Good Inside with Dr. Becky - Do I Have a DFK?

Episode Date: November 12, 2024

Do your kid's tantrums seem more intense than other kids their age? Do they come on fast and last much longer? No, you're not imagining it. And no, there's nothing wrong with your kid. Your kid might ...be a Deeply Feeling Kid. And these kids will learn how to regulate their emotions, they just need a different approach. Today, Dr. Becky gives you the tools you need to assess if your kid might be a Deeply Feeling Kid.Get the Good Inside App by Dr. Becky: https://bit.ly/4egGIjAFor more on the Deeply Feeling Kids Workshop visit https://bit.ly/4ege3KMFollow Dr. Becky on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drbeckyatgoodinsideSign up for our weekly email, Good Insider: https://www.goodinside.com/newsletterOrder Dr. Becky's book, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be, at goodinside.com/book or wherever you order your books.For a full transcript of the episode, go to goodinside.com/podcastTo listen to Dr. Becky's TED Talk on repair visit https://www.ted.com/talks/becky_kennedy_the_single_most_important_parenting_strategyToday’s episode is brought to you by Airbnb: Let's be honest, parenting is expensive, especially around the holidays. If you’re traveling over the holidays and have an empty home consider making a little extra income by becoming a host on Airbnb. Every little bit helps, especially during the holiday season! Being an Airbnb host means that you are providing another family with an amazing experience and it's a great way to earn some extra money for all the different things you wanna do. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb dot com slash host. For more on the Deeply Feeling Kids Workshop visit https://bit.ly/4ege3KM 

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Do you have a kid who goes 0 to 60, who you tell yourself all the time, I really feel like my kid has more intense tantrums and meltdowns than any other kid? I really feel like those meltdowns last longer. I also feel like they're more intense. And I swear, I swear I am doing the things that psychologists say, that I read, and they're making things worse. Now, this is the type of situation I was in myself. And it felt almost gaslighting. I felt like, wait, am I just doing it wrong? Is something wrong with me? Is something wrong with my kid? And then everything changed. When I realized, holy moly, no, I just have a kid
Starting point is 00:00:48 who is a little bit different than some other kids and I need to understand this kid. I need to figure out interventions that actually work. I'm not doing it all wrong. I'm not making it all up. I just don't yet have an approach that works. Take a deep breath with me, because if this sounds like your experience of one of your kids,
Starting point is 00:01:12 this is going to be one of the most profoundly important episodes you listen to. This is going to be about figuring out, do I have a deeply feeling kid? Because I want you to kind of get to the bottom of that, because once we figure that out together, then the next steps become clear. I'm Dr. Becky, and this is Good Inside.
Starting point is 00:01:36 We'll be back right after this. So if this episode resonates, if you found yourself thinking, oh my goodness, this really sounds like my kid, I feel like I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't share the supporting resources we have available within the Good Inside app. First, I want to personally invite you to my upcoming Deeply Feeling Kids workshop. There is nothing more hopeful than being connected to a group of parents who just get it, who are in the trenches with you. You will walk away with a whole new understanding of your kid, with strategies and tactics that actually work, probably also with the new
Starting point is 00:02:15 community of parents who are right there with you with their deeply feeling kid. How else can the Good Inside app support you and your deeply feeling kid? Well, you have an online private community kept safe by Good Inside parent coaches, with forums for discussion and deeply feeling kids support groups at no extra charge. You also have access to a chatbot trained in my DFK approach. This is available 24-7 for any question that inevitably comes your way. And seriously, thousands of scripts and strategies curated for you and delivered in bite-sized pieces based on the age of your child so you know it's developmentally appropriate.
Starting point is 00:02:58 Something you should know about me. I never want someone to pay for something that I don't think will make a massive difference in your home. I mean it. I feel so confident in my ability to help you turn things around with your deeply feeling kid that we offer a full 14-day money back guarantee. No tricks. Tap the link in the show notes or visit goodinside.com to learn more. And if you have a question about my DFK approach or about the app, truly just shoot me a DM on Instagram. I always try to answer as many questions as I can. So I just want to start with a personal story.
Starting point is 00:03:42 As I think you know, I'm a clinical psychologist, private practice, and I think it was probably around the time my first kid was, I don't know, two. I was seeing all of these parents in my private practice who were telling me, Dr. Becky, I swear I'm doing the things you tell me to do. My kid's upset, and I'm saying, oh, you're so upset. I get it. But Dr.. Becky it is not reaching my kid It is making my kid worse and I swear I'm doing the other thing
Starting point is 00:04:12 Okay, so they had a hard time we get through it later in the day I try to kind of retell the story with them. Like you told me that helps build coherence I try to bring it up in the most loving non-judgmental way. My kid puts their hand over their ears. They hiss at me. They scream, I hate you. Okay, so this was happening over and over and I have to be honest. My first reaction internally was kind of judgmental.
Starting point is 00:04:41 Okay, I'm just gonna be honest with you. I think my first thought was, well, you're probably not doing it right. Like, I laugh at myself because it took having more kids to realize how absurd that was. But in the moment, I think I thought that. I didn't say that. But what I'd say to these parents is,
Starting point is 00:04:57 okay, it's not working. And I really love to be creative. So I'd say, okay, well, let's try something else and let's do this. And then we eventually would make progress with these very different interventions. Then I had my second kid and my second kid got older and I was doing the same things
Starting point is 00:05:17 that would really help my first kid. Oh, it's so frustrating to do this puzzle. I think you can do it if you stick with it. And that kid, instead of looking calmer, would look at me with like dragon eyes as if I had just stabbed her in the heart with what I thought was a beautiful intervention. This kid, we'd be out in public
Starting point is 00:05:39 and something embarrassing would happen. Maybe she'd fall down or I don't know, she did something in a way that didn't feel right and I'd go over and I'd say, I'm right here with you. And she'd blame me. She'd like blame me for something I clearly had nothing to do with. Like I tripped you while you were running on the mat
Starting point is 00:05:57 during the gymnastics party. I was truly 50 feet away from you. It's impossible that I did that. And so many things started to connect in my brain. Oh my goodness. These are the same situations all of these parents would describe to me. When I would work with these parents
Starting point is 00:06:15 and in the back of my mind, probably feel judgmental, I was watching myself do things that were so helpful with my first kid, that I watched be helpful with so many other kids, and they were making things worse. Now, around this time, there were words swirling around my child, and I started hearing these same types of words swirling around other kids. Dramatic, oppositional, difficult, disproportionate. That was like always in a disproportionate reactions. And something started to strike me when I kind
Starting point is 00:06:56 of heard all these words. They just kind of made me like my kid less. Like, okay, so now I'm thinking of my kid as dramatic. I don't know about you, but there's no way I feel closer toward a kid when I think about them as dramatic. Oppositional defiant, like, whoa, even those terms, I just have such harshness. I have an oppositional defiant kid and I kind of went back to my principles. Wait, kids are born good inside. They're born with all the feelings, none of the skills to have these feelings. And then I started to connect to something very new. I feel like my second kid truly felt things more often and more deeply than other kids.
Starting point is 00:07:41 She noticed more things around her. Maybe she sometimes misperceived them, like some kid was smiling and waving at her and she thought that kid was judging her, but another one of my kids wouldn't have even noticed the kid even looking in their direction. And I started to think of this very different term, deeply feeling. My kid was a deeply feeling kid.
Starting point is 00:08:07 And around this time, I actually called some of those parents in my private practice, who some of them I was still seeing on and off, some of them I hadn't seen in years, and I kind of said, oh my goodness, wait. Do some of these things sound like your kid? And I'm going to describe to you what I started to say to them, because my goal with this episode
Starting point is 00:08:26 is for you to really understand, do I have a kid like this? And it's not so clean. I wanna be honest, is there some like diagnosis here? I happen to, you know, be a little, I don't know, squirmy about diagnosis in general. I think sometimes it's helpful. Sometimes it puts kids in a box and pathologizes them. And so this is definitely not a diagnosis
Starting point is 00:08:46 But there are a collection of things that I think are really similar with these kids And I I want to use today to describe these things to you Is this gonna give you everything you need to then help your kid? I want to be totally honest on the front No, it can't right? I mean what I'll tell you about later is I've actually developed a whole approach for these kids This was honestly years of work into my practice and going back to my books from my PhD program and putting things together. And that would, you know, that's too nuanced and frankly too important for a single podcast episode.
Starting point is 00:09:16 But my goal is to give you clarity. Because when you start to understand, oh, my goodness, maybe this is my kid. There's even tears that come because we think our struggles are with our kids' behaviors. Our struggle is actually that we don't understand our kid. And when we understand our kid, we feel relief. Then we can get in a different road for getting the approach we need to get to the outcomes we're looking for.
Starting point is 00:09:36 So here's some of the things I wanna ask you to start to almost assess, do I have a deeply feeling kid? Number one, does it feel like you can be kind of in the lobby of a building with your kid? Now this is a metaphor, but you're kind of in the lobby of a building. Maybe you're in the elevator on floor zero
Starting point is 00:09:58 and one thing happens and it feels like what happened to floor one, two, three, four, five? All of a sudden the elevator catapults to the roof. Like, when I think about zero to 60, I think about being in an elevator with a deeply feeling kid and everything seemingly okay, and then one thing is off. Like someone laughs around them. They don't even laugh at your kid, but they laugh even at something funny your kid said, or they laugh at something someone else said, and this is enough.
Starting point is 00:10:27 Your kid is 10 out of 10, and you, like being in an elevator that goes from zero to floor 50, like you're taken for a ride. You're like, holy moly, what just happened? Core to a deeply feeling kid. Next. or do a deeply feeling kid. Next, when your kid gets upset, they're disappointed, they're frustrated. Maybe you're thinking, I don't even know what the feeling is,
Starting point is 00:10:52 but it is messy and totally dysregulated. Do they push you away instead of wanting you close? This is so key to think about. If I think about my other kids when they're upset, it's not like they say to me in such a sophisticated way, hey mom, I'm upset and I'd really enjoy your presence to help me through this. That has literally never happened, let me be clear.
Starting point is 00:11:20 But I picture one of my kids being upset and if I inch toward them, like, they're okay with it. Or maybe even they soften, or maybe I do give them a literal hug, or I say, hey, we're going to get through this. And even if it doesn't make it better, this is key, okay? They tolerate it. With a deeply feeling kid when they're upset, it's almost like your presence is an additional threat.
Starting point is 00:11:48 And so what would that come out as? Get away from me. Get out of my room. Leave me alone. And I think this is a very conflictual experience as a parent, because you're thinking, like, I'm literally just trying to help you. And then we get very activated
Starting point is 00:12:08 because we feel like we're trying to help, and I think we feel like rejected, or nobody sees our effort and we'll often yell back, fine, fine, I was just trying to help. Or you make things impossible. Or fine, if you don't want me here, I'll leave. So when your kid is upset, and maybe you don't even understand
Starting point is 00:12:27 why they're upset, that's fine, do they tend to push you away? And the other thing, if I go further on this one, do they tend to push you in a way where they kind of do it well? Like they're kind of effective in getting you away because it can be full of such vitriol, right? That we tend to almost then move away from them with anger.
Starting point is 00:12:51 Do they go zero to 60? Do you feel like you're taken for this ride from the elevator that's in the lobby to an elevator all the way on the roof all of a sudden? And do they push you away when they're upset? And in a way, the way I can additionally reframe that, and I think it makes us all soften is, does your kid push you away when they kind of need you the most?
Starting point is 00:13:16 And you're not gonna see that they need you the most because on the surface, it looks like they don't want you. But if you right now think about your kid and these moments when they scream, get out of my room, my guess is they're not doing it in like a calm way. Hey, I really need alone time. They're so out of control. They're in such an awful state that like in our best moments, we think, oh my goodness, my kid must need me. I mean, they're really not in a good way. But do they actually push you away, scream for you to go away?
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Starting point is 00:14:24 Your home might be worth more than you think. I mean, every little bit helps, especially during the holiday season. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com slash host. Okay, next thing I kind of went over with these parents I called to try to assess this and bring this all together. Do they tend to blame you or blame other people when they made a mistake? When they can't find something? When they lose something? When they lose a game? Do they tend to blame others when they're kind of upset or embarrassed.
Starting point is 00:15:08 I don't know, you're playing Candyland and it's clear that someone else is about to win. And it all becomes that, I don't know, someone skipped their turn or they cheated and you're thinking, you know, none of that happened. To me, a classic example of this is, you know, they trip. They bump their elbow. They're maybe surrounded by friends. And then all of a sudden they tell you,
Starting point is 00:15:32 you pushed me into the table, right? And again, this tends to activate us. Cause we're like, what? Me as your loving parent injured you? Like that's not what happened. And then we try to intervene at the level of logic. I didn't push you into the table. I wasn't even in the room. It explodes. We get confused. We get angry and the whole thing gets worse. Do they tend to blame others for things that are definitely not
Starting point is 00:15:54 other people's fault? Next, do they tend to not love surprises? This isn't true of all deeply failing kids, but it's true of a lot of them, even good surprises. I remember being a mystery reader, okay? In my kid's preschool class, I went for my first kid. It was like, oh, which parent or caregiver or special adult is coming? And they'd give clues and the adult would come. And the kid was like, oh, it's my special adult.
Starting point is 00:16:21 And they'd read a book and then they leave. Cool, mystery reader. My first kid, oh, it's my special adult. And they'd read a book and then they'd leave. Cool mystery reader. My first kid, ooh, he was surprised. He was like, oh my goodness, it's you. My second kid, and this was before I put this together because holy moly, would I have handled it differently now that I understand my deeply feeling kid. Let me just tell you,
Starting point is 00:16:41 the reading of the book never happened. That's really all I need to tell you, okay? This moment that was supposed to feel lovely never happened. Even happy surprises, definitely difficult surprises. Anything where they're kind of having an unexpected spotlight kind of again reacts with a lot of intensity. The last thing I want to share, again isn't true for all deeply feeling kids, but if this is happening I would you know really sign my name to something that said I think this is definitely your kid. When they get their most activated do they actually seem animalistic? Growling, hissing, scratching. Does it feel like they're acting like they're a caged animal?
Starting point is 00:17:35 Now, as you think through this, it's possible that you're like three of those really resonated, two of them not as much. What's so important is I want you to give yourself freedom just to say, does a lot of this resonate? Could this be a very different way of seeing my kid and understanding? And if there's a way of connecting all these things and if all these things relate to some core dynamics, could that be something very new? Because I think for these kids, we're generally given an approach that's full of punishment,
Starting point is 00:18:06 that tells us we're not harsh enough on these kids. I cannot even tell you how wrong I believe that is and how I believe that just exacerbates all of these kids' issues. Because as you can see, these kids are very sensitive to threat or the perception of threat and badness. So I just want you to give yourself freedom to say yes to all, maybe some, not others. And I just want to then quickly go through a little lightning round of very common parent questions I usually get. The first one is kind of what I named. My
Starting point is 00:18:40 kid has some of these characteristics but not all. Are they a deeply feeling kid? Are they not? This is where I have a very mixed relationship with my own term. If someone has a deeply feeling kid, to me, they also have many other traits to them. I would like to say, do they have some of these tendencies? Is this a part of them?
Starting point is 00:18:57 Or when my kid gets very activated and upset, do a lot of these things come out? And so if any of this resonates, I would just say this idea of deeply feeling kid is really going to be for you. Okay, next question. My 18 month old has started having huge tantrums. They're not even in the terrible twos yet.
Starting point is 00:19:17 Does that mean I have a deeply feeling kid? I actually want to tell you, no. No, I think actually one of the biggest misperceptions is that tantrums start in the terrible twos. Tantrums start around age one. They do, it's when kids kind of wake up to the world, they have a better sense of wanting things and having feelings when they want something
Starting point is 00:19:34 and don't have them. Now, could your kid have some of these tendencies? They might as they get older, but I would also just remind yourself tantrums are normal. Tantrums are actually a healthy part of development. And I would not say that an 18-month-old having huge tantrums means that they're a deeply feeling kid. Next question.
Starting point is 00:19:49 Your description of a deeply feeling kid sounds like my kid, but my kid's neurodivergent, and so many approaches I've tried don't end up working because they don't account for his neurodivergence. Okay, this to me is a great example of what I say as two things are true. Your kid is neurodivergent. I believe you.
Starting point is 00:20:08 Lots of things therefore haven't helped. I believe you. That's one thing that's true. Another thing that's true. There's so much overlap between neurodivergence and deeply feeling kids getting overstimulated. Sensory sensitivities, big reactions to what other people would say was a seemingly small thing, the tendency to shut down when you get upset. And here's what I want to say, your kid can be both. Now, anyone listening that's, oh my goodness, this sounds like my kid, that means my kid is
Starting point is 00:20:34 neurodivergent. No, it doesn't. A deeply feeling kid can be neurodivergent and a deeply feeling kid could be neuro-typical. The last question I wanna answer is, will things ever get better? Will things ever get better? Yes. Yes, you hear that I have a very hard time answering questions in a straightforward way. I have a lot of nuance,
Starting point is 00:21:00 but this one I wanna answer in a straightforward way, and then I wanna add one thing. Yes. One of the things that's really heartening to me is, again, in the private community want to answer in a straightforward way, and then I want to add one thing. Yes. One of the things that's really heartening to me is, again, in the private community that we have in the membership, we have a room also called Wins and Gems. Let's post some wins you've had.
Starting point is 00:21:14 By far, the most posts we have revolve around people who have done the Deeply Feeling Kid program. What I hear all the time is, in the first eight minutes of the program, I was hysterically crying because I understood my kid for the very first time and actually had hope because now with the understanding and concrete, and I mean concrete strategies,
Starting point is 00:21:38 he'll know exactly what to do, what to stop doing, what to stop saying in key situations, we are seeing change fast. The other thing to say about deeply feeling kids is these are the kids where if we can harness their power, these are the kids who will change the world. When I think about my deeply feeling kid, she's going to change the world.
Starting point is 00:22:02 She's so special. She has so much in her. She feels things so deeply. She can put things out into the world so intensely. And if we harness that, which I really believe most of the strategies, approaches that were given won't do that, it will, they often do, almost get us in this awful power struggle cycle.
Starting point is 00:22:24 But if we do harness it, these kids are going to change the world. Thank you for listening. To share a story or ask me a question, go to goodinside.com slash podcast. Or you could write me at podcast at goodinside.com. Parenting is the hardest and most important job in the world. And you deserve resources and support so you feel empowered and confident for this very important job you hold. I'm so excited to share Good Inside membership. It's the first platform
Starting point is 00:23:06 that brings together content and experts you trust with a global community of like-valued parents. It's game-changing and built for a busy parent who wants to make the most out of the few minutes they have. One last thing before I let you go. Let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves, even as I struggle and even as I have a hard time on the outside, I remain good inside. Today's episode is in partnership with Airbnb.

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