Dr. Becky Kennedy — Parenting Strategies for Raising Resilient Kids

Honestly almost always when I'm asked a question my answer is almost always reframing the question how do I say no without someone getting upset I mean this with love it's just a bad question it's a bad question it's an impossible question how do I say no and tolerate someone being upset is a great question love that question so I'll shift to that usually when we feel stuck in life it's because we're asking the wrong questions Right not because we don't have the% you can get also get a great answer to the wrong question and that

can lead you astray [Music] well let's start with what popped into my head great and we'll just keep rolling with that thread love it and see if it goes somewhere interesting if it's a dead end I'll get us out of the dead end but I want to talk perhaps about your Ted Talk on the power of repair why do you think this struck a cord with people and what resonated with people from that classic example is you yell at your kid for something right so I'll use this example which is different than the one my

TED talk because it also leads to some you know common questions so my kids stalling in the morning like I got to get my kid to school because also when I drop my kid at school I have to get to work and my kids laid on late the Whole thing were all so rushed and my kid is saying you know I don't know whatever they're saying I'm not going to school today you can't make me go to school I'm not putting on my shoes you put on my shoes and you're thinking like I have an

8-year-old like they have to put on their shoes right and then we get to some Crescendo moment where as a parent and I'll say me myself cuz I have this too I just I just yell scream at my kid what is wrong with you you don't do Anything you're 8 years old you're never going to amount to anything in your life if you can't put on your shoes or you know you're so selfish you're going to make me late you turn me into a monster why can't you listen the first time we say this thing

MH depending on our kids temperament they react in different ways if they're kind of in the more people pleasing type that immediately stops them they're like oh no my parents mad at me you know I'm going to be good Mostly just because I'm I really need to see that they reflect that I'm a good kid I like need that if you have another temperament kid they use this as a way of like oh you want a fight I'll show you a fight and they're like I am not putting on my shoes you know that was

me right that is my third kid love him what order are you I'm first you're first okay but I was uh a pretty defiant little kid right at points and so then you get through the Moment you get through it and then I think after drop off there's this like immense heaviness as a parent and you're cycling through different things that again whatever your voice is might be your own voice or it's probably the voice you've internalized from your own upbringing in terms of how people would have responded to you if you were your kid

in that moment but it's some version of blame it's either blame in or blame out it's either I'm an awful parent why Can't I stay stay calm and why can't I just get through the morning and then that usually Cycles with I have an awful kid and my kid's a sociopath and they're going to go to jail and they're never going to mount to anything and either way you're blaming where repair right would be saying to your kid at some point hey I screamed at you earlier that probably felt scary and this will be the

kind of maybe maybe the Start of something controversial it's never your fault when I yell and I'm working on staying calmer so even when I'm frustrated I can use a calmer voice like I'm sorry that would be a repair I'm kind of going back to a moment that felt bad kind of like reopening that part of the chapter I'm taking responsibility for my behavior I'm giving my kid a story to understand what happened and I'm kind of talking about What I would do differently the next time all right this is great Grist for the mill

and part of the reason and we talked about this a little bit before recording that I was excited to have you on and have a convers is that the tools you're talking about really apply everywhere and they're echoed by a lot of folks people would not necessarily associate with parenting like Joo willink Navy SEAL Commander extreme ownership and I want to use that there Are many other examples that I could give where I feel like what we will discuss in our conversation can be applied many different places many different dojos for for very similar tools

and toolkits okay with that said I suspect one line where people maybe got stuck and you know exactly what I'm going to say is it's never your fault when I yell at you yes all right part of me loves that because Just to invoke the great name of jao again who did his first ever podcast first ever interview on this podcast 100 years ago when you own things you give yourself a degree of agency yes right but also overly blaming yourself can be the flip side of maybe taking on excessive responsibility for other people's actions

and feelings and so on meaning sort of codependent or otherwise so I heard everything you said But I suppose like some listeners I was like always never these absolutes are very strong words why say that particular line yeah and when I share a script to me it's often words that are representative of kind of principles mhm I never like to get too stuck on words I actually gave those words an example in part because I think it does bring up a lot of questions but I never want someone to hear this and think okay I

got to write Down that exact word in general take responsibility for your actions give your kid a story say what you do differently the next time and I actually would hope anyone listening would say I think I have my own brand of that amazing that's better for you and your kid than my brand so with that in mind it's never your fault when I yell here's why I think that's powerful even if you don't say it to discuss and really think about The way we react to our kid yes has to do with the situation

in front of us but we actually react to the set of feelings in our own body combined with the circuitry we have to manage those feelings mhm and I think the biggest thing to think about is that circuitry those skills we have to manage emotions literally predated our kids' existence that was there so far before them now when my kid doesn't listen and the morning is delayed I feel frustrated and That feeling is definitely co-created with my kid separating frustration from my ability to manage the frustration are two really different things and telling a kid

basically you make me yell you turn me into a monster is actually holding your kid responsible for your set of skills to manage your feelings and the other reason and then I'll be quiet for right now that I think it's so powerful is I think about my son I don't know it could be my daughter whatever He's married one day let's say and he has some partner and I don't he had a really bad day at work and he comes home and for some reason I'm at his house visiting and his partner is like oh

man I I forgot to get toilet paper from the store and then he sits down for dinner and maybe his partner like ordered him the wrong thing I don't know he yells at her mhm and I hear him saying well if you just got toilet paper and ordered me the right thing like I wouldn't be Yelling at you and I picture the cringe M like oh my God that's like the creepiest thing like seriously like did I install that soft and then we hear ourselves say to our kids all the time if you just listen

the first time I wouldn't have yelled or like okay well if you were just calmly playing with your sister then you wouldn't get this reaction from me and if that creeps us out down the line if we wouldn't say I would be so proud to hear my kids say That to a partner then I don't know why we think that's a good idea to say to our kids when they're young all right so there are many different branches off of this that we could explore let's maybe back up or zoom out choose your favorite metaphor

and perhaps you could just in your suppose framework or worldview what it means to be a good parent could you define this or just speak to that yeah and then we can use that as a sort of a Foundation from which we can launch into a bunch of other stuff I should have a really solid answer to that question by now but I fortunately we have a lot of time maybe part of what I struggle with is I think we probably think about that word or that term good parent is like what I'm doing on

the surface is something observable where I think a core principle that I think about is actually separating kind of who you are in terms of your identity which is not Observable from what you do and your actions which usually is observable separating those two I mean but I think a good parent probably sees parenting as a journey of self-growth and Discovery as much as they see it about anything related to your kids growth so I think that's number one number two I think a good parent really activates curiosity over judgment in a situation with their

kids and a good parent probably can put into Action the idea that really being the sturdiest leader for your kid involves equal parts very firm boundaries and parental Authority as it does kind of warm validating connection you mentioned curiosity over judgment now when people hear this word judgment they probably assume that is a negative judgment but a judgment could also be something like good job right so what would curiosity look like in place of either negative or Positive judgment I think the words good job of gotten a lot of like press or parents like you

not so say good job say good job that's not going to do damage to your kid I think there's a lot we can unpack there there's deeper principles right they're like oh what do kids really need when they have accomplishments yeah I like how you zoom out because it's it's not whether you're using like the Crayons or the oil paints or the acrylics or or charcoal you have To learn the fundamentals of like drawing and to do that you need to learn how to see things so it's like returning to those first principles that's right

right that's exactly right so I think judgment it can be positive but I would say in parenting actually in any relationship it's just so easy to see someone's behavior that feels bad or feels less than ideal and we just activate our judgment about the behavior and usually when you judge Behavior what You're unconsciously doing is you're seeing Behavior as a sign of who someone is that's why you're judging it this person is such a selfish person right my friend didn't call me back oh they're so selfish right or my kid keeps hitting on the playground

even though I say no hitting and then we don't even realize going to like what's wrong with my kid why do I have such a bad kid you know my kid is never going to figure things out I'm a bad parent you just see something On the surface and you kind of feel like you know everything about it I actually think I've never thought about that that's really what it means to judge something I see something that's probably part of a larger story and instead I think it's the whole thing mhm to me the opposite

of judgment in any relationship is curiosity and I think curiosity is when you see something and you just wonder about it to me that's like one of the best words for parents Wonder I wonder why my kid is hitting as soon as you use the word wonder you're unable to judge because you're thinking and kind of conjuring up this bigger picture now where parents usually go and they hear me say that it's like oh so it's just okay my kid's hitting and there's this again judgment we even do there where you must deal with so

many people so many strong opinions well part of is I get it I have so much empathy for parents and even understand their Skepticism of our approach because we have had shoved down our throat this very very Behavior first punishment first we call it discipline it's actually a joke to me in any other area of life if we allowed CEOs and coaches to talk to the people in their organizations like we think parents do to kids and then we call it disciplined it would never fly and those people would be fired but we've had that

shoved down our throats and so anything new Always feels uncomfortable and these are very new ideas right but I think about with other areas even with kids if your kid isn't learning how to swim right you teach them how to swim and nobody says oh you just think it's okay that they're not swimming it's like a weird be like what I'm just teaching them how to swim could I pause for one second yeah all right I have a bunch of thoughts on this good job thing I know that let's do it I like your potential

replacements for That could you just just to give some people a concrete example like what might you say instead of good job a kid comes to us and let's say I don't know a young kid brings us a a painting M and we could say oh good job it's amazing right or let's say an older kid brings us some paper they wrote and they got a good grade we say good job okay again good job does not damage kids but I think in those moments we want as parents to kind of double down on Building

our kids confidence that's usually the kind of goal we're optimizing for so then to me the question is is that like the best of all options or at least we have other tools in our toolbox and the thing that really builds kids confidence is learning to gaze in before you gaze out we're in a world that is priming us to gaze out before we gaze in kind of like look what I've done and can someone in the world tell me it SL I am good enough that's basically the world we live in and it makes

you very empty and very fragile very very anxious I'm talking about social media social media yeah everything I mean so many things right definitely social media right and if I think about this moment and again I'm often very long-term thinking but my kids over and over show me things what's going to help them down the road well I know when you're in your 20s and 30s what's really helpful down The road is when you produce something maybe it's art maybe it's a project being able to give yourself some estimation of that before others do is

very helpful to your whole self-concept and protective of anxiety and depression I think I did a good job in this project it's true I didn't hear back from my boss yet but I'm a little anxious about what my boss is going to say but the fact that someone didn't tell me something isn't going to spiral meh and I think about the yearning and the searching and the desperation for a good job well if every time my kid produces something again what they wire next to that is someone telling them good job then they go into

the world unable to give themselves that type of validation and searching for someone to say they're good enough so what do I like better anything that helps your kid share more about themsel actually ends up feeling better to your kid also so I Think about you know a little while ago my daughter paints stuff and she did she gave me this painting and was I'm a horrible artist so anything she does is amazing but what I said to her first I said oh like tell me about the painting like what made you pick red there

she told me this whole story this whole story about how she hasn't ever really seen a red police car and whatever it was it just and she shared her story with me same thing I'm thinking about a Kid giving us a paper oh had do you think it come up with that topic oh what made you start it that way oh what was it like writing that whatever the question are and I know it sounds sounds like annoying at first I get it like as a parent you're like oh really can I just say good

job and of course you can but then again I go to an adult example like let's say Tim you rid your house okay and I visited and you really worked hard on it and I came I go oh I love Your house good job it's actually kind of a conversation Ender I feel like you'd say to me thank you yeah but if instead I said how did you pick that color wall with that couch you would oh oh okay well let me tell you and let me show you my Pinterest board or whatever it was

and even if I never said good job I bet you would feel more lit up inside and almost better than if I had just kind of ended the conversation that way yeah for sure I have a number of friends I mean I have a lot of friends with kids but one who comes to mind I'm not going to name him but he's very good at this and one of the best Learners of any skill I've ever met he's just an incredible human the other thing that he did and this was even prior to books like

grit I think that's Angela Duckworth but instead of saying good job another thing he would do is say something I'm making this up as an example but he would be like I'm so Proud of you you work so hard on that right to sort of reinforce the effort the process over the outcome that's right which seems to make sense right and you're not suggesting your path is the one only toolkit of Purity and redemption in the sense that it can combine with other things but first principles are adaptable right as long as you understand what

those principles are yeah I think that every parent like some Percentage of the time be like great job that's cool that's awesome okay but those questions process over product like asking for a kid story asking them to tell you once you get started it's easier and yes it actually focuses on what's more in a kid's control right and then setting up your kids to feel good about themselves even if they're not always getting 100 is just such a massive privilege and it actually makes them work harder because They're focused on their effort and process instead

of just on a result what is your opinion of parents focusing or viewing their job is making their kids happy optimizing for happiness right because who's going to poooo happiness right I mean it sounds sounds will all right let's wait into the deep Waters it's something people say is a throwaway comment like my husband always jokes like you're at like a dinner party soone like you just want your kids to be Happy right and he'll look at me and think Becky please don't ruin this perfect nice moment don't take it don't take the bait and

I always do um no I very much would say a parents job is not to make a get happy and again because we struggle to hold multiplicity people will say you want your kids to be unhappy no I definitely don't try to make my kids unhappy can I just stop to say you're not not going to like this movie like why are people so stupid and Just like want to fight it's like obviously you don't mean that we think in these extremes we see that in all areas and holding two things as true or holding

Nuance is increasingly hard in this world which is why it's even more important right to kind of have some of these ideas in our homes you use the word optimizing and I think about that a lot so zooming out again about kind of good Insight in general is I would say our parenting approach is just very Long-term greedy because I just think my kids are going to be out of my house for way longer than they're in my house mhm they're going to choose whether they want to be in a relationship with me way longer

than they're locked into a relationship with me and however High the stakes feel when they're 8 and 10 and 17 we know the stakes in life just get higher right and so when we think about making our kids happy what we're actually saying is I am prioritizing my Kids short-term ease I am making my kids life easy and comfortable in the short term and what ends up happening not when you do that a couple times but as a pattern is you actually narrow the range of emotions kids believe they can cope with 100% for sure

true in Partnerships too true inere a lot of relationships you end up having adults who are remarkably anxious so prioritizing happiness for kids leads to adulthood full of a ton of anxiety because you're Protecting them from a broader band of emotional exposure and so they don't develop the confidence and they can handle those broader ranges yeah I always think and I think I have to sometimes use hyperbolic language with myself to like really get me to do something that's hard but I think good for my kids like I see my kid you know who's left

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

that was really difficult and just get Through it and so if I say to my kid I'll call the school and I'll switch the school group for you oh I'll do that puzzle for you because I just don't want to deal with you having a meltdown not once but over and over I'm actually stealing their capability and capability really is the antidote to anxiety and going forward when I think about my kids going into the world what's more important than feeling like I can be capable in a wide range not very narrow Bubbled cushion range

of situations what does it mean to be a sturdy leader yeah I love the word sturdy like there's certain words I love because even though I'm a psychologist I have a lot of words to say I actually think very visually and to me the words that make sense like evoke an emotion that I can access and to the word sturdy just does that for me and again I think sturdy leadership is what we want in a CEO it's what we want in a partner it's What we want in a coach it's definitely what we want

in a pilot so does that mean reliable dependable I think there's a couple ways I think it's a leader who is equally boundaried as they are connected to you they're actually equally as connected to themselves what do I want what are my values what are my limitations as they are able to connect to you oh you might be different but I'm able to Hear and understand your values and wants and feelings and to me the way that can get kind of operationalized as a kind of really set of skills is you know how to set

boundaries and I think most people get boundaries completely wrong so I know how to set and hold boundaries and at the same time I'm able to connect to and validate other people's emotional experiences those are the two pillars of sturdy leadership could you paint a Scenario for us you have great scripts and people come to you for scripts doesn't have to be a Verbatim script but could you just walk us through a hypothetical situation that exemplifies someone being sturdy and this way yes I think sometimes the best way to do it is actually in this

pilot metaphor can I do that first let's get into the pilots okay are you actually a pilot wouldn't surprise me I'm not a pilot I've landed a plan but I'm not a Pilot Sully right there got s okay you're many things I'm definitely not the sturdy pilot you want so I definitely not a pilot you're a passenger on a flight and there's let's say a lot of turbulence and you're very scared and maybe even you look around and like everyone's pretty scared I think there's three versions of a pilot that you might hear come over

the loudspeaker and I actually think they perfectly exemplify three Different versions of parenting so here's Pilot One everyone stop screaming you're making a big deal out of nothing and I can't focus and you ruin everything and you're just going to all have your frequent flyer miles taken away if you keep screaming something like that not super reassuring not reassuring and the invalidation there as a passenger for me almost makes me worried does the pilot not know it's turbulent and oh my goodness me Screaming and being scared is enough to make the pilot kind of freak

out at me like that actually doesn't feel good it feels like I was contagious to the pilot mhm and they couldn't handle the situation okay that's pilot one that's like when we say to our kids you know if you don't listen to me the next time you're losing dessert you're so rude you know you can't hit your sister and you ruin every family vacation whatever we kind of just Scream at our kids and we threaten things that by the way we never follow up on and we just stle out punishment because we don't really know

what to do that's Pilot One Pilot two is almost the opposite extreme like everyone's scared and it is you're right it is really turbulent and I don't know I'm just going to open up the cockpit door and if any of you know how to Pilot the plane just come on in and take over and at this point you're No longer scared of turbulence and you're just terrified that this person is your pilot right because there's this merger my overwhelm became your overwhelm and you just melted in front of me that is so scary the pilot

we want to hear is the sturdy leader and they'd probably say something like this I hear you screaming that makes sense it's very turbulent and I've done this a million times I know what I'm doing what scares you does Not scare me and so I'm going to get off the loudspeaker and go back to piloting the plane and I'll see you on the ground in Los Angeles and what's crazy is I think you think about a passenger in that situation and I'm going to guess even if the turbulence was the same they feel calmer because

what a sturdy leader really does is they say to you I see what's happening for you I see your feelings as real and your feelings don't overwhelm me there's actually there's a Boundary I can see yours as real and connect to them while I can maintain a separate connection for myself and there's kind of this cockpit between us that's like saying to your kid oh you know they're having a meltdown because you say no to ice cream for breakfast right and you say oh you really wanted ice cream for breakfast I get it it's so

yummy and that's not an option sweetie you can have a waffle you can have cereal let me know when you want to make A decision and when I model that parent will say it's not working it's not working I'm like what do you mean it's not working well my kid still screams I'm just thinking about my pilot saying my announcement didn't work my passengers are still scared of the turbulence like can you imagine who cares like in a way that they're still scared their reaction is not a barometer for whether you are doing a good

job and defining it that way can get into real Role confusion can get us into a lot of trouble what do you mean by role confusion I think every parent wants to do a good job but like over and over when I talk to parents their kids are taning me all the time and they're rude whatever it is I'll say to them what is your job in this situation and all of them say I have no idea but again I go to the workplace and I imagine someone at good inside like as a company showing

up and me as CEO Saying do a good job today and I'm saying but I don't have a job description and I'd be like do a good job they say Becky I cannot do a good job if I don't know what my job is and I need to know what that person's job is so I know what they're doing versus what I'm doing that's totally fair so I think as a parent if you don't know what your job is you can't do a good job and what role confusion what I mean by that is number

one you don't have Clarity on Your job because I think any parent listening to this if you think about any tricky situation my kid's rude my kid's not sleeping my kid's lying what is my job in the situation if you don't know that with Clarity that's at least your starting point and of as parents we ask our kid to do our job for us what would you offer as a sample job description almost always our jobs are those two things setting boundaries boundaries are limits we set they're decisions we make And sometimes especially when our

kids are younger they're truly they're physical they're stopping my kid from running into the street or picking my kid up and leaving the park because they're having a meltdown even though my kid doesn't want to be doing that those are boundaries the other side is always seeing the good kid under the bad behavior and connecting to my kid in that way and here's a good example I Hear all the time my kid doesn't listen to anything my kid doesn't listen to anything I say for example my kid is jumping on the couch right near a

class table like get off the couch stop jumping on the couch and they don't listen I say stop jumping on the couch and then I say if you don't get off the couch by the time I count to three I'm going to take away your dessert and I don't really take away the dessert cuz I don't want to melt down later that night Like this is so common sounds like a mess right it's a mess so number one I would say what is your job again I think they would say I'm doing my job I'm

trying to get my kid off the couch but you're asking your kid to do your job for you you're watching your kid not able to make a good decision this is your kid who you like and instead of helping them be safe you're asking them to do something they're showing you they can't do so what would you potentially Do great so let's start I I can't even answer that without saying what's a boundary because that parent I would say is not setting boundaries and this is true separate from kids is it fair to think about

boundaries as rules you follow consistently or is I guess there's probably more Nuance to that um I mean I guess I think it's fair to say but I would say it's not the most actionable helpful definition so all right great to me my definition of Boundaries boundaries are things you tell people you will do and they require the other person to do nothing M that's a really important dual kind of definition it's something I tell let's say it's my kid although it could be your colleague or anyone it's what I tell my kid I will

do that's an assertion of my power it's what I will do I'm not letting my day be ruined by my four-year-old not listening I just like myself and my kid too much to do That so boundary is something I tell my tell my kid I will do and its success requires my kid to do nothing get off the couch get off the couch I'm not telling my kid what I will do and it requires them to do something to be successful it's a complete giving away of your power right versus and this surprises people because

too often I think good inside we get lumped in with like soft permissive parenting this is 0% permissive setting a boundary and Validating my kids's feelings being sturdy would sound like this once I tell my kid hey get off the couch they don't and say look I'm going to walk over to you and if by the time I get there you're not off the couch I will put my arms around you I'll pick you up I'll put you on the floor because my number one job is to keep you safe and it's just not safe

to you know jump near that glass table okay now in my own house when my kids were younger I'd go over to My kid and people have this illusion so you do this and then your kid just gets off the couch no no they don't you do this you get over there if you have a normal child they're going to look at you in the eye and keep jumping up and down not because they don't respect you just because they haven't learned how to control their impulses yet so then I would do my job I

would put my arm okay I'm going to pick you up now I'm going to put them on the ground they will not Look at you and say thank you for your sturdy leadership you're so amazing I really needed that thank you for seeing no they will scream but actually when you understand this kind of parents job visual you set a boundary every time you set a boundary your kid's going to get upset until they get a little more used to it but that's because when you set a boundary you're basically just telling your kid you

can't do something you want to do humans feel upset when they're Stopped from doing things they want to do all the the time they get upset and it actually allows you to do the second part of your job so I pick my kid up they scream no put me down I hate you whatever they say in the state and then I can say oh you really want to jump on the couch you really don't want to jump on the floor it's so boring again when I say that doesn't mean for one instant that I let

my kid back on the couch what they will try to do and my hands will be Ready to block them nope I'm not going to let you do that this is where I think it really is this revolutionary idea in any relationship I can be equally strong and equally connected to someone else and that's true sturdiness and really doing our job I want to ask you about perhaps another facet of doing your job but you can't trust everything you read on the internet so I will ask this question in the following way this is from

a Participant in one of your workshops and they described your approach as one of quote coaching a nervous system to cope with being a human in the world end quote is that a fair description of what we do yeah or would you say not quite close but a Miss what I love about that is it captures something that's so much more true than why most people initially come to us they come to us because their kids are having Tantrums their kids aren't Sleeping their kids are being rude their kids are being defiant and what they

end up getting is they themselves get rewiring to be sturdier in the world while they learn how to give that to their kids from the start so I think that that's close referring back to what I mentioned earlier in this conversation it's really sympatico with so many other things that I've been exposed to it seems like with good inside the child is yes you're Interacting with the child yes one of the objectives to become a better parent and be more connected and be a sturdy leader and your child is also a mirror and a medium

through which you get to work on yourself because if you're disregulated guess what how can you expect your kid yeah to be regulated and I mean some people are going to hate this because I recognize that human children are not dogs but for instance there's a great book There's so many terrible books on dog training one which has a terrible title unfortunately called Don't Shoot the dog is written by Karen prior she took clicker training from marine mammals and brought it over to shaping Behavior with dogs so clicker training is when you click to reward

certain Behavior or getting directionally moving towards the right behavior and then you're able to sort of time Mark that and offer a reward but The reason I'm bringing this up is not that you should use clicker training with humans I've tried that as a joke it generally lands really poorly but rather she reinforces over and over again why most dog problems are actually owner problems right and you need to be consistent if you are trying to shape Behavior you also need to be very very consistent with and I know this might open up some debate

but rewards generally not punishments in Her approach it's almost all positive reinforcement and when I see for instance I mean she's not here today but I have a very well- trained dog and I have some tolerance for the monotony of dog training and I find it very soothing actually but when I see dogs that are misbehaving because they were never sort of trained early on and then their owners are freaking out maybe hitting them being really abusive I'm like that is an owner problem that's not a dog Problem and I have to imagine they're probably

similar examples in parenting I mean there must be my oldest son said something once that I don't think he meant to be as profound but it's something that sticks with me a lot and it goes kind of problem blame where we're in a situation in the car and essentially my husband thought my son had closed the door and he didn't and kind of backed out the car and the car got caught in the garage with the door Anyway and he kind of said saying my son and my son just said it's not my fault and

my husband said so it's my fault and my son said I think he was I don't even know eight at the time he goes you know sometimes bad things happen and it's nobody's fault and I think for parents this is always true like when your kid is really struggling is it a kid's fault is it a parents fault feel like we're obsessed with fault why is it Anybody's kind of fault I always say to parents it's not your fault your kids struggling the way they are faults just not a useful framework you are the leader

of your home and if all the Associates in some big company you know were struggling I don't think you would start an intervention at the associate level leadership would say okay it's not our fault but like we're the leaders so what are we going to do yeah and it's not your fault but it's your Responsibility responsibility exactly and the other thing is I think when we become parents it's not just like our kids problems are our fault or our problems but I see a much more hopeful framework where through your kids if if you want

to take this on as a journey you will learn everything you ever needed to know about yourself your own childhood by the way you watch your partner's childhood play out you're like oh that's how you were raised I see it Now and there's so much learning right and that's hard learning is hard growth is hard and it is kind of this amazing opportunity rather than my kids's problem being my fault or my problem could be like there is an opportunity for everyone here what is the MGI I love a good acronym so when I was

in my clinical Psych ol PhD program I'd always hear these amazing people speak and I'd go with my you know classmates be like that Was amazing and I say yes it's amazing but what do we going to do about it and i'' be like what do you mean just think about it I really don't love thoughts without actions I just like to know how okay well what do I do how do I action on this great idea and to me this idea that your kid all of us we are good inside identity separate from Behavior

it's a very powerful idea but I don't find it as actionable as I would like so to me the way to action on that idea is This idea of MGI and to me this is something in all of our relationships even if it's just after the fact at the end of the day we can ask ourselves and MGI just stands for most generous interpretation what is the most generous interpretation I can come up with of my kids behavior of my colleagues behavior of my teammates Behavior because I think what happens naturally is we default to

the LGI the least generous interpretation so you see your kid they Lie to your face once no I didn't take Kit Kats from I didn't eat before dinner and they have like chocolate all over and it's just so easy you just go to like my kid is a sociopath my kid doesn't respect me you're like who my kid ate a Kit Kat and like all of a sudden this is a matter of like respecting me right or my kid is hitting they're in a hitting stage and again we just go to my kid is never

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

of that right what is the Most generous interpretation of why my kid would lie to my face whenever I ask parents that it's amazing their countenance goes from like so angry at their 4-year-old like they're like oh they're probably scared of my reaction okay and then eventually like what do I do but the mindset we're in in life determines the interventions we use and I can promise you as long as you're in an LGI mindset with your kid with your partner with your colleague zero Productive things can happen and then we say what do I

do what do I do the answer is to stop doing from that mindset and ask yourself a different question to get in a more productive mindset and then intervene from there so we're meeting for the first time we have a lot of mutual friends it turns out but I have this suspicion that we have a fair amount of shared DNA just in terms of how we operate as you were Mentioning the thoughts as being interesting but not that interesting if there's no action to apply these thoughts I thought that might be a useful place for

a segue so I read that you're a planner and that your husband gave you some advice around planning is this enough of a cue to prompt I don't no it's not you don't I don't know I need more all right all right so this is from Romper romper.com Y and so this is the Journalist speaking okay I tend to catastrophize to jump to the worst case scenario and we're struggling with a difficult phase or unpleasant pattern but I tell myself to Faith to believe that we will work ourselves to a better place and then this

is I believe quoting you I'm guessing you're a planner she responds I'm a planner too my husband said to me over the pandemic I never thought of planners as pessimists but the opposite of planning is not Catastrophe it's being able to say to yourself I'll figure it out no matter what happens the opposite of catastrophizing isn't predicting the good it's saying to yourself I'll find my feet I'll be able to cope with what comes my way so this is a a roundabout way of asking what historically or currently have been your biggest challenges in parenting

yeah that could be with your kids it could be with your husband could be other but what comes to Mind it's a great segue and that is true where my husband said to me when I you know during the pandemic I kind of started this whole part of my career and I kind of burst into these creative thoughts where I became much less organized and I had all this creativity and at the same time the pandemic was very hard to me and this relates to one of the things that's hard for me in parenting and

one of the things I talk about a lot so people probably think I'm Good at it but I talk about it all the time cuz I'm bad at it that's why anybody talks about things all the time where he's like wow I didn't marry like a very logical Optimist I think I married like a creative pessimist he's like look at this creative pessimist you know I think I'm short-term pessimistic long-term optimistic and what I mean by that is I love a plan I love an action people outside of me will be like Becky is one

Of the most productive people I know and I think that's probably true on the surface but the driver of that is I'm incredibly anxious when I want to do something and haven't yet done it that the way I relieve my own anxiety is just to do it so it looks productive but it's probably just an anxiety coping skill and what that means is when I want to do something or there's a struggle and I can't get action on it I have a really hard time what would be an example of That I mean all during

Co in terms of I think one of the reasons I probably in some many people say oh you were there for me in Co and I produce so much content is I just needed something to do because the pause of that the slowness like 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 another example of that is I think about my kids and they're now 710 and 13 you know each of them they go through these stages and You know maybe

some social shifts or harder stages and I think I talk so much about sitting with feelings and not fixing them mhm because my first instinct for sure is to just go in and make it better make them happy and that is something again the parallel process of learning to just sit with my own feelings all of us who can be prone to action there's like morality to it like kind of like it's like a better thing and it can be better in some Circumstances but sometimes the best thing to do is just sit with it

and that is something I think I have worked on in myself even you know through working on it with my kids in addition to your book good inside a Guide to Becoming the parent you want to be which has been recommended to me by multiple close friends even though I don't have kids in addition to that what other books or modalities do you think could be helpful for someone in Relationship and or with kids and for instance a few come to mind right there's a book called conscious loving I think it's by gay and KD

Hendrick I always mix up the Hendricks because they're two pairs there's non-violent communication great book there is I think I mentioned extreme ownership which it does actually overlap in certain ways you have I believe a quote from dick Schwarz internal ifs Internal family systems for people interested I did a live session with him on this podcast yep got very interesting very very quickly fascinating practitioner really useful system anything else come to mind any books resources anything at all that you would kind of add to that list yes the three books I guess that are top

of mind would be yes stick schwarz's no bad parts or just his internal family system book I Mean he knows I've been very influenced by him and when I've when I work with adults in therapy and to me some of the best gifts and privileges kind of we can give our kids is helping them understand the parts of themselves and talk to their parts as kids like when I hear my kids do that I always think this is going to help you more when you go to college than anything you learn high school it's crazy

so ifs Eve rodsky book fair play I don't know that Is I think so powerful especially for parents who feel like they're the default parent meaning they're the parent who maybe their partner takes the kid to soccer but realizing they have to be signed up for soccer thinking about what soccer where to sign up getting them the shinguards getting them the new cleats that actually fit and are the ones they want that idea of mental load mental load of parenting is so intense she really helps put words in a System to that that I think

makes a lot of parents say like oh my God I'm not crazy like this is a thing this is a system why is it called fair play because it's the idea that if you have a partnership that you don't have to distribute tasks 50/50 mhm but that the mental load has like a disproportionate impact on your stress and overwhelm and there needs to be more fair play amongst teammates MH that way got it and then this might sound like an odd Recommendation but Cheryl Strays tiny beautiful things Cheryl is someone I also wonder like do

I share DNA with her where I'll read things she writes in there and I think oh my goodness did I steal her thought I swear I say this in my book and she has said to me no I've always I worry I plagiarized you even though my book came out before your book it's very interesting I'm just hearing my own three suggestions and none of them have To do with kids that's right but maybe super fasc maybe that's my you know revealing something where to me this the things we need to learn for our kids

when we're parenting if I think about a strategy or what to do with my kid it's like something I put on the Shelf that's important when you open a closet door you need the things on the Shelf to take that are actually useful and feel right and move things forward but what I hear from parents all The time is I'm learning I'm learning I'm memorizing I'm meing but in the moment I just scream at my kid you know and then they say what's wrong with me yeah right to me you need the key to the

door that is the closet that has that shelf right like if you can't can you explain that one more time like if all of your parenting strategies are on a shelf in a closet and there's a door to the closet and in the moment you're like I want to get that strategy you need to Be able to access it you have to be able to access it and so for any parent listening who's like that is so me I know the thing I want to say but then I just scream my head off at my

kid I would actually say stop learning parenting strategies you have enough on that shelf for now what I would focus on are my triggers what is happening with my kid that I am triggered and I'm at a 10 out of 10 and when you're at a 10 out of 10 Nobody has a key to any lock yeah yeah strategies is not going to be forthcoming no the strategies you need have a lot more to do with you not because it's your fault and the beauty is when you work on those strategies where you're triggered with

your kid guess what if you're triggered when your kid's whining it's not the whining it's probably the fact that whining generally represents helplessness I would guess if that's a particularly triggering Situation helplessness was very shamed in your own family was probably a pull up your bootstraps a family if you're crying I'll give you something to cry about family so you had to shut down your helplessness because it was dangerous you see it in your kid and you respond to them in the same way people responded to you okay that's like a lot of therapy in

30 seconds but let's say that's true or people are like wow that's weird that's very true you can Memorize everything you want to say to your kid but if you don't an ifs is hugely helpful here hugely helpful in my reparenting Approach and Trigger approach if you don't get to know your protector Parts MH and you don't do that type of work then every time when that happens that part is going to scream out so the answer to showing up as a parent you want to be is this combination of yes I have to put

the things on the Shelf but I have to know how to open the door also yeah makes a lot of sense so what advice would you give me since I'm currently wife SL partner hunting right I would like to have a family but would like to hit some prere I mean it's guess technically biologically not that hard to have kids but I would like to have build a family together Adventure yep I'd like to have that version of possible for people out there who are single but would love to have a Family what advice might

you give them in terms of positive indicators for people who will be leaning towards some of the abilities and self-awareness and skills that make for a leader parent right so just like I was like hey here's my dossier of like 10 Prospects and you're like well let's like ask a few questions and fig stury leadership on the on the list one second I'm assessing you leers pre stury Leadership they're like oo dirty talk yeah seriously seriously talk about that one in our next episode so a couple of things to me again being a sty leader

has nothing to do with being a parent and while I think it's actually through parenting and this is the beauty that people have such in their face the work they need to do that they can access that you're right in pointing out how amazing if you're doing some of this work before right so I think number one Again curiosity over judgment to me is very very key for any sturdy leader at any age right so when you're dating people you know when you're friends with people you know and in general they hear something that's happening

for you and more Curious and they are judgmental oh I did this thing I had this awful interview oh what happened oh tell me about that or you even hear that they approach their own life that way right where people who have really intense Rigid judgments about anyone they tend to be that way with others because they tend to be that way with themselves and then that's going to be activated you know probably with kids right that's number one to me I think tolerance for inconvenience M it's like a really important part of sturdy leadership

especially with kids how about you sus that out I mean you can go on like a traveling trip and see how they handle baggage being delayed or whatever I mean You can try to engineer it that way but any other way I think it probably comes up in our life all the time I don't know how much we're always optimizing for convenience versus like yeah let's take the subway it'll take us a little longer but it's easy enough or oh there's a weight at a restaurant I really want to go there okay you know can

I tolerate that or oh I really want to go I was just invited to this party it's going to be so cool I already committed to my Friends and this kind of not quote cool but random group dinner and you know what I'm going to miss that party this is like my my best friend's you know birthday party whatever it is cuz I think that's one of the things with parenting that people don't talk about enough it's massively inconvenient that's really the word I think about all the time I show up I'm trying to grocery

shop my four is having a tantrum and it's just that's inconvenient that I've Spent 10 minutes now dealing with that and I won't be able to finish my my grocery shopping I also think in a relationship the ability to be curious about your experience and not see that as any reflection on their own experience which is really the ability to hold multiplicity like when you say to a partner oh was really upset you didn't text me back probably whoever the partner is their first reaction might be like oh I I wouldn't have been upset in

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

that to me is probably the ultimate kind of indicator because that happens all the time for our kids oh yeah I can only imagine sure it happens all the time I would love to ask you a few questions that one of my employees sent she is she is a toddler in every instance that I've seen she tries very hard to be however she defines it good parent right and I think maybe this conversation will lead her to think About the definition differently but she sent a bunch of very good questions and we probably won't have

time for all of them she really took my question and my producers question seriously I should say so she has eight questions but I want to hop to number eight okay this is about Grandparents does Dr Becky have any good tips on parenting our parents our quote unquote Boomer parents often use guilt and shame as teaching methods which we Don't love or approve of but how do we effectively introduce more positive ways they can grandparent our children when they are together or babysitting for us this question could also apply to someone's partner right if someone

reads your book they think it's fantastic they want to embrace it but their partner maybe has a heavy-handed reactive way of handling things or yes fill in the blank they're skeptical right so maybe you could speak to the grandparents and Maybe that will also speak to the partner question although they're different they're probably they're related and different the grandparent one is a great one because I think there's a lot to unpack there so if she was here I'd first probably ask her questions about what it's like for her to parent in a way that's different

from it seems like what her parents think is right I actually think that's at the core what it feels like for her yeah What it's like for her I mean I think that what happens when you have kids and grandparents are involved is we don't even realize how much unconsciously we're just looking for them to tell us we're doing a good job and most parents parent differently than their parents did yeah most grandparents find that to be almost a criticism of how they parented and so they're interested in criticizing their kids almost as a way

of making themselves feel better And then as the parent we don't even realize we're back to being 5 years old and being like please tell me I'm doing a good job and the whole thing becomes very very toxic yeah to me the most liberating thing when you're an adult and it's just an idea obviously it takes a little to get emotionally there is I don't need my parents approval I remember when I realized that I was that's actually amazing that just changed my life into so many ways we Won't lose track of the the grandparents

question but was there a cataly in event conversation Revelation there actually was you know like where I just remember going through my dating life M and dating people that you know my parents like would have some things to say about and I didn't I happen not to have any like majorly toxic relationships but they had opinions and I just remember one day thinking the way it came up my head is my God wait they're not dating Them like they're not dating this person there was an eye I think there was a boundary I'm in the

[ __ ] pit they can be chirpy passengers but that's actually what they are and and by the way I love my parents they're incredible and I think realizing that and this is the thing when you're a parent realizing that about your own parents only serves to make your relationship better because when you're unconsciously looking for their approval you get frustrated by the Way you're you tend to show up in really confusing ways to your kids you start to do weird things with your kids in front of your parents almost trying to bridge this gap

between how I parent and how my parents want me and my kids are like who is my parent they're doing all this weird stuff that they never do and then we really lose ourselves so what I would actually say here which sounds odd and it's probably not that dissimilar to what I'd start with with a partner Although I think the dynamic is different with parents is the first step is actually trying to figure out what do I believe in in my parenting the sturdier you are in your boundaries the easier it is to deal with

push back and in fact the opposite is true with boundaries The More I Seek approval for my boundaries the weaker my boundaries become mhm and so that's where I would actually start so let's say like oh I Wish my parents understood my kids Tantrums the way I try to understand them and instead my parents tend to say why aren't you sending Bobby to his room you know you have a bad kid or whatever they say yeah or if they're babysitting they just do that that's right but even those conversations are so much easier to have

once you've really grounded yourself in what you believe because then the conversation becomes less emotional and here's then how I would Handle it after that how I'm handling Bobby's meltdowns I think it's different than what comes natural to you and we have a couple options I'm happy to kind of go through it and why I'm also happy if you're don't really care about the why just share how I would like you to respond that's in line with the way we're doing things cuz given you spend a good amount of time with him it's just confusing

for him to hear things so differently I know you probably don't Approve or at least it's going to feel weird because it's so new and this stuff really matters to me right and then I don't know how egregious it is again is it just different is it terrifying we want to differentiate but the conversation is kind of me and my parent even are on the same team and that conversation I have a lot more to say about being on the same team versus oppositional teams that's a lot easier to have if I'm less caught up

and Probably what's happening unconsciously which is trying to get them to kind of tell me that I'm doing a good job by my kid mhm let me bring up one other question of hers and I may bring up more but partially because it also Bridges to a question that I had so this is a question about parenting toddlers could apply to all sorts of Ages is it okay to tell my toddler that I'm upset by her behavior for example if she's whining and complaining about getting buckled Into the car and I've tried to stay calm

but it goes on for so long that I get frustrated is it okay to say that I am frustrated by her behavior and I need a break or what is the best response to avoid guilt and shaming language mhm okay because I was thinking was reflecting on the example you gave of the kid jumping on the couch and I could very easily see myself like okay I've done the work done the ifs got the key to the closet and I go Through the routine right I set the boundary if I walk over there and you're

still on the couch but I'm calm I'm calm then I put them down they scream their face off they somehow Juke me and get back on the couch maybe I do it a second time but by this point my blood pressure is a little higher by like rep number three like there's a point sure where if it's like rep number 20 like there's a rep at which anyone will probably kind of break So I guess my question is but we can we can tackle I want to answer her question because she was generous enough to

send the questions all right like is it okay to tell my kid that I'm upset or let me get her language solid but the broader question frustrated I think she said right is it okay to say that I'm frustrated by her behavior and that I need a break etc etc what is the best response to avoid guilt and shaming language my broader question is what do You do let's say in the jumping on the couch example when you've done the right thing two or three times and the kid is just hell still being a you

know difficult yeah so a couple parts of that question number one there's this thing about I hear it I've never said like you can't tell your kids how you feel there's all these like random things people inest like I don't even know who said that but I think I'm not supposed to do it to not you know whenever you're The Ten Commandments but I would say whenever as a parent you're repeating advice to yourself where you can't even name the person who said that it's a pretty good time to say like I'm not going to

let that take up too much space in my head you know if I don't even know the name of the person who I trust enough to let that live wild in my head exactly Abraham Lincoln where I think there's a big difference between saying to your kid I'm frustrated I'm taking a Breath I'm taking a break I'll be back and saying you make me yell at you mhm sure stop doing that that makes Mommy so sad the insinuation that we say out loud that your kid your your three-year-old is making you feel something is actually

especially toxic for kids who you said like you were who are kind of rebellious who already kind of struggle because they know like I'm a little more powerful in my family Dynamic than I Should be people are a little scared of me and now my parent is confirming that as a three-year-old I have the power to make her feel a certain way I think we say it cuz we're so desperate and we're like nothing's worked will this work but again we all say all the things and then we repair and try to do a little

better the next day but I'm not such a fan but what that has got kind of misconstrued as is never tell your kids how you feel they're totally different those are Different things saying to your kid that's a great thing to say hey I'm getting heated I need a break and then I think it's helpful to say to a kid I love you I'll be back because kids are so attuned evolutionarily to attachment and therefore to proximity and kind of quote abandonment that a kid can feel like oh did I like make my parent go

away so hey I'm feeling upset or I feel feeling frustrated I need a moment it's actually such beautiful self-care I'm Going to go to my room I'm going to take some breaths and I'll be back you know connect with you again in a few minutes or whatever it is and that's especially powerful what I want to tell parents listening if you know you're someone where you get reactive you kind of get to the point where you boil over such a powerful thing to say to your kid to preview to them before hey I'm going to

start doing something different going forward you know how sometimes you get Upset I get upset and then kind of there's like this big screaming moment really invested as a parent in trying to have that happen less just keep a calmer home and one of the things I'm going to do is start to notice when I'm a little upset instead of waiting for it to get to a time when I'm very and you could say to your kid because that's what happens to feelings right if you don't take care of them when they're small they get

bigger and out of control so I Might end up saying to you at some point in the next day ooh now is one of those moments I need a break I'm going to take that and I'll be back and what I'd say to a parent you can practice this with a kid they love it I would actually okay let's practice that o get off the couch oh you're not listening okay ooh okay 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

you go to the art room and you color like you can actually Practice this just the way we practice sports plays why do you run a play on a basketball team and practice because you know you're not going to do it in the game if you haven't run it over and over in practice I actually think that's so powerful to think about our interactions with our kids in the same way then when the moment comes and you say o now's one of those times your kid has had a rep already and the whole moment will

probably go a lot more smoothly do you Have any other recommendations something for example I like that and it makes a lot of sense and I'm wondering what you do in a circumstance where you can't take a time out for yourself right let's just say she's trying to buckle the kid into the car tantrum tantrum whine yell yell yell she tries to do the right thing tries the right thing and and her kids still yeah doing the thing yeah doing the crocodile roll in The Babys seat or whatever I'll Answer that question but I really

do think again it's a framework shift question because people say this all the time it's like saying when I drive my car to the cliff what can I do so I don't fall off the cliff like if that was a friend be like why are you driving to the cliff all the time how about we recognize that you're on the road to the cliff when we get to the point as a parent that we are so full of anger resentment burnout that We're about to explode because our kid won't allow us to buckle them into

the car SE the real question if you want to make a change is how do I start to recognize I'm on that road way before I get to the cliff what can I do why am I getting there so often how can I get into a different road to me this is the whole idea of Rage this is actually something we talk about a good inside all the time because when you don't take care of yourself as a parent when you Lose touch with your friends or dance class or whatever the thing that you feel

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

definitely a time and place sweetie I'm going to buckle you into the car seat you're going to scream and cry you're not gonna like it my number one job is to keep you safe and so I'm doing that again my kid's gonna be screaming I Buckle them and then close the door as I'm walking to the front and I say to myself oh my Goodness that was really hard I'm going to go to bed early tonight I'm going to call a friend but again that's an example it's actually a good example cuz I actually heard

this exact example from parent recently that used to drive me bananas the reason that situation feels so exhausting is cuz on some level you have job confusion you think you're job is to get your kid happily into their car seat if you know your job is to keep your kid safe and to do what you can to Try to make it smooth but then if push comes to shove you're just going to prioritize safety and you know that that's you doing your job you actually don't feel as exhausted by it oddly enough it is like

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

on so yeah I got my PhD from columia mhm then my postto year I worked with college students and grad students who were students at Columbia and I did a specialty in the eating disorder kind of Group there so I saw a good number of eating disorder clients and as someone I had a needing disorder in high school and so I think through that you know and I'd been recovery for a while I also just started to put more pieces together a couple things I learned our body has this remarkable way to act out conflict

if we don't kind of understand it and resolve it and this is is like a lot of what anorexia and bulimia are Things that we don't understand things that live kind of unformulated we're conflicted about and the body expresses it in these horrible sematic ways through an eating disorder through so many other things too but as an example and this is not true for everyone but often anorexia is this kind of conflict around your relationship with anger and taking up space in the world it's like kind of amazing in anorexia You both take up so

much space because you get everyone's attention right and you take up no space you shrink into a prepubescent version of yourself like what like that conflict is being kind of represented in your body right I think bulimia how much can I want is it okay to want things for myself can I want things what is my relationship with desire I actually think anorexia and bulimia have a lot to do with your relationship with wanting and desire Especially as a woman is there anything that you took from that experience questions lenses Insight that also transfer it

over to some of the work that you do now or is it sort of looking I guess leading the witness of it but is it like looking at the thing below the thing below the thing is that what it has in common with what you do now or are there other Things I think yes this the second part of that question like what is really underneath people's behavior that's always really driven me it's why I became a psychologist like why do good people do things that work against them why do good kids act out and

lie and do these things why do good parents scream and get into these kind of quick fix Cycles even though they don't want to do that I think I have again it's like the Curiosity over judgment always been really curious about that and then I guess through especially my work with people who had intense eating disorders and this was true when I was in private practice too and worked with teens who were really struggling I think I really understood and saw how desperate they were like a very sturdy leader who could make good decisions when

they couldn't and how they'll say all the things on the Surface that make it seem like they can be in control but really they're deeply struggling and they're deeply in pain and I think that probably helped me see kids struggle in pain underneath their disruptive behaviors reflecting back on my own childhood right I have younger brother and you know Brothers got up to Brothers stuff like you know so he would try to get me in trouble or I'd like kind of like wrestle him and beat him up and it was it wasn't like malicious Necessarily

but there were definitely times when you know he'd be screaming like mom Tim is hitting me and then she'd run into the room and he'd be in the room by himself I wouldn't say he was struggling like he was being mischievous and like maybe there's something underneath it but it seems like kids have this burgeoning sense of agency and sometimes they're troublemakers or like do things that they know are wrong and I'm wondering How you handle some of those situations because you could try to develop a narrative around like the feeling or the pathology underneath

it but I guess maybe at face value perhaps there instances where kids are just doing stuff they know is wrong because it's fun or whatever what do you do in in those type of instances or how do you think about let's see more specific like your brother's saying Tim hit me but you didn't like he's lying is that the Situation sure I mean that's an example I mean I it doesn't weigh heavy on my conscience but it was annoying right and like when I look at his personality as an adult it's like yeah he's play

and kind of a prankster and likees to stir the pot yeah he likes to stir the pot he's very very smart but I'm like yeah it makes sense I would say I definitely don't think my Approach is about pathologizing things or even always like seeing the feeling underneath I actually Think what's core is this idea and I'm going to say it again but I really think it's so different from how we usually intervene that it is worth repeating that you have a good kid underneath whatever is happening there so okay why is my good kid

stirring the pop right my third kid is like this I mean the stuff and the fact that he's my third me and my husband always say we Delight in him cuz I think we're less worried but he will do stuff like hey why do all the Bathrooms smell like pee and we just knew we should ask him I just knew I should ask him this when he was like five and he literally goes oh well I just thought it would be funny in every bathroom to First pee into the garbage can and then dump it

into the toilet that might be why first of all I just tried to stop myself from laughing I'm like that is actually so funny like you also didn't tell anyone for days you just were entertaining yourself it's Just funny and I go can you not do that anymore he's like yeah no problem and he never did it again yeah okay no I think it's really easy to be like what is my kid's a psychopath like what are you doing right but I think for me and maybe it's because my third what did I do yeah

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

of his kindergarten classroom you know in the airport but he's maybe like your brother he thinks funny things he's industrious he comes up with his Own plans and I think the idea wait I have this good kid like I don't have to take this all so seriously maybe I can trust myself to know when this veers into the domain of like really bad or too much and maybe actually what I do is just say hey can you not do that again mhm and maybe I know my son is always going to be a kid looking

to kind of push the envelope and knowing that about him means I'm less surprised I can set up boundaries a little differently and I Can actually and this is what I think is missing a lot and it goes back to knowing your kid's a good kid I can Delight in him delighting in your kid is so important as a parent your kids feel that and it changes and it doesn't make Behavior okay all of it but that element and I think that's what's missing when we're in really bad Cycles we just we love our kid

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

little downtown and get into stupid trouble with a bunch of troublemakers it's actually quite difficult right I couldn't too far away for me to bike and they held the keys to the car etc etc but they were good with certain things that I hated like curfews for coming back from like hanging out downtown after a movie or something which was in retrospect very very smart because a lot of those people ended up in jail oding Etc etc right they would not have been good influences what is the move what does it look like so I

think there's a lot of degrees here and only apparent listening is saying okay when I say bad influence yeah like there's stuff that feels legitimately dangerous my kid's older there's I don't know there's drugs I give you a specific example for a younger kid great okay so I noticed when I was a kid I'm very sensitive to animals and there were a few boys who Legitimately liked torturing animals they liked inflicting damage on animals and as far as I'm concerned that's just that is not a good trait but it's like okay okay so some kids

you know [ __ ] with frogs or squirrels or whatever trash can no no no like mutilating animals is a Step Beyond peing in the trash can I would say so but that kid is also like maybe fine in school well behaved etc etc and so you're like that Kid seems to have zero empathy that's not even not even registering on any scale I don't really want my kid to be around that totally so let's again go to degrees so torturing animals that's like kind of a known concerning trait in a child among psychologists right

it's part of like a Triad you would say you know you know good grooming serial killers definitely concerning yeah so that would probably be the same almost level to me as a Parent as oh my kid is hanging out with kids who again I think there's legitimate sure and that stuff I don't think the parents even have visibility into right like unfortunately so there I think one of the things you say to your kid and and I've now said this a bunch of times in this conversation my number one job is to keep my kid

safe that is such a powerful thing to remind yourself now safe doesn't mean risk-free it doesn't mean I keep my kid in a Bubble but keep my kids safe and so I'm not going to let my kid hang out with kids who again it's not like they have Bad Manners it's not like they do something that's like a little pushing the edge and funny like my son did like this is kind of where we would say is over the line so what would I say to my kid hey I want to go hang out with

person X and Y listen sweetie this is part of a bigger conversation this is where this line helps so much my number One job is to keep you safe and sometimes that means not hanging out with certain kids who are doing really dangerous things mhm and I know as an adult that some of what those kids are doing are dangerous and so I'm not going to take you downtown to be with them now again my kids's probably going to be angry MH I don't have to say to them because I know my role but don't

you understand I don't we really like lower ourselves to our kids' level like I'm Asking my 7-year-old to approve of my decision can you imagine a CEO being like we're going through layoffs if they have to and they're going at everyone's desk like is that okay is that okay that's okay that's okay or a pilot like we have to make an emergency landing everyone vote Yes I need everyone's yes vote come on don't you understand it's like you just have to do the thing you need to do when you're in a position of authority have

to do your job now Exactly do your job there's something else though that happens a lot so maybe it's not animal cruelty right I mean another instance from when I was a kid a lot of those kids ended up getting into a lot of trouble later whether it was going to jail drugs you name it they stole stuff right and it was a small town so like people kind of knew like these kids are bad seeds I mean I know that's a big label but like not a great influence to have around your kids again

I think that would fall under my role around the boundaries that is my job is to keep my kids safe that doesn't mean no risk it literally does mean safe that might lead to hard decisions that my kid's not happy with but are part of my kind of being the true Authority and the adult my kid needs I do think the emergency landing is the most helpful thing if my pilot said we're making emergency landing and someone on the plane said but wait I have a really Important podcast interview with Tim Ferris and they were

like you know what fine forget it yeah yeah you don't want that our kids are going to face tricky situations and again every parent knows the line between safety versus kind of playground you can't play with us you're a poopy head right right right and then I think it becomes a little more nuan there well one thing you said doing your job doesn't mean taking or exposing your kids to Zero risk right and it actually made me think of a friend of mine different former special forces guy amazing guy You' never guess in a million

years that H maybe no but he's not like obvious he's not in your face he's more like a gray man for people who get the lingo but he has two daughters and uh he's very jovial fun guy like he's he's very easygoing he's as tough as you would expect but on the surface like his interactions are very he's actually very Soft but he ended up basically creating this game with his girls where each birth they have like a birthday Challenge and it's something that's hard for them so for and it goes up as they get

olders they get to choose like their 10 challenges it's kind of like having your employees choose okrs or whatever so they got into rock climbing and then into like I'm going to do the cold Plunge in the lake for this long and then I'm going to do cattle Bell Swings with this and this many of this and that the other thing so for those people who ever seen the movie Hannah he's basically training both of his girls to be Hannah which is like training This Guy's daughter Ben as the actor to be Jason Bourne but

he has sort of inoculated them against a lot of types of fear by expanding their exposure to all these different stressors and kind of making a game of it and they do fail at points but they Get to contend with failure and then recover from it I'm wondering if you proactively have done that with your own kids or how you facilitate exposing kids to this broad range of emotional experience so that when they get into the quote unquote real world they're not fragile yes anti fragility is definitely big big goal I guess I think that

I don't often have to insert that as much as I have to be mindful of not removing it there's a lot Of opportunities for kids to be frustrated to take on challenges I mean we're really talking about feeling uncomfortable right don't do their job for them not doing their job for them and not narrowing the range of their resilience if my kid is only resilient when they get the job and have an easy project and go to a dinner where all their friends are and get driven there and there's never any traffic like they're going

to be in trouble right They're going be a lot of trouble but we can't expect them to expect anything different if that's kind of been what we create for them during their formid of years so here's a good example talk about my youngest this is the one who PE in the garbage cans this is my I like this my resilient rebel I like this kid already he is yes he is something he really is he's my kid who wanted to get money to get a certain baseball card that my Oldest son and he was going

to the store and he didn't have money and he had two somewhat loose teeth and he pulled them both out by the end of the day because he figured he could get money from the Tooth Fairy yeah and he did and I was like Wow smart kid industrious very industrious yes high tolerance for pan but I'm think he wanted to play sports and he's my third so he's been playing for a while and the only teams you know he tried out he made Two teams for two different sports where he knew nobody he knew no

kids to me this is such an amazing life experience joining a team where you know nobody and I would say in both teams he's not on the stronger end that's a really powerful life experience in terms of again the capability you will build we think our kids are going to find the cap capability before and then we get frustrated come on you can do it it's not a big deal everybody in life finds Capability after surviving not even after thriving just after surviving something hard the capabil is on the other side you can't expect someone

to access it before you just have to tolerate the before MH right now I think it could be easy to remove that oh I'm going to I'm going to make sure I call a friend to join the team with you right and and some ways we take our own anxiety and we add it you know what I mean versus I really felt like my job to Me here's like such a powerful line I remember before he went to his first basketball practice and this team happened to be a team that they already knew each other

for a year so not only did he know any one they was you know he was I'm really nervous I said that makes sense I'd almost feel nervous if you weren't nervous mhm make sense you're nervous to do something new yeah and then after we walked home and he said you know I think when they introduced Everyone I felt better I said yeah when he goes like you know that I said you'll probably be a little less nervous at next practice but you probably also will be a little nervous and I think this idea when

we build our kids capability I your friend who has all those challenges that sounds amazing and there's all different ways to do things in different families I guess for me I see with my kids there's so many opportunities in life I should say it's not like the Lynch pin of his parenting he's actually just like super active with his kids and role models it and to me one of the most important things for building capability and antifragility is actually this idea of validation and hope or validation and cap ability this is hard and I can

do it often when you do only one with a kid it backfires so we'll be like this is really hard it makes sense you're nervous about practice ooh and we just live in that world and sometimes our kid Feels like are you validating my emotions but I'm just kind of like building my anxiety or we leave that out and we do the opposite it's no big deal it's just a basketball team you're going to be fine kids have been doing basketball forever that's often not great and we think that's like building resilience the lack of

validation doesn't help help your kid cope with the emotion and so it's also not that helpful both is really powerful H makes Sense that you're nervous and you're a kid who can do hard things oh it makes sense you're not sure how this is going to go and you're feeling a little uneasy and I just know 5 minutes in it's going to feel a little easier that idea that I can see my kid where they are and I can almost see a more capable version of them than they can access by the way I think

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

a little bit here but it might work is like do you have a Favorite failure meaning like something that didn't turn not the way you hoped or it was a Miss whatever but it ended up teaching you so much that in the long term it was beneficial I hear my daughter's voice in this moment saying I started good inside for you and the reason she says that is because I had my first kid and at this point I also my private practice and my first kid definitely had his meltdowns he had his difficult moments but

there was Something relatively linear relatively about his development where kind of did the thing okay oh you're so upset you're going to figure it out I'm here with you no you can't have that truck I'm holding it I'm keeping you safe and he kind of responded in kind he would kind of okay and then I'd have all these people in my practice saying Dr Becky like I'm doing the things you're saying but I swear they're making everything worse it's making everything worse it's not working And even though I in general like curiosity over judgment in

the back of my head I was thinking what anyone would think like you're just not doing it right you know you're not doing it right that's all but moving on and then it actually kind of in these sessions would make me have to innovate I'm like okay well that's not working and I kind of do love problems and thinking through things like try this try this you know and then I had my second kid and I feel Like after a year and a half I remember being like I need to call all of those people

that I was secretly judging I was like oh my God I know what you're talking about because I am watching myself do the thing I was telling you to do when I was doing with my son and I'm watching my kid scream or by the time she's old enough to talk be like stop talking I hate you and I was like what are you talking about I'm being an amazing parent right now why are you Saying that and I would say for a number of months I really mean it was like a dark it was

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

to sleep and I say and tomorrow I'm going to turn it into fire because there's a lot of energy and feeling awful and overwhelmed and if you can like allow yourself to embrace it and not fight it then I feel like there's a day where you can use all of That for something productive and I feel like that's what I did and I started to connect these crazy dots in my head I was like okay so they're all these family out there who are telling me the same thing I'm seeing with my kid these kids

when you try to talk to them about their feelings even in the best way they explode their meltdowns are like animalistic hissing growling I mean really intense they act like a caged animal and then I thought about probably 30% of the adults I was seeing in private practice for really deep therapy and the struggles they had in adulthood a lot of fear of Abandonment a lot of emotion disregulation a lot of really low selfworth and it was crazy to I mean I was like oh my God they were all my daughter and they were all

those kids I saw this whole thing and it led to this body of work where with the adults I was doing this really deep therapy of kind of going back to some Moments and really reworking them in this like experiential way and they would tell me things I'm not joking that I would then do with my daughter could you give an example okay here's an example so your kid has this meltdown and some parents listen be like yeah my kid has meltdowns okay I'm not talking about the run-of-the-mill Meltdown I am talking about it truly

The Exorcist The Exorcist it's animalistic because these kids and I call them deeply feeling kids They experience their feelings as threats and so if your feeling is a threat in your own body think about what you would do to get rid of it you have to like expel it onto someone and they're so porous to the world that they get overwhelmed more easily and they fear being overwhelmed and then they fear they're going to overwhelm you and basically with these kids their shame sits so close to their vulnerability so whenever they feel vulnerable shame Makes

it explosive and then when you try to get close like hey I'm here for you or hey you're mad it's too close they actually do it sounds so existential but they fear that they are toxic and then they will kind of make you toxic and so they say things like get out I hate you leave me alone and then as parents we kind of take the bait fine I'm just trying to help and then we leave these kids alone they're completely 10 out of 10 disregulated and then they basically Learn see I really am as

bad and toxic as I worried I was and we see this all the time in adulthood yeah act itself out this is a good example of what came from this most amazing adult I worked with forever and we went back to this moment in her childhood work again she'd be in her room because these kids would be in the room and they're out of control screaming at a parent like get out and kids are oriented by attachment which is a system of proximity so when They say get out not calmly we all say get out

someone's like sure I'll get out but they're like not in a place to be making a decision what they're really saying is I'm so terrified I'm going to terrify you and I'm so terrified therefore I'm bad because if I terrify you so much that you can't even be near me I'm a vulnerable kid that basically means I'm not going to survive cuz I need your attachment to survive and I remember going through Like what she needed in that moment and I remember kind of going through this visual of this wise adult being in her room

with her staying even though she's screaming get out cuz I always say with deeply feeling kids when they're in that 10 out of 10 State their words are not their wishes they're their fears honestly all of us most of us that's a really interesting reframe can you say that one more time when we're completely out of Control and overwhelmed and we scream things out in that state our words are not our wishes our words are our fears mhm and I think even the visual if you have a kid like this what they're screaming they're actually

screaming to their feelings not to you get out leave leave me alone I have the chill is like they're not talking to a parent they're talking to these like terrifying Sensations in their body so we went through this this Visual and I'm in the room kind of like visually with you're doing this with your client this is an adult exactly this is what help me so much with deeply feeling kids one of the things I'm just giving you one example and I was like okay so I don't remember if it was her mom or just

some sturdy adult who wasn't seeming scared of her I said so she's standing at the door with you and I remember this woman saying she's not standing she has to be Sitting and I kind of explored that in the imagery and she was if she's standing I I just believe she's about to leave I don't believe she's committed to this so she was sitting at the door and I'm like okay so she's sitting at the door and this goes into so much more about deeply feeling kids but in these moments they need containment they literally

need to be with you in a smaller space because they're so fearful of how their feelings come out of them And take up all the space that they need to essentially have us hold space with them like your feelings only go this far and I'm sitting with you at the door because I'm I would never let you kill both of us so my sitting here with you is almost a way of saying you are not so bad and awful and toxic after all and if I cannot be scared of this one day you will not

and every [ __ ] time when you do this and it's more Details and just this your kid will end by crawling over to you like a dog and coming into your lap for a hug because that's exactly what they need but that idea that you can't even be standing I kind of knew in these moments she was screaming get out I was like you're not in a place to be making good decisions for yourself it would be like if my kid was trying to cross New York City street completely out of control like don't

hold my hand like yeah your words are Not like I'm not you're about to die in ourc coming traffic like there's something deeper I'm going to hold you and I knew I had to be in the room but I remember as soon as my client told me this thing about sitting down I remember with my own daughter and talking to clients I had all these clients at the time who had these kids cuz I was kind of getting these referrals from these kids labeled as Oppositional Defiant Disorder difficult Traumatic all of these diagnoses I was

like Wow Oppositional Defiant Disorder you cannot like a child who you label as Oppositional Defiant yeah and we were all trying these things and everyone at the same time was like the sitting down and kind of imagining yourself in this just really sturdy way it shortened the Meltdown by like 90% right and again that it came directly from my work with I think so many of my best interventions come from actually the work I did with Adults understanding what adults needed and kind of when they were kids and reverse engineering that to today's parents fascinating

example and I can Envision it I can see it working I mean I I suppose I've used different words for it but a friend of mine recently recommended a book to me which was something like the highly sensitive person or something like that because what I say to people from myself and I was like this is a kid too I like my Senses are very very sensitive mhm very porous and it can be incredibly overwhelming sometimes and I've become better at using that and managing it but as a kid I mean forget about it different

story well you're probably what I would say is a is a deeply feeling kid mine too and I say to her you're a super sensor because with these kids I live in New York City that MH and we'd be getting near the garage where we park Our car and she would not want to go into the garage like the smells of even near the garage it's so easy as a parent to say something to a kid like you're so crazy what are you talking about it doesn't smell any different outside here and if you think

about what you're really doing is you're saying to a kid I know how you feel better than you know how you feel now again the boundaries matter might there be a time especially when she was younger would say I get it You smell it it's awful you smell things I don't smell and I'm picking you up I have to carry you in the garage that's independent from my action yeah but again when we can't separate those two we usually say super invalidating things to dfk we tell them they're dramatic we tell them they're making a

big deal out of nothing a principle of all human behavior is we all need to be believed and so if you don't get believed you escalate the expression of your behavior In desperation to be believed then usually people lead with more invalidation which means you escalate Behavior further to try to get the original thing you were looking for and with deeply feeling kids and parents that's a cycle we really reverse yeah wow yeah trip down memory lane that's wild send the send do the workshop yeah we have a lot of adults do it separate from

their kids it's all the same stuff yeah it is all the same stuff if you Could put metaphorically speaking a message on a billboard could be a quote could be an image anything non-commercial just something to get out to very large number of people could be a reminder a request anything Mantra that you find useful anything at all what might you put can I pick more than one of course not on the same billboard I don't know about The Branding of all them at once but I I have too many I have too many things

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

I think when you're talking about kids working on math or learning how to read doing a puzzle or doing something at work or managing your first conflict in your romantic relationship you put on their desk like a placard or like a little dry RIS board or little Post-It note I took a Post-It note and wrote it messily into just put it up there and say it one more time this feels hard because it is hard not Because I'm doing something wrong the difference between understanding something's hard because it is versus thinking it's hard because basically

you failed has massive life implications on what we'd be willing to take on next as a challenge like yeah that's just a hard math problem if it feels hard that's because you're doing it right because it's supposed to be hard oh I'm doing it right versus I'm not good at math I mean it's just Remarkable especially academically when kids are young how that how powerful that is if I could put something different on a b or if I have like you're going to you're sponsoring many branding campaign budget okay it would be one of two

things this is like different versions of a similar idea parenting doesn't come naturally the only thing that comes naturally is how you were parented or we were never meant to Parent an instinct alone the whole idea of maternal Instinct has had a profound impact on parents profound and awful and it's not to say I don't think there's some Instinct in us obviously I get that but it would be like a doctor saying I didn't go to medical school I have surgical Instinct I surgical Instinct and you're like yeah I'm just not going to see you

and if your friend said that yeah it's going to be a hard pass right It's a hard pass and it's just so interesting that I think we take learning seriously at every point in our lives and then we get the job that's the hardest and most ongoing and most important job we'll ever have and we're social Iz to think we're supposed to be learning before I'll take a CPR class a pregnancy class and then once your baby's like one The Narrative I hear from parents we hear this Honestly cuz that good inside I think way

more than trying to help you through a tantrum or trying to elevate parenting parenting deserves education because that's a good compliment with Instinct like there are things to learn doesn't come naturally and I really we have moms especially all the time say I just I I feel like it's a sign of a failure M which to me I just don't know anyone who goes to medical school and says oh I have to go to medical school to become a Doctor unlike my friend who I don't know has a surgical Instinct has a surgical instinct or

I get my surgical tips on Instagram and I think that's enough you would say to a doctor yeah that's cool you want to stay up to dat and some tips but you probably need a foundation and I think this goes back to fault you know where it goes back to how When we struggle especially as women we tend to think it's our fault instead of maybe something more useful like a Little bit of Anger of like wow the system is pretty stacked against me like nobody is setting me up to have Clarity in my job

to know what to do and to actually feel res resourced and supported and then I think we'd find parenting hard but we wouldn't find it as impossible as we find it today you said one of two things what was was there another very oh just some version of I think part of me I I like to be Punchy if I was going to put something On a bill board I wanted to create you know a conversation so maybe I'd say something like there's no such thing as maternal Instinct not because I even fully believe that

but just to start a conversation on the limitations of that framework and I think the massive amount of Shame it's created especially for women and shame leads to an Animal Defense freeze State freeze you don't act so what's kind of amazing and [ __ ] up is if you can convince women that They should be be able to parent on maternal Instinct alone it's just a great way of kind of ensuring moms forever feel really bad about themselves and don't talk about it yeah that resonates I mean look what do I know I don't have

kids but just what I've seen with friends is there seems to be certainly there are like matern there are maternal instincts for sure right just like some people may be better suited to empathy and bedside manner as A surgeon but you also want them to go to med school yeah two things are true right two things are true and what I've seen amongst because there are all these battles in the parenting discussions right there's like the the attachment parenting versus the sleep training versus and man oh man these get intense and you know I'm watching

some of these things because I'm curious but if one of the stories that sometimes pops up is related to mothering IND different let's Just say for Simplicity indigenous cultures and what gets lost there is overemphasized is the Instinct and what that means and what you can rely on what gets a little lost is societally as you said how for a lot of women in industrialized Western cities let's just say or westernized cities or certainly Coastal us in a lot of places in those societies have spent Time in Ethiopia and all over South America and so

on it's like from a very young age they are being taught how to take care of kids in whatever way makes sense culturally in that context but it's like from a very young age like they're getting training that's like being born into like jro Dreams of Sushi and it's like all right you're going to start with washing the Bots I mean like from a very very early age they're being taught and getting a lot of practice Which is just simply not the case for a lot of women these days so it would seem to make

a lot of sense that they need to have the opportunity to be resourced as you said yeah and I think the resources again that I always want for parents extend so beyond just your interactions with your kids like learning to set real boundaries is lifegiving like in every area of your life and I think that's why when people are kind of involved in the good inside system for a while like when We interview users it's interesting after a little while they say oh I asked for a raise for the first time my girlfriend from college

always go away and honestly my partner always gives me a hard time every year and so I don't ever go and for the first time I realized wait Dr Becky like you said those are my partner's feelings I can care about them but I don't have to take care of them meaning my partner can be upset and I can go on my trip right and Then we always say like what about those Tantrums remember how you came and they were like oh is that why I came in right so I think what I want for

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

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

so anything about saying no and boundaries and repair repair yeah I feel really stuck and I just I can't get myself to go to my kids's room and say the thing and yeah I always feel like a Script is like a door opening sometimes we need someone to open the door for us and then when you get in the room you're like okay I can do this but that's kind of what a script can give what specific boundary setting or saying no like within that subcategory what are the things that tend to come up the

most honestly almost always when I'm asked a question my answer is almost always reframing the question how do I say no without someone Getting upset I mean this with love it's just a bad question it's a bad question it's an impossible question how do I say no and tolerate someone being upset is a great question love that question so I'll shift to that usually when we feel stuck in life it's because we're asking the wrong questions right not cuz we don't have you can get also get a great answer to the wrong question and that

can lead astray right I was like questions are roads you walk down mhm to Make sure that the road it's like the destination you want to end in not kind of a cliff or something unproductive and I'll share some of them here just because some of them are going to put out there so how do I say no right again I think saying no well really comes from knowing your why and really being grounded more in your experience than the other person's the reason it's hard for someone to say no is cuz they've actually already

vacated their body and If it's me say you know here we are on Monday but let's say you ask me hey can you do Monday at 3:30 I'm like I really can't for whatever reason oh my God what is Tim going to think about me and is Tim going to be really upset what am I going to say when Tim says that that's the only time and you can't say no from that place because your no and setting a boundary comes from your place of authority and if I vacated my body and I'm now spending

all my time in Tim's Head right you lost yourself in your fantasy of you've lost your and your fantasy exactly Tim's probably like why are you spending so much time in my head I would have just figured it out with you that's that's that's what we do so I think step one is actually coming back to ourselves like why am I saying no okay I'm I'm saying no because I don't know I have to pick up my kids from school or whatever it is right it actually becomes a lot more self-evident I'm not able to

make that time because whatever the reason is and then I think one of the best thing with scripts when you're saying no naming your intention naming it not just thinking it is really helpful in communication I'm really excited about recording I am unable to do this I would love to find another time right making it really really obvious what your intention is really does get in a helpful way it prevents someone else from misinterpreting it From you thinking oh Becky just doesn't want to be in my podcast and it also makes me feel sturdier because

I'm kind of connecting to you along the way one of the ways to think about boundaries and how to actually set them because there's a lot of people who are like I know I want to set them but it's the holding and I just feel so uncomfortable and my mom's mad at me or my kids mad at me okay so right now we're sitting on opposite sides of the table but imagine We're on a tennis Court okay we're I'm on one one side of the Court behind the Baseline and you're on the other side but

instead of a net I don't know there's like a glass wall so like I could see you but whatever happens on your side would stay on your side Okay the reason boundaries become hard to hold because I'm on my side setting a boundary so maybe it's saying to my mom oh you want to come over to see the kids it doesn't work for us we have to find Another day right or maybe it's saying to my kids oh TV time is over or no sweetie I we're here to buy a birthday present for your cousin

but I'm not going to buy anything else you know you see that thing you want that's my boundary and on your side is your feelings so if you're my mom you're upset and maybe your version of upset is guilting me who knows right and maybe if you're my kid in the toy store you're upset probably your version is screaming Meltdown or who knows what it is right what we say to ourselves all the time is I can't set boundaries I feel so guilty right okay in my mind guilt is a Feeling you have when you're

acting out of alignment with your values that's why guilt is useful if I yelled at a taxi on the way home tonight I would feel guilty because that's not in my values to yell at anyone definitely not someone trying to help me that guilt would make me reflect huh I wonder why I yelled what Could I have done differently useful but it's interesting when people say I set a boundary with my mom because I just need the alone family time but I feel guilty I said no to my kid because I don't want to buy

them everything at a toy store and I feel guilty it's not guilt it's sex life-changing it's not guilt because you're acting in alignment with your values so then b a question what is it it's our tendency to see other people's distress on their side of the tennis Court and this usually happens in childhood we learn we kind of say I will take that for you I will take your upset and bring it to my body and put it in my body to kind of metabolize it for you and I will call it guilt but it's

not guilt it is someone else's feelings that you're feeling for them and not only is that not good for you it's actually awful for the other person because if you metabolize let's say your kids feelings for them they never learn to Deal with the stress you can also never empathize because the only reason I can empathize is if I actually see your feelings as yours so I actually have to when I do this exercise this Workshop or I'll say to someone you have to give that feeling back to its rightful owner let's say I take

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

need people's feelings to say on their side of the Court mhm it kind of comes over to me m I'm like I can't what you have to do is actually almost put your hands up and like push It back and actually the visual is powerful that's my kids's feeling or my mom is upset she can't come over if I actually think about it that makes sense I'm allowed to say no and they're allowed to be upset is like a great life mattra they're equally true no one's a bad person my mom is not a bad

person for feeling upset that she can't see her grandkid I am not a bad person for saying the time doesn't work for me those two things just happen not to kind Of be in line with each other so I have to hold them at the same time they're both true neither is wrong and neither is more true than the other and if you see your mom's feelings as real ironically now you could actually empathize with her because as long as you're taking on the feelings you can't empathize you're responding to your mom to take care

of your own feelings that weren't yours you're putting yourself in the washing machine as opposed to Looking through the glass 100% at what's inside the washing ma that's right and so holding boundaries you get better when you picture that tenants court and you start to ask yourself am I really feeling guilt it's probably not can I give that person's feelings back and then empathy actually helps you hold a boundary h i get it Mom you wish you could come over I know I'd be upset if you were if I were you too oh does that

mean I can come over no it doesn't I'm Just saying I understand right and then that's how so that visual I think is powerful tennis court we have just a few minutes until our time yeah and I thought I would just open the floor to ask you if there are any things we didn't touch upon that you'd like to mention if there are any requests of my audience my listeners any reminders closing thoughts anything at all that you'd like to add and people can certainly find good Inside atg good inside.com and we'll link to all

your socials as well Instagram Dr BeckyG good inside I believe mhm and we'll put all these in the show notes of course the book good inside a Guide to Becoming the parent you want want to be we'll link to the Ted Talk we will link to all the goodies in the show notes but is there anything else that you'd like to mention no I mean I think that I find learning and Reflection to be really such a brave Endeavor I really really do because if you're thinking about yourself or thinking about why we do the

things the way we do or oh maybe I do want to intervene differently like there's probably someone at this point saying maybe my kid is a deeply feeling kid like should I go learn more about that and I feel like that's very brave because to do that you're going to be Confronted by feelings of like oh shoot I going to do that and we all have wondering questions of did I mess my kid up which you didn't but we wonder it and then we feel upset and then to kind of push forward and say like

okay I'm going to tolerate those feelings in the pursuit of finding something that's going to end up feeling better to me I just find I find it very admir and increasingly hard to do in today's world you know we're all oriented around Short-term convenience and gratification and so for anyone listening at this point I really I just want to say thank you I want to say you know there's probably a lot of Tolerance of uncomfortable emotions along the way there's there's no one we care about in the world in the way that we care about

our kids we're so invested in it so thinking about getting support thinking about taking a workshop or getting a resource on some level it seems like Well yeah it's the person I care the most about I'm going to do that but there is is this pull away of like ooh I I don't know if I want to look at something and so the people who are willing to do that I just think that's like my type of people and I love people who are who can do hard things so I want to say thank you

and then the thing I want to hold right next to that is everything I said today and I should have said this in the Beginning I myself definitely do not do 100% of the time as a parent and it really matters to me that people know that number one just cuz it's true and I don't want to misrepresent myself but there's no perfect parent kids don't need a perfect parent that would again be weird if we set our kid to think that their most important relationships down the road are going to be with people who

are always perfectly attuned to their every feeling and need That would be very counterproductive and so again maybe we end with what we begin with is the most powerful relationship strategy I believe we have in any relationship is repair it's our willingness to go back to take responsibility to say hey I wish I handled that differently to then hopefully actually do a little bit of like the inv tigation or resourcing we need to actually do it differently but I I want to leave Parents or any listener with that there's nothing more powerful than repair there's

nothing more important to get good at as repair which also means you have to mess up because the only way you can repair is if you did mess up and so I just want to leave people with that more kind of balanced human note because that's the thing I usually hold on to myself and for people who are curious they want to explore the world world of good inside and Dr Becky Kennedy where would you suggest they start in terms of like dipping a toe in the water let's just for the purpose of applying some

constraints right somebody who doesn't maybe they don't have the ability or the financial resources to go to like an extended Workshop or something like that yeah where might they start let say go to your local library and kind of request the book if it's not you know in definitely get on the request list for good inside I would Say come to good inside.com and sign up for our emails I'm bursting with new thoughts all the time and I always need containers for them so one container is you know our email or kind of weekly thoughts

for me on Thursdays I send out Instagram my own podcast sorry I should say I'm on a podcast Now podcast listeners usually listen to other podcasts so maybe that's best it's just called good inside we try to keep it simple and good inside.com is kind of The home for everything we do and then I would say if your kid is you know I love to help people whose kids aren't just struggling it's kind of like waiting to to marriage counseling until you're like in a problem it's never the best but a lot of us wait

I really think of our resources inside our app as you know about your kids and your own emotional wellness and we try to we have I think we make that very accessible you know compared to other Emotional Wellness Resources so that's there too well folks there you have it that is how you wait into the waters and I'm so happy we could have this conversation thank you for taking the time thank you this was awesome took a lot of notes for myself also right best to be prepared might take a little while for me to

get the kiddos online but that is the plan and I really appreciate what you are teaching these toolkits are incredibly powerful and as we have Mentioned and alluded to multiple times in this conversation you can apply these things everywhere it is not limited to your interactions with your kids and to everybody listening thanks for sticking around thanks for tuning in and as always be just a bit Kinder than is necessary until next time that includes other people but that also includes yourself and for links to everything we discussed You can find them in the show

notes tim. Blog podcast and I'll repeat myself but thanks for tuning in till next time take care