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

0:00:04 Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of
0:00:08 The Tim Ferriss Show, where for more than a decade, it has been my job to deconstruct world-class
0:00:14 performers from different disciplines, all different disciplines, to tease out the frameworks,
0:00:21 the favorite books, the routines, and in this case, the word-for-word scripts that you can apply
0:00:26 to your own lives. My guest today is Dr. Becky Kennedy. She is the founder and CEO of Good Inside,
0:00:31 a parenting movement with members in more than 100 countries that overturns a lot of conventional
0:00:37 modern parenting advice to actually empower parents to become sturdy, confident leaders.
0:00:41 We’ll explain what that means and raise sturdy, confident kids. Of course, there are a million
0:00:47 people out there giving parenting advice, and Dr. Becky Kennedy’s advice, her thinking on this,
0:00:53 has resonated incredibly well with me, and that is why for years I’ve wanted to have her on. She
0:00:59 is the author of the number one best-selling book by the same name, Good Inside, a chart-topping podcast,
0:01:03 Good Inside with Becky. You can see the theme here, a TED Talk with nearly four million views
0:01:08 on the power of repair. We’ll discuss what that means and what it looks like in an upcoming
0:01:14 children’s book, That’s My Truck, a Good Inside story about hitting. Maybe I could use that too.
0:01:19 You can find her online at goodinside.com and on Instagram @drbecky@goodinside.
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0:06:41 learn more at drinkag1.com/tim. Let’s start with what popped into my
0:06:47 head. And we’ll just keep rolling with that thread and see if it goes. We’re interesting.
0:06:51 If it’s a dead end, I’ll get us out of the dead end. But I want to talk, perhaps, about your
0:06:57 TED Talk on the power of repair. Why do you think this struck a chord with people
0:07:03 and what resonated with people from that? A classic example is you yell at your kid for
0:07:07 something, right? So I’ll use this example, which is different than the one in my TED Talk,
0:07:14 because it also leads to some common questions. So my kid’s stalling in the morning. I got to
0:07:18 get my kid to school, because also when I drop my kid at school, I have to get to work. And my
0:07:22 kid’s late, I’m late. The whole thing were also rushed. And my kid is saying, I don’t know whatever
0:07:26 they’re saying, I’m not going to school today. You can’t make me go to school. I’m not putting on
0:07:30 my shoes. You put on my shoes and you’re thinking, I have an eight-year-old, like they put on their
0:07:36 shoes, right? And then we get to some crescendo moment where as a parent, and I’ll say me myself,
0:07:41 because I have this too, I just yell, scream at my kid. What is wrong with you? You don’t do
0:07:46 anything. You’re eight years old. You’re never going to amount to anything in your life. You can’t
0:07:52 put on your shoes. You’re so selfish. You’re going to make me late. You turn me into a monster.
0:07:57 Why can’t you listen the first time? We say this thing, depending on our kid’s temperament,
0:08:02 they react in different ways. If they’re kind of in the more people-pleasing type that immediately
0:08:07 stops them, they’re like, oh no, my parents mad at me. I’m going to be good, mostly just because
0:08:13 I really need to see that they reflect that I’m a good kid. I need that. If you have another
0:08:17 temperament kid, they use this as a way of like, oh, you want to fight? I’ll show you a fight.
0:08:21 And they’re like, I am not putting on my shoes. That was me. Right. That is my third kid. Love him.
0:08:31 What order are you? I’m first. You’re first. But I was a pretty defiant little kid at points.
0:08:35 And so then you get through the moment. You get through it. And then I think after drop-off,
0:08:40 there’s this immense heaviness as a parent. And you’re cycling through different things that,
0:08:45 again, whatever your voice is, might be your own voice, or it’s probably the voice you’ve
0:08:49 internalized from your own upbringing in terms of how people would have responded to you
0:08:54 if you were your kid in that moment. But it’s some version of blame. It’s either blame in
0:08:58 or blame out. It’s either I’m an awful parent. Why can’t I stay calm? And why can’t I just get
0:09:02 through the morning? And then that usually cycles with I have an awful kid and my kids a sociopath
0:09:05 and they’re going to go to jail and they’re never going to mount to anything. And either way,
0:09:12 you’re blaming where repair would be saying to your kid at some point, hey, I screamed at you
0:09:17 earlier. That probably felt scary. And this will be the kind of maybe the start of something
0:09:23 controversial. It’s never your fault when I yell. And I’m working on staying calmer. So even when
0:09:28 I’m frustrated, I can use a calmer voice like I’m sorry. That would be a repair. I’m kind of going
0:09:34 back to a moment that felt bad, kind of like reopening that part of the chapter. I’m taking
0:09:39 responsibility for my behavior. I’m giving my kid a story to understand what happened.
0:09:44 And I’m kind of talking about what I would do differently the next time.
0:09:50 All right. This is great grist for the mill. And part of the reason we talked about this a little
0:09:55 bit before recording that I was excited to have you on and have a conversation is that
0:10:02 the tools you’re talking about really apply everywhere. And they’re echoed by a lot of
0:10:09 folks people would not necessarily associate with parenting like Jaco Willink, Navy Seal Commander,
0:10:13 Extreme Ownership. And there are many other examples that I could give where
0:10:21 I feel like what we will discuss in our conversation can be applied many different places,
0:10:29 many different dojos for very similar tools and tool kits. With that said, I suspect one line
0:10:34 where people maybe got stuck and you know exactly what I’m going to say is it’s never your fault
0:10:41 when I yell at you. All right. Part of me loves that because just to invoke the great name of Jaco
0:10:46 again, who did his first ever podcast, first ever interview on this podcast 100 years ago.
0:10:54 When you own things, you give yourself a degree of agency. Yes. Right. But also overly blaming
0:10:58 yourself can be the flip side of maybe taking on excessive responsibility for other people’s
0:11:05 actions and feelings and so on, meaning sort of codependent or otherwise. So I heard everything
0:11:10 you said, but I suppose like some listeners, I was like always never, these absolutes are very
0:11:19 strong words. Why say that particular line? And when I share a script to me, it’s often words
0:11:24 that are representative of kind of principles. I never like to get too stuck on words. I actually
0:11:27 gave those words an example in part because I think it does bring up a lot of questions,
0:11:31 but I never want someone to hear this and think, okay, I got to write down that exact word. In
0:11:35 general, take responsibility for your actions, give your kid a story, say what you do differently
0:11:38 the next time. And I actually would hope anyone listening would say, I think I have my own brand
0:11:42 of that. Amazing. That’s better for you and your kid than my brand. So with that in mind,
0:11:47 it’s never your fault when I yell. Here’s why I think that’s powerful, even if you don’t say it,
0:11:55 to discuss and really think about. The way we react to our kid, yes, has to do with the situation
0:12:01 in front of us, but we actually react to the set of feelings in our own body combined with
0:12:08 the circuitry we have to manage those feelings. And I think the biggest thing to think about is
0:12:15 that circuitry, those skills we have to manage emotions literally predated our kid’s existence.
0:12:24 That was there so far before them. Now, when my kid doesn’t listen and the morning is delayed,
0:12:28 I feel frustrated. And that feeling is definitely co-created with my kid.
0:12:35 Separating frustration from my ability to manage the frustration are two really different things.
0:12:40 And telling a kid, basically, you make me yell, you turn me into a monster,
0:12:46 is actually holding your kid responsible for your set of skills to manage your feelings.
0:12:50 And the other reason, and then I’ll be quiet for right now, that I think it’s so powerful
0:12:54 is I think about my son. I don’t know, it could be my daughter, whatever, he’s married one day,
0:12:59 let’s say, and he has some partner and I don’t need a really bad day at work. And he comes home
0:13:05 and for some reason, I’m at his house visiting and his partner is like, “Oh, man, I forgot to get
0:13:09 toilet paper from the store.” And then he sits down for dinner and maybe his partner ordered
0:13:16 him the wrong thing. I don’t know, he yells at her. And I hear him saying, “Well, if you just got
0:13:21 toilet paper and ordered me the right thing, I wouldn’t be yelling at you.” And I picture the
0:13:24 cringe moment, “Oh, my God, that’s like the creepiest thing.” Like seriously?
0:13:26 And then you’re like, “Did I install that software?”
0:13:30 And then we hear ourselves say to our kids all the time, “If you just listened the first time,
0:13:35 I wouldn’t have yelled.” Or like, “Okay, well, if you were just calmly playing with your sister,
0:13:42 then you wouldn’t get this reaction from me.” And if that creeps us out down the line, like if we
0:13:47 wouldn’t say, “I would be so proud to hear my kids say that to a partner,” then I don’t know
0:13:50 why we think that’s a good idea to say to our kids when they’re young.
0:13:53 So there are many different branches off of this that we could explore.
0:14:01 Let’s maybe back up or zoom out. Choose your favorite metaphor. And perhaps you could just
0:14:09 in your, I suppose, framework or worldview what it means to be a good parent. Could you
0:14:15 define this or just speak to that? And then we can use that as a sort of a foundation
0:14:17 from which we can launch into a bunch of other stuff.
0:14:22 Yeah. I should have a really solid answer to that question by now, but I…
0:14:23 Fortunately, we have a lot of time.
0:14:28 Okay. Maybe part of what I struggle with is I think we probably think about that word
0:14:32 or that term “good parent” is like what I’m doing on the surface is something observable,
0:14:37 or I think a core principle that I think about is actually separating kind of who you are in
0:14:42 terms of your identity, which is not observable from what you do in your actions, which usually is
0:14:48 observable, separating those two. I mean, but I think a good parent probably sees parenting
0:14:54 as a journey of self-growth and discovery as much as they see it about anything related to
0:15:00 your kid’s growth. So I think that’s number one. Number two, I think a good parent
0:15:09 really activates curiosity over judgment in a situation with their kids. And a good parent
0:15:15 probably can put into action the idea that really being the sturdiest leader for your kid
0:15:25 involves equal parts, very firm boundaries, and parental authority, as it does kind of warm,
0:15:29 validating connection. You mentioned curiosity over judgment. Now,
0:15:34 when people hear this for judgment, they probably assume that as a negative judgment,
0:15:40 but a judgment could also be something like “good job,” right? So what would curiosity
0:15:47 look like in place of either a negative or a positive judgment? Yeah, I think the words “good
0:15:50 job” have gotten a lot of presser parents like, “You know, so say good job. Say good job. That’s
0:15:54 not going to do damn much to your kid.” I think there’s a lot we cannot pack there against there’s
0:15:58 deeper principles, right? They’re like, “Oh, what do kids really need when they have accomplishments?”
0:16:04 Yeah, I like how you zoom out because it’s not the whether you’re using the crayons or the oil
0:16:09 paints or the acrylics or charcoal. You have to learn the fundamentals of drawing, and to do
0:16:13 that you need to learn how to see things. So it’s like returning to those first principles.
0:16:18 That’s right. That’s exactly right. So I think judgment, it can be positive, but I would say
0:16:24 in parenting, actually in any relationship, it’s just so easy to see someone’s behavior that feels
0:16:31 bad or feels less than ideal, and we just activate our judgment about the behavior. And usually,
0:16:36 when you judge behavior, what you’re unconsciously doing is you’re seeing behavior as a sign of who
0:16:40 someone is. That’s why you’re judging it. It’s a person such a selfish person, right? My friend
0:16:46 didn’t call me back. Oh, they’re so selfish. Or my kid keeps hitting on the playground, even though
0:16:50 I say no hitting. And then we don’t even realize going to like, “What’s wrong with my kid? Why
0:16:54 do I have such a bad kid?” You know, my kid is never going to figure things out. I’m a bad parent.
0:17:00 You just see something on the surface and you kind of feel like you know everything about it. I
0:17:03 actually think I never thought about that. That’s really what it means to judge something. I see
0:17:08 something as probably part of a larger story. And instead, I think it’s the whole thing.
0:17:15 To me, the opposite of judgment in any relationship is curiosity. And I think curiosity is when you
0:17:19 see something and you just wonder about it. To me, that’s like one of the best words for parents.
0:17:26 Wonder. I wonder why my kid is hitting. As soon as you use the word wonder, you’re unable to judge
0:17:29 because you’re thinking and kind of conjuring up this bigger picture.
0:17:34 Now, where parents usually go when they hear me say that, it’s like, “Oh, so it’s just okay,
0:17:39 my kid’s hitting.” And there’s this, again, judgment we even do there.
0:17:42 You must deal with so many people, so many strong opinions.
0:17:47 Well, I get it. I have so much empathy for parents and even understand their skepticism
0:17:53 of our approach because we have had shoved down our throat this very, very behavior first,
0:17:58 punishment first. We call it discipline. It’s actually a joke to me in any other area of life
0:18:04 if we allowed CEOs and coaches to talk to the people in our organizations like we think parents
0:18:08 do to kids. And then we call it disciplined. It would never fly and those people would be fired.
0:18:13 But we’ve had that shoved down our throats. And so anything new always feels uncomfortable.
0:18:17 And these are very new ideas. But I think about with other areas, even with kids,
0:18:22 if your kid isn’t learning how to swim, you teach them how to swim. And nobody says,
0:18:26 “Oh, you just think it’s okay that they’re not swimming?” It’s like, “What? I’m just
0:18:31 teaching them how to swim.” So I have a bunch of thoughts on this good job thing. I know that
0:18:37 I like your potential replacements for that. Could you just, just to give people a concrete
0:18:42 example, like what might you say instead of good job? A kid comes to us and let’s say they,
0:18:47 I don’t know, a young kid brings us a painting and we could say, “Oh, good job. It’s amazing.”
0:18:50 Right? Or let’s say an older kid brings us some paper they wrote and they got a good grade and
0:18:56 we say, “Good job.” Okay, again, good job does not damage kids. But I think in those moments,
0:19:00 we want as parents to kind of double down on building our kids’ confidence. That’s usually
0:19:05 the goal we’re optimizing for. So then to me, the question is, is that like the best of all
0:19:10 options? Or at least we have other tools in our toolbox. And the thing that really builds kids’
0:19:18 confidence is learning to gaze in before you gaze out. We’re in a world that is priming us
0:19:23 to gaze out before we gaze in. Kind of like, “Look what I’ve done and can someone in the world tell
0:19:27 me it/I am good enough?” That’s basically the world we live in. And it makes you very empty and
0:19:32 very fragile, very, very anxious. I’m talking about social media. It’s social media. Yeah,
0:19:36 everything. I mean, so many things, right? Definitely social media. And if I think about
0:19:41 this moment, and again, I’m often very long-term thinking, but my kids over and over show me things.
0:19:45 What’s going to help them down the road? Well, I know when you’re in your 20s and 30s,
0:19:49 what’s really helpful down the road is when you produce something, maybe it’s art,
0:19:55 maybe it’s a project. Being able to give yourself some estimation of that before others do is very
0:20:00 helpful to your whole self-concept and protective of anxiety and depression. I think I did a good
0:20:04 job in this project. It’s true. I didn’t hear back from my boss yet, but I’m a little anxious about
0:20:08 what my boss is going to say. But the fact that someone didn’t tell me something isn’t going to
0:20:15 spiral me. And I think about the yearning and the searching and the desperation for a good job.
0:20:20 Well, if every time my kid produces something, again, what they wire next to that is someone
0:20:26 telling them, “Good job,” then they go into the world unable to give themselves that type of
0:20:30 validation and searching for someone to say they’re good enough. So what do I like better?
0:20:35 Anything that helps your kid share more about themselves actually ends up feeling better to
0:20:40 your kid also. So I think about a little while ago, my daughter paints stuff, and she did. She
0:20:44 gave me this painting. I’m a horrible artist. So anything she does is amazing. But what I said to
0:20:50 her first, it said, “Oh, tell me about the painting. What made you pick red there?” She told me this
0:20:58 whole story, this whole story about how she hasn’t ever really seen a red police car and whatever it
0:21:04 was. She shared her story with me. Same thing I’m thinking about a kid giving us a paper. Oh,
0:21:09 how do you think it could have come up with that topic? Oh, what made you start it that way? Oh,
0:21:13 what was it like writing that? Whatever the questions are. And I know it sounds annoying at
0:21:17 first. I get it because apparently you’re like, “Oh, really? Can I just say good job?” And of course,
0:21:22 you can. But then again, I go to an adult example. Like, let’s say Tim, you redid your house. Okay,
0:21:28 and I visited and you really worked hard on it. And I came and go, “Oh, I love your house. Good job.”
0:21:33 It’s actually kind of a conversation ender. I feel like you’d say to me, “Thank you.” But if
0:21:39 instead I said, “How did you pick that color wall with that couch?” You would, “Oh, okay. Well,
0:21:43 let me tell you and let me show you my Pinterest board or whatever it was.” And even if I never
0:21:50 said, “Good job,” I bet you would feel more lit up inside and almost better than if I had just
0:21:54 kind of ended the conversation that way. Yeah, for sure. I have a number of friends. I mean,
0:21:58 I have a lot of friends with kids. But one who comes to mind, I’m not going to name him. But he’s
0:22:07 very good at this. And one of the best learners of any skill I’ve ever met. He’s just an incredible
0:22:12 human. The other thing that he did, and this was even prior to books like “Grit,” I think that’s
0:22:19 Angela Duckworth. But instead of saying, “Good job,” another thing he would do is say something.
0:22:23 I’m making this up as an example. But he would be like, “I’m so proud of you. You work so hard on
0:22:28 that to reinforce the effort, the process over the outcome.” That’s right.
0:22:34 Which seems to make sense, right? And you’re not suggesting your path is the one only toolkit of
0:22:40 purity and redemption and the sense that it can combine with other things. But the first principles
0:22:46 are adaptable as long as you understand what those principles are. Yeah, I think that every parent
0:22:49 should be like some percentage of the time and be like, “Great job. That’s cool. That’s awesome.
0:22:57 Okay.” But those questions process over product, asking for a kid’s story, asking them to tell you.
0:23:02 Once you get started, it’s easier. And yes, it actually focuses on what’s more in a kid’s control
0:23:07 and then setting up your kids to feel good about themselves, even if they’re not always getting
0:23:12 100. This is just such a massive privilege. And it actually makes them work harder
0:23:15 because they’re focused on their effort and process instead of just on a result.
0:23:20 What is your opinion of parents focusing or viewing their job as
0:23:25 making their kids happy, optimizing for happiness? Right? Because who’s going to poo poo happiness?
0:23:27 Right? I mean, it’s sad ones. I will.
0:23:33 All right. So let’s wade into the deep waters. It’s something people say is a throwaway comment.
0:23:36 Like my husband always jokes when you’re at like a dinner party. He’s like,
0:23:38 “You just want your kids to be happy, right? And I’ll look at me and think,
0:23:42 Becky, please don’t ruin this perfectly nice moment. Don’t take it. Don’t take the bait.”
0:23:47 And I always do. No. I very much would say a parent’s job is not to make
0:23:52 kids happy. And again, because we struggle to hold multiplicity, people will say,
0:23:56 “You want your kids to be unhappy?” No. I definitely don’t try to make my kids unhappy.
0:23:59 Can I just stop to say, you’re not going to like this, maybe you’re like,
0:24:04 “Why are people so stupid and just want to fight?” It’s like, obviously, you don’t mean that.
0:24:09 We think in these extremes. We see that in all areas. And holding two things as true or holding
0:24:14 nuance is increasingly hard in this world, which is why it’s even more important to kind of have
0:24:19 some of these ideas in our homes. So you use the word optimizing. And I think about that a lot.
0:24:24 So zooming out again about kind of good insight in general, as I would say,
0:24:28 our parenting approach is just very long-term greedy. Because I just think my kids are going
0:24:33 to be out of my house for way longer than they’re in my house. They’re going to choose whether they
0:24:38 want to be in a relationship with me way longer than they’re locked into a relationship with me.
0:24:45 And however high the stakes feel when they’re eight and 10 and 17, we know the stakes in life
0:24:53 just get higher. And so when we think about making our kids happy, what we’re actually saying is,
0:25:01 “I am prioritizing my kids’ short-term ease. I am making my kids’ life easy and comfortable
0:25:05 in the short-term.” And what ends up happening, not when you do that a couple of times, but as a
0:25:12 pattern, is you actually narrow the range of emotions kids believe they can cope with.
0:25:17 100%. For sure. True in partnerships, too. True in a lot of relationships.
0:25:22 You end up having adults who are remarkably anxious. So prioritizing happiness for kids
0:25:28 leads to adulthood full of a ton of anxiety. Because you’re protecting them from a broader
0:25:33 band of emotional exposure. And so they don’t develop the confidence that they can handle
0:25:39 those broader ranges. I have to sometimes use hyperbolic language with myself to really get
0:25:44 me to do something that’s hard, but I think good for my kids. I see my kid who’s left out of a
0:25:50 social event or who got the school project in a group where all of his friends are together
0:25:54 and my kid is the only one not with his friends. Or my kid is struggling to do a puzzle.
0:26:00 And one of the things I say to myself is, Becky, do not deprive my child of finding their capability.
0:26:06 Do not steal it. Do not steal their capability. A kid doesn’t feel capable when they do something
0:26:11 easy. A kid doesn’t even feel capable when they’re doing something hard.
0:26:15 Kids develop capability after watching themselves survive something that was really difficult and
0:26:20 just get through it. And so if I say to my kid, I’ll call the school and I’ll switch the school
0:26:22 group for you. Oh, I’ll do that puzzle for you because I just don’t want to deal with you having
0:26:27 a meltdown. Not once, but over and over. I’m actually stealing their capability. Capability
0:26:32 really is the antidote to anxiety. And going forward, when I think about my kids going into the
0:26:39 world, what’s more important than feeling like I can be capable in a wide range, not very narrow,
0:26:48 bubbled cushion range of situations? What does it mean to be a sturdy leader?
0:26:54 I love the word sturdy. There are certain words I love because even though I’m a psychologist and
0:26:58 I have a lot of words to say, I actually think very visually. And to me, the words that make
0:27:04 sense evoke an emotion that I can access, the word sturdy just does that for me. And again,
0:27:07 I think sturdy leadership is what we want in a CEO. It’s what we want in a partner. It’s what we
0:27:13 want in a coach. It’s definitely what we want in a pilot. So does that mean reliable, dependable?
0:27:20 I think there’s a couple ways. I think it’s a leader who is equally boundaries as they are
0:27:24 connected to you. They’re actually equally as connected to themselves. What do I want? What
0:27:29 are my values? What are my limitations? As they are able to connect to you. Oh, you might be
0:27:35 different, but I’m able to hear and understand your values and wants and feelings. And to me,
0:27:43 the way that can get kind of operationalized as a kind of really set of skills is you know
0:27:46 how to set boundaries. And I think most people get boundaries completely wrong. So I know how
0:27:52 to set and hold boundaries. And at the same time, I’m able to connect to and validate other people’s
0:27:57 emotional experiences. Those are the two pillars of sturdy leadership. Could you paint a scenario
0:28:02 for us? You have great scripts and people come to you for scripts. Doesn’t have to be a verbatim
0:28:08 script. But could you just walk us through a hypothetical situation that exemplifies
0:28:13 someone being sturdy in this way? Yes. I think sometimes the best way to do it is actually in
0:28:18 this pilot metaphor. Can I do that first and then look into it? Let’s get into the pilots.
0:28:24 Okay. So are you actually a pilot? It wouldn’t surprise me. I’m not a pilot. I have landed a
0:28:32 plane, but I’m not a pilot. Sully. Right there. Got Sully. Okay. I’m definitely not the sturdy
0:28:37 pilot you want. So I’m definitely not a pilot. You know, you’re a passenger on a flight and
0:28:42 there’s, let’s say, a lot of turbulence. And you’re very scared. Maybe even you look around and
0:28:47 everyone’s pretty scared. I think there’s three versions of a pilot that you might hear come over
0:28:51 the loudspeaker. And I actually think they perfectly exemplify three different versions
0:28:56 of parenting. So here’s pilot one. Everyone stop screaming. You’re making a big deal out of nothing.
0:29:02 And I can’t focus and you ruin everything. And you’re just gonna all have your frequent flyer
0:29:07 miles taken away if you keep screaming. Something like that. Not super reassuring. Not reassuring.
0:29:14 And the invalidation there as a passenger for me almost makes me worried. Is the pilot not
0:29:22 no turbulence? And oh my goodness, me screaming and being scared is enough to make the pilot kind
0:29:26 of freak out at me. Like that actually doesn’t feel good. It feels like I was contagious to the
0:29:32 pilot and they couldn’t handle the situation. Okay. That’s pilot one. That’s like when we say to
0:29:37 our kids, “If you don’t listen to me the next time, you’re losing dessert. You’re so rude. You
0:29:42 can’t hit your sister. And you ruin every family vacation.” Whatever we kind of just scream at
0:29:47 our kids and we threaten things that by the way we never follow up on. And we just do a lot of
0:29:51 punishment because we don’t really know what to do. That’s pilot one. Pilot two is almost the
0:29:57 opposite extreme. Like everyone’s scared and it is, you’re right. It is really turbulent and
0:30:01 I don’t know. I’m just gonna open up the cockpit door and if any of you know how to pilot the plane
0:30:05 just come on in and take over. And at this point, you’re no longer scared of turbulence and you’re
0:30:12 just terrified that this person is your pilot, right? Because there’s this merger. My overwhelm
0:30:18 became your overwhelm and you just melted in front of me. That is so scary. The pilot we want to hear
0:30:22 is the sturdy leader and they’d probably say something like this, “I hear you screaming.”
0:30:30 That makes sense. It’s very turbulent. And I’ve done this a million times. I know what I’m doing.
0:30:36 What scares you does not scare me. And so I’m gonna get off the loudspeaker
0:30:39 and go back to piloting the plane and I’ll see you on the ground in Los Angeles.
0:30:44 And what’s crazy is I think you think about a passenger in that situation
0:30:50 and I’m gonna guess even if the turbulence was the same, they feel calmer because what a sturdy
0:30:57 leader really does is they say to you, “I see what’s happening for you. I see your feelings as real
0:31:04 and your feelings don’t overwhelm me.” There’s a boundary. I can see yours as real and connect to
0:31:09 them while I can maintain a separate connection for myself. And there’s kind of this cockpit between
0:31:14 us. That’s like saying to your kid, “Oh, you know, they’re having a meltdown because you say no to
0:31:19 ice cream for breakfast, right?” And you say, “Oh, you really wanted ice cream for breakfast. I get
0:31:25 it. It’s so yummy.” And that’s not an option, sweetie. You can have a waffle. You can have cereal.
0:31:29 Let me know when you want to make a decision. And when I model that, the parent will say,
0:31:33 “It’s not working. It’s not working.” I’m like, “What do you mean it’s not working?”
0:31:38 Well, my kid still screams. I’m just thinking about my pilot saying, “My announcement didn’t work.
0:31:42 My passengers are still scared of the turbulence. Can you imagine who cares in a way that they’re
0:31:50 still scared?” Their reaction is not a barometer for whether you are doing a good job and defining
0:31:56 it that way can get into real role confusion, can get us into a lot of trouble.
0:32:01 What do you mean by role confusion? Well, I think every parent wants to do a good job.
0:32:04 But over and over when I talk to parents and their kids, they’re tantruming all the time,
0:32:08 they’re rude, whatever it is, I’ll say to them, “What is your job in this situation?”
0:32:13 And all of them say, “I have no idea.” But again, I go to the workplace and I imagine someone at
0:32:19 good inside as a company showing up and me as CEO saying, “I do a good job today.” And
0:32:23 then saying, “But I don’t have a job description.” And I’d be like, “Do a good job.” And they say,
0:32:27 “Becky, I cannot do a good job if I don’t know what my job is and I need to know what that person’s
0:32:32 job is so I know what they’re doing versus what I’m doing.” That’s totally fair. So I think as a
0:32:38 parent, if you don’t know what your job is, you can’t do a good job. And what role confusion,
0:32:42 what I mean by that is number one, you don’t have clarity on your job. Because I think any parent
0:32:46 listening to this, if you think about any tricky situation, my kid’s rude, my kid’s not sleeping,
0:32:52 my kid’s lying, what is my job in the situation? If you don’t know that with clarity, that’s at
0:32:58 least your starting point. And often as parents, we ask our kid to do our job for us.
0:33:04 What would you offer as a sample job description?
0:33:11 Almost always our jobs are those two things. Setting boundaries. Boundaries are limits we set,
0:33:14 they’re decisions we make, and sometimes especially when our kids are younger,
0:33:18 they’re truly, they’re physical. They’re stopping my kid from running into the street
0:33:23 or picking my kid up and leaving the park because they’re having a meltdown even though
0:33:27 my kid doesn’t want to be doing that. Those are boundaries. The other side
0:33:34 is always seeing the good kid under the bad behavior and connecting to my kid in that way.
0:33:38 Here’s a good example. I hear all the time, my kid doesn’t listen to anything. My kid doesn’t
0:33:43 listen to anything I say. For example, my kid is jumping on the couch right near a glass table,
0:33:48 get off the couch, stop jumping on the couch, and they don’t listen. I say, “Stop jumping on the
0:33:52 couch.” And then I say, “If you don’t get off the couch by the time I count to three, I’m going to
0:33:54 take away your dessert and then I don’t really take away the dessert because I don’t want to melt
0:34:00 down later that night.” This is so common. Sounds like a mess. Right, it’s a mess. So number one,
0:34:05 I would say, “What is your job?” Again, I think they would say, “I’m doing my job. I’m trying to
0:34:10 get my kid off the couch.” But you’re asking your kid to do your job for you. You’re watching your
0:34:16 kid not able to make a good decision. This is your kid who you like. And instead of helping them be
0:34:22 safe, you’re asking them to do something they’re showing you they can’t do. So what would you
0:34:25 potentially do? Great. So let’s start. I can’t even answer that without saying what’s a boundary
0:34:29 because that parent I would say is not setting boundaries. And this is true separate from kids.
0:34:35 Is it fair to think about boundaries as rules you follow consistently? Or is, I guess, there’s
0:34:39 probably more nuance to that. I mean, I guess I think it’s fair to say, but I would say it’s not
0:34:44 the most actionable helpful definition. Okay, all right, great. To me, my definition of boundaries,
0:34:49 boundaries are things you tell people you will do and they require the other person to do nothing.
0:34:57 That’s a really important dual kind of definition. It’s something I tell, let’s say it’s my kid,
0:35:03 although it could be your colleague or anyone, it’s what I tell my kid I will do. That’s an
0:35:07 assertion of my power. It’s what I will do. I’m not letting my day be ruined by my four-year-old
0:35:11 not listening. I just like myself and my kid too much to do that. So a boundary is something I tell
0:35:18 my kid I will do. And its success requires my kid to do nothing, get off the couch, get off the couch.
0:35:23 I’m not telling my kid what I will do. And it requires them to do something
0:35:29 to be successful. It’s a complete giving away of your power versus, and this surprises people,
0:35:33 because too often I think good inside we get lumped in with like soft, permissive parenting.
0:35:38 This is zero percent permissive. Setting a boundary and validating my kid’s feelings,
0:35:43 being sturdy, would sound like this. Once I tell my kid, “Hey, get off the couch.” They don’t. I’d
0:35:48 say, “Look, I’m going to walk over to you.” And if by the time I get there, you’re not off the couch,
0:35:54 I will put my arms around you. I’ll pick you up. I’ll put you on the floor, because my number one
0:35:59 job is to keep you safe and it’s just not safe to jump near that glass table. Okay. Now in my own
0:36:04 house, when my kids were younger, I’d go over to my kid and people have this illusion. So you do
0:36:10 this and then your kid just gets off the couch. No, no, they don’t. You do this. You get over there.
0:36:14 If you have a normal child, they’re going to look at you in the eye and keep jumping up and down,
0:36:18 not because they don’t respect you, just because they haven’t learned how to control their impulses
0:36:23 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
0:36:28 to put them on the ground. They will not look at you and say, “Thank you for your sturdy leadership.”
0:36:33 You’re so amazing. I really needed that. Thank you for seeing. No, they will scream. But actually,
0:36:40 when you understand this kind of parent’s job visual, you set a boundary. Every time you
0:36:44 set a boundary, your kid’s going to get upset until they get a little more used to it. But that’s
0:36:48 because when you set a boundary, you’re basically just telling your kid you can’t do something you
0:36:53 want to do. Humans feel upset when they’re stopped from doing things they want to do all the time.
0:37:00 They get upset and it actually allows you to do the second part of your job. So I pick my kid up,
0:37:04 they scream, “No, put me down. I hate you,” whatever they say in the state. And then I can say, “Oh,
0:37:08 you really want to jump on the couch. You really don’t want to jump on the floor. It’s so boring.”
0:37:15 Again, when I say that, that doesn’t mean for one instant that I let my kid back on the couch,
0:37:19 what they will try to do. And my hands will be ready to block them. Nope, I’m not going to let
0:37:25 you do that. This is where I think it really is this revolutionary idea in any relationship.
0:37:32 I can be equally strong and equally connected to someone else, and that’s true sturdiness and
0:37:39 really doing our job. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we’ll be right back to the
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0:38:48 I wanted to ask you about perhaps another facet of doing your job,
0:38:52 but you can’t trust everything you read on the internet. So I will ask this question in the
0:38:59 following way. This is from a participant in one of your workshops, and they described your
0:39:04 approach as one of, quote, “Coaching a nervous system to cope with being a human in the world,”
0:39:12 end quote. Is that a fair description? What we do? Yeah. Or would you say, “Not quite,
0:39:19 close but a miss.” What I love about that is it captures something that’s so much more true
0:39:26 than why most people initially come to us. They come to us because their kids are having tantrums,
0:39:29 their kids aren’t sleeping, their kids are being rude, their kids are being defiant.
0:39:36 And what they end up getting is they themselves get rewiring to be sturdier
0:39:40 in the world while they learn how to give that to their kids from the start.
0:39:45 So I think that that’s close. Yeah. I mean, that’s referring back to what
0:39:51 I mentioned earlier in this conversation. It’s really simpatico with so many other things
0:40:00 that I’ve been exposed to. But it seems like with good insight, the child is, yes, you’re
0:40:04 interacting with the child. Yes, one of the objectives is to become a better parent and be
0:40:11 more connected and be a sturdy leader. And your child is also a mirror and a medium through which
0:40:15 you get to work on yourself. Because if you’re dysregulated, guess what? How can you expect your
0:40:23 kid to be regulated? And some people are going to hate this because I recognize that Cuban children
0:40:31 are not dogs. But for instance, there’s a great book. There’s so many terrible books on dog training.
0:40:37 But one which has a terrible title, unfortunately, called Don’t Shoot the Dog, is written by Karen
0:40:44 Pryor. She took clicker training from marine mammals and brought it over to shaping behavior
0:40:52 with dogs. So clicker training is when you click to reward a certain behavior or getting
0:40:58 directionally moving towards the right behavior, and then you’re able to sort of time mark that
0:41:02 and offer reward. But the reason I’m bringing this up is not that you should use clicker training
0:41:06 with humans. I’ve tried that as a joke. It generally lands really poorly. But rather,
0:41:12 she reinforces over and over again why most dog problems are actually owner problems.
0:41:19 And you need to be consistent. If you are trying to shape behavior, you also need to be
0:41:26 very, very consistent with. And I know this might open up some debate, but rewards generally not
0:41:32 punishments. In her approach, it’s almost all positive reinforcement. And when I see, for instance,
0:41:36 I mean, she’s not here today, but I have a very well trained dog. And I have some tolerance for
0:41:41 the manani of dog training. And I find it very soothing, actually. But when I see dogs that are
0:41:48 misbehaving, because they were never trained early on, and then their owners are freaking out,
0:41:52 maybe hitting them, being really abusive, I’m like, that is an owner problem. That’s not a dog
0:41:59 problem. And I have to imagine they’re probably similar examples from parenting, and there must be.
0:42:04 My oldest son said something once that I don’t think he meant to be as profound,
0:42:08 but it’s something that sticks with me a lot. And it goes kind of problem blame where
0:42:12 we’re in the situation in the car. And essentially, my husband thought my son
0:42:16 had closed the door, and he didn’t, and kind of backed out the car, and the car got caught in
0:42:21 the garage with the door anyway. And he kind of said something to my son, and my son just said,
0:42:29 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
0:42:33 even know, eight at the time, he goes, you know, sometimes bad things happen, and it’s nobody’s
0:42:39 fault. And I think for parents, this is always true. Like when your kid is really struggling,
0:42:44 is it a kid’s fault? Is it a parent’s fault? Like we’re obsessed with fault. Why is it anybody’s
0:42:49 kind of fault? I always say to parents, it’s not your fault, your kid’s struggling in the way
0:42:55 they are. Fault’s just not a useful framework. You are the leader of your home. And if all the
0:43:01 associates in some big company, you know, we’re struggling, I don’t think you would start an
0:43:05 intervention at the associate level. Leadership would say, okay, it’s not our fault, but like,
0:43:10 we’re the leaders. So what are we going to do? It’s not your fault, but it’s your responsibility.
0:43:13 It’s your responsibility, exactly. And the other thing is, I think when we become parents,
0:43:18 it’s not just like our kids’ problems are our fault or our problems, but I see a much more
0:43:23 hopeful framework where through your kids, if you want to take this on as a journey, you will learn
0:43:28 everything. You ever needed to know about yourself, your own childhood. By the way, you watch your
0:43:33 partner’s childhood play out. You’re like, oh, that’s how you were raised. I see it now. And
0:43:38 there’s so much learning, right? And that’s hard. Learning is hard. Growth is hard. And
0:43:43 it is kind of this amazing opportunity rather than my kid’s problem being my fault or my problem.
0:43:49 You could be like, there is an opportunity for everyone here. What is the MGI? I love a good
0:43:56 acronym. So when I was in my clinical psychology PhD program, I’d always hear these amazing people
0:44:00 speak. And I’d go with my classmates and be like, that was amazing. And I’d say, yes, it’s amazing,
0:44:04 but what are we going to do about it? And I’d be like, what do you mean? Just think about it.
0:44:10 I really don’t love thoughts without actions. I just like to know, okay, what do I do? How do I
0:44:16 action on this great idea? And to me, this idea that your kid, all of us, we are good inside
0:44:22 identity, separate from behavior, it’s a very powerful idea. But I don’t find it as actionable
0:44:28 as I would like. So to me, the way to action on that idea is this idea of MGI. And to me,
0:44:32 this is something in all of our relationships, even if it’s just after the fact at the end of
0:44:38 the day, we can ask ourselves, an MGI just stands for most generous interpretation. What is the most
0:44:44 generous interpretation I can come up with of my kid’s behavior, of my colleagues behavior,
0:44:50 my teammates behavior, because I think what happens naturally is we default to the LGI,
0:44:54 the least generous interpretation. So you see your kid, they lie to your face once, no,
0:44:58 I didn’t take KitKats from, I didn’t eat before dinner, and they like chocolate all over.
0:45:05 And it’s just so easy. You just go to like, my kid is a sociopath, my kid doesn’t respect me,
0:45:10 I’m like, well, my kid ate a KitKat. And like, all of a sudden, this is a matter of like respecting
0:45:16 me, right? Or, you know, my kid is hitting, they’re in a hitting stage. And again, we just go to,
0:45:19 my kid is never going to have any friends, my kid is clingy, they’re always going to be the
0:45:23 loser at parties, and they’re never going to be able to converse with anyone. And then what happens
0:45:29 and why the LGI is so almost dangerous is it makes us do this fast forward error. We take a
0:45:35 situation today, we fast forward to what that means about our kid, I don’t know, 20 years from now.
0:45:40 And then we respond in the moment based on all of that fear, rather than what’s just going on in
0:45:47 the moment. And MGI really shakes us out of that. What is the most generous interpretation of why my
0:45:53 kid would lie to my face? Whenever I ask parents that, it’s amazing, their countenance goes from
0:46:01 like so angry at their four-year-old. Oh, they’re probably scared of my reaction. Okay. And then
0:46:08 eventually they’re like, what do I do? But the mindset we’re in in life determines the interventions
0:46:14 we use. And I can promise you, as long as you’re in an LGI mindset with your kid, with your partner,
0:46:20 with your colleague, zero productive things can happen. And then we say, what do I do? What do
0:46:26 I do? The answer is to stop doing from that mindset and ask yourself a different question
0:46:29 to get in a more productive mindset and then intervene from there.
0:46:36 So we’re meeting for the first time. We have a lot of mutual friends, it turns out. But I have this
0:46:42 suspicion that we have a fair amount of shared DNA just in terms of how we operate. And as you’re
0:46:49 mentioning the thoughts as being interesting, but not that interesting, if there’s no action to
0:46:55 apply these thoughts, I thought that might be a useful place for a segue. So I read that you’re
0:47:01 a planner and that your husband gave you some advice around planning. Is this enough of a cue
0:47:06 to a prompt? I don’t know. It’s not a lot. Oh, you don’t. I don’t know. I need more. All right. So
0:47:14 this is from romper. And so this is the journalist speaking. I tend to catastrophize,
0:47:18 to jump to the worst case scenario and we’re struggling with a difficult phase or unpleasant
0:47:22 pattern. But I tell myself to have faith, to believe that we will work ourselves to a better
0:47:27 place. And then this is, I believe, quoting you, I’m guessing you’re a planner, she responds.
0:47:32 I’m a planner too. My husband said to me over the pandemic, I never thought of planners as pessimists.
0:47:36 But the opposite of planning is not catastrophe. It’s being able to say to yourself,
0:47:40 I’ll figure it out no matter what happens. The opposite of catastrophizing isn’t
0:47:44 predicting the good. It’s saying to yourself, I’ll find my feet. I’ll be able to cope with
0:47:50 what comes my way. So this is a roundabout way of asking what historically or currently
0:47:58 have been your biggest challenges in parenting that could be with your kids. It could be with your
0:48:04 husband, could be other, but what comes to mind? It’s a great segue and that is true,
0:48:10 where my husband said to me when I during the pandemic, I kind of started this whole part of
0:48:16 my career. And I kind of versed in these like creative thoughts where I became much less organized.
0:48:20 And I had all this creativity. And at the same time, the pandemic was very hard to me. And this
0:48:25 relates to one of the things that’s hard for me in parenting. And one of the things I talk about
0:48:28 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.
0:48:32 That’s why anybody talks about things all the time where he’s like, wow, I think I made,
0:48:36 I didn’t marry like a very logical optimist. I think I married like a creative pessimist.
0:48:42 He’s like, look at this creative pessimist. You know, I think I’m short term pessimistic.
0:48:49 Yes, long term optimistic. And what I mean by that is I love a plan. I love an action. People
0:48:54 outside of me will be like Becky is one of the most productive people I know. And I think that’s
0:49:02 probably true on the surface. But the driver of that is I’m incredibly anxious when I want to do
0:49:07 something and haven’t yet done it. That the way I relieve my own anxiety is just to do it. So it
0:49:14 looks productive, but it’s probably just an anxiety coping skill. And what that means is when I want
0:49:20 to do something or there’s a struggle and I can’t get action on it. I have a really hard time.
0:49:25 What would be an example of that? I mean, all during COVID in terms of I think one of the
0:49:29 reasons I probably, in some ways, people say, oh, you were like there for me in COVID and I produced
0:49:34 so much content is I just like needed something to do because the pause of that slowness that like
0:49:38 there’s not a lot to do to fix this. You just kind of have to be in it is really, really hard for me.
0:49:44 Another example of that is, you know, I think about my kids and, you know, they’re now 7, 10,
0:49:50 and 13. So, you know, each of them, they go through these stages and, you know, maybe some social
0:49:57 shifts or harder stages. And I think I talk so much about sitting with feelings and not fixing
0:50:04 them because my first instinct for sure is to just go in and make it better, make them happy.
0:50:11 And that is something, again, the parallel process of like learning to just sit with my own feelings.
0:50:16 All of us who can be prone to action, there’s like a morality to it, like a better, you know,
0:50:20 thing. And it can be better in some circumstances, but sometimes the best thing to do
0:50:27 is just sit with it. And that is something I think I have worked on in myself, even, you know,
0:50:33 through working on it with my kids. In addition to your book, Good Inside,
0:50:37 a Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be, which has been recommended to me by multiple
0:50:44 close friends, even though I don’t have kids. In addition to that, what other books or modalities
0:50:51 do you think could be helpful for someone in relationship and/or with kids? For instance,
0:50:55 it’s a few come to mind, right? There’s a book called Conscious Loving. I think it’s by Gay and
0:51:01 Katie Hendricks. I always mix up the Hendricks because they’re two pairs. There’s nonviolent
0:51:07 communication. Great book. There is, I think I mentioned extreme ownership, which it does
0:51:15 actually overlap in certain ways. You have, I believe, a quote from Dick Schwartz.
0:51:20 I was going to say, love Dick Schwartz. Internal IFS, Internal Family Systems. For
0:51:25 people interested, I did a live session with him on this podcast, which got very interesting,
0:51:30 very, very quickly. Fascinating practitioner, really useful system. Anything else come to mind,
0:51:35 any books, resources, anything at all that you would kind of add to that list?
0:51:40 The three books, I guess, that are top of mind would be, yeah, Dick Schwartz’s No Bad Parts
0:51:45 or just his Internal Family Systems book. I mean, he knows I’ve been very influenced by him when
0:51:52 I work with adults in therapy. To me, some of the best gifts and privileges we can give our kids
0:51:57 is helping them understand the parts of themselves and talk to their parts as kids. When I hear my
0:52:01 kids do that, I always think this is going to help you more when you go to college than anything you
0:52:11 learn. It’s cool. It’s crazy. So IFS, Eve Rodskie’s book, Fair Play, I don’t know that, is, I think,
0:52:16 so powerful, especially for parents who feel like they’re the default parent, meaning they’re the
0:52:22 parent who maybe their partner takes the kid to soccer, but realizing they have to be signed up
0:52:27 for soccer, thinking about what soccer, where to sign up, getting them the shin guards, getting
0:52:32 them the new cleats that actually fit and are the ones they want, that idea of mental load.
0:52:38 The mental load of parenting is so intense, but she really helps put words in a system to that,
0:52:43 that I think makes a lot of parents say, “Oh my God, I’m not crazy. This is a thing. This is a system.”
0:52:45 Why is it called Fair Play?
0:52:51 Because it’s the idea that if you have a partnership, that you don’t have to distribute tasks 50/50,
0:52:57 but that the mental load has a disproportionate impact on your stress and overwhelm,
0:53:00 and there needs to be more Fair Play amongst teammates in that way.
0:53:01 Got it.
0:53:06 And then this might sound like an odd recommendation, but Cheryl Strayed’s tiny, beautiful things.
0:53:12 Cheryl is someone I also wonder, “Do I share DNA with her where I’ll read things she writes in
0:53:16 there?” And I think, “Oh my goodness, did I steal her thought? I swear I say this in my book.” And
0:53:20 she has said to me, “No, I worry I plagiarized you, even though my book came out before your book.”
0:53:24 And it’s very interesting. I’m just hearing my own three suggestions,
0:53:25 and none of them have to do with kids.
0:53:26 But that’s super fascinating.
0:53:29 Maybe that’s my revealing something.
0:53:32 To me, the things we need to learn for our kids when we’re parenting,
0:53:37 if I think about a strategy or what to do with my kid, it’s like something I put on a shelf.
0:53:42 That’s important. When you open a closet door, you need the things on the shelf to take
0:53:45 that are actually useful and feel right and move things forward.
0:53:48 But what I hear from parents all the time is, “I’m learning. I’m learning. I’m
0:53:52 memories. I’m listening. But in the moment, I just scream at my kid.” And then they say,
0:54:01 “What’s wrong with me?” To me, you need the key to the door that is the closet that has that shelf.
0:54:04 Could you explain that one more time?
0:54:09 If all of your parenting strategies are on a shelf in a closet and there’s a door to the closet,
0:54:11 and in the moment, you’re like, “I want to get that strategy.”
0:54:13 You need to be able to access it.
0:54:17 You have to be able to access it. And so for any parent listening who’s like, “That is so me.
0:54:21 I know the thing I want to say, but then I just scream my head off at my kid.”
0:54:26 I would actually say, “Stop learning parenting strategies. You have enough on that shelf.”
0:54:33 For now, what I would focus on are my triggers, what is happening with my kid that I am triggered.
0:54:38 And I am at a 10 out of 10. And when you’re at a 10 out of 10, nobody has a key to any lock.
0:54:40 Yeah, strategy is not going to be forthcoming.
0:54:44 No, the strategies you need have a lot more to do with you, not because it’s your fault.
0:54:48 And the beauty is when you work on those strategies where you’re triggered with your kid,
0:54:53 guess what? If you’re triggered when your kid’s whining, it’s not the whining.
0:54:56 It’s probably the fact that whining generally represents helplessness.
0:55:00 I would guess if that’s a particularly triggering situation,
0:55:03 helplessness was very shamed in your own family.
0:55:05 It was probably a pull up your bootstraps kind of family.
0:55:08 If you’re crying, I’ll give you something to cry about, family.
0:55:10 So you had to shut down your helplessness because it was dangerous.
0:55:15 You see it in your kid and you respond to them in the same way people responded to you.
0:55:17 Okay, that’s like a lot of therapy in 30 seconds.
0:55:18 But let’s say that’s true.
0:55:20 Or people are like, wow, that’s weird. That’s very true.
0:55:23 You can memorize everything you want to say to your kid.
0:55:26 But if you don’t, and IFS is hugely helpful here,
0:55:29 hugely helpful in my reparenting approach and trigger approach,
0:55:34 if you don’t get to know your protector parts and you don’t do that type of work,
0:55:39 then every time when that happens, that part is going to scream out.
0:55:43 So the answer to showing up as a parent you want to be is this combination of,
0:55:45 yes, I have to put the things on the shelf,
0:55:47 but I have to know how to open the door also.
0:55:49 Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
0:55:53 So what advice would you give me since I’m currently
0:55:56 wife/partner hunting?
0:56:00 I would like to have a family, but would like to hit some pre-rex.
0:56:06 I mean, it’s technically biologically not that hard to have kids, but I would like to have.
0:56:06 You could do it too.
0:56:11 Build a family together adventure, like to have that version if possible.
0:56:16 For people out there who are single, but would love to have a family,
0:56:23 what advice might you give them in terms of positive indicators for people who will be
0:56:31 leaning towards some of the abilities and self-awareness and skills that make for
0:56:33 a sturdy leader parent?
0:56:37 Because I was like, “Hey, here’s my dossier of 10 prospects.”
0:56:40 And you’re like, “Well, let’s ask a few questions.”
0:56:42 It’s a sturdy leadership on the list.
0:56:46 One second, I’m assessing you for sturdy leadership.
0:56:48 Pre-sturdy leadership.
0:56:50 They’re like, “Ooh, dirty talk.”
0:56:52 Seriously, seriously.
0:56:54 Talk about that one in our next episode.
0:56:57 So a couple of things.
0:57:01 To me, again, being a sturdy leader has nothing to do with being a parent.
0:57:05 And while I think it’s actually through parenting, and this is the beauty that people
0:57:09 have such in their face the work they need to do that they can access that,
0:57:13 you’re right in pointing out how amazing you’re doing some of this work before.
0:57:19 So I think number one, again, curiosity over judgment to me is very, very key
0:57:21 for any sturdy leader at any age.
0:57:26 When you’re dating people, when you’re friends with people, and in general,
0:57:30 they hear something that’s happening for you and they’re more curious and they are judgmental.
0:57:34 “Oh, I did this thing. I had this awful interview. Oh, what happened?
0:57:34 Tell me about that.”
0:57:37 Or you even hear that they approach their own life that way,
0:57:43 where people who have really intense rigid judgments about anyone,
0:57:46 they tend to be that way with others because they tend to be that way with themselves.
0:57:49 And then that’s going to be activated probably with kids.
0:57:50 That’s number one.
0:57:54 To me, I think tolerance for inconvenience.
0:57:58 It’s a really important part of sturdy leadership, especially with kids.
0:58:00 How might you suss that out?
0:58:05 I mean, you can go on a traveling trip and see how they handle baggage being delayed or whatever.
0:58:08 I mean, you can try to engineer it that way, but any other ways-
0:58:11 I think it probably comes up in our life all the time.
0:58:16 I don’t know how much we’re always optimizing for convenience versus like,
0:58:19 “Yeah, let’s take this subway. It’ll take us a little longer, but it’s easy enough.”
0:58:24 Or, “Oh, there’s a way to the restaurant. I really want to go there. Okay. Can I tolerate that?”
0:58:28 Or, “Oh, I really want to go. I was just invited to this party. It’s going to be so cool.
0:58:33 I already committed to my friends in this kind of not quote cool, but random group dinner.”
0:58:34 And like, “You know what? I’m going to miss that party.
0:58:37 This is like my best friend’s birthday party,” whatever it is.
0:58:41 Because I think that’s one of the things with parenting that people don’t talk about enough.
0:58:44 It’s massively inconvenient. That’s really the word I think about all the time.
0:58:48 I show up. I’m trying to grocery shop. My foyer is having a tantrum.
0:58:52 And it’s just like, that’s inconvenient that I’ve spent 10 minutes now dealing with that.
0:58:55 I want to be able to finish my grocery shopping.
0:59:03 I also think in a relationship, the ability to be curious about your experience and not see that
0:59:09 as any reflection on their own experience, which is really the ability to hold multiplicity.
0:59:13 Like, when you say to a partner, like, “Oh, he’s really upset. He didn’t text me back.”
0:59:16 Probably over the partner is their first reaction might be like,
0:59:19 “I wouldn’t have been upset in that situation,” or whatever.
0:59:22 Are you saying I’m a bad person or we get very defensive?
0:59:27 Because we find someone’s experience of us to be counter of our experience of ourselves.
0:59:32 And if we’re very secure and sturdy, we’d be able to say to ourselves,
0:59:35 “Okay, I can know what my intention was and I’m not threatened
0:59:38 by the fact that Tim was upset that I didn’t text him back.
0:59:42 I can be curious about it. Be like, “Oh, tell me more about that. Oh, I see that.”
0:59:45 And I don’t see that as like a threat to myself.
0:59:51 That to me is probably the ultimate indicator because that happens all the time with our kids.
0:59:55 Oh, yeah, I can only imagine. Sure, it happens all the time.
1:00:00 I would love to ask you a few questions that one of my employees sent.
1:00:05 She is a toddler. In every instance that I’ve seen, she tries very hard to be,
1:00:09 however she defines it, a good parent. And I think maybe this conversation will lead her to
1:00:13 think about the definition differently. But she sent a bunch of very good questions.
1:00:19 And we probably won’t have time for all of them. She really took my question
1:00:24 and my producer’s question seriously, I should say. So she has eight questions.
1:00:26 But I want to hop to number eight. Okay.
1:00:32 This is about grandparents. Does Dr. Becky have any good tips on parenting our parents?
1:00:36 Our “boomer parents” often use guilt and sham as teaching methods,
1:00:40 which we don’t love or approve of. But how do we effectively introduce more positive ways
1:00:43 they can grandparent our children when they are together or babysitting for us?
1:00:49 This question could also apply to someone’s partner. If someone reads your book,
1:00:55 they think it’s fantastic, they want to embrace it. But their partner maybe has a heavy-handed
1:01:00 reactive way of handling things or fill in the blank. They’re skeptical.
1:01:04 Right. So maybe you could speak to the grandparents and maybe that will also
1:01:07 speak to the partner question, although there are different dynamics.
1:01:11 They’re related and different. The grandparent one is a great one because I think there’s a
1:01:15 lot to unpack there. So if she was here, I’d first probably ask her questions about what it’s like
1:01:21 for her to parent in a way that’s different from it seems like what her parents think is right.
1:01:25 I actually think that’s at the core. What it feels like for her.
1:01:29 Yeah, what it’s like for her. I mean, I think that what happens when you have kids and grandparents
1:01:34 are involved is we don’t even realize how much unconsciously we’re just looking for them to
1:01:38 tell us we’re doing a good job. And most parents parent differently than their parents did.
1:01:44 Most grandparents find that to be almost a criticism of how they parented.
1:01:48 And so they’re interested in criticizing their kids almost as a way of making themselves feel
1:01:54 better. And then as the parent, we don’t even realize we’re back to being five years old and
1:01:59 being like doing a good job. And the whole thing becomes very, very toxic. To me, the most liberating
1:02:03 thing when you’re an adult, and it’s just an idea obviously takes a little get emotionally there,
1:02:09 is I don’t need my parents approval. I remember when I realized that, that’s actually amazing.
1:02:14 That just changed my life in so many ways. We won’t lose track of the grandparents question,
1:02:22 but was there a catalyzing event, conversation, revelation? There actually was. I just remember
1:02:28 going through my dating life and dating people that my parents would have some things to say about.
1:02:33 And I have not to have any like majorly toxic relationships, but they had opinions. And I
1:02:37 just remember one day thinking the way it came up my head is they’re not dating this person.
1:02:42 Like, there was an I, I think there was a boundary. This like, I’m in the cockpit.
1:02:47 They can be chirpy passengers. But that’s actually what they are. And by the way,
1:02:52 I love my parents. They’re incredible. And I think realizing that, and this is the thing,
1:02:57 when you’re a parent, realizing that about your own parents only serves to make your relationship
1:03:03 better. Because when you’re unconsciously looking for their approval, you get frustrated.
1:03:07 You tend to show up in really confusing ways to your kids. You start to do weird things with
1:03:12 your kids in front of your parents, almost trying to bridge this gap between how I parent
1:03:16 and how my parents want me. And like, who is my parent? They’re doing all this weird stuff that
1:03:21 they never do. And then we really lose ourselves. So what I would actually say here, which sounds
1:03:26 odd, and it’s probably not that dissimilar to what I’d start with, with a partner. Although I think
1:03:31 the dynamic is different with parents is the first step is actually trying to figure out what do I
1:03:40 believe in in my parenting. The sturdier you are in your boundaries, the easier it is to deal with
1:03:46 pushback. And in fact, the opposite is true with boundaries. The more I seek approval for my
1:03:51 boundaries, the weaker my boundaries become. And so that’s where I would actually start.
1:03:57 So let’s say, oh, I wish my parents understood my kids’ tantrums the way I try to understand them.
1:04:01 And instead, my parents tend to say, “Why aren’t you sending Bobby to his room? You have a bad
1:04:04 kid,” or whatever they say. Yeah, or if they’re babysitting, they just do that.
1:04:12 That’s right. But even those conversations are so much easier to have once you’ve really grounded
1:04:19 yourself in what you believe. Because then the conversation becomes less emotional. And here’s
1:04:24 then how I would handle it after that. How I’m handling Bobby’s mouth sounds, I think it’s
1:04:28 different than what comes natural to you. And we have a couple options. I’m happy to kind of go
1:04:35 through it and why. I’m also happy if you don’t really care about the why. Just share how I would
1:04:41 like you to respond. That’s in line with the way we’re doing things. Because given you spend a
1:04:46 good amount of time with him, it’s just confusing for him to hear things so differently. I know you
1:04:51 probably don’t approve, or at least it’s going to feel weird because it’s so new. And this stuff
1:04:55 really matters to me. And then I don’t know how egregious it is. Again, is it just different? Is
1:05:01 it terrifying? We want to differentiate. But the conversation is kind of, me and my parent
1:05:06 even are on the same team. And that conversation, I have a lot more to say about being on the same
1:05:12 team versus oppositional teams, that’s a lot easier to have if I’m less caught up in probably what’s
1:05:17 happening unconsciously, which is trying to get them to kind of tell me that I’m doing a good
1:05:25 job at my kid. Let me bring up one other question of hers. And I may bring up more, but partially
1:05:34 because it also bridges to a question that I had. So this is a question about parenting toddlers
1:05:40 could apply to all sorts of ages. Is it okay to tell my toddler that I’m upset by her behavior?
1:05:44 For example, if she’s whining and complaining about getting buckled into the car and I’ve tried
1:05:48 to stay calm, but it goes on for so long that I get frustrated, is it okay to say that I am
1:05:53 frustrated by her behavior and I need to break? Or what is the best response to avoid guilt and
1:06:01 shaming language? Because I was thinking, was reflecting on the example you gave of the kid
1:06:07 jumping on the couch. And I could very easily see myself like, okay, I’ve done the work,
1:06:16 done the IFS, got the key to the closet. And I go through the routine, right? I set the boundary.
1:06:20 If I walk over there and you’re still on the couch, but I’m calm, I’m calm. Then I put them down,
1:06:26 they scream their face off. They somehow juke me and get back on the couch. Maybe I do it a second
1:06:31 time. But by this point, my blood pressure is a little higher. By like rep number three, like,
1:06:36 there’s a point where if it’s like rep number 20, like, there’s a rep at which anyone will probably
1:06:41 kind of break. So I guess my question is, but we can tackle, I want to answer her question
1:06:47 because she was generous enough to send the questions. Is it okay to tell my kid that I’m
1:06:51 upset or let me get her language? Broader question. Frustrated, I think she said.
1:06:56 Right. Is it okay to say that I’m frustrated by her behavior and that I need to break, etc., etc.?
1:07:00 What is the best response to avoid guilt and shaming language? My broader question is,
1:07:07 what do you do, let’s say in the jumping on the couch example, when you’ve done the right thing
1:07:13 two or three times and the kid is just hell bent? Still being difficult. Yeah.
1:07:18 So a couple of parts to that question. Number one, there’s this thing about, I hear it, I’ve never
1:07:22 said like, you can’t tell your kids how you feel. There’s all these like random things people ingest
1:07:26 and I don’t even know who said that, but I think I’m not supposed to do it to not get, you know.
1:07:29 All right. That’s the 10 commandments. But I would say whenever as a parent, you’re repeating
1:07:33 advice to yourself where you can’t even name the person who said that. It’s a pretty good
1:07:38 not going to let that take up too much space in my head. You know, if I don’t even know the name
1:07:42 of the person who I trust enough to let that live in my head. Oscar Wilde, Abraham Lincoln.
1:07:47 There’s a big difference between saying to your kid, “Hey, I’m really, I’m frustrated.
1:07:55 I’m taking a breath. I’m taking a break. I’ll be back.” And saying, “You make me yell at you.
1:08:03 Stop doing that. That makes mommy so sad.” The insinuation that we say out loud that
1:08:12 your kid, your three-year-old, is making you feel something is actually especially toxic for kids
1:08:17 who, you said like you were, who are kind of rebellious, who already kind of struggle
1:08:20 because they know like, “I’m a little more powerful in my family dynamic than I should be.
1:08:25 People are a little scared of me.” And now my parent is confirming that as a three-year-old,
1:08:30 I have the power to make her feel a certain way. I think we say it because we’re so desperate and
1:08:35 we’re like, “Nothing’s worked. Will this work?” But again, we all say all the things and then we
1:08:40 repair and try to do a little better the next day, but I’m not such a fan. But what that has got
1:08:44 kind of misconstrued as is never telling your kids how you feel. They’re totally different.
1:08:49 Saying to your kid, “That’s a great thing to say. Hey, I’m getting heated. I need a break.”
1:08:55 And then I think it’s helpful to say to a kid, “I love you. I’ll be back.” Because kids are so
1:09:02 attuned evolutionarily to attachment and therefore to proximity and kind of “abandonment” that a kid
1:09:07 can feel like, “Oh, did I make my parent go away?” So, “Hey, I’m feeling frustrated. I need a moment.
1:09:11 It’s actually such beautiful self-care. I’m going to go to my room. I’m going to take some breaths
1:09:16 and I’ll be back.” Connect with you again in a few minutes or whatever it is. And that’s especially
1:09:20 powerful what I want to tell parents listening. If you know you’re someone, you get reactive,
1:09:25 you kind of get to the point where you boil over such a powerful thing to say to your kid to preview
1:09:29 to them before, “Hey, I’m going to start doing something different going forward.” You know how
1:09:35 sometimes you get upset, I get upset, and then kind of there’s like this big screaming moment,
1:09:40 I’m really invested as a parent in trying to have that happen less. Just keep a calmer home.
1:09:45 And one of the things I’m going to do is start to notice when I’m a little upset.
1:09:49 Instead of waiting for it to get to a time when I’m very and you could say to your kid,
1:09:52 because that’s what happens to feelings, right? If you don’t take care of them when they’re small,
1:09:58 they get bigger and out of control. So I might end up saying to you at some point in the next day,
1:10:04 “Ooh, now is one of those moments. I need a break. I’m going to take that and I’ll be back.”
1:10:08 And what I’d say to a parent, “You can practice this with a kid. They love it.” I would actually,
1:10:13 “Okay, let’s practice that. Ooh, get off the couch. Oh, you’re not listening. Okay, ooh. Okay,
1:10:17 dad needs a break right now. I’m going to go to my room. What do you do when I go to my room? Right?
1:10:22 You go to the art room and you color. Like, you can actually practice this just the way we practice
1:10:28 sports plays. Why do you run a play on a basketball team and practice? Because you know you’re not
1:10:33 going to do it in the game if you haven’t run it over and over in practice. I actually think
1:10:38 that’s so powerful to think about our interactions with our kids in the same way. Then when the
1:10:43 moment comes and you say, “Ooh, now is one of those times,” your kid has had a rep already
1:10:46 and the whole moment will probably go a lot more smoothly.
1:10:49 Do you have any other recommendations? I’m thinking of her example.
1:10:54 I like that and it makes a lot of sense. And I’m wondering
1:10:59 what you do in a circumstance where you can’t take a time out for yourself, right? So let’s just
1:11:04 say she’s trying to buckle the kid into the car. Tantrum, tantrum, wine, yell, yell, yell.
1:11:09 She tries to do the right thing, tries to do the right thing. And her kids don’t do in the thing.
1:11:13 Doing the crocodile role in the baby seat or whatever.
1:11:19 So I’ll answer that question, but I really do think, again, it’s a framework shift question
1:11:24 because people say to me all the time. It’s like saying, “When I drive my car to the cliff,
1:11:29 what can I do so I don’t fall off the cliff?” If that was a friend, why are you driving to the cliff
1:11:32 all the time? How about we recognize that you’re on the road to the cliff?
1:11:41 When we get to the point, as a parent, that we are so full of anger, resentment, burnout,
1:11:45 that we’re about to explode because our kid won’t allow us to buckle them into the car seat,
1:11:50 the real question, if you want to make a change, is how do I start to recognize I’m on that road
1:11:56 way before I get to the cliff? What can I do? Why am I getting there so often? How can I get
1:11:59 into a different road? To me, this is the whole idea of rage. This is actually something we talk
1:12:04 about inside all the time because when you don’t take care of yourself as a parent, when you lose
1:12:08 touch with your friends or dance class or whatever the thing that made you feel like you before you
1:12:12 had a kid, you better bet you’re going to be screaming at your kids all the time because,
1:12:16 to some degree, you’re just saying, “I miss all the other parts of me that used to light me up.”
1:12:22 And so I think that’s the better question. Now, still, when you get there, this is where I think
1:12:26 it’s so important to establish that you said, “Good inside it, sturdy, not soft.” If your kid won’t
1:12:30 get into the car seat, okay, hey, we’re going to play a game. We’ve already practiced. We’ve done
1:12:36 the things. There is definitely time and place, sweetie. I’m going to buckle you into the car seat.
1:12:40 You’re going to scream and cry. You’re not going to like it. My number one job is to keep you safe,
1:12:45 and so I’m doing that. Again, my kid’s going to be screaming. I buckle them and then close the door
1:12:50 as I’m walking to the front, and I say to myself, “Oh, my goodness. That was really hard. I’m going
1:12:54 to go to bed early tonight. I’m going to call a friend.” But again, that’s an example. It’s actually
1:12:59 a good example because I actually heard this exact example from Clarence recently that used to drive
1:13:05 me bananas. The reason that situation feels so exhausting is because on some level, you have
1:13:11 job confusion. You think your job is to get your kid happily into their car seat. If you know your
1:13:16 job is to keep your kid safe and to do what you can to try to make it smooth, but then a push comes
1:13:22 to shove, you’re just going to prioritize safety, and you know that that’s you doing your job,
1:13:27 you actually don’t feel as exhausted by it. Oddly enough, it is like a pilot getting through
1:13:33 really intense turbulence, where on the ground, the pilot’s going to earn my wings today. You
1:13:37 don’t earn your wings by a smooth flight. This is going to be hard left. Okay, do it.
1:13:44 I’m curious how or if any of it will tie in. You mentioned being a postdoc at one point,
1:13:51 I believe, and my understanding is you worked with a number of people who had eating disorders.
1:13:56 What did you learn from that experience? What were you studying? What were you working on?
1:14:01 Yeah, I got my PhD from Columbia. Then in my postdoc year, I worked with
1:14:07 college students and grad students who were students at Columbia. I did a specialty in the
1:14:12 eating disorder group there, so I saw a good number of eating disorder clients. I had an
1:14:18 eating disorder in high school. I think through that, and I’d been in recovery for a while,
1:14:22 I also just started to put more pieces together. A couple things I learned.
1:14:31 Our body has this remarkable way to act out conflict if we don’t understand it and resolve it.
1:14:36 This is a lot of what anorexia and bulimia are, things that we don’t understand,
1:14:41 things that live kind of unformulated, we’re conflicted about, and the body expresses it in
1:14:46 these horrible, somatic ways through an eating disorder, through so many other things too.
1:14:53 But as an example, and this is not true for everyone, but often anorexia is this kind of conflict
1:14:59 around your relationship with anger and taking up space in the world. It’s kind of amazing,
1:15:04 like in anorexia, you both take up so much space because you get everyone’s attention,
1:15:11 and you take up no space. You shrink into a prepubescent version of yourself.
1:15:17 That conflict is being kind of represented in your body. I think bulimia, how much can I want?
1:15:22 Is it okay to want things for myself? Can I want things? What is my relationship with desire?
1:15:26 I actually think anorexia and bulimia have a lot to do with your relationship with wanting
1:15:32 and desire, especially as a woman. Is there anything that you took from that experience,
1:15:42 questions, lenses, insight that also transferred over to some of the work that you do now? Or is
1:15:48 it sort of looking, I guess, leading the witness of it, but is it like looking at the thing below
1:15:54 the thing below the thing? Is that what it has in common with what you do now, or are there other
1:16:01 things? I think yes. That’s the second part of that question. What is really underneath people’s
1:16:08 behavior? That’s always really driven me. It’s why I became a psychologist. Why do good people
1:16:16 do things that work against them? Why do good kids act out and lie and do these things? Why do good
1:16:20 parents scream and get into these kind of quick, fixed cycles, even though they don’t want to
1:16:25 do that? I think I have, again, it’s like the curiosity over judgment. I’ve always been really
1:16:32 curious about that. Then I guess through especially my work with people who had intense eating
1:16:36 disorders. This was true when I was in private practice too and worked with teens who were really
1:16:45 struggling. I think I really understood and saw how desperate they were, like a very sturdy leader
1:16:50 who could make good decisions when they couldn’t, and how they’ll say all the things on the surface
1:16:55 that make it seem like they can be in control, but really they’re deeply struggling and they’re
1:17:01 deeply in pain. I think that probably helped me see kids struggle in pain underneath their
1:17:06 disruptive behaviors. Reflecting back on my childhood, I have a younger brother,
1:17:15 and the brother stuff. He would try to get me in trouble, or I’d wrestle him and beat
1:17:22 him up. It wasn’t malicious necessarily, but there were definitely times when he’d be screaming,
1:17:26 like, “Mom, Tim is hitting me,” and then she’d run into the room and he’d be in the room by
1:17:33 himself. I wouldn’t say he was struggling. He was being mischievous. Maybe there’s
1:17:40 something underneath it, but it seems like kids have this burgeoning sense of agency,
1:17:45 and sometimes they’re troublemakers or do things that they know are wrong.
1:17:53 I’m wondering how you handle some of those situations, because you could try to develop a
1:17:59 narrative around the feeling or the pathology underneath it, but I guess maybe at face value,
1:18:03 perhaps there are instances where kids are just doing stuff they know is wrong because it’s fun
1:18:08 or whatever. What do you do in those type of instances, or how do you think about them?
1:18:11 Let’s see more specific. Your brother’s saying, “Tim hit me,” but you didn’t. He’s lying.
1:18:15 Is that the situation? That’s an example. It doesn’t weigh heavy on my conscience,
1:18:20 but it was annoying. When I look at his personality as an adult, it’s like, “Yeah,
1:18:23 he’s playful and kind of a prankster.” Like, “Sister of the pot?”
1:18:28 Yeah, like, “Sister of the pot” is very, very smart, but I’m like, “Yeah, it makes sense.”
1:18:34 I would say I definitely don’t think my approach is about pathologizing things or even always seeing
1:18:38 the feeling underneath. I actually think what’s core is this idea, and I’m going to say it again,
1:18:43 but I really think it’s so different from how we usually intervene that it is worth repeating,
1:18:51 that you have a good kid underneath whatever is happening there. So, okay, why is my good kid
1:18:57 stirring the pot? And my third kid is like this. I mean, the stuff. And the fact that he’s my third,
1:19:01 me and my husband always say we delight in him because I think we’re less worried,
1:19:06 he will do stuff like, “Hey, why do all the bathrooms smell like pee?” And we just knew
1:19:09 we should ask him. I just knew I should ask him. So, when he was like five, he literally goes,
1:19:17 “Oh, well, I just thought it would be funny in every bathroom to first pee into the garbage can
1:19:23 and then dump it into the toilet. That might be why.” First of all, I just tried to stop myself
1:19:28 from laughing. I’m like, “That is actually so funny.” Like, you also didn’t tell anyone for days.
1:19:32 You just were entertaining yourself. It’s just funny. And I go, “Can you not do that
1:19:37 anymore?” He’s like, “Yeah, no problem.” And he never did it again. Okay. No, I think it’s really
1:19:41 easy to be like, “What is, like, my kid’s a psychopath. Like, what are you doing?” Right?
1:19:46 But I think for me, and maybe it’s because my third, what did I do? I think actually the most
1:19:50 underutilized strategy in parenting, and this sounds like a joke, but I do want to name it
1:19:56 to make it official, is doing nothing. Is doing nothing. Because you know what helped me do nothing?
1:20:03 I have a good kid. Did something actually really smart and funny. That’s just funny,
1:20:07 and he’s entertaining himself. Like, I see him as a 20-year-old in college. I know exactly who
1:20:12 he’s going to be. And I kind of know over time, I can, like, rein it in. And it’s not like he does
1:20:16 that, like, in the middle of the kindergarten classroom, you know? In the airport, yeah.
1:20:21 But he’s maybe like your brother. He thinks funny things. He’s industrious. He comes up with his own
1:20:26 plans, you know? And I think the idea, wait, I have this good kid. Like, I don’t have to take
1:20:32 this all so seriously. Maybe I can trust myself to know when this veers into the domain of, like,
1:20:37 really bad or too much. And maybe actually what I do is just say, “Hey, can you not do that again?”
1:20:44 And maybe I know my son is always going to be a kid, looking to kind of push the envelope.
1:20:48 Knowing that about him means I’m less surprised. I can set up boundaries a little differently.
1:20:52 And I can actually, and this is what I think is missing a lot, and it goes back to knowing your
1:20:59 kid’s a good kid. I can delight in him. Delighting in your kid is so important as a parent. Your
1:21:05 kids feel that. And it changes. And it doesn’t make behavior okay, all of it. But that element,
1:21:10 and I think that’s what’s missing when we’re in really bad cycles. We love our kid, but we actually
1:21:14 really stop liking them. We don’t even realize that. And that’s really painful for everyone.
1:21:22 I want to ask a question also from my employee I mentioned earlier, which I was very curious
1:21:32 about myself, which is, if your kid is hanging out with other kids who are bad influences,
1:21:36 what does an intervention look like? And I think my parents actually did a very good job
1:21:40 on this with me, but it was simpler in a sense because no smartphones,
1:21:47 we were living in a rural area. So if I wanted to hang out in our little downtown and get into
1:21:52 stupid trouble with a bunch of troublemakers, it’s actually quite difficult. It’s too far away
1:21:58 from you to bike, and they held the keys to the car, etc., etc. But they were good with certain
1:22:03 things that I hated, like curfews for coming back from hanging out downtown after a movie or
1:22:07 something, which was in retrospect very, very smart because a lot of those people ended up
1:22:14 in jail, OD-ing, etc., etc. They would not have been good influences. What is the move? What does
1:22:18 it look like? So there’s a lot of degrees here. Only apparent listening is saying, okay, when I
1:22:22 say bad influence, yeah, like there’s stuff that feels legitimately dangerous. My kid’s older,
1:22:27 there’s, I don’t know, there’s drugs. I can give you a specific example for a younger kid. Great.
1:22:36 Okay. So I noticed when I was a kid, I’m very sensitive to animals. And there were a few
1:22:43 boys who legitimately liked torturing animals, like they liked inflicting damage on animals.
1:22:50 And as far as I’m concerned, that’s just not a good trait. But it’s like, okay, so some kids,
1:22:54 you know, fucking with frogs or squirrels or whatever, pee in trash can.
1:22:59 No, no, like, like mutilating animals is a step beyond peeing in the trash can.
1:23:00 I would say so.
1:23:08 But that kid is also like, maybe fine in school, well-behaved, etc., etc. And so you’re like,
1:23:14 that kid seems to have zero empathy. Like, that’s not even, not even registering on any scale.
1:23:17 I don’t really want my kid to be around that.
1:23:23 Totally. So let’s again, go to Grease. So torturing animals, that’s like kind of a known concerning
1:23:27 trait in a child amongst psychologists, right? It’s part of like a triad, you would say.
1:23:29 Yeah, good grooming for serial killers.
1:23:34 So that’s definitely concerning. So that would probably be the same almost level to me as a
1:23:38 parent is, oh, my kid is hanging out with kids. So again, I think there’s legitimate danger.
1:23:41 And that stuff I don’t think the parents even have visibility into, unfortunately.
1:23:45 So there I think one of the things you say to your kid, and I’ve now said this a bunch of times
1:23:50 in this conversation, my number one job is to keep my kids safe. That is such a powerful thing to
1:23:55 remind yourself. Now, safe doesn’t mean risk free. It doesn’t mean I keep my kid in a bubble,
1:24:03 but keep my kids safe. And so I’m not going to let my kid hang out with kids who, again,
1:24:06 it’s not like they have bad manners. It’s not like they do something that’s like a little
1:24:10 pushing the edge and funny like my son did. Like this is kind of where we would say is over the
1:24:14 line. So what would I say to my kid? Hey, I want to go hang out with person X and Y. Listen, sweetie,
1:24:18 this is part of a bigger conversation. This is where this line helps so much.
1:24:24 My number one job is to keep you safe. And sometimes that means not hanging out with
1:24:30 certain kids who are doing really dangerous things. And I know as an adult that some of
1:24:35 what those kids are doing are dangerous. And so I’m not going to take you downtown to be with them.
1:24:39 Now, again, my kid’s probably going to be angry. I don’t have to say to them because I know my
1:24:46 role. But don’t you understand? I don’t like we really lower ourselves to our kids level.
1:24:52 Like I’m asking my seven year old to approve of my decision. Can you imagine a CEO being like,
1:24:57 we’re going through layoffs if they have to and they’re going to everyone’s desk. Is that okay?
1:25:01 Is that okay? That’s okay. That’s okay. Or a pilot being like, we have to make an emergency landing.
1:25:05 Everyone vote yes. I need everyone’s yes vote. Come on, don’t you understand? It’s like,
1:25:08 you just have to do the thing you need to do when you’re in a position of authority.
1:25:10 Just have to do your job.
1:25:14 Now, exactly. Do your job. There’s something else, though, that happens a lot. So maybe it’s not
1:25:19 animal cruelty. Right. I mean, another instance from when I was a kid, a lot of those kids had
1:25:25 to know getting into a lot of trouble later, whether it was going to jail, drugs, you name it.
1:25:32 They stole stuff and it was a small town. So people kind of knew like, these kids are bad
1:25:39 seeds. I mean, I know that’s a big label, but not a great influence to have around your kids.
1:25:46 Yeah. Yeah. So yes, again, I think that would fall under my role around the boundaries. My job
1:25:50 is to keep my kids safe. That doesn’t mean no risk. It literally does mean safe. That might
1:25:55 lead to hard decisions that my kids not happy with, but are part of my kind of being the true
1:26:01 authority and the adult my kid needs. I do think the emergency landing is the most helpful thing.
1:26:06 If my pilot said we’re making emergency landing and someone on the plane said,
1:26:09 “But wait, I have a really important podcast interview with Tim Ferriss.” And they’re like,
1:26:16 “You know what? Fine. Forget it.” Yeah. You don’t want that. Our kids are going to face tricky
1:26:23 situations. And again, every parent knows the line between safety versus kind of playground.
1:26:27 You can’t play with us. You’re a poopy head, right? Right. Right. And then I think it becomes a
1:26:34 little more nuanced there. One thing you said, doing your job doesn’t mean taking or exposing your
1:26:41 kids to zero risk. And it actually made me think of a friend of mine, different former special
1:26:48 forces guy, amazing guy. You’d never guess in a million years that maybe. Now, he’s not like
1:26:52 obvious. He’s not in your face. He’s more like a gray man for people to get the lingo. But
1:27:02 he has two daughters and he’s very jovial, fun guy. He’s very easy going. He’s as tough as you
1:27:08 would expect. But on the surface, like his interactions are very, he’s actually very soft.
1:27:16 But he ended up basically creating this game with his girls where each birthday they have
1:27:22 a birthday challenge. And it’s something that’s hard for them. And it goes up as they
1:27:27 get older. They get to choose like their 10 challenges. It’s kind of like having your
1:27:31 employees choose Oak Harris or whatever. So they got into rock climbing and then into like,
1:27:35 I’m going to do the cold plunge and the lake for this long. And then I’m going to do kettlebell
1:27:38 swings with this and this many of this and that. The other thing. So for those people who’ve ever
1:27:44 seen the movie Hannah, he’s basically training both of his girls to be Hannah, which is like
1:27:51 training this guy’s daughter, Eric Bennis, the actor to be Jason Bourne. But he has inoculated
1:27:57 them against a lot of types of fear by expanding their exposure to all of these different stressors
1:28:03 and kind of making a game of it. And they do fail at points, but they get to contend with failure
1:28:12 and then recover from it. I’m wondering if you proactively have done that with your own kids or
1:28:18 how you facilitate exposing kids to this broad range of emotional experience that when they get
1:28:25 into the quote unquote real world, they’re not fragile. Yes. Yes. Antifragility is definitely
1:28:32 big, big goal. I guess I think that I don’t often have to insert that as much as I have to be
1:28:37 mindful of not removing it. There’s a lot of opportunities for kids to be frustrated,
1:28:42 to take on challenges. I mean, we’re really talking about feeling uncomfortable.
1:28:46 Right. So don’t do their job for them. Not doing their job for them and not
1:28:52 narrowing the range of their resilience. Right. If my kid is only resilient when they get the job
1:28:56 and have an easy project and go to a dinner where all their friends are and get driven there and
1:29:00 there’s never any traffic, they’re going to be in trouble, right? There will be a lot of trouble.
1:29:06 But we can’t expect them to expect anything different if that’s kind of been what we create
1:29:10 for them during their formative years. So here’s a good example. I’ll talk about my youngest.
1:29:15 This is the one who pees in the garbage can’t. This is my resilient rebel.
1:29:23 This kid already. He has something. He really is. He’s my kid who wanted to get money to get
1:29:28 a certain baseball card that my oldest son and he was going to the store and he didn’t have money
1:29:33 and he had two somewhat loose teeth and he pulled them both out by the end of the day
1:29:37 because he figured he could get money from the tooth fairy. Yeah.
1:29:42 And he did and I was like, wow. Smart kid, industrious. Yes, very industrious.
1:29:46 Hi, tolerance for pain. But I think he wanted to play sports and he’s my third so he’s been
1:29:51 playing for a while. He tried out. He made two teams for different sports where he knew nobody.
1:29:57 He knew no kids. To me, this is such an amazing life experience. Joining a team where you know
1:30:04 nobody and I would say in both teams, he’s not on the stronger end. That’s a really powerful life
1:30:09 experience in terms of, again, the capability you will build. We think our kids are going to
1:30:12 find the capability before and then we get frustrated. Come on, you can do it. It’s not a
1:30:18 big deal. Everybody in life finds capability after surviving. Not even after thriving.
1:30:22 Just after surviving something hard. The capability is on the other side. You can’t expect
1:30:27 someone to access it before. You just have to tolerate the before. Now, I think it could be
1:30:31 easy to remove that. I’m going to make sure I call a friend to join the team with you.
1:30:36 Right? And in some ways, we take our own anxiety and we add it. You know what I mean?
1:30:40 Versus, I really felt like my job. To me, here’s such a powerful line. I remember before he went
1:30:44 to his first basketball practice and this team happened to be a team that they already knew
1:30:49 each other for a year. Not only did he know no one, there was some really nervous. I said,
1:30:53 “That makes sense. I almost feel nervous if you weren’t nervous.”
1:31:01 Make sense you’re nervous to do something new. Yeah. Right? Then after, we walked home and he
1:31:05 said, “I think when they introduced everyone, I felt better.” I said, “You’ll probably be a
1:31:09 little less nervous at next practice, but you probably also will be a little nervous.” I think
1:31:14 this idea of when we build our kids’ capability, your friend who has all those challenges, that
1:31:18 sounds amazing. There’s all different ways to do things in different families. I guess for me,
1:31:23 I see with my kids, there’s so many opportunities in life. I should say it’s not like the linchpin of
1:31:29 his parent. He’s actually just super active with his kids and role models it. To me, one of the most
1:31:34 important things for building capability and anti-fragility is actually this idea of validation
1:31:41 capability. This is hard and I can do it. Often when you do only one with a kid, it backfires.
1:31:46 We’ll be like, “This is really hard. It makes sense. You’re nervous about practice.” We just
1:31:51 live in that world and sometimes our kid feels like, “You’re validating my emotions, but I’m just
1:31:56 kind of building my anxiety.” We leave that out and we do the opposite. It’s no big deal. It’s
1:31:58 just a basketball team. You’re going to be fine. Kids have been doing basketball forever.
1:32:03 That’s often not great. We think that’s like building resilience. The lack of validation
1:32:08 doesn’t help your kid cope with the emotion and so it’s also not that helpful. Both is really
1:32:13 powerful. It makes sense that you’re nervous and you’re a kid who can do hard things. It makes
1:32:17 sense you’re not sure how this is going to go when you’re feeling a little uneasy and I just
1:32:21 know five minutes in, it’s going to feel a little easier. That idea that I can see my kid where they
1:32:27 are and I can almost see a more capable version of them than they can access. By the way, I think
1:32:32 great CEOs do this too. This is a hard project and I know you’re the one to figure it out.
1:32:38 Or good partners. Or good partners. Yeah. That’s right. I’ll give a public thanks to my ex. She
1:32:42 was very, very good at all this type of communication and perspective taking,
1:32:47 so she was able to teach this whole dog some new tricks, which have stuck and it’s been incredibly
1:32:54 valuable. Have you had any personal sort of parenting slips that you learned a lot from?
1:32:59 Because one of the questions I often ask, so I’m force fitting it a little bit here, but it might
1:33:04 work is, do you have a favorite failure? Meaning something that didn’t turn out the way you hoped
1:33:09 or it was a mess, whatever, but it ended up teaching you so much that in the long term,
1:33:17 it was beneficial. I hear my daughter’s voice in this moment saying, “I started good inside for
1:33:24 you.” The reason she says that is because I had my first kid and at this point, I also had my
1:33:28 private practice and my first kid definitely had his meltdowns. He had his difficult moments,
1:33:33 but there was something relatively linear, relatively about his development where he did
1:33:37 the thing, “Okay, oh, you’re so upset. You’re going to figure it out. I’m here with you. No,
1:33:41 you can’t have that truck. I’m holding it. I’m keeping you safe.” He kind of responded in
1:33:46 kind. Then I have all these people in my practice saying, “Dr. Becky, I’m doing the things you’re
1:33:50 saying, but I swear they’re making everything worse. It’s making everything worse. It’s not working.”
1:33:55 Even though I, in general, like curiosity over judgment in the back of my head, I was thinking
1:33:59 what anyone would think. You’re just not doing it right. No, you’re not doing it right. That’s
1:34:05 all. Moving on. Then actually, in these sessions would make me have to innovate. I’m like, “Okay,
1:34:09 well, that’s not working. I kind of do love problems and thinking through things like, “Try this. Try
1:34:15 this.” Then I had my second kid. I feel like after a year and a half, I remember being like,
1:34:20 “I need to call all of those people that I was secretly judging.” It’s like, “Oh my god. I know
1:34:26 what you’re talking about because I am watching myself do the thing I was telling you to do
1:34:31 when I was doing my son. I’m watching my kid scream or by the time she’s old enough to talk,
1:34:36 be like, “Stop talking. I hate you.” I was like, “What are you talking about? I’m being an amazing
1:34:44 parent right now. Why are you saying that?” I would say for a number of months, I really mean
1:34:53 this. It was a dark place. What is going on? What is my kid? Why can’t I give to her the way I know
1:35:00 I can show up for my other one? Then I feel like after that period, this is usually what happens,
1:35:05 I feel overwhelmed. Then I have this thing I say to myself when I’m feeling really overwhelmed and
1:35:10 like full of self-blame and pity where I say, “Okay, Becky, wash yourself in it. Fully embrace it.
1:35:15 You’re horrible. Everything’s horrible. Go all the way to the extreme.” I’m going to go to sleep
1:35:18 and I say, “Tomorrow I’m going to turn it into fire because there’s a lot of energy
1:35:22 and feeling awful and overwhelmed. If you can allow yourself to embrace it
1:35:26 and not fight it, then I feel like there’s a day where you can use all of that for something
1:35:31 productive.” I feel like that’s what I did. I started to connect these crazy dots in my head.
1:35:34 I was like, “Okay, so there are all these families out there who are telling me the same
1:35:39 thing I’m seeing with my kid. These kids, when you try to talk to them about their feelings,
1:35:46 even in the best way, they explode. Their meltdowns are animalistic, hissing, growling,
1:35:52 like really intense. They act like a caged animal.” Then I thought about probably 30%
1:35:58 of the adults I was seeing in private practice for really deep therapy. The struggles I had
1:36:02 in adulthood, a lot of fear of abandonment, a lot of emotion dysregulation, a lot of really
1:36:09 low self-worth. It was crazy to him. I was like, “Oh my God, they were all my daughter and they were
1:36:14 all those kids.” I saw this whole thing and it led to this body of work where with the adults,
1:36:21 I was doing this really deep therapy, going back to some moments and really reworking them
1:36:27 in this experiential way. They would tell me things. I’m not joking that I would then do
1:36:35 with my daughter. Could you give an example? Here’s an example. Your kid has this meltdown
1:36:39 and some parents listen and be like, “Yeah, my kid has meltdowns.” I’m not talking about
1:36:43 the run-of-the-mill meltdown. I am talking about it truly.
1:36:44 The exorcist.
1:36:49 The exorcist. It’s animalistic because these kids, and I call them deeply feeling kids,
1:36:55 they experience their feelings as threats. If your feeling is a threat in your own body,
1:37:00 think about what you would do to get rid of it. You have to expel it onto someone. They’re so
1:37:06 porous to the world that they get overwhelmed more easily and they fear being overwhelmed and then
1:37:11 they fear they’re going to overwhelm you. Basically, with these kids, their shame sits so close to
1:37:17 their vulnerability. Whenever they feel vulnerable, shame makes it explosive. Then when you try to
1:37:22 get close, like, “Hey, I’m here for you,” or, “Hey, you’re mad. It’s too close.” They actually do.
1:37:28 It sounds so existential, but they fear that they are toxic and then they will make you toxic.
1:37:34 They say things like, “Get out. I hate you. Leave me alone.” Then as parents, we kind of
1:37:38 take the bait, “Fine. I’m just trying to help.” Then we leave these kids alone. They’re completely
1:37:43 10 out of 10 dysregulated and then they basically learn, “See, I really am as bad and toxic as I
1:37:49 worried I was.” We see this all the time in adulthood. It acts itself out. This is a good
1:37:55 example of what came from this most amazing adult I worked with forever. We went back to this moment
1:37:57 when our child didn’t work out and she’d be in her room because these kids would be in their room
1:38:03 and they’re out of control, screaming at a parent, “Get out.” Kids are oriented by attachment,
1:38:08 which is a system of proximity. When they say, “Get out,” not calmly, we all say,
1:38:11 “Get out.” Someone’s like, “Sure, I’ll get out,” but they are not in a place to be making a decision.
1:38:15 What they’re really saying is, “I’m so terrified. I’m going to terrify you. I’m so terrified,
1:38:20 therefore I’m bad because if I terrify you so much that you can’t even be near me,
1:38:23 I’m a vulnerable kid that basically means I’m not going to survive because I need your
1:38:29 attachment to survive.” I remember going through what she needed in that moment. I remember going
1:38:35 through this visual of this wise adult being in her room with her, “Stay,” even though she screamed,
1:38:39 “Get out,” because I always say with deeply feeling kids when they’re in that 10 out of 10 state,
1:38:45 their words are not their wishes, they’re their fears. Honestly, all of us, most of us.
1:38:48 That’s a really interesting reframe. Can you say that one more time?
1:38:53 When we’re completely out of control and overwhelmed and we scream things out in that state,
1:39:00 our words are not our wishes, our words are our fears. I think even the visual, if you have a kid
1:39:04 like this, what they’re screaming, they’re actually screaming to their feelings, not to you.
1:39:09 “Get out. Leave me alone.” I have the chills like they’re not talking to a parent, they’re talking
1:39:14 to these terrifying sensations in their body. We went through this, this visual, and I’m in
1:39:18 the room visually with her. You’re doing this with your client?
1:39:22 This is an adult, exactly. This is what helps me so much with deeply feeling kids.
1:39:26 One of the things, I’m just giving you one example. I was like, “Okay, so I don’t remember if it was
1:39:32 her mom or just some sturdy adult who wasn’t seeming scared of her.” I said, “So she’s standing at the
1:39:38 door with you.” I remember this woman saying, “She’s not standing. She has to be sitting.”
1:39:44 And I kind of explored that in the imagery, which is if she’s standing, I just believe she’s about
1:39:49 to leave. I don’t believe she’s committed to this, so she’s sitting at the door. I’m like,
1:39:53 “Okay, so she’s sitting at the door.” This goes into so much more about deeply feeling kids,
1:39:56 that in these moments, they need containment. They literally need to be with you in a smaller
1:40:00 space because they’re so fearful of how their feelings come out of them and take up all the
1:40:04 space that they need to essentially have us hold space with them. Your feelings only go
1:40:09 this far and I’m sitting with you at the door. I would never let you kill both of us, so my
1:40:14 sitting here with you is almost a way of saying, “You are not so bad and awful and toxic after all,
1:40:22 and if I cannot be scared of this, one day you will not.” And every fucking time when you do this,
1:40:26 and it’s more details than just this, your kid will end by crawling over to you like a dog
1:40:32 and coming into your lap for a hug because that’s exactly what they need. But that idea that you
1:40:38 can’t even be standing, I kind of knew in these moments she was screaming, “Get out!” I was like,
1:40:41 “You’re not in a place to be making good decisions for yourself.” It would be like if
1:40:46 my kid was trying to cross New York City Street, completely out of control, like, “Don’t hold my
1:40:50 hand. You’re about to die in our incoming traffic. Like, there’s something deeper. I’m going to hold
1:40:56 you.” And I knew I had to be in the room, but I remember as soon as my client told me this thing
1:41:01 about sitting down, I remember with my own daughter and talking to clients. I had all these clients
1:41:05 at the time who had these kids because I was kind of getting these referrals from these kids labeled
1:41:10 as Oppositional Defiant Disorder, difficult, dramatic, all of these diagnoses. I was like,
1:41:16 “Wow, Oppositional Defiant Disorder. You cannot like a child who you label as Oppositional Defiant.”
1:41:19 And we were all trying these things, and everyone at the same time was sitting down
1:41:26 and kind of imagining yourself in this just really sturdy way. It shortened the meltdown
1:41:33 by like 90%. And again, that came directly from my work. I think so many of my best interventions
1:41:38 come from actually the work I did with adults, understanding what adults needed when they were
1:41:44 kids and reverse engineering that to today’s parents. Fascinating example. And I can envision it.
1:41:48 I can see it working. I suppose I’ve used different words for it, but a friend of mine recently
1:41:54 recommended a book to me, which was something like “The Highly Sensitive Person” or something
1:41:58 like that because what I say to people for myself, and I was like, “This is a kid too,” is like,
1:42:07 “My senses are very, very sensitive, very porous, and it can be incredibly overwhelming sometimes,
1:42:16 and I become better at using that and managing it. But as a kid, I mean, forget about it. Different
1:42:21 story.” Well, you’re probably what I would say is a deeply-filling kid. Mine too. And I say to her,
1:42:27 you’re a super sensor because with these kids, I live in New York City, and we’d be getting near
1:42:31 the garage where we park our car, and she would not want to go into the garage. The smells of
1:42:38 even near the garage so easy as a parent to say something to a kid like, “You’re so crazy. What
1:42:41 are you talking about? It doesn’t smell any different outside here.” And if you think about
1:42:49 what you’re really doing is you’re saying to a kid, “I know how you feel better than you know
1:42:53 how you feel.” Now, again, the boundaries matter. Might there be a time, especially when she was
1:42:58 younger, where you’d say, “I get it. You smell it. It’s awful. You smell things. I don’t smell,
1:43:02 and I’m picking you up. I have to carry you in the garage.” That’s independent from my action.
1:43:09 But again, when we can’t separate those two, we usually say super invalidating things to DfKs.
1:43:13 We tell them they’re dramatic. We tell them they’re making a big deal out of nothing. The
1:43:18 principle of all human behavior is we all need to be believed. And so if you don’t get believed,
1:43:21 you escalate the expression of your behavior in desperation to be believed.
1:43:25 Then usually, people lead with more invalidation, which means you escalate behavior further
1:43:30 to try to get the original thing you were looking for. And with deeply feeling kids and parents,
1:43:36 that’s a cycle we really reverse. Yeah. Well, yeah, trip down memory lane. That’s wild.
1:43:41 I’ll send you the workshop. We have a lot of adults do it separate from their kids. It’s
1:43:47 all the same stuff. Yeah, it is all the same stuff. If you could put, metaphorically speaking,
1:43:53 a message on a billboard. It could be a quote, it could be an image, anything non-commercial,
1:44:00 just something to get out to a very large number of people. It could be a reminder, requests,
1:44:06 anything. Mantra that you find useful, anything at all. Can I pick more than one? Of course.
1:44:09 Not in the same billboard. I don’t know about the branding of all them at once,
1:44:13 but I have too many things. Yeah, you can definitely have a couple.
1:44:19 Okay, so I’m going to start with one that’s probably most linked to our conversation so far,
1:44:25 just my ultimate mantra. This feels hard because it is hard, not because I’m doing
1:44:29 something wrong. And again, to me, the idea that we struggle, and it doesn’t mean it’s our fault,
1:44:35 is life changing. I remember during COVID when my kids were doing work and work from home,
1:44:39 when they were in school at home, that was the thing I put on their desks. And I think when
1:44:43 you’re talking about kids working on math or learning how to read, doing a puzzle,
1:44:47 or doing something at work, or managing your first conflict in your romantic relationship.
1:44:50 So you put it on their desk like a placard or like a little dry erase board?
1:44:54 I mean, I just like a post-it note. I took like a post-it note and wrote it
1:44:56 messily and just put it up there. And say it one more time.
1:45:00 This feels hard because it is hard, not because I’m doing something wrong.
1:45:05 The difference between understanding something’s hard because it is versus thinking it’s hard
1:45:10 because basically you failed has massive life implications on what we’d be willing to take
1:45:13 on next as a challenge. Like, yeah, that’s just a hard math problem. If it feels hard,
1:45:17 that’s because you’re doing it right, because it’s supposed to be hard. Oh, I’m doing it right
1:45:21 versus I’m not good at math. I mean, it’s just remarkable, especially academically,
1:45:25 when kids are young, how powerful that is. If I could put something different on a billboard,
1:45:28 you’re sponsoring many branding campaigns. You have infinite billboard budget, yeah.
1:45:33 Okay, it would be one of two things. This is like different versions of a similar idea.
1:45:37 Parenting doesn’t come naturally. The only thing that comes naturally is how you were
1:45:43 parented or we were never meant to parent an instinct alone. The whole idea of maternal
1:45:48 instinct has had a profound impact on parents, profound and awful. And it’s not to say I don’t
1:45:54 think there’s some instinct in us. Obviously, I get that, but it would be like a doctor saying,
1:45:58 like, I didn’t go to medical school, like I have surgical instinct, surgical instinct,
1:46:02 and you’re like, yeah, I’m just not going to see you. And if your friend said that.
1:46:07 Yeah, that’s gonna be a hard pass. Right, it’s a hard pass. And it’s just so interesting that I
1:46:15 think we take learning seriously at every point in our lives. And then we get the job that’s the
1:46:23 hardest and most ongoing and most important job we’ll ever have. And we’re socialized to think
1:46:29 we’re supposed to be learning before like a CPR class, a pregnancy class. And then once your baby
1:46:34 is like one, the narrative I hear from parents, we hear this honestly, because that good insight I
1:46:38 think way more than trying to help you through a tantrum or trying to elevate parenting,
1:46:44 parenting deserves education, because that’s a good compliment with instinct. Like there are
1:46:49 things to learn, doesn’t come naturally. And I really, we have moms, especially all the time say,
1:46:56 I feel like it’s a sign I’m a failure. Which to me, I just don’t know anyone who goes to medical
1:47:00 school and says like, oh, I have to go to medical school to become a doctor. And like my friend who,
1:47:06 I don’t know, has a surgical instinct or I get my surgical tips on Instagram. And I think that’s
1:47:11 enough. You would say to a doctor, yeah, that’s cool. You want to stay up to date on some tips,
1:47:17 but you probably need a foundation. And I think this goes back to fault, you know, where it goes
1:47:23 back to how when we struggle, especially as women, we tend to think it’s our fault, instead of maybe
1:47:27 something more useful, like a little bit of anger of like, wow, the system is pretty stacked against
1:47:33 me. Nobody is setting me up to have clarity in my job, to know what to do and to actually feel
1:47:39 resourced and supported. And then I think we’d find parenting hard, but we wouldn’t find it as
1:47:44 impossible as we find it today. You said one of two things. Was there another variant? Just some
1:47:48 version of, pardon me, I like to be punchy. If I was going to put something on a billboard, I wanted
1:47:53 to create, you know, a conversation. So maybe I’d say something like, there’s no such thing as
1:47:59 maternal instinct. Not because I even fully believe that, but just to start a conversation
1:48:06 on the limitations of that framework. And I think the massive amount of shame it’s created,
1:48:14 especially for women. And shame leads to an animal defense freeze state, freeze. You don’t act.
1:48:18 So what’s kind of amazing and fucked up is if you can convince women that they should be able to
1:48:25 parent on maternal instinct alone, it’s just a great way of kind of ensuring moms forever feel
1:48:30 really bad about themselves and don’t talk about it. Yeah, that resonates. I mean, what do I know?
1:48:35 I don’t have kids, but just what I’ve seen with friends is there seems to be, certainly, there
1:48:42 are maternal instincts. For sure. Right? Just like some people may be better suited to empathy and
1:48:47 bedside manner as a surgeon, but you also want them to go to med school. Yeah, as I mean,
1:48:53 two things are true. Right. Two things are true. And what I’ve seen amongst, because there are all
1:48:59 these battles in the parenting discussions, right? Yes. There’s like the attachment parenting versus
1:49:05 the sleep training versus and man, oh man, these get intense. And I’m watching some of these things
1:49:15 because I’m curious. But if one of the stories that sometimes pops up is related to mothering
1:49:24 in different, let’s just say for simplicity, indigenous cultures, and what gets lost there is
1:49:31 overemphasized is the instinct and what that means and what you can rely on. What gets a little lost
1:49:40 is societally, as you said, how for a lot of women in industrialized western cities, let’s just say,
1:49:46 air westernized cities or certainly coastal US and a lot of places in those societies have
1:49:51 spent time in Ethiopia and all over South America and so on. It’s like from a very young age,
1:49:57 they are being taught how to take care of kids in whatever way makes sense culturally in that
1:50:02 context. But it’s like from a very young age, like they’re getting training. That’s like being born
1:50:06 into like JIRA dreams of sushi. And it’s like, all right, you’re going to start with washing the
1:50:12 pots. I mean, like from a very, very early age, they’re being taught and getting a lot of practice,
1:50:19 which is just simply not the case for a lot of women these days. So it would seem to make a lot
1:50:26 of sense that they need to have the opportunity to be resourced, as you said. And I think the
1:50:31 resources, again, that I always want for parents extends so beyond just your interactions with
1:50:37 your kids, like learning to set real boundaries is life giving, like in every area of your life.
1:50:42 And I think that’s why when people are kind of involved in the good inside system for a while,
1:50:47 like when we interview users, it’s interesting after a while to say, oh, I asked for a raise for
1:50:52 the first time. My girlfriends from college always go away. And honestly, my partner always gives me
1:50:56 a hard time every year. And so I don’t forego. And for the first time, I realized, wait, Dr.
1:51:02 Becky, like you said, those are my partner’s feelings. I can care about them, but I don’t
1:51:06 have to take care of them. Meaning my partner can be upset and I can go on my trip. And then we
1:51:09 always say, like, what about those tantrums? Remember how you can’t, and they’re like, oh,
1:51:13 is that why I came in? Right? So I think what I want for parents and what I’d want to build
1:51:18 board also say is… Tantrums are the gateway truck. They are kind of, you know, we come,
1:51:26 our kids’ problems, they’re really a signal that probably there are so many opportunities for us
1:51:30 to learn things that are yes going to help them, but are going to end up helping us even more.
1:51:36 I want for parents, really, to feel like they do more than just put out the latest fire in their
1:51:44 home. So you are, and I love this about you, well known, as I mentioned, for your specific scripts,
1:51:49 your word for word scripts, even though the intention is to use them to highlight principles.
1:51:57 I understand that. What are your most requested, the fan favorites most requested as far as scripts?
1:52:01 What do I do when my kids are having a meltdown that I just totally don’t understand?
1:52:05 So what do I do when my kid’s freaking out about something I don’t understand?
1:52:10 Anything about boundaries and saying no? How do I say no to someone without feeling guilty?
1:52:15 How do I say no to my in-laws when they keep popping over or so? Anything about saying no
1:52:21 in boundaries and repair? Repair. Yeah, I feel really stuck and I just, I can’t get myself to
1:52:26 go to my kid’s room and say the thing. I always feel like a script is like a door opening.
1:52:29 Sometimes we need someone to open the door for us, and then when you get in the room,
1:52:32 I’m like, “Okay, I can do this.” That’s kind of what a script can give.
1:52:38 What specific boundary setting or saying no? Like within that subcategory,
1:52:43 what are the things that tend to come up the most? Honestly, almost always when I’m asked a
1:52:49 question, my answer is almost always reframing the question. How do I say no without someone getting
1:52:52 upset? I mean this with love, it’s just a bad question. It’s a bad question. It’s an impossible
1:52:57 question. How do I say no and tolerate someone being upset? It’s a great question. Love that question.
1:53:01 So I’ll shift to that. Usually when we feel stuck in life, it’s because we’re asking the wrong
1:53:04 questions, not because we don’t have the answers. 100%. But I think scripts that…
1:53:08 Because you can also get a great answer to the wrong question that can lead you astray.
1:53:14 Right? I always say, “Questions are roads you walk down.” To make sure the road is like the
1:53:18 destination you want to end in. Not kind of a cliff or something unproductive. And I’ll share
1:53:22 some of them here just because some of them are good to put out there. So how do I say no?
1:53:29 I think saying no well really comes from knowing your why and really being grounded more in your
1:53:34 experience than the other persons. The reason it’s hard for someone to say no is because they’ve
1:53:39 actually already vacated their body. And if it’s me, let’s say, here we are on Monday, but let’s say
1:53:42 you ask me, “Hey, can you do Monday at 3.30?” I’m like, “Oh, I really can’t.” For whatever reason,
1:53:45 oh my God, what is Tim going to think about me? Is Tim going to be really upset? What am I going
1:53:50 to say when Tim says that that’s the only time? You can’t say no from that place because your
1:53:55 no and setting a boundary comes from your place of authority. And if I’ve vacated my body and I’m
1:53:59 now spending all my time in Tim’s head, you’ve lost yourself. In your fantasy of…
1:54:03 You’ve lost your… In your fantasy, exactly. Tim’s probably like, “Why are you spending so
1:54:06 much time in my head? I would have just figured it out with you.” That’s what we do. So I think
1:54:10 step one is actually coming back to ourselves. Like, why am I saying no? Okay, I’m saying no
1:54:14 because I don’t know how to pick up my kids from school or whatever it is, right? It actually
1:54:19 becomes a lot more self-evident. I’m not able to make that time because whatever the reason is,
1:54:24 right? And then I think one of the best things with scripts when you’re saying no, naming your
1:54:31 intention, naming it, not just thinking it, is really helpful in communication. I’m really excited
1:54:37 about recording. I am unable to do this. I would love to find another time, right? Making it really,
1:54:42 really obvious what your intention is really does get in a helpful way. It prevents someone else
1:54:47 from misinterpreting it, from you thinking, “Oh, Becky just doesn’t want to be in my podcast,” right?
1:54:51 And it also makes me feel sturdier because I’m kind of connecting to you along the way.
1:54:55 One of the ways to think about boundaries and how to actually set them, because there’s a lot of
1:54:58 people who are like, “I know I want to set them, but it’s the holding and I just feel so uncomfortable
1:55:03 and my mom’s mad at me or my kid’s mad at me.” Okay, so right now we’re sitting on opposite sides
1:55:08 of the table, but imagine we’re on a tennis court. I’m on one side of the court behind the baseline
1:55:12 and you’re on the other side, but instead of a net, I don’t know, there’s like a glass wall,
1:55:17 so like I could see you, but whatever happens on your side would stay on your side. Okay.
1:55:23 The reason boundaries become hard to hold is because I’m on my side setting a boundary. So
1:55:27 maybe it’s saying to my mom, “Oh, you want to come over to see the kids? It doesn’t work for us. We
1:55:32 have to find another day.” Or maybe it’s saying to my kids, “Oh, TV time is over.” Or, “No, sweetie,
1:55:36 we’re here to buy a birthday present for your cousin, but I’m not going to buy anything else,
1:55:42 even though you see that thing you want.” That’s my boundary. And on your side is your feelings.
1:55:46 So if you’re my mom, you’re upset. And maybe your version of upset is
1:55:50 “guilting me who knows.” Right? And maybe if you’re my kid in the toy store, you’re upset,
1:55:53 probably your version is screaming meltdown or who knows what it is, right?
1:56:01 What we say to ourselves all the time is I can’t set boundaries. I feel so guilty, right? Okay.
1:56:08 In my mind, guilt is a feeling you have when you’re acting out of alignment with your values.
1:56:14 That’s why guilt is useful. If I yelled at a taxi on the way home tonight, I would feel guilty
1:56:18 because that’s not in my values to yell at anyone, definitely not someone trying to help me.
1:56:22 That guilt would make me reflect, “Huh, I wonder why I yelled. What could I have done differently?”
1:56:27 Useful. But it’s interesting when people say, “I set a boundary with my mom because I just need
1:56:31 the alone family time, but I feel guilty.” I said no to my kid because I don’t want to buy them
1:56:36 everything at a toy store and I feel guilty. It’s not guilt. It’s actually life changing. It’s not
1:56:42 guilt because you’re acting in alignment with your values. So then, if I ask the question,
1:56:49 “What is it?” It’s our tendency to see other people’s distress on their side of the tennis court.
1:56:56 And this usually happens in childhood. We learn, we kind of say, “I will take that for you. I will
1:57:02 take your upset and bring it to my body and put it in my body to kind of metabolize it for you,
1:57:10 and I will call it guilt.” But it’s not guilt. It is someone else’s feelings that you’re feeling
1:57:15 for them. And not only is that not good for you, it’s actually awful for the other person because
1:57:19 if you metabolize, let’s say, your kid’s feelings for them, they never learn to deal with the stress.
1:57:24 You can also never empathize because the only reason I can empathize is if I actually see
1:57:28 your feelings as yours. So I actually have to when I do this exercise at this workshop
1:57:32 or I’ll say to someone, “You have to give that feeling back to its rightful owner.”
1:57:37 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
1:57:42 them, but I have the money and I feel so guilty.” And even though I want to say no, okay, but now
1:57:47 maybe it’s not guilt. How do I deal with that? What happens is you’re on one side of the tennis
1:57:54 court and your kid’s frustration, distress kind of starts to come over. And instead of going
1:57:58 and hitting against the gospel and going back to them, which by the way is what you want,
1:58:01 you need people’s feelings to say on their side of the court.
1:58:05 It kind of comes over to me. I’m like, “I can’t.” What you have to do is actually
1:58:10 must put your hands up and like push it back. And actually the visual is powerful. That’s my kid.
1:58:16 Or my mom is upset. She can’t come over. If I actually think about it, that makes sense.
1:58:20 I’m allowed to say no and they’re allowed to be upset is like a great life mantra.
1:58:26 They’re equally true. No one’s a bad person. My mom is not a bad person for feeling upset
1:58:31 that she can’t see her grandkid. I am not a bad person for saying the time doesn’t work for me.
1:58:38 Those two things just happen not to kind of be in line with each other. So I have to hold them
1:58:43 at the same time. They’re both true. Neither is wrong and neither is more true than the other.
1:58:49 And if you see your mom’s feelings as real, ironically now you can actually empathize with her.
1:58:53 Because as long as you’re taking on the feelings, you can empathize. You’re responding to your mom
1:58:56 to take care of your own feelings that weren’t yours. You’re putting yourself in the washing
1:59:01 machine as opposed to looking through the glass at what’s inside the washing machine. That’s right.
1:59:05 And so holding boundaries, you get better when you picture that tennis court and you start to
1:59:09 ask yourself, “Am I really feeling guilt? It’s probably not. Can I give that person’s feelings
1:59:14 back?” And then empathy actually helps you hold a boundary. “I get it, Mom. You wish you could
1:59:18 come over.” “I know. I’d be upset if I were you too.” “Oh, does that mean I can come over?”
1:59:22 “No, it doesn’t. I’m just saying I understand.” So that visual, I think, is powerful. Tennis court.
1:59:30 We have just a few minutes until our time. And I thought I would just open the floor
1:59:36 to ask you if there are any things we didn’t touch upon that you’d like to mention,
1:59:42 if there are any requests of my audience, my listeners, any reminders, closing thoughts,
1:59:48 anything at all that you’d like to add. And people can certainly find Good Inside at GoodInside.com
1:59:55 and we’ll link to all your socials as well, Instagram, Dr. Becky @GoodInside, I believe.
1:59:59 And we’ll put all these in the show notes. Of course, the book, Good Inside, A Guide to
2:00:03 Becoming the Parent You Want to Be, we’ll link to the TED Talk. We will link to all
2:00:08 the goodies in the show notes. But is there anything else that you’d like to
2:00:16 mention? No. I mean, I think that I find learning and reflection to be really such a brave endeavor.
2:00:21 I really, really do because if you’re thinking about yourself or you’re thinking about why we do
2:00:26 the things the way we do, or, “Oh, maybe I do want to intervene differently,” there’s probably someone
2:00:31 at this point saying, “Maybe my kid is a deeply feeling kid. Should I go learn more about that?”
2:00:36 And I feel like that’s very brave because to do that, you’re going to be confronted by feelings
2:00:41 of like, “Oh, shoot. I’m going to do that.” And we all have wondering questions of, “Did I
2:00:46 mess my kid up?” Which you didn’t. But we wonder it and then we feel upset. And then to kind of push
2:00:53 forward and say, “Okay, I’m going to tolerate those feelings in the pursuit of finding something
2:00:58 that’s going to end up feeling better to me,” I just find it very admirable and increasingly hard
2:01:02 to do in today’s world that we’re all oriented around short-term convenience and gratification.
2:01:07 So for anyone listening at this point, I just want to say thank you. I want to say there’s
2:01:11 probably a lot of tolerance of uncomfortable emotions along the way. There’s no one we care
2:01:15 about in the world in the way that we care about our kids. We’re so invested in it. So thinking
2:01:20 about getting support, thinking about taking a workshop or getting a resource. On some level,
2:01:23 it seems like, “Well, yeah, it’s the person I care the most about. I’m going to do that.”
2:01:28 But there is this pull away, like, “Ooh, I don’t know if I want to look at something.” And so the
2:01:32 people who are willing to do that, I just think that’s my type of people and I love people who
2:01:36 can do hard things. So I want to say thank you. And then the thing I want to hold right next to
2:01:40 that is everything I said today, and I should have said that’s in the beginning. I myself
2:01:46 definitely do not do 100% of the time as a parent. And it really matters to me that people know that.
2:01:50 Number one, just because it’s true and I don’t want to misrepresent myself. But there’s no
2:01:55 perfect parent. Kids don’t need a perfect parent. That would, again, be weird if we said our kid
2:02:00 to think that their most important relationships down the road are going to be with people who are
2:02:04 always perfectly attuned to their every feeling and need. That would be very counterproductive.
2:02:11 And so, again, maybe we end with what we begin with is the most powerful relationship strategy I
2:02:17 believe we have in any relationship is repair. It’s our willingness to go back, to take responsibility,
2:02:21 to say, hey, I wish I handled that differently, to then hopefully actually do a little bit of the
2:02:26 investigation or resourcing. We need to actually do it differently. But I want to leave parents or
2:02:31 any listener with that. There’s nothing more powerful than repair. There’s nothing as important
2:02:36 to get good at as repair, which also means you have to mess up. Because the only way you can repair
2:02:43 is if you did mess up. And so, I just want to leave people with that more kind of balanced human note
2:02:48 because that’s the thing I usually hold on to myself. And for people who are curious, they
2:02:56 want to explore the world of good inside. And Dr. Becky Kennedy, where would you suggest they start
2:03:02 in terms of dipping a toe in the water? Let’s just for the purpose of applying some constraints.
2:03:07 Somebody who doesn’t, maybe they don’t have the ability or the financial resources to go to
2:03:12 like an extended workshop or something like that. Where might they start? Let’s say go to your local
2:03:17 library and kind of request the book. If it’s not in, definitely get on the request list for
2:03:22 Good Inside. I would say come to goodinside.com and sign up for our emails. I’m bursting with
2:03:27 new thoughts all the time and I always need containers for them. So one container is our email
2:03:33 or kind of weekly thoughts for me. On Thursdays, I send out Instagram, my own podcast. I should
2:03:37 say I’m on a podcast now. Podcast listeners usually listen to other podcasts. So maybe that’s
2:03:42 best. That’s just called Good Inside. We try to keep it simple. And goodinside.com is kind of the
2:03:46 home for everything we do. And then I would say if your kid is… I love to help people whose
2:03:49 kids aren’t just struggling. It’s kind of like waiting to go to marriage counseling until you’re
2:03:56 like in a problem. It’s never the best, but a lot of us wait. I really think of our resources
2:04:01 inside our app as, you know, about your kids and your own emotional wellness. I think we make that
2:04:06 very accessible, you know, compared to other emotional wellness resources. So that’s there too.
2:04:10 Well folks, there you have it. That is how you wade into the waters.
2:04:14 And I’m so happy we could have this conversation. Thank you for taking the time.
2:04:15 Thank you. That’s awesome.
2:04:20 And took a lot of notes for myself also. Best to be prepared. It might take a little while for me
2:04:28 to get the kiddos online, but that is the plan. And I really appreciate what you are teaching.
2:04:36 These toolkits are incredibly powerful. And as we have mentioned and alluded to multiple times
2:04:45 in this conversation, you can apply these things everywhere. It is not limited to your interactions
2:04:51 with your kids. And to everybody listening, thanks for sticking around. Thanks for tuning in.
2:04:58 And as always be just a bit kinder than is necessary until next time. That includes
2:05:03 other people, but that also includes yourself. And for links to everything we discussed,
2:05:11 you can find them in the show notes, tim.blog/podcast. And I’ll repeat myself, but thanks for tuning
2:05:17 in until next time. Take care. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take
2:05:22 off and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday
2:05:27 that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people
2:05:32 subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to
2:05:38 sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the
2:05:43 coolest things I’ve found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It’s kind of
2:05:48 like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I’m reading, books I’m reading, albums
2:05:54 perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on. They get sent to me by my friends,
2:06:00 including a lot of podcast guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field.
2:06:07 And then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it’s very short,
2:06:11 a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about.
2:06:15 If you’d like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday, type that into your browser,
2:06:22 tim.blog/friday, drop in your email and you’ll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.
2:06:28 Way back in the day, in 2010, I published a book called The Four Hour Body, which I probably
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