but I'm able to hear and understand your values and wants and feelings. And to me the way that can get kind of operationalized as a kind of really set of skills

so I know how to set and hold boundaries. And at the same time, I'm able to connect to and validate other people's emotional experiences, those are the two pillars of sturdy leadership. Can you paint a scenario for us and you have great scripts and people come to you for script? Does not have to be a verbatim script, but could you just walk us through a hypothetical

“situation that exemplifies someone being sturdy and fresh? Yes, I think sometimes the best way to do”

it is actually in this pilot metaphor. Can I do that first? And then let's get into the pilot.

Okay, so are you actually a pilot when surprised me? I'm not a pilot. I have landed a plane, but I'm not a pilot. I'm sorry, right there, I'm sorry, okay, I'm not a pilot, I'm definitely not the sturdy pilot anymore. So I'm definitely not a pilot, you know, you're a passenger on a flight and there's let's say a lot of turbulence and you're very scared and maybe even you look around and everyone's pretty scared. I think there's three versions of a pilot that you might hear come over

the loudspeaker and I actually think they perfectly exemplify three different versions of parenting. So here's pilot one. Everyone's top screaming. You're making a big deal out of nothing and I can't focus and you ruin everything and you're just gonna all of your frequent flyer miles taken away if you keep screaming. Something like that. Not super-risher. Not reassuring and the invalidation there as a passenger for me, almost makes me worried. The pilot, not turbulent and oh my goodness,

me screaming and being scared is enough to make the pilot kind of freak out at me. Like that actually doesn't feel good. It feels like I was contagious to the pilot and they couldn't handle the situation. Okay, that's pilot one. That's like when we say to her kids, if you don't listen to me the next time you're losing dessert, you're so rude. You can't hit your sister and you ruin every family vacation, whatever we kind of just scream at our kids and we threaten things

by the way we never follow up on and we just do a lot of punishment because you don't really know

what to do. That's pilot one. Pilot two is almost the opposite extreme. Everyone's scared and it is your right. It is really turbulent and I don't know I'm just gonna open up the cockpit door and if any of you know how to pilot the plane just come on in and take over and at this point you're no longer scared of turbulence and you're just terrified that this person is your pilot. Right? Because there's this merger. My overwhelm became your overwhelm and you just melted in front

of me. That is so scary. The pilot we want to hear is the sturdy leader and they'd probably say something like this. I hear you screaming. That makes sense. It's very turbulent and I've done this a million times. I know what I'm doing. What scares you does not scare me and so I'm gonna

get off the loudspeaker and go back to piloting the plane and I'll see you on the ground and

“Los Angeles. And what's crazy is I think you think about a passenger in that situation and I'm”

gonna guess even if the turbulence was the same they feel calmer because what a sturdy leader really does is they say to you I see what's happening for you. I see your feelings as real and your feelings don't overwhelm me. There's a boundary. I can see yours as real and connect to them while I can maintain a separate connection for myself and there's kind of this cockpit between us. That's like saying to your kid. Oh, you know they're having them melt down because you say no to ice cream

for breakfast, right? And you say, oh, you really want an ice cream for breakfast. I get it. Oh, yummy. And that's not an option, sweetie. You can have a waffle. You can have cereal. Let me know anyone you want to make a decision. And when I model that, parents say, it's not working. It's not working. I'm like, what do you mean it's not working? Well, my kids still screams. I'm just thinking about my pilot saying, I announcement didn't work. My passengers are still scared of the turbulence. I can

imagine who cares like it away that they're still scared. Their reaction is not a barometer for whether you are doing a good job and defining it that way can get into real role confusion,

“can get us into a lot of trouble. What do you mean their role confusion? Well, I think every”

parent wants to do a good job. But over and over when I'd have to parents and their kids are tantruming all the time, their rude whatever it is, I'll say to them, what is your job in this situation? And all of them say, I have no idea. But again, I go to the workplace and I imagine someone I good inside like as a company showing up and me as CEO saying, do a good job today and then saying, but I don't have a job description. I'd be like, do a good job and say, Becky, I cannot do a good job.

If I don't know what my job is and I need to know what that person job is. So I know what they're doing versus what I'm doing. That's totally fair. So I think as a parent, if you don't know what your job is, you can't do a good job. And what role confusion, what I mean by that is number one, you don't have clarity on your job. Because I think any parent listening to this, if you think about any

If you don't know that with clarity, that's at least your starting point. And often as parents,

“we ask our kid to do our job for us. What would you offer as a sample job description?”

Almost always, our jobs are those two things, setting boundaries, boundaries are limits. We set

their decisions we make and sometimes especially when our kids are younger, they're truly they're physical. They're stopping my kid from running into the street or picking my kid up and leaving the park because they're having a meltdown, even though my kid doesn't want to be doing that. Those are boundaries. The other side is always seeing the good kid under the bad behavior and connecting to my kid in that way. Here's a good example. I hear all the time. My kid isn't

listening to anything. My kid doesn't listen to anything I say. For example, I kid is jumping on the couch, right in your class table, get off the couch, stop jumping on the couch and they don't listen. I say stop jumping on the couch and then I say if you don't get off the couch by the time I count to three, I'm going to take away your dessert and then I don't really take away the dessert because I don't want to meltdown later that night. This is so common. It sounds like a mess.

“Right, it's a mess. So number one, I would say, what is your job? Again, I think they would say I'm”

doing my job. I'm trying to get my kid off the couch, but you're asking your kid to do your job for you. You're watching your kid not able to make a good decision. This is your kid who you like. And instead of helping them be safe, you're asking them to do something they're showing you they can't do. So what would you potentially do? Great. So let's start, I can't even answer that without saying what's a boundary. Because that pattern I would say is not setting boundaries.

And this is true, separate from kids. Is it fair to think about boundaries as rules you follow consistently or as I guess is probably more nuanced. I mean, I guess I think it's fair to say but I would say it's not the most actionable helpful definition. Okay. So all right, great. To me my definition of boundaries, boundaries are things you tell people you will do and they require the other person to do nothing. That's a really important dual kind of definition. It's something I tell

I'd say it's my kid, although it could be your colleague or anyone. It's what I tell my kid, I will do. That's an assertion of my power. It's what I will do. I'm not letting my day be ruined by my four-year-old not listening. I just like myself and my kid too much to do that. So boundaries something I tell my kid I will do. And it's success requires my kid to do nothing. Get off the couch, get off the couch. I'm not telling my kid what I will do. And it requires them to do something

to be successful. It's a complete giving away of your power. Right. Versus. And this surprises people

“because too often I think good inside we get lumped in with like soft permissive parenting. This is”

0% permissive. Setting a boundary and validating my kid's feelings. Being sturdy would sound like this. Once I tell my kid, "Hey, get off the couch." They don't. It's like, "Look, I'm going to walk over to you." And if by the time I get there, you're not off the couch. I will put my arms around you. I'll pick you up. I'll put you on the floor because my number one job is to keep you safe and it's just not safe to, you know, jump near that glass table. Okay. Now in my own house, when my kid's

were younger, I'd go over to my kid. And people have this illusion. So you do this. And then your kid just gets off the couch. No. No, they don't. You do this. You get over there. If you have a normal child, they're going to look at you in the eye and keep jumping up and down. Not because they don't respect you. Just because they haven't learned how to control their impulses yet. So then I would do my job. I would put my arm. Okay. I'm going to pick you up now. I'm going to

put them on the ground. They will not look at you and say, "Thank you for your sturdy leadership."

You're so amazing. I really needed that. Thank you for saving up. No. They will scream.

But actually when you understand this kind of parent job, visual, you set a boundary. Every time you set a boundary, your kid's going to get upset. Until they get a little more used to it. But that's because when you set a boundary, you're basically just telling your kid, you can't do something you want to do. Humans feel upset when they're stopped from doing things they want to do. All the time. They get upset and actually allows you to do the second part of your job.

So I picked my kid up. They screamed, "No, put me down. I hate you whatever they say in the state." And then I can say, "Oh, you really want to jump on the couch." You really don't want to jump on the floor. It's so boring. Again, when I say that, that doesn't mean for one instant that I let my kid back on the couch what they will try to do. And my hands will be ready to block

them. Nope. I'm not going to let you do that. This is where I think it really is this revolutionary

idea in any relationship. I can be equally strong and equally connected to someone else. And that's true sturdiness and really doing our job.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

>> I want to ask you about perhaps another facet of doing your job, but you can't just

everything you read on the internet. So I will ask this question in the following way. This is from a participant in one of your workshops. And they described your approach as one of quote, "coaching and nervous system to cope with being human in the world." And quote, "Is that a fair description?" >> What we do? >> Yeah. Or would you say, "Mmm." Not quite. >> Close for this. >> What I love about that is it captures something that's so much more true

than why most people initially come to us. They come to us because their kids are having tantrums. Their kids aren't sleeping. Their kids are being rude. Their kids are being defiant. And what they end up getting is they themselves get rewiring to be sturdier in the world.

“While they learn how to give that to their kids from the start. So I think that that's close.”

>> Yeah, I mean, it's referring back to what I mentioned earlier in this conversation. It's really simpatico with so many other things that I've been exposed to, but it seems like with good insight in the child is yes, you're interacting with the child. >> Yes, one of the objectives to become a better parent and be more connected and be a sturdy leader. And your child is also a mirror and a medium through which you get to work on yourself.

Because if you're dysregulated, guess what? How can you expect your kid to be regulated? And some people are going to hate this because I recognize that human children are not dogs, but for instance, there's a great book. There's so many terrible books on dog training, but one which has terrible title, unfortunately, called Don't Shoot The Dog, is run by Karen Prior. She took clicker training from marine mammals and brought it over to shaping behavior with dogs.

So clicker training is when you click to reward a certain behavior or getting directionally moving towards the right behavior and then you're able to sort of tie mark that enough or war.

“But the reason I'm bringing this up is not that you should use clicker training with humans.”

I've tried that as a joke. It generally lands really poorly, but rather she reinforces over and over again. Why most dog problems are actually owner problems. And you need to be consistent. If you are trying to ship behavior, you also need to be very, very consistent with. And I know this might open up some debate, but rewards generally not punishments in her approach. It's almost all positive reinforcement. And when I see, for instance, I mean, she's not here today,

but I have a very well trained dog. And I have some tolerance for the monony of dog training. And I find it very soothing, actually. But when I see dogs that are misbehaving,

because they were never trained early on. And then their owners are freaking out, maybe hitting them,

being really abusive. I'm like, that isn't owner problem. That's not a dog problem. And I have to imagine they're probably similar examples from parenting. I mean, they're must be. My oldest son said something once that I don't think he meant to be as profound, but it's something that sticks with me a lot. And it goes kind of problem blame where we're in situation in the car. And essentially, my husband thought my son had closed the door.

And he didn't kind of backed up the car in the car, got caught in the garage. The door, anyway. And he kind of said something in my son. And my son just said, it's not my fault. And my husband said, so it's my fault. And my son said, I think he was, I don't know, ate at the time because, you know, sometimes bad things happen and it's nobody's fault. And I think

for parents, this is always true. Like when your kid is really struggling, is it a kid's fault?

“Is it a parent's fault? I think we're obsessed with the fault. Why is it anybody's kind of fault?”

I always say to parents, it's not your fault. Your kid's struggling in the way they are. I'll just not a useful framework. You are the leader of your home. And if all the associates

at the associate level, leadership would say, okay, not our fault, but like we're the leaders. So what are we going to do? And yeah, it's not your fault, but it's your responsibility. Exactly. And the other thing is, I think when we become parents, it's not just like our kids' problems, our fault, our problems, but I see a much more hopeful framework where through your kids,

“if you want to take this on as a journey, you will learn everything. You ever need to know about”

yourself, you're on a childhood, by the way, you watch your partners childhood play out, you're like, oh, that's how you were raised. I see it now. And there's so much learning, right? And that's hard, learning is hard, growth is hard. And it is kind of this amazing opportunity, rather than my kids' problem being my fault or my problem, you can be like, there is an opportunity for everyone here. What is the MGI? I love a good acronym. So when I was in my clinical psychology PhD program,

I'd always hear these amazing people speak, and I'd go with my classmates, but that was amazing,

and I'd say, yes, it's amazing, but we're going to do about it. Maybe like, what do you mean, just think about it? I really don't love thoughts without actions. I just like to know, okay, what do I do? How do I action on this great idea? And to me, this idea that your kid, all of us, we are good inside identity separate from behavior. It's a very powerful idea, but I don't find it as actionable as I would like. So to me, the way to action on that idea

is this idea of MGI. And to me, this is something in all of our relationships. Even if it's just after the fact at the end of the day, we can ask ourselves, an MGI just stands for most generous interpretation. What is the most generous interpretation I can come up with? Of my kids'

“behavior, of my colleagues' behavior, my teammates' behavior, because I think what happens naturally”

is we default to the LGI, the least generous interpretation. So you see your kid, they lied to your face once, no, I didn't take kick-tats from, I don't need before dinner and they like chalk all over. And it's just so easy, you just go to like, my kid is a sociopath, my kid doesn't respect me, and like, well, my kid ate a kick-tat, and like all of a sudden, this is a matter of like respecting me, right? Or, you know, my kid is hitting. They're in a hitting

stage. And again, we just go to, my kid is never going to have any friends. My kid is clingy.

They're always going to be the loser at parties, and they're never going to be able to converse with anyone. And then what happens and why the LGI is so almost dangerous? Is it makes us do this fast forward error? We take a situation today. We fast forward to what that means about our kid. I don't know, 20 years from now. And then we respond in the moment based on all of that fear, rather than what's just going on in the moment. And MGI really shakes us out of

“that. What is the most generous interpretation of why my kid would lie to my face?”

Whenever I ask parents that, it's amazing. Their countenance goes from like so angry at their four-year-old to like, yeah, oh, they're probably scared of my reaction. Okay. And then a venture to do like, what do I do? But the mindset we're in in life determines the interventions we use. And I can promise you as long as you're in an LGI mindset with your kid, with your partner, with your colleague, zero-row productive things can happen. And then we say, what do I do? What

do I do? The answer is to stop doing from that mindset and ask yourself a different question

to get in a more productive mindset. And then intervene from there. So we're meeting for the first time. We have a lot of mutual friends that turns out. But I have this suspicion that we have a fair amount of shared DNA just in terms of how we operate. And as you're mentioning the thoughts as being interesting, but not that interesting. If there's no action to apply these thoughts, I thought that might be a useful place for segue. So I read that you're a planner and that

your husband gave you some advice around planning. Is this enough of a cue to a prompt? I don't know. I don't know. I need more. All right. So this is from romper.com. And so this is the journalist speaking. Okay. I tend to catastrophes jump to the worst case scenario and we're struggling with a difficult phaser unpleasant pattern. But I tell myself to have faith to believe that we will work ourselves to a better place. And then this is, I believe, according to you, I'm guessing

your planner, she responds. I'm a planner too. My husband said to me over the pandemic, I never thought of planners as pessimists. But the opposite of planning is not catastrophe is being able to save yourself. I'll figure it out no matter what happens. The opposite of catastrophizing isn't predicting the good. It's saying to yourself, I'll find my feet. I'll be able to cope with what comes my way. So this is a roundabout way of asking what historically or currently have been your biggest

challenges in parenting. Yeah. That could be with your kids. It could be with your husband could be

when I, you know, I turn the pandemic, I kind of started this whole part of my career and I kind of versioned these like creative thoughts where I became much less organized and I had all this creativity and at the same time the pandemic was very hard to me and this relates to one of the things that's hard for me in parenting and one of the things I talk about a lot. So people probably think I'm good at

“it but I talk about it all the time. So I'm bad at it. That's why anybody talks about things all the”

time where he's like, wow, I think I didn't marry like a very logical optimist. I think I'm married like a creative pessimist. I think I'm short-term pessimistic. Yes, long-term optimistic. And what I mean by that is I love a plan. I love an action. People outside of me will be like Becky is one of the most productive people I know and I think that's probably true on the surface but the driver of that is I'm incredibly anxious when I want to do something and haven't yet

done it that the way I relieve my own anxiety is just to do it so it looks productive but it's it's probably just an anxiety coping skill and what that means is when I want to do something or there's a struggle and I can't get action on it. I have a really hard time. Well, be an example of that. I mean, all during COVID in terms of I think one of the reasons I probably in some ways it was all you were like there for me in COVID and I produce so much content

is I just like needed something to do because the pause of that, slowness, there's not a lot to do to fix this. You just kind of have to be in it. It's really really hard for me. Another example of that is I think about my kids and they're now 7, 10 and 13. Each of them they go to these stages and maybe some social shifts or harder stages and I think I talk so much about

sitting with feelings and not fixing them because my first instinct for sure is to just go in

and make it better, make them happy and that is something again the parallel process of like learning to just sit with my own feelings. All of us who can be prone to action, there's like morality to it. It's like a better thing and it can be better in some circumstances but sometimes

“the best thing to do is just sit with it and that is something I think I have worked on in myself”

even through working on it with my kids. In addition to your book, good inside a guide to becoming the parent you want to be which has been recommended to me by multiple close friends even though don't have kids. In addition to that what other books or modalities do you think could be helpful for someone in relationship and/or with kids. For instance, a few come to mind, right? There's a book called Cauchess Loving. I think it's by gay and Katie Hendrix.

I always mix up the Hendrix because there are two pairs. There's nonviolent communication.

Great book. There is, I think I mentioned extreme ownership which it does actually over and laugh in certain ways. You have, I believe, a quote from Dick Schwartz. I haven't said internal. IFS, internal family systems for people interested. I did a live session with him on this podcast. We just got very interesting, very, very quickly fascinating, practitioner, really useful system. Anything else come to mind? Any books, resources,

anything at all that you would kind of add to that list? The three books, I guess, that are top of mind would be, yes, Dick Schwartz is no bad parts or just his internal family systems book. He knows I've been very influenced by him. When I work with adults in therapy and to me, some of the best gifts and privileges we can give our kids is helping them understand the parts of

themselves and talk to their parts as kids. When I hear my kids do that, I always think this is going

to help you more when you go to college than anything you learn. It's cool. It's crazy. So IFS,

“Eve Rodski's book, fair play. I don't know them. Is I think so powerful, especially for parents who”

feel like they're the default parent, meaning they're the parent who maybe their partner takes the kid to soccer, but realizing they have to be signed up for soccer, thinking about what soccer, where to sign up, getting them the shin guards, getting them the new cleats that actually fit and are the ones they want, that idea of mental load, the mental load of parenting is so intense, but she really helps put a word, words, and a system to that, but I think it makes a lot of

parents, oh my god, I'm not crazy. This is a thing. This is a system. I call it fair play. Because it's the idea that if you have a partnership that you don't have to distribute tasks 50, 50, but that the mental load has like a disproportionate impact on your stress and overwhelm, and there needs to be more fair play amongst teammates. That way. Got it. And then this might sound,

Cheryl is someone I also wonder, like do I share DNA with her, where I'll read things,

“she writes in there, and I think, oh my goodness, did I steal her thought? I swear I say this in my book,”

and she has said to me, no, I've always, I worry, I play drives you, even though my book came out

for your book, and it's very interesting. I'm just hearing my own three suggestions, and none of them have to do with kids, but maybe that's super festive. Maybe that's my, you know, revealing something. To me, the things we need to learn for our kids and our parenting, if I think about a strategy or what to do with my kid, it's like something I put on a shelf. That's important. When you open a closet door, you need the things on the shelf to take that are

actually useful and feel right, and move things forward. But what I hear from parents all the time is I'm learning, I'm learning, I'm learning. I'm memories, I'm everything, but in the moment, I just scream out like I could. And then they say, well, it's wrong with me, right? To me, you need the key

to the door. That is the closet that has that shelf, right? Like, if you can explain them one more time.

Like, if all of your parenting strategies are on a shelf and a closet, and there's a door to the

“closet. And in the moment, you're like, I want to get that strategy. You need to be able to access it.”

You have to be able to access it. And so for any parent listening, it was like, that is so me. I know the thing I want to say, but then I just scream my head off at my kid. I would actually say, stop learning parenting strategies. You have enough on that shelf for now, what I would focus on? Are my triggers? What is happening with my kid that I am triggered? And I am at a 10 out of 10. And when you're at a 10 out of 10, nobody has a key 10 a lock. Yeah, strategy's not going

to be forthcoming. No, the strategies you need have a lot more to do with you, not because it's your fall. And the beauty is when you work on those strategies where you're triggered with your kid, guess what? If you're triggered when your kid's whining, it's not the whining. It's probably the fact that whining generally represents helplessness. I would guess if that's a particularly triggering situation, helplessness was very shamed in your own family. It was probably a pull-up

your bootstraps kind of family. If you're crying, I'll give you some in a cry about family. So you had to shut down your helplessness because it was dangerous. You see it in your kid and you respond to them in the same way people responded to you. Okay, that's like a lot of therapy in 30 seconds, but that's true. Our people are like, wow, that's weird. That's very true. You can memorize everything you want to say to your kid. But if you don't, an IFS is usually helpful here, hugely

helpful in my repairing thing approach and trigger approach, if you don't get to know your protector parts and you don't do that type of work, then every time and that happens, that part is going to scream out. So the answer to showing up is the parent you want to be is this combination of, yes, I have to put the things on the shelf, but I have to know how to open the door also. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. So what advice would you give me, since I'm currently

wife/partner hunting, I would like to have family, but would like to hit some pre-rex? Maybe it's technically biologically not that hard of kids, but I would like to have you like to have the family together adventure. Yep. Like to have that version of possible for people out there who are single, but would love to have a family. What advice might you give them in terms of positive indicators for people who will be leaning towards some of the

abilities and self-awareness and skills that make for a sturdy leader parent? Yeah, it was like, hey, here's my dossier of like 10 prospects and you're like, well, let's like ask a few questions and this is the story leadership on the on the list. One second, I'm especially looking for a little pre-stirty leader chef. They're like, oh, dirty talk seriously. Talk about that one in our next episode. So a couple of things. To me,

again, being a sturdy leader has nothing to do with being a parent. And while I think it's actually through parenting, and this is the beauty that people have such in their face that work,

they need to do that. They can access that. You're right, pointing out how amazing you're doing

some of this work before. So I think number one, again, curiosity over judgment to me is very, very key for any sturdy leader at any age. So when you're dating people, you know, when you're friends with people, and in general, they hear something that's happening for you and they're more curious and they are judgmental. Oh, I did this thing. I had this awful interview. Oh, what happened? Tell me about that. Or you even hear that they approach their own life that way, where people who

have really intense rigid judgments about anyone, they tend to be that way with others because they tend to be that way with themselves. And then that's going to be activated, probably with kids.

“Number one, to me, I think tolerance for inconvenience is like a really important part of”

sturdy leadership, especially with kids. I'm what you stress that out. I mean, you can go on like traveling trip and see how they handle baggage being delayed or whatever. I mean, you can try to

Like, I don't know how much we're always optimizing for convenience versus like, hey, let's take

this up. I don't take this all longer, but it's easy enough. For, oh, there's a way to the restaurant. I really want to go there. Okay. Can I tolerate that? Or, oh, I really want to go, I was just invited with this party. It's going to be so cool. I already committed to my friends in this kind of not-quote, cool, but random group dinner. And like, you know what, I'm going to miss that party. This is like, my best friends, you know, birthday party, whatever it is.

“Because I think that's one of the things with parenting. I feel like I don't talk about enough.”

It's massively inconvenient. That's really the word I can go all the time. I show up. I'm trying to grow a street job. My Fourier is having a tantrum. And it's just like, that's inconvenient. But I've spent 10 minutes now dealing with that. I want to be able to finish my grocery shopping. I also think in a relationship, the ability to be curious about your experience and not see that as any reflection on their own experience, which is really the ability to hold multiplicity,

like when you say to a partner, like, oh, I was really excited and texted me back. Probably

over the partner is their first reaction might be like, I wouldn't have been upset in that situation.

Or, whatever, are you saying I'm a bad person or we get very defensive, because we find someone's experience of us to be counter of our experience of ourselves. And if we're very secure and sturdy, we'd be able to say to ourselves, okay, I can know what my intention was. And I'm not threatened by the fact that Tim was upset, but I didn't text him back. I can be curious about it. I'd be like, oh, tell me more about that. Oh, oh, I see that. And I don't see that as like a threat

to myself. That to me is probably the ultimate indicator. Because that happens all the time. Sure. Oh, yeah, I can only imagine. Sure, it happens all the time. I would love to ask you a few questions that one of my employees and she is a toddler. In every instance that I've seen, she has very

“hard to be. However, she defines it. Good parent. And I think maybe this conversation will”

lead her to think about the definition differently. But she sent a bunch of very good questions. And we probably won't have time for all of them. She really took my question in my producer's question seriously. I should say. So she has eight questions. But I want to hop to number eight. Okay. This is about grand parents. Does Dr. Becky have any good tips on parenting our parents? Our, quote, unquote, boomer parents often use guilt and sham as teaching methods, which we don't love or

prove of, but how do we effectively introduce more positive ways they can grand parent or children when they're together or babysitting for us? This question could also apply to someone's partner. Right. If someone reads your book, they think it's fantastic. They want to embrace it. But their partner maybe has a heavy handed, reactive way of handling things or. Yes, fill in the blank. They're skeptical. Right. So maybe you could speak to the grandparents. Maybe that will also

speak to the partner question. Yes. They're probably, they're related and different. The

“grandparent one is a great one because I think there's a lot to unpack there. So if she was here,”

I'd first probably ask her questions about what it's like for her to parent in a way that's different from the seems like what her parents think is right. I actually think that's a core. What it feels like for her? What it's like for her? I mean, I think that what happens when you've kids and grandparents are involved is we don't even realize how much unconsciously we're just looking for them to tell us we're doing a good job. And most parents parent differently than their parents

did. Most grandparents find that to be almost a criticism of how they parent did. And so they're interested in criticizing their kids, almost as a way of making themselves feel better. And then as the parent, we don't even realize we're back to being five years old and being like doing a good job. And the whole thing becomes very, very toxic. To me, the most liberating thing when you're an adult and it's just an idea basically takes a little get emotionally there is I don't need my parents

approval. I remember when I realized that that's actually amazing. I just changed my life

in so many ways. We won't lose track of the grandparents question, but was there catalyzing event, conversation, revelation? There actually was, I just remember going through my dating life and dating people that, you know, my parents like would have some things to say about and I don't have I have not to have any like majorly toxic relationships, but they had opinions. And I just remember one day thinking the way it came up, my head is they're not dating. It's person like

there was an eye. I think there was a boundary. This like I'm in the cockpit, they can be chirpy passengers. But that's actually what they are. And I'm by the way, I love my parents. They're incredible and I think realizing that and this is the thing when you're a parent, realizing that about your own parents only serves to make your relationship better. Because when you're unconsciously looking for their approval, you get frustrated. You tend to show up in really confusing ways to your

kids. You start to do weird things with your kids in front of your parents. Almost trying to bridge

doing all this weird stuff that they never do. And then we really lose ourselves. So what I would

actually say here, which sounds odd and it's probably not that dissimilar to what I'd start with

“with the partner. Although I think the dynamic is different with parents is the first step is actually”

trying to figure out what do I believe in in my parenting. The sturdier you are in your boundaries, though easier it is to deal with pushback. And in fact, the opposite is true with boundaries. The more I seek approval for my boundaries, the weaker my boundaries become. And so that's where I would actually start. So let's say, I wish my parents understood my kids' tantrums the way I try to understand them. And instead my parents tend to say, why aren't you sending Bobby to his room or

you know, you have a bad kid or whatever they say? Yeah, or if they're babysitting, they just do that. That's right. But even those conversations are so much easier to have once you've really grounded yourself in what you believe. Because then the conversation becomes less emotional and here's then how I would handle it after that. How I'm handling Bobby's

“mouth-downs, I think it's different than what comes natural to you. And leave a couple of options.”

Happy to kind of go through it and why, you know, I'm also happy if you don't really care about the why, just share how I would like you to respond. That's in line with the way we're doing things. Because given you spend a good amount of time with him, it's just confusing to hear things so differently. I know you're probably going to prove or at least it's going to feel weird because it's so new and this stuff really matters to me. And then I don't know how grieges it is. Again,

is it just different? Is it terrifying? You know, we want to differentiate. But the conversation is kind of me and my parent even are on the same team. And that conversation, I have a lot more to say about being on the same team versus oppositional teams. That's a lot easier to have if I'm less caught up and probably what's happening. I'm consciously, which is trying to get them to kind of tell me that I'm doing a good job at my get. Let me bring up one other

question if her is and I may bring up more. But partially because it also bridges to a question that I had. So this is a question about parenting toddlers could apply to all sorts of ages. Is it okay to tell my toddler that I'm upset by her behavior? For example, if she's winding him and complaining I'm getting buckled into the car and I've tried to stay calm but it goes on for so long that I get frustrated, is it okay to say that I am frustrated by her behavior and I need

to break or what is the best response to avoid guilt and shaming language? Because I was thinking as reflecting on the example you gave of the kid jumping on the couch. And I could very easily

“see myself like I have done the work done the IFS got the key to the closet and I go through the”

routine. I set the boundary if I walk over there and you're still in the couch but at the calm I'm calm. Then I put them down and they scream their face off. They somehow juke me and get back

on the couch. Maybe I do it a second time but by this point my blood pressure is a little higher.

By like, rep number three like there's a point, where if it's like rep number 20 like there's a rep at which anyone will probably kind of break. So I guess my question is but we can attack them. I want to answer her question because she's generous enough to send the questions. Is it okay to tell my kid that I'm upset or let me get her language? Brought her question. Frustrated I think she's in. Right. Is it okay to say that I'm frustrated by her behavior

and then I need to break etc. etc. What is the best response to avoid guilt and shaming language? My broader question is, what do you do? Let's say jumping on the couch example. When you've done the right thing two or three times and the kid is just helping. Still being difficult. Yeah.

So a couple of times that question. Number one, there's this thing about I hear it. I have never

said like you can't tell your kids how you feel. There's all these like random things people ingest and I don't even know who said that but I think I'm not supposed to do that to not get you know whenever you're the 10 commandments. But I would say whenever I was a parent you're repeating advice to yourself where you can't even name the person who said that it's a pretty good. I'm just not going to let that take up too much space in my head. You know if I don't even

know the name of the person who I trust enough to let that leave. There's a big difference between saying to your kid. I'm really frustrated. I'm taking a breath, taking a break. I'll be back and saying you make me yell at you. Stop doing that. That makes mommy so sad. The insinuation that we say allowed that your kid or three year old is making you feel something is actually especially toxic

like I'm a little more powerful in my family dynamics should be people are a little scared of me. And now my parent is confirming that as a three year old I have the power to make her feel a certain

“way. I think we say because we're so desperate and like nothing's worked will this work. But again,”

we all say all the things and then we repair and try to do a little bit of the next day but I'm not

such a fan. But what that has got kind of misconstrued as is never telling your kids how you feel

they're totally different. Saying to your kid that's a great thing to say hey I'm getting heated I need a break and then I think it's helpful to say to a kid I love you. I'll be back because kids are so attuned evolutionarily to attachment and therefore to proximity and kind of quote abandoned men that a kid can feel like oh did I like make my parent go away? So hey I'm feeling frustrated. I need a moment. It's actually such beautiful self-care. I'm gonna go to my room. I'm gonna

take some breaths and I'll be back you know connect with you again a few minutes or whatever it is. And that's especially powerful what I want to tell parents listening. If you know you're someone you get reactive you kind of get to the point where you boil over. Such a powerful thing to say

“to your kid to preview to them before hey I'm gonna start doing something different going forward.”

Know how sometimes you got upset I got upset and then kind of it was like this big screaming moment

I'm really invested as a parent and trying to have that happenless. Just keep a calmer home and one of the things I'm gonna do is start to notice when I'm a little upset instead of waiting for it to get to a time when I'm very and you could say to your kid because that's about happens to feelings right if you don't take care of them when they're small they get bigger and out of control. So I might end up saying to you at some point in the next day. Oh now is one of

those moments. I need a break. I'm gonna take that and I'll be back and what I'd say to a parent you can practice this with a kid they love it. I would actually okay let's practice that. Ooh get off the couch. Oh you're not listening okay oh okay dad needs a break right now. I'm gonna go to my room. What do you do when I go to my room right? You go to the art room and you color like you can actually practice this just the way we practice sports plays. Why do

you run a play on a basketball team and practice because you know you're not gonna do it in the

game if you haven't run it over and over in practice I actually think that's so powerful to

think about our interactions with our kids in the same way then when the moment comes and you say ooh now is one of those times your kid has had a rep already and the whole moment will probably go a lot more smoothly. Do you have any other recommendation something if her example I like that and it makes a lot of sense and the wondering what you do in a circumstance where you can't take a time out for yourself right so let's just say she's trying to buckle the kid into the car

tantrum tantrum one yall yall yall yall tries to do the right thing tries to do the right thing and yeah doing the thing yeah so doing like we know the crocodile or all in the babysitter whatever so I'll answer that question but I really do think again it's a framework shift question because people say them is all the time it's like saying when I drive my car to the cliff what can I do so don't fall off the cliff like if that was a friend why are you driving to the

cliff all the time how about we recognize that you're on the road to the cliff when we get to the point as a parent that we are so full of anger resentment burnout that we're about to explode because

“our kid won't allow us to buckle them into the car seat the real question if you want to make a”

change is how do I start to recognize them on that road way before I get to the cliff what can I do why am I getting there so often how can I get into a different road to me this is the whole idea of rage this is actually something we talk about a good inside all the time because when you don't take care of yourself as a parent when you lose touch with your friends or dance class or whatever the thing that made you feel like you before you had a kid you better bet you're

going to be screaming at your kids all the time because to some degree you're just saying I miss all the other parts of me that used to light me up and so I think that's the better question now still when you get there this is where I think it's so important to establish that good inside it's sturdy not soft if your kid won't get into the car seat okay hey we're going to play game we've already practiced we've done the things there is definitely time and place sweetie

I'm going to buckle you into the car seat you're going to scream in cry you're not going to like it my number one job is to keep you safe and so I'm doing that again my kids going to be screaming I buckle them and close the door as I'm walking to the front and I say to myself oh my goodness that was really hard I'm going to go to bed early tonight we're going to call a friend but again that's an example it's actually a good example because I actually heard this exact

example from parent recently that used to drive me bananas the reason that situation feels so exhausting because on some level you have job confusion you think your job is to get your kid happily into their car seat if you know your job is to keep your kid safe and to do what you can to try to make

that's you doing your job actually don't feel as exhausted by it oddly enough it is like a pilot

getting through really intense turbulence or on the ground the pilot is kind of earned my wings today like you know you don't earn your wings by a smooth flight this is going to be hard left but I'm curious how or if any of it will tie and so you mentioned being a postdoc at one point believe and my understanding is you worked with a number of people who had eating disorders what did you learn from that experience and what were you studying what were you working on so yeah I got

my PhD from Columbia then in my postdoc year I worked with college students and grad students who were students at Columbia and I did a specialty in the eating disorder kind of group there so I saw a good number of eating disorder clients I had a eating disorder in high school and so

“I think through that you know and I've been recovery for a while I also just started to put more”

pieces together a couple things I learned our body has this remarkable way to act out conflict if we don't kind of understand it and resolve it things is like a lot of what interacts yet and believe me or things that we don't understand things that live kind of unformulated we're conflicted about and the body expresses it in these horrible, somatic ways through a needing disorder through so many other things too but as an example and this is not true for everyone but often anorexia

is this kind of conflict around your relationship with anger and taking up space in the world

it's kind of amazing like an anorexia you both take up so much space because you get everyone's

attention right and you take up no space you shrink into a like pre-pubescent version of yourself that conflict is being kind of represented in your body I think bulimia how much can I want is it okay to want things for myself can I want things what is my relationship with desire I actually think anorexia and bulimia have a lot to do with your relationship with wanting and desire especially as a woman is there anything that you took from that experience

questions lenses insight that also transferred over to some of the work that you do now or is it sort of looking I guess leading the witness a bit but is it like looking at the thing below the thing below the thing is that what it has in common with what you do now or there are other things

“I think yes that's the second part of that question like what is really underneath people's”

behavior that's always really driven me it's why I became a psychologist why do good people

do things that work against them why do good kids act out and why and do these things why do good parents scream and get into these kind of quicks fix cycles even though they don't want to do that I think I have again it's like the curiosity over judgment always been really curious about that and then I guess through especially my work with people who had intense eating disorders and this was true when I was in private practice too and worked with teens who were really struggling

I think I really understood and saw how desperate they were like a very sturdy leader who could make a decisions when they couldn't and how they'll say all the things on the surface that make it seem like they can be in control but really they're deeply struggling and they're deeply

“in pain and I think that probably helped me see kids struggle and pain underneath their”

disruptive behaviors reflecting back on my childhood I have younger brother and you know brothers got up to brother stuff like you know you try to get me in trouble or I'd like kind of like wrestle them and beat them up and it was like malicious necessarily but there are definitely times when you know he'd be screaming like my tip is hitting me and then she'd run into the room and he'd be in the room myself but he wasn't I wouldn't say he was struggling like he was

being mischievous and like maybe there's something underneath it but it seems like kids have this burgeoning sense of agency and sometimes they're trouble makers like do things that they know are wrong and I'm wondering how you handle some of those situations because you could try to develop a narrative around like the feeling or the pathology underneath it but I guess maybe at face value perhaps their instances were kids are just

doing something I was wrong because it's fun or whatever what you do in in those type of instances or how do you think about that? Let's say more specific like your brother's saying Tim hit me but you didn't like he's lying is that the situation? I mean that's an example I mean it doesn't weigh heavy on my conscience but it was annoying right and like when I look at

like sister the pop? Yeah I like sister the pot is very very smart but I'm like yeah it makes sense I would say I definitely don't think my approach is about pathologizing things or even always like seeing the feeling underneath I actually think what's core is this idea and I'm gonna say

“it again but I really think it's so different from how we usually intervene that it is worth”

repeating that you have a good kid underneath whatever is happening there so okay why is my good kid stirring the pot right and my third kid is like this I mean the stuff and the fact that he's

my third me and my husband always say like we don't lighten him because I think we're less worried

he will do stuff like hey why do all the bathrooms smell like pee we just knew we should ask him I just knew I should ask him when he was like five he literally goes oh well I just thought it would be funny in every bathroom to first pee into the garbage can and then dump it into the toilet that might be why first of all I just tried to stop myself from laughing like that is actually so funny but you also didn't tell anyone for days you just were intervening yourself it's just

funny and I'd go can you not do that anymore is like yeah no problem and you never did it again

“yeah okay no I think it's really easy to be like what is my kids a cycle bad what are you doing”

right but I think for me and maybe it's because my third what did I do I think actually the most

underutilized strategy in parenting and this sounds like a joke but I do want to name it to make it official is doing nothing is doing nothing because you know what helped me do nothing I have a good kid did something actually really smart and funny I just funny and he's entertaining himself like I see him as a 20-year-old in college I know exactly who he's gonna be and I kind of know over time can like rain it in and it's not like he does that like the little kindergarten master

you know but he's maybe like your brother he thinks funny things he's industrious he comes up with his own plans you know and I think the idea way I have this good kid like I don't have to take this all so seriously maybe I can trust myself to know when this appears into the domain of like really bad or too much and maybe actually what I do is just say hey can you not do that again and maybe I know

my son is always gonna be a kid looking kind of push the envelope knowing that about him means

I'm less surprised I can set up boundaries all differently and I can actually and this is what I think is missing a lot and it goes back to knowing your kid's a good kid I can delight in him but lighting in your kid is so important as a parent your kid's feel that and it changes and it

“doesn't make behavior okay all of it but that element and I think that's what's missing when we're”

in really bad cycles we just we love our kid but we actually really stop liking them we don't even realize that and it's really painful for everyone and want to ask a question also from my employee I mentioned earlier which I was very curious about myself which is if your kid is hanging out with other kids who are bad influences what is an intervention look like and I think my parents actually did a very good job on this with me but it was simpler in a sense because no smartphones

we were living in a rural area so if I wanted to hang out in our little downtown and get into this stupid trouble with a bunch of trouble makers it's actually quite difficult and I couldn't stay far away from you to bike and they held the keys to the car etc etc but they were good with certain things that I hated like curfews for coming back from like hanging out downtown after a movie or something which was in retrospect very very smart because a lot of those people ended

up in jail o-d-ing etc etc right they would not have been good influences yeah what is the move what does it look like so there's a lot of degrees here only apparent listening is saying hey when I say bad influence yeah like there's stuff that feels legitimately dangerous my kids older there's I don't know there's drugs I give you a specific example okay for a younger kid great okay so I noticed when I was a kid I'm very sensitive to animals and there were a few

boys who legitimately liked torturing animals like they liked inflicting damage on animals and as far as I'm concerned that's just not a good trait but it's like okay so some kids you know fucking with frogs or squirrels or whatever can you trash can no no like like you letting animals is a step beyond being in the trash can but that kid is also like maybe fine in school well behaved etc etc etc and so you're like hmm that kid seems to have

zero empathy like that's not even not even registering on any skill I don't really want my kid to be around that totally so let's again go to degrees so torturing animals that's like

would say you know good grooming so that's serial killers definitely concerning yeah so that would probably be the same almost level to me as a parent is oh my kid is hanging out with kids again I think there's legitimate sure and that stuff I don't think the parents even have visibility into

“unfortunately so there I think one of the things you say to your kid and and I've now said this”

a bunch of times in this conversation my number one job is to keep my kid safe that is such a powerful

thing to remind yourself now safe doesn't mean risk free it doesn't mean I keep my kid in a bubble but keep my kid safe and so I'm not gonna let my kid hang out with kids who again it's not like they've bad manners it's not like they do something that's like a little pushing the edge and funny like my son did like this is kind of where we would say it's over the line so what I say to my kid hey I want to go hang out with person x and y listen sweetie this is part of a bigger conversation

this is where the sign helps so much my number one job is to keep you safe and sometimes that means not hanging out with certain kids who are doing really dangerous things and I know as an adult that some of what those kids are doing are dangerous and so I'm not gonna take you down down to be with them now again my kid's probably gonna be angry I don't have to say to them because I know my role but don't you understand I don't like we really poor ourselves to our kids level like I'm

asking my seven year old to approve of my decision can you imagine a CEO being like we're going through layoffs if they have to and they're going to everyone's desk is that okay is that okay an emergency landing everyone vote yes I need everyone's yes vote come on don't you understand

“it's like you just have to do the thing you need to do when you're in a position of authority”

to do your job now exactly do your job there's something else though that happens a lot so maybe it's not animal cruelty right I mean another instance from one I was a kid a lot of this kids went and I'm getting into a lot of trouble later where there was go to jail drugs you name it they stole stuff and it was a small town so like people kind of knew like er these kids are bad seeds I mean I know it's a big label but like not a great influence to have around

your kid yeah yeah so yes again I think that would fall under my role around the boundaries that my job is to keep my kids safe that doesn't mean no risk it literally doesn't mean safe that might lead to hard decisions that my kids not happy with but are part of my kind of being the true authority and the adult my kid needs I do think the emergency landing is the most helpful thing if my pilot said we're making emergency landing and someone on the plane said but wait I've

really important podcast interview with Tim Ferris and they're like you know what fine forget it yeah you don't want that our kids are going to face tricky situations and again every parent knows the line between safety versus kind of playground you can't play with us you're a poopy

“head right and then I think it becomes a little more nuanced there one thing you said”

doing your job doesn't mean taking or exposing your kids to zero risk and I made me think of a

friend of mine different former special forces guy amazing guy you'd never guess in a million years

that maybe now he believes not like obviously he's not in your face it's more like a gray man for people to get the link up but he has two daughters and he's very jovial fun guy he's very easy going he's as tough as you would expect but on the surface like his interactions are very he's actually very soft but he ended up basically creating this game with his girls where each birthday they have a birthday challenge and it's something that's hard for them so for like and it

goes up as they get older they get to choose like their ten challenges that's kind of like having your employees choose okay or whatever so they got into rock climbing and then into like I'm going to do the cold plunge in the lake for this long and then I'm going to do kettlebell swings with this and this many of this not the only so for this people who ever seen the movie Hannah he's

basically training with this girl's to be Hannah which is like training this guy's daughter

Eric Bennett's the actor to be Jason Moore but he is inoculated them against a lot of types of fear by expanding their exposure to all these different stressors and kind of making a game of it and they do fail at points but they get to contend with failure and then we're a cover from it I'm wondering if you proactively have done that with your own kids or how you facilitate exposing kids to this broad range of emotional experience so that when they get into the quote

unquote real world they're not fragile yes yes anti fragility is definitely big big goal

of not removing it there's a lot of opportunities for kids to be frustrated to take on challenges I mean we're really talking about feeling uncomfortable right don't do their job for them not doing their job for them and not narrowing the range of their resilience right if my kid is only resilient when they get the job and have an easy project

and go to a dinner where all their friends are and get driven there and there's never any traffic

they're going to be in trouble right there may a lot of trouble but we can't expect them to expect anything different if that's kind of been what we create for them during their formative years so here's a good example talk about my youngest this is one of peas in the garbage cans this is my my resilient rock this kid already he has something he really is he's my kid who wanted to get money to get a certain baseball card that might oldest son and he couldn't

was going to the store and he didn't have money and he had to somewhat lose teeth and he pulled them both out by the end of the day because he figured he could get money from the tooth very yeah and he did and I was like wow yeah very industrious high tolerance for pain

“but I think he wanted to play sports and he's my third so he's been playing for a while”

he tried out he made two teams for different sports where he knew nobody you know no kids

to me this is such an amazing life experience joining a team or you know nobody

and I would say in both teams he's not on the stronger end that's a really powerful life experience in terms of again the capability you will build we think our kids are going to find the capability before and let me get frustrated come on you can do it it's not a big deal everybody in life finds capability after surviving not even after thriving just after surviving something hard the capabilities on the other side you can't expect someone to access it before

you just have to tolerate the before now I think it could be easy to remove that I'm going to make sure I call a friend to join the team with you right and in some ways we take our own anxiety and we add it you know name in versus I really felt like my job to me here's such a powerful line I remember before you went to a source basketball practice and this team happened to be a team that they already knew each other for a year so not only did you know no one they was you know

some really nervous and said that makes sense I've almost feel nervous if you weren't nervous make sense you're nervous to do something new yeah right and then after you know we walked home

“and he said you know I think when they introduced everyone I felt better you know I said”

you're probably a little less nervous at next practice but you probably also will be a little nervous and I think this idea of like when we build our kids capability you're friend who has all those challenges that sounds amazing and there's all different ways to do things in different families I guess for me I see with my kids there's so many opportunities in life that should say it's not like the lynch benefits parent he's actually just like super active with respect and like role models

it to me one of the most important things you're building capability and type for agility

is actually this idea of validation capability this is hard and I can do it often when you do only one with a kid it backfire so we'll be like this is really hard it makes sense you're nervous about practice and we just live in that world and sometimes our kid feels like you're validating my emotions but I'm just kind of like building my anxiety or we leave that out we do the opposite it's nobody deal it's just a basketball team you're gonna be fine kids have been doing basketball forever

right that's often not great and we think that's like building resilience the lack of validation doesn't help your kid cope with the emotion and so it's also not that helpful both is really powerful make sense that you're nervous and your kid who can do hard things oh it makes sense you're not sure how this is gonna go when you're feeling a little uneasy and I just know five minutes in it's gonna feel a little easier that idea that I can see my kid where they are

“and I can almost see a more capable version of them than they can access by the way I think”

great CEOs do this too yeah right this is a hard project and I know you're the one to figure it out or good partners or good partners yeah that's right I'll give a public thanks to my ex she was very very good at all this talk communication perspective taking so she was able to teach this whole dogs and new tricks which have stuck and it's been an incredibly valuable have you had any personal sort of parenting slips that you learned a lot from because one of the questions I often

ask some force fitting into a little bit here but it might work is like do you have a favorite failure meaning like something that didn't turn out the way you hoped or was a miss whatever but it ended up teaching you so much that in the long term it was beneficial I hear my my daughter's voice in this moment saying I started good inside for you and the reason she says that is because I had my first kid and at this point I also my private practice and my first kid

definitely had his mouth bounce he had his difficult moments but there was something relatively

going to figure it out I'm here with you know you can't have that truck I'm holding and I'm keeping

you safe and he would kind of responded in kind he would kind of okay and then I have all the people my practice saying back to back you like I'm doing the things you're saying but I swear they're making everything worse it's making everything worse not working and even though I in general like curiosity over judgment in the back of my head I was thinking when anyone would think like you're just not doing it right you know you're not doing it right that's all but moving on and then it actually

kind of in these sessions would make me have to innovate like okay well that's not working and I kind of do love problems and thinking through things like try this try this you know

“and then I have my second kid and I feel like after a year and a half I remember being like I need to”

call all of those people that I was secretly judging oh my god I know what you're talking about because I am watching myself do the thing I was telling you to do when I was doing it my son and I'm watching my kid scream or by the time she's old enough to talk stop talking I hate you and I was like

what are you talking about I'm being an amazing parent right now why are you saying that and

I would say it for a number of months I really mean it was like a dark place like what is going on and what is my kid and why can't I give to her the way I know I can show up for my other one and and then I feel like after that period this is usually what happens I feel overwhelmed and then I have this thing I say to myself and I'm feeling really overwhelmed and like full of like self-blame and pity where I say like hey Becky wash yourself in it fully embrace it you're horrible

everything's horrible like go away to the extreme and go to sleep I say and tomorrow I'm going to turn it into fire because there's a lot of energy and feeling awful and overwhelmed and if you can like allow yourself to embrace it and not fight it then I feel like there's a day where you can like use all

“of that for something productive I feel like that's what I did and I started to connect these crazy”

dots in my head I was like okay so they're all these families out there who are telling me the same thing I'm seeing with my kid like these kids when you try to talk to them about their feelings even in the best way they explode their meltdowns are like animalistic hissing growling like really I mean really intense they act like you're caged animal and then I thought about probably 30% of the adults I was seeing in private practice for really deep therapy and the struggles

I had in adulthood a lot of fear of abandonment a lot of emotion dysregulation a lot of really low self-worth and it was crazy time I was like oh my god they were all my daughter and they were all those kids like I saw this whole thing and it led to this body of work or with the adult so I was doing this really deep therapy kind of going back to some moments and really reworking them in this like experiential way and they would tell me things I'm not joking that I would then do

with my daughter can you give an example okay here's an example so your kid has this meltdown and some parents listen to like yeah my kid has meltdowns okay I'm not talking about the run of the meltdown I am talking about it truly the exercise the exercise it's animalistic because these kids and I call them deeply feeling kids they experience their feelings as threats and so if you're feeling is a threat in your own body think about what you would do to

“get rid of it you have to like spell it onto someone and they're so”

poorest to the world that they get overwhelmed more easily and they fear being overwhelmed and then they fear they're going to overwhelm you and basically with these kids they're shame sits so close to their vulnerability so whenever they feel vulnerable shame makes it explosive and then when you try to get close like hey I'm here for you or hey you're mad it's too close they actually do it sounds so existential but they fear that they are toxic and then they will kind

of make you toxic and so they say things like get out I hate you leave me alone and then as parents we kind of take the bait fine I'm just trying to help and then we leave these kids alone they're completely tenant attendance regulated and then they basically learn see I really am as bad in toxic as I wear it I was and we see this all the time and it all had act itself out and so

this is a good example of what came from this most amazing adult I worked with forever we went

back to this momentary childhood we're getting she'd be in her room because these kids being their owner out of control screaming at a parent get out kids are oriented by attachment which is a system of proximity so when they say get out not commonly we all say get out someone's like sure I'll get out but they're like not in a place to be making a decision what they're really saying is I'm so terrified I'm gonna terrify you and I'm so terrified therefore I'm bad

because if I terrify you so much that you can't even be near me I'm a vulnerable kid that basically means like I'm not gonna survive because I need your attachment to survive and I remember going through like what she needed in that moment and I remember like kind of going through this visual

because I always say with deeply feeling kids when they're in that tenant attendance state

“their words are not their wishes they're their fears um honestly all of us most of us”

that's a really interesting reframe kiss that one more time when we're completely out of control and overwhelmed and we scream things out in that state our words are not our wishes our words are our fears and I think even the visual if you have a kid like this what they're screaming they're actually screaming to their feelings not to you get out leave me alone I have the chills like they're not talking to a parent they're talking to these like terrifying sensations in their body

so we went through this this visual I'm in the room kind of like visually when you're doing this with your client this is an adult exactly this is my help so much with deeply feeling kids one of the things just giving you an example I was like okay so I don't remember if it's her mom or just some sturdy adult wasn't seem scared of her and I said so she's standing up the door with you and I remember this woman saying she's not standing she has be sitting and I kind of explored that

“in the imagery and just if she's standing I just believe she's about to leave like I don't believe”

she's committed to this so she's sitting at the door and I'm like okay so she's sitting at the door this goes into so much more about deeply feeling kids but in these moments they need containment they literally need to be with you in a smaller space because they're so fearful of how their feelings come out of them and like take up all the space that they need to essentially have us hold space

with them like your feelings only go this far and I'm sitting with you at the door like I would never

let you kill both of us so my sitting here with you is almost the way of saying like you are not so bad and awful and toxic after all and if I cannot be scared of this one day you will not every fucking time when you do this and it's more details and just this your kid will end by crawling over to you like a dog and coming into your lap for a hug because that's like exactly what they need but that idea that you can't even be standing I kind of knew in these moments she was screaming

get out it's like you're not in a place to be making good decisions for yourself it would be like if my kid was trying to cross near city street completely out of control like don't hold my hand you're about to die in our coming traffic like there's something deep around and hold you

and I knew I had to be in the room but I remember as soon as my client told me this thing about

sitting down I remember when I own daughter and talking to clients I had all these clients at the time what these kids because I was kind of getting these referrals from these kids labeled as oppositional defiant disorder difficult dramatic all of these diagnoses I was like wow oppositional defiant disorder you cannot like a child who you label as oppositional defiant and we are all trying these things and every one at the same time was like the sitting down and kind of

imagining yourself in this just really sturdy way it shorten the meltdown by like 90% and again

“that came directly from my work with I think so many of my best interventions come from”

actually the work I did with adults understanding what adults needed when they were kids and reverse engineering that to today's parents. Fastening an example and I can envision it and I can see it working I suppose it used different words for it but a friend of mine recently recommended a book to me which was something like the highly sensitive person who's not going up because I am what I say to people for myself and I was like this is a kid too it's like my senses are very

very very sensitive very porous and they can be incredibly overwhelming sometimes and I've become better at using that and managing it but as a kid I mean if you had about it they're a story. You're probably what I would say is a deeply feeling kid mine too and I say to her you're a super sensor because with these kids I live in your sleep and we'd be getting near the garage or you park our car and she would not want to go into the garage the smells of even near the garage

so easy as a parent to say something to a kid like you're so crazy what are you talking about it doesn't smell any different outside here and if you think about what you're really doing is you're saying to a kid I know how you feel better than you know how you feel now again the boundaries matter might there be a time especially when she was younger and say I get it you smell it it's awful you smell things I don't smell and I'm picking you up I have to carry you in the garage

that's independent from my action but again when we can't separate those two we usually say super invalidating things to DFK's we tell them they're dramatic we tell them they're making a big deal out of nothing principle of all human behavior is we all need to be believed and so if you don't get believed you escalate the expression of your behavior and desperation to be believed then usually people lead with more invalidation which means you escalate behavior further

to try to get the original thing you are looking for and with deeply feeling kids and parents that's a cycle we really reverse yeah well yeah trip down memory lane that's wild

kids so I think stuff yeah it is all the same stuff if you could put metaphorically speaking a message on a billboard could be a quote could be an image anything non commercial just something to get out to very large number of people could be a reminder requests anything mantra that you find useful anything at all can I pick more than one of course not the same billboard I'm about the branding of all the met ones but I have to do anything so yeah

yeah you can definitely have a couple okay so I'm going to start with one that's probably most linked to our conversation so far just my ultimate mantra this feels hard because it is hard not because I'm doing something wrong and again to me the idea that we struggle and it doesn't mean it's our fault is life changing I remember during COVID when my kids are doing work and like work from home you know when they were like in school at home I was like the thing

“I put in their desks and I think when you're talking about kids working on math or learning”

at a read doing a puzzle or doing something at work or managing your first conflict in your

romantic relationship you put it on their desk like a placard or like a little dry raised board or I mean I just like post of note I took like a post it no and wrote it messily and just put it up there and say one more time this feels hard because it is hard not because I'm doing something wrong the difference between understanding something's hard because it is versus thinking it's hard because basically you failed has massive life implications on what we'd be willing to take on next

it's a challenge like yeah that's just a hard math problem if it feels hard that's because you're doing it right because it's supposed to be hard oh I'm doing it right versus I'm not good at math I mean it's just remarkable especially academically when kids are young how powerful that is if I could put something different on a billboard you're sponsoring many brand new campaigns in a couple of your budget yeah okay it would be one of two things this is like different versions

“of a similar idea parenting doesn't come naturally the only thing that comes naturally is how you”

were parented or we were never meant a parent uninstinct alone all idea of maternal instinct

has had a profound impact on parents profound and awful and it's not to say I don't think there's some instinct in us obviously I get that but it would be like a doctor saying like I didn't go to medical school like I've surgical instinct sort of glinstinct you're like yeah I'm just not gonna see you like and if your friends said that yeah it's gonna be hard past right it's hard past and it's just so interesting that I think we take learning seriously at every point in our lives

and then we get the job that's the hardest and most ongoing and most important job will ever have and we're socialized to think we're supposed to be learning before like a CPR class, a pregnancy class and then once your baby's like one the narrative I hear from parents we hear this honestly because at good and side I think way more than trying to help you through a tantrum we're trying to elevate parenting parenting deserves education because that's a good compliment

with instinct like there are things to learn doesn't come naturally and I really we have moms especially all the time say I feel like it's a sign of my failure which to me I just don't know anyone who goes to medical school and says like oh I have to go to medical school I've become a doctor I'm like my friend who I don't know who has a surgical instinct or I get my surgical tips on

“Instagram and I think that's enough you would say to a doctor yeah that's cool you want to stay”

up to date and some tips but you probably need a foundation and I think this goes back to fall you know where it goes back to how when we struggle especially as women we tend to think it's our fault instead of maybe something more useful like a little bit of anger like wow the system is pretty stacked against me nobody is setting me up to have clarity in my job to know what to do and to actually feel resourced and supported and then I think we find parenting hard but we wouldn't

find it as impossible as we find it to there you said one of two things or was there another failure oh just some version of part of me I like to be punchy if I was going to put something on a billboard I want to create you know a conversation so maybe I'd say something like there's no such thing as maternal instinct not because I even fully believe that but just to start a conversation on the limitations of that framework and I think the massive amount of shame

it's created especially for women and shame leads to an animal defense free state

free you don't act so it's kind of amazing and fucked up is if you can convince women but they

should be able to parent on maternal instinct alone it's just a great way of kind of ensuring moms forever feel really bad about themselves and don't talk about it yeah that resonates I mean what do I know I don't have kids but just what I've seen with friends is there seems to be certainly there are maternal instincts for sure just like some people may be better suited to empathy and

right two things are true and what I've seen amongst several of these battles in the parenting

“discussions right the attachment parenting versus the sleep training versus and man oh man”

he's good intent and I'm watching some of these things because I'm curious but if one of the stories that sometimes pops up is related to mothering in different let's just say for simplicity indigenous cultures and what gets lost there is over emphasized is the instinct in what that means and what you can rely on would get a little lost is societally as you said how for a lot of women in industrialized western cities let's just say or westernized cities

are certainly coastal US in a lot of places in those societies I've spent time in Ethiopia and all over South America and so on it's like from a very young age they are being taught how to take care of kids in whatever way makes sense culturally in that context but it's like from a very young age like they're getting training that's like being born into like geodreams of sushi and it's like all right you're gonna start with washing the box I mean like but very very early age they're being

taught and getting a lot of practice which is just simply not the case for a lot of women these days so it would seem to make a lot of sense that they need to have the opportunity to be resourced as you said and I think the resources again that I always want for parents extend so beyond just your interactions with your kids like learning to set real boundaries

“is life-giving I can every area of your life and I think that's why when people are kind of”

involved in the good and side system for a while like when we interview users it's interesting

after a while to ask for a raise for the first time my girlfriend from college always go away

and honestly my partner always gives me a hard time every year and so I don't ever go and the first time I realized wait Dr. Becky like he said those are my partners feelings I can care about them but I don't have to take care of them meaning my partner can be upset and I can go in my trip and then we always say what about those tantrums remember how you can't and they are like oh is how I came in right so I think what I want for parents and what I want the billboard

also said they are kind of you know we come our kids problems they're really a signal that probably there are so many opportunities for us to learn things that are yes going to help them but are going to end up helping us even more I want for parents really to feel like they do more than just put out the latest fire in their home hmm so you are and I love this by you well known as I mentioned for your specific scripts your word for word scripts even though

the intention is to use them to highlight principles understand them what are your most requested the fan favorites most requested as far as scripts what do I do in my kids having a meltdown but like I just totally don't understand so like what do I do when my kids freaking out about something I don't understand anything about boundaries and saying no how do I say no to someone without feeling guilty how do I say no to my in laws when they keep you know popping over so

anything about saying no and boundaries and repair yeah I feel really stuck and I just I can't

get myself to go to my kids room and say the thing I always feel like a script is like a door opening

sometimes we just want to open the door for us and then when you get in the room like okay I can do this but that's kind of what a script you have what's specific boundary setting or saying no

“like within that subcategory what are the things that tend to come up the most honestly”

almost always in a master question my answer is almost always reframing the question how do I say no without someone getting upset I mean this with love it's just a bad question it's a bad question yeah possible question how do I say no and tolerate someone being upset is a great question well that question so I'll shift to that usually when we feel stuck in life it's because we're asking wrong questions not because we don't want the answer but I think scripts

that you can get also get a great answer to the wrong question yeah I can lead you astray right I was like questions are roads you walk down to make sure the road it's like the destination you want to end and not kind of a cliff or anything I'm productive and I'll share some of them here because some of them are good about there so how do I say no I think saying no well really comes from knowing your why and really being grounded more in your experience than the other

persons the reason it's hard for someone to say no is because they've actually already vacated their body and if it's me let's say you know here we are on Monday but let's say you ask me hey can you do Monday at 330 and I can't forever be saying oh my god what's Tim going to think

the only time you can't say no from that place because you're no and setting a boundary comes from

your place of authority and if I vacated my body and I'm now spending all my time and Tim's head you've lost yourself you've lost your and your fantasy exactly Tim's probably like why he's

“spending so much time I had I would have just figured it out with you that's what we do so I think”

step one is actually coming back to ourselves like why am I saying no okay I'm saying no because I don't pick up my kids from school or whatever it is right it actually becomes a lot more self evident I'm not able to make that time because whatever the reason is right and then I think one of the best thing with scripts when you're saying no naming your intention naming it not just thinking it is really helpful in communication I'm really excited about recording I'm unable to do this

I would love to find another time right making it really really obvious what your intention is really does get in in helpful way it prevents someone else from misinterpreting it from you thinking oh Becky just doesn't want to be in my podcast right and it also makes me feel sturdier because I'm kind of connecting to you along the way one of the ways to think about boundaries and how to actually set them because there's a lot of people who are like I know I want to set them but it's the holding

and I just feel so uncomfortable my mom's mad at me or my kids mad at me okay so right now we're sitting on opposite sides of the table but imagine one tends court almond one side of the court bound the baseline and you're on the other side but instead of a net I don't know there's like a glass wall so like I could see you but whatever happens on your side would stay on your side okay the reason boundaries become hard to hold because I'm on my side setting a boundary so maybe it's

saying to my mom oh you want to come over to see the kids it doesn't work for us we have to find another day or maybe it's saying to my kids a TV time is over or no sweetie we're here to buy a birthday present for your cousin but I'm not gonna buy anything else even though you see that thing you want that's my boundary and on your side is your feelings so if you're my mom you're upset and maybe your version of upset is tilting me who knows right and maybe if you're my kid in the toy store you're

upset probably your version is screaming meltdown or who knows what it is right what we say to ourselves all the time is I can't set boundaries I feel so guilty right mm-hmm okay and my mind

“guilt is a feeling you have when you're acting out of alignment with your values that's why”

guilt is useful if I yelled at a taxi on the way home tonight I would feel guilty because that's not my value used yell at anyone definitely not someone trying to help me that guilt would make me reflect huh I wonder why I yelled what could I have done differently useful but it's interesting when people say I said a boundary with my mom because I just needed the alone family time but I feel guilty I said no to my kid because I don't want to buy them everything in a toy store and I feel guilty it's

not guilt it's actually life changing it's not guilt because you're acting in alignment with your values so then by the question what is it it's our tendency to see other people's distress on their side of the tennis court and this usually happens in childhood we learn we kind of say I will take that for you I will take your upset and bring it to my body and put it in my body to kind of metabolize it for you and I will call it guilt but it's not guilt it is someone else's feelings

that you're feeling for them and not only is that not good for you it's actually awful for the

other person because if you metabolize let's say your kids feelings for them they never learn to

deal with the stress you can also never empathize because the only reason I can empathize is if I actually see your feelings as yours so I actually have to when I do this exercise for a workshop

“well I'll say to someone you have to give that feeling back to its rightful owner so let's say”

I take my kid to a toy store and I say to my friend I really do want to say no to them but I have the money and I feel so guilty and even though I want to say no okay but now maybe it's not guilt how do I deal with that what happens is you're on one side of the tennis court and your kids frustration distress kind of starts to come over and instead of going and hitting against the glass wall and going back to them which by the way is what you want you need people's feelings to say on their

side of the court it kind of comes over to me I'm like I can't well what you have to do is actually

must put your hands up and like push it back and actually the visual is powerful that's my kids or

my mom is upset she can't come over if I actually think about it that makes sense I'm allowed to say no and they're allowed to be upset is like a great life mantra they're equally true no one's a bad person my mom is not a bad person or feeling upset that she can't see her grand kid I am not a bad person for saying the time doesn't work for me those two things just happen not to kind of be in line with each other so I have to hold them at the same time they're both true

neither is wrong and neither is more true than the other and if you see your mom's feelings as

the feelings you can't empathize you're responding to your mom to take care of your own feelings that weren't yours you're putting yourself in the washing machine as opposed to looking through the glass a hundred percent that's right and so holding boundaries you get better when you picture that tennis court and you start to ask yourself am I really feeling guilt it's probably not can I give that person's feelings back and then empathy actually helps you hold a boundary

oh I get it mom you wish you could come over I know I'd be upset if I were you too oh

“does that mean I can come over no it doesn't I'm just saying I understand so that visual I think is”

powerful tennis court we have just a few minutes until our time yeah and I thought I would just

open the floor to ask you if there are any things we didn't touch upon that you'd like to mention if there any requests of my audience my listeners any reminders closing thoughts anything at all that you'd like to add and people can certainly find good inside a good inside.com and we'll link to all your socials as well Instagram Dr. Becky at good inside I believe and we'll put all these in the show notes of course the book good inside a guide to

becoming the parent you want to be link to the TED talk we will link to all the goodies in the show notes but is there anything else that you'd like to mention? No I mean I think that I find learning and reflection to be really such a brave endeavor I really really do because if you're thinking about yourself or thinking about why we do the things the way we do or oh maybe I do

“want to intervene differently like there's probably someone at this point saying maybe my kid is a”

deeply feeling kid like should I go learn more about that and I feel like that's very brave because to do that you're going to be confronted by feelings of like oh shoot I don't do that and we all have wondering questions of did I mess my kid up which you didn't but we wonder it and then we feel upset and and then to kind of push forward and say like okay I'm going to tolerate those feelings in the pursuit of finding something that's going to end up feeling better to me I just find

I find it very admirable and increasingly hard to do in today's world that we're all oriented around short-term convenience and gratification and so for anyone listening at this point I just want to say thank you I want to say you know there's probably a lot of tolerance of uncomfortable emotions along the way there's no one we care about in the world in the way that we care about our kids we're so invested in it so thinking about getting support we can about taking a workshop

or getting a resource on some level it seems like well yeah it's the person I care the most about I'm going to do that but there is this like pull away like oh I don't know if I want to look at something and so the people who are willing to do that I just think that's like my type of people and I love people who can do hard things so I want to say thank you and then the thing I want to hold right next to that is everything I said today and I should have said it's in the beginning like

I myself definitely do not do 100% of the time it's apparent and it really matters to me that people know that number one just because it's true and I don't want to misrepresent myself but there's no perfect parent kids don't need a perfect parent that would again be

weird if we set our kid to think that they're most important relationships down the road are

going to be with people who are always perfectly attuned to their every feeling and that would be very counterproductive and so again maybe we end with what we begin with is the most powerful relationship strategy I believe we have in any relationship is repair it's our willingness to go back to take responsibility to say hey I wish I handled that differently to then hopefully actually do a little bit of like the investigation or resourcing we need to actually do it differently

but I I want to leave parents or any listener with that there's nothing more powerful than

“repair there's nothing as important to get good at as repair which also means you have to mess up”

because the only way you can repair is if you did mess up and so I just want to leave people with that more kind of balanced human note because that's the thing I usually hold on to myself and for people who are curious they want to explore the world of good inside and Dr. Becky Kennedy where would you suggest they start in terms of like dipping a toe in the water let's just for the purpose of applying some constraints right somebody who doesn't

maybe they don't have the ability or the financial resources to go to like an extended workshop or something like that yeah where might they start let's say go to your local library and kind of request the book if it's not you know and definitely get on the request list for good inside I would say come to goodinside.com and sign up for our emails I'm bursting with new thoughts all the

time and I always need containers for them so one container is our email or you know kind of weekly

thoughts for me Thursdays I send out Instagram my own podcast I should say I'm on a podcast now podcast listeners usually listen to other podcasts so maybe that's best that's just called goodinside we try to keep it simple and goodinside.com is kind of the home for everything we do and then it would save your kid is I love to help people whose kids aren't just struggling it's kind

a lot of us wait I really think of our resources inside our app as you know about your kids and

“your own emotional wellness I think we make that very accessible you know compared to other emotional”

wellness resources so that's there too. Well folks they have it that is how you wait into the waters and I'm so happy we get out of this conversation thank you for taking the time. Thank you us and like a lot of notes for myself also that's to be prepared might take a little while for me to get the kiddos online but that is the plan and I really appreciate what you are teaching these toolkits are incredibly powerful and as we have mentioned and alluded to multiple times in this

conversation you can apply these things everywhere it is not limited to your interactions with your

kids and everybody listening thanks for sticking around thanks for tuning in and as always be

just a bit kinder than is necessary until next time that includes other people but that also

“includes yourself and for links to everything we discussed you can find them in the show notes”

Tim.log/podcast and I'll repeat myself but thanks for tuning in until next time take care. Hey guys this is Tim again just one more thing before you take off and that is five bullet Friday with you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter my super short newsletter called five bullet Friday easy to sign up easy to cancel it is basically a half page

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