Good Inside with Dr. Becky - Optimizing Happiness with Laurie Santos

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

Every parent wants their kid to be happy and to grow up into a happy adult. But sometimes, a parent's intervention in the short term can lead to their kid becoming an unhappy adult in the long term. Yale professor, scientist, and podcast host, Dr. Laurie Santos, joins Dr. Becky to talk about happiness and the difference between optimizing for happiness in the moment and optimizing for happiness in the future. Get the Good Inside App by Dr. Becky: https://bit.ly/4gjmUOcFollow 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. And Dr. Becky hears all the time from parents that there are so many things they want to do that just don't fit into their budget, and it can feel kind of powerless. And then, once the holidays are over, they still end up having spent more than they usually do and feel stressed and behind. So now that the holidays are behind us, she wants to share an idea for a way to make some extra income in 2025…Hosting on Airbnb. Being an Airbnb host means that you are providing another family with an amazing experience— because I know you've created your home with a family in mind—and it's a great way to earn some extra money for all the different things you want to do this year. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb dot com slash host.Today’s episode is brought to you by AG1: As parents, we all wonder: “How can I take care of myself while also caring for my kid?” It’s so easy to lose ourselves—and then we get resentful and reactive. AG1 is a daily supplement powder with minerals, probiotics, antioxidants—all that good stuff that supports your overall health and well-being. For Dr. Becky, a Good inside mom working on being a sturdy leader, AG1 is something else as well; it’s how she ensures she starts her day by remembering herself. To learn more, go to drinkAG1.com/drbecky to check it out. For Good Inside listeners, we added in—with no extra charge—a bottle of Vitamin D3K2 and 5 free AG1 travel packs with your first purchase.

I often talk about these not so great feelings as the dashboard on your car, where your tire light, your engine light comes on. Is your engine light coming on bad? It's just information, but it's kind of a pain in the butt. There's something you have to do at that point. You've got to take the car in. But if you don't take the car in, if you don't listen to that information, then your car is going to die on the butt. There's something you have to do at that point. You got to take the car in. But if you don't take the car in, if you don't listen to that information, then your car is going to die on the highway. And I like this analogy for a couple of reasons. One is like,

it gets to this point that you're making about the neutrality of different kinds of emotions. It also tells us something about what we need to do with negative emotions, which is like, you don't necessarily have to deal with it immediately. Like if the engine light goes on, you'd have to immediately pull off the next exit if the engine light goes on, you'd have to like immediately pull off the next exit of the highway, but you gotta schedule some time to kind of work on it. I just want my kid to be happy. Why isn't my kid happier?

How do I make sure my kid becomes a happy adult? The topic of happiness is honestly one of my favorite topics to talk about, mostly because I think there's a big difference between kind of optimizing for happiness in the moment and optimizing for happiness long term. I know that's confusing, right? If we make our kids happy today, won't they become happy adults? Well, I have some thoughts on this, but I wanted to bring in

one of the most known experts on the topic of happiness. Today on the podcast, I have the incredible, lovely, brilliant, warm, thoughtful Dr. Laurie Santos. She's a Yale professor. She's the host of the Happiness Lab podcast, and she helps people improve their well-being with the science of happiness. By the end of today's episode, you're going to get a couple things. You're going to rethink what happiness is. You're going to also have a new perspective on those moments when you want to intervene and just make something a little easier for your kid.

And you're going to actually have an arc or kind of a road, a pathway for how to actually make sure our kids feel confident, confident and happy. I'm Dr. Becky and this is Good Inside. We'll be back right after this. As parents, I think we all wonder, how can I take care of myself while also caring for my kid? It's so easy to lose ourselves, and then we get resentful and reactive. For me, it's all about small, consistent actions

that remind me that I matter. And for months now, AG1 truly has been a key element in my life. AG1 is a daily supplement powder with minerals, probiotics, antioxidants, all the good stuff that supports your overall health and wellbeing. For me, a good inside mom, working on being a sturdy leader, AG1 is something else as well. It's how I ensure I start my day by remembering myself.

I've gotten to know Kat Kohl, the CEO of AG1, and you'd love her because she's a true champion for parents. She even offers the Good Inside app as a corporate benefit to parents working at AG1 because she knows that AG1 and Good Inside are both crucial parts of a parent's sturdy foundation. To learn more, go to drinkag1.com slash Dr. Becky to check it out. And for Good Inside listeners, we added in, with no extra charge, a bottle of vitamin D3K2 and five free AG1 travel packs with your first purchase. I can't wait to hear what you think. So I'm going to say the word happiness, and you are one of the experts on the science of happiness. And so maybe we can just jump in with what is happiness?

What is Dr. Laurie Santos' definition of happiness? Oh my gosh, we're going to have such a long conversation on this. But yeah, I'll keep it short. Social scientists tend to think about happiness as having two parts, kind of being happy in your life and being happy with your life. So being happy in your life is that you have a decent amount of like positive emotions, you have joy and laughter,

and maybe a good ratio of those positive emotions to negative emotions. We don't wanna get rid of negative emotions completely, we might talk about this, but you wanna have a decent ratio of the positive stuff. That's sort of being happy in your life. But being happy with your life is the idea that you have a sense of meaning and purpose.

You feel satisfied with your life. Another way to think about it is like how you feel in your life and how you think about your life, the sort of affective parts and the cognitive parts. And I love that definition because I think, sometimes we can get off on one, but be okay on another. I think any parent who thinks back to like to when they were in the newborn days, they're like, lots of meaning, you're so satisfied with your life, this rich sense of purpose,

but nobody's sleeping and there's dirty diapers and you're kind of off track a little bit. I think the best case scenario is that we're bumping both of those up at once, where you have a life where you're experiencing joy, calm, like laughter, fun, but also feel like you're doing that in a way that gives you meaning and purpose. Yeah. Okay, so I guess that leads me to my next question. What do you think a lot of people misunderstand about happiness? Yeah, I think the biggest misconception is that, well, one big misconception is that it's out of our control, right?

You're kind of genetically born either as a happy kind of person or a down in the dumps person. And, you know, that's it. It's kind of luck of the draw. But so much research suggests that our happiness is something that we can take action on. We can kind of build it up. We can sort of do things,

whether it's with our behavior or our mindset to sort of feel a little bit happier. I think a different misconception though is just that happiness is something that is kind of like hard to build up unless you fix your circumstances, right? We think, okay, fine, I can build happiness, but to do that, I have to hit the lottery. I have to change my job. I have to switch my partner. All these life circumstances have to come together in a particular way to make me happier.

And the research really shows that this is a misconception in part because it is true that if you have really dire circumstances, like if you're living as a refugee, you can't put food on your table, yes, of course, changing your circumstances will matter for feeling better in your life and with your life. But for the vast majority of people listening right now, circumstance changes probably won't have

as big of an effect as you think. You'd be better off focusing on changing your own personal behaviors, your mindset, your thought pattern, your kind of standard like CBT stuff, cognitive behavior therapy have changed the way you think and the way you feel. That works better than like, oh, if I can only switch my job and get another $100,000 a year, I'd be way happier.

Interesting. Another moment, Laura, you and I can talk about CBT because I would probably say some other stuff would be helpful, but we could put that to the side for now. You know, one of the things that I also think people kind of misperceive about happiness. And I really want to get your opinion on this because obviously I think a lot about kids and parenting. And I think there's this difference, but you tell me, between optimizing for our kids' happiness in the moment versus setting our kids up to experience happiness down the line. And I think the easiest thing is like, okay, so I'm going to optimize for my kids being

happy now and then they'll be happier later. And I actually have found, and I haven't done true academic research on this, but that actually it's the opposite. Now, let me just be clear, because people always go to extremes. Oh, so I should make my kid miserable and then they'll be happy? No, no, I've never said that. Please don't quote me on that.

Okay, no. But when you optimize for their happiness, short term, meaning my kid wasn't invited, I don't know, to a birthday party. Okay, we'll have our own party and we'll invite all the kids that person invited so no one even goes to their party. I don't know, we say like crazy things sometimes as parents.

I do too. Or I don't know, my kid is like, oh, I don't want to go with you on that errand. And like they're whining. So I'm like, you know what? Forget it. Okay. I'll make sure I have a sitter that day and you'll be happier. Okay.

So if I'm optimizing for happiness short term, I have found that those kids end up so anxious later on and relatively unhappy. Is there truth to this or how would you think about that? Yeah. I mean, I think there's a lot of truth to this. I think so often parents, I mean, for all good reasons, right? We need to change childcare, et cetera, right? But like, so this is not beating up on parents at all. But I think so often parents are optimizing for like Thursday night at 6 p.m., not thinking of the consequences of what their intervening or placating or something will do to, you know, every Thursday night beyond that or five years from now, 10 years from now and so on.

And we know that this kind of like intensive parenting winds up having some negative consequences down the line, especially things like intervening for kids, right? When you solve their boredom immediately, so they kind of get over boredom super fast, it makes it kind of harder for them to kind of soothe themselves later on. When you intervene, especially in academics for older kids on things like homework or help them, you remember their backpack or remember their lunch. All these things are kind of solving for the moment, but not helping kids in the long run kind of learn how to do it.

I think that's what I'm talking about. And just because I think I imagine someone listening, okay, so if my kids upset and I'm not just trying to convince them to be happy, and I'm also not trying to like double down on their misery, What do I do? And I think about this image, and I'm curious, related to happiness, where we have a lot of feelings. I personally don't call feelings positive or negative. I know a lot of people do just because, I don't know, I just feel like they are.

They're all information. Totally. And so to say something is negative information, I'd be like, I don't know, it's just data. It's our body trying to tell us something. And I don't know, it's just data. Like it's our body trying to tell us something. And I don't know, I picture it like a jar. So let's say in the jar is disappointment, frustration, excitement, happiness, joy, pride, like all of them. And then like, obviously, we'd all want our kids when they get older to have like happiness

be like a relatively large part of that jar. Me too. That's what I'm, you know, hoping for. But to some degree, I feel like these balls of feelings are all floating in this jar, taking up different amounts of space. But the coping skills for each feeling is kind of like the container for each. And if a feeling, a ball feeling in this Mike image doesn't have a strong container, then it would end up taking up a lot more space in the container.

It's like an egg without a shell. And so when I think about how do we optimize for happiness, my thought is we need to help kids develop really good containers, kind of coping skills for all the harder feelings that ends up creating more space in your jar when you're older for the experience harder feelings. That ends up creating more space in your jar when you're older for the experience of happiness. But we can't get those uncomfortable feelings out of the jar. We're never gonna, I don't know, kill them off, right?

Which is a good thing, right? I love your analogy of this idea of kind of not so great feelings as information. In my course with Yale students, I often talk about kind kind of not so great feelings as like information. In my course with Yale students, I often talk about kind of these not so great feelings as the kind of dashboard on your car, where like your tire light, your engine light comes on. And you know, is your engine light coming on bad? You know, it's just information, but it's kind of a pain in the butt. There's something you have to do at that point. You got to take the car in. But if you don't take the car in, if you don't listen to that information,

then your car is going to die on the highway. And I like this analogy for a couple of reasons. One is it gets to this point that you're making about the neutrality of different kinds of emotions. It also tells us something about what we need to do with negative emotions, which is you don't necessarily have to deal with it immediately. If the engine light goes on, you'd

have to immediately pull off the next exit of the highway, but you got to schedule some time to kind of work on it. And I think so many of the negative emotions that parents go through have this feature, right? You know, a big one is overwhelmed where parents are just like, I can't even, you know, that's like your engine light coming on saying, you need a break, you need to ask for help, you need to take something off your plate. And it doesn't have to be right then at dinner when the kids are screaming and you feel that moment of overwhelm, but it has to be sometime soon, right?

You can't kind of let your emotional cars or go into disarray. And so, yeah, I love this sort of analogy of like, what we need to be doing is to recognize these emotions, not push them away, but come up with great coping strategies for parents themselves, but then also to, but come up with great coping strategies for parents themselves, but then also to help our kids cope with those emotions.

So they can navigate them and use the information correctly when it comes up. I love that. I really love that. I mean, I'm like a lover of metaphors, such a sucker for metaphors, and yours is so beautiful. Because if we think about childhood and adulthood, obviously, no kids are driving a car. We know our five-year-olds aren't driving, but let's pretend that they were in your dashboard metaphor. And if their engine light goes on, once again, it's not like red, but there's some yellow

thing and a kid learns when a yellow light goes on, my parent picks me up and puts me in a new car. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know what happened to that old car, but it's someone else's problem, right? Or my parent comes and they're so worried about me being worried that they put duct tape over the light.

No, us parents, we're all doing the best we can with the resources we have available. And I think sometimes when we see our kids distress, we do kind of take them and give them a new car or duct tape the light. We think cognitively it's to help them. I think it's actually because we're distressed and we just want to stop feeling like that. Totally. I know from my experience, I'm like, I just don't want to deal with this moment. But then what you end up doing is you train your kid to disregard engine lights.

So then they become an adult who when an engine light comes on, they go buy a new car or try to think that's the only thing they can do. Or they put duct tape over it, which I think if we fast forward and make that metaphor literal, we'd say, that's not useful. Like why don't you pay attention to bad things? But then I picture a 25 year old saying, but you, you train me not useful. Like, why don't you pay attention to bad things? But then I picture a 25 year old saying, but you train me not to, like, what, how do I make that switch?

I'm just supposed to be happy all the time, remember? But is that something you find too, that as parents or as adults, we have a hard time also not being happy. Like we try to exit into happiness. Totally. I mean, I think adults as adults, we have to work on our distress tolerance,

but we especially have to work on our kind of distress tolerance for our kids' distress tolerance, right? In so many different domains. And I think, again, this is not, it's parents trying to do the best with the circumstances they have and the culture they've inherited. The culture parents have inherited tells parents, you must be enriching your kids at every moment of the day. If they experience boredom, you, parent have done something wrong. And so it makes sense that parents are feeling distressed

at this. First, it's just like your kid's not feeling good. So that doesn't feel awesome as a parent. But beyond that, that increases parent guilt and parent shame and parent like, gosh, I'm doing something wrong, right? And so I think it makes total sense that parents are experiencing this distress. But the problem, as you've noted, is then that makes parents sort of solve for Thursday at 6 PM, right? Versus thinking about, how do I want my kids to kind of navigate their engine lights in decades and years to come?

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Your home might be worth more than you think find out how much at Airbnb comm slash host. Hey, it's dr Becky right now. I'm offering 20% off annual membership to good, and I wanted to make sure you knew about it. I know you love this podcast, and I love creating it for you. Here's something you might not know. Our longest-term members started as podcast listeners, just like you. Why? Because while this podcast is packed with ideas, it can't give you everything you need to navigate parenting's hardest moments in real time. That's where the Good Inside membership comes in.

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It's an investment in your family. It's an investment in your confidence as a parent. One membership called it a relationship game changer for the entire year. I couldn't agree more. If you're ready to make this your year of sturdy connected parenting, head to GoodInside.com today to join with 20% off. But don't wait. This offer is only good through January 13th. You know, I just want to come out and say, I love when my kids are bored.

Like I get sick happiness when they're bored. Like there are times when they're like, why can't you get me this thing on Amazon? It's not even that expensive or something. And in my brain, I used to be like, oh, my kid's upset. I guess I could get that. Or I'll justify it. It is educational. I don't know.

Whatever I say to myself. And I've realized that what helps me tolerate that moment is I have to go so extreme. I'm actually like, this is going to be my best parenting moment. Not my most enjoyable one, but actually my kids whole life, they're going to have moments of wanting and not having. My kids whole life, they're going to be at work one day. They're going to like maybe finish a project or find a project hard and just be like, I'm bored.

I don't know what to do. Do I want my kid to look for immediate satisfaction or do I want my kid to say, I actually have like built up an arsenal of skills to manage through this and wait, Becky, in this moment, even though it's really annoying, I can help my kid build that skill by probably doing what I think is one of my favorite and least used parenting strategies. Okay. Everyone listening, get ready to write this down.

Doing nothing. Doing nothing. Because parents often say to me, Lori, they're like, so I'm just supposed to do nothing as if it's like so minimal. And I was like, no, no, I want to do capital D, capital N. Do nothing. It's an official parenting strategy. When my kid is bored, I am going to say, oh, I get it. It is boring.

Maybe I'll say something like, I have a feeling you'll figure something out. I don't know. But I just choose to do nothing. That's like the parenting strategy. I feel like it's the most underutilized parenting strategy. What do you think about that? I agree completely. And there's this literally a period of it is especially about intervening in these academic

contexts where if you can get parents to do nothing, their kids wind up succeeding better later, persisting more later. This is some lovely work by Julia Leonard, one of my colleagues at Yale. But she finds that it's so hard for parents to do nothing because our instinct, we're caregivers, right? The caregiving instinct is when you see distress, you act to sort of fix that distress. And it's so hard to remember that the way you fix distress is to think about not this distress in the moment,

but distress in the future. And that do nothing strategy, what it's doing is, you take the case of boredom, your kid's feeling a little boredom, you do nothing, they have to find their own way out of it. They get one little rep in of that distress tolerance of dealing with their own boredom. And if you give them more and more reps of that over time, they're doing a kind of boredom

reduction workout that will help them get stronger doing that later on. It's kind of like a little distress tolerance gym that we can put our kids into whenever we do nothing and just don't act to kind of fix everything for them. It is. And I just want to validate what you're saying. It is hard. It's really hard. I remember, you know, thinking with, you know, as my kids got older, I really don't want to be the water bottle rememberer the rest of their life.

It's like, there's a lot of jobs I want to keep as my kids get older. I want to be there for them on chat. Remembering the water bottle, I just like, I feel like that's really not a job. I'm like dying to do forever. But I remember one day saying to myself, am I working myself out of this job or am I continuing to lock myself into this job? And I was like, shoot, Becky, I'm,

I've got to change my approach. And then I was like, it's actually not that sophisticated. I'm going to say to my son today, hey, from this day forward, I'm not going to put your water bottle in your bag for you. And here is actually for everyone listening, the same intervention can either be done from a place of kind of like anger and resentment or from a place of capability empowerment. And it will have a completely different impact based on the intention because your kid feels

the intention. So I could say to my kid, look, you're 10. Like you don't need your mom to put your water bottle in your backpack. And so I'm not doing it anymore. And the reason I can say that like that is because that was my first attempt. It wasn't so successful. Okay. I ended up repairing.

I was like, wow, that was, you know what, you know what, let me take this back. I feel like you're capable of remembering your own water bottle. That's really what it is. Like, I think you're capable of that. And every time I do it for you, in some ways I'm telling you that you're capable of remembering your own water bottle. That's really what it is. I think you're capable of that. And every time I do it for you, in some ways I'm telling you that you're not capable. And so the reason I'm not doing it is because I think you can remember. In fact, maybe we could think of a strategy. How could you remember?

My son literally said to me in that conversation, maybe I could put a Post-it up in the kitchen. I was like, that's going to help you more going forward in life than whatever you're learning in school. You just figured out how to help yourself. And he did. And I remember the first time he forgot his water bottle and I saw it in the kitchen. I feel like it was one of my hardest parenting moments. Because you're like, I know what I can do to fix this. I could be the savior. I could fly in with my wings and see what I've done. No, I know. Exactly.

And I remember saying to myself, Becky, I'm not just doing nothing because that makes it sound. I am choosing the hardest parenting strategy right now. I'm a strong parent. I'm going to choose to do nothing because in anything in life, and I think this relates to happiness, right? The good stuff always comes after the hard stuff. Totally. It's never like the good leads to the good.

The easy leads to the happy. It's always like, and so I was like, this is the hard. He's going to go and be like, shoot, I forgot my water bottle. And I don't have to like make that happen. I'm not going to like hide his water bottle, but that experience is going to naturally make him, I don't know, write another post it on the door. Right? And it was so hard, but I do think it was so important. Totally. And I think this is what we forget is that, you know, if you think about the moments in your life when you've learned something, it's usually not because somebody told you

to do it. Like if anything, when people tell me to do things, like my spouse tells me like, oh, remember this thing, I get almost like a resistance where I like, almost don't even want to remember, even if it's good for me, just because like, don't tell me what to do, right? We forget our kids are like that too. But when you mess up and like you actually face the consequences of messing up,

like you'll usually learn something, one shot learning like really, really fast. I had this lovely conversation with a parent we're working with in this Yale parenting class that we're working on right now. And she told this lovely story where she was always paranoid that her son, you know, around like 13 years old would just forget to charge his phone. So it's every day, did you charge your phone? Yeah, I'm on my charge of phone.

Did you charge your phone? And that was in part because they live in the city. He was going to take the subway and she's like, if you don't have your phone charged, you won't be able to figure your way back. Anyway, fateful day comes, despite her reminding him a million times, phone's not charged. He gets on the bus. He doesn't have a way to figure out where he's home. And what she said was the sad thing is if he had even just like a tiny bit of charge and he called her at that moment, she would have been like, get off the bus, like, I'll come find you. She would have swooped in and rescued him, but he had no charge.

And so what did he do? He had to just use the skills that he had to figure it out. He talked to the bus driver, the bus driver explained how he gets back to his house. He had this fun conversation with the bus driver. He gets home and she was like, two things happened. One is he was so excited to have figured it out on his own. But the second thing is she's like, that was three months ago, and I have never had to tell him to charge his phone ever again, because now he just knows the importance of charging it. And you could see that like, oh my gosh, this mom who let her kid go on this, but now he's

learned. So as a parent, you've helped your kid, but you've also helped yourself. Now this poor mom doesn't have to remind her her 13 year old every single day about the phone It's like they can move on to other things that don't feel naggy that don't cause resistance Like it's just such a win-win for everyone when we let our kids screw up But the moment of screwing up that's hard, you know, if she had if he had called her There's no way she would have been like nope sort it out on your own Like I've told you she should have have, like, the ultimately be better,

but it's so hard to let your kids screw up when you're kind of watching this screw up happen in real time. It's so hard. I think knowing the arc of something is helpful to me as a parent, like totally differently. One of my kids used to always wake up in the morning, be like, I'm not going to school today.

Okay. And when I realized that's just part of that child's arc, before that child goes to. Before that child goes to school, that child always says that. It's just like, it's not terribly enjoyable or convenient, but it's part of that child's arc. And then I reacted differently. And I think for every parent listening, I want us, this is going to sound bold, but it's, I think we have to say it boldly to really make movement. When we intervene fast, we steal our kids' competence.

We actually steal it from them. Because competence isn't built in a moment when someone's supporting you. Competence is built after feeling in general supported, finding yourself in an uncomfortable situation, and eventually just surviving it and figuring it out. And I think if we think about our kids feeling competent, if you think about the arc there, it involves doing less, maybe doing nothing.

It involves the mess up. The mess up is part of the arc. You can never have a successful arc to competence without the mess up. And so I think the next time it's like, my kid is never a water bottle or oh my goodness, they didn't charge their phone. If you can say to yourself kind of like, check, crushed it, crushed it. Like all those other developmental milestones I wanted him to go through, potty trading,

click like, oh, forgot their cell phone, forgot their water bottle. Like you're clicking off this list of things, experiences you have to give your kids so they can succeed later. That's right. Like I'd pat yourself on the back because I think being hyperbolic is needed. You're like, that is my best parenting moment.

My kid forgot their cell phone today. My kid does not have their water bottle for practice. My kid does not have their track uniform and they will be running in the track meet as maybe the only kid without the track uniform and they will be running in the track meet as maybe the only kid without the track uniform. Not to be mean. If it feels like it's from a place of punishing, it is not an intervention you should use.

If it feels like it's part of supporting your kid's arc to feeling competent and you as a parent will know the difference, then you should pat yourself on the back of tolerating that moment because it's so important. And I think when parents kind of experience that distress, it might be a good signal that you're doing it the right way. If it's hard for you, it wouldn't be hard for you if your kid was really in true danger or safety. There would be no like, maybe I shouldn't grab the water bottle or not. If it was truly a situation where you had to intervene

with the right safe thing to do with to intervene, you would intervene. You would not be kind of going back and forth about, is this the moment to sort of step back? But if you have that conflict, it means this is probably a safe space to just let the little mess up happen and allow that learning that comes with it.

That's right. And I think when, you know, our number one job as our parents, I think, is to keep our kids safe. But safety has somehow been perverted into comfortable safety. Like if my kid, when they're older, I don't know, called me from somewhere and their friends were drunk and they didn't have a safe ride back, I wouldn't be like, this is the moment. No, like I'm going to go pick up my kid.

We'll deal with that later. And if it's like their soccer match, that's like the final soccer match of the year for state championship and they forget that, yes, you intervene in that moment. And maybe the track meet, you're like, actually that feels too embarrassing. I know something about my kid. We all know the difference, right?

But there probably are moments that fall into comfort that we categorize as safety. And we can just even take the step of just questioning, like, which really is this? And probably just even questioning it at times will lead to different decisions. Yeah. I love this sort of, am I parenting for, again, like Thursday night? Am I parenting for this moment, this soccer game, this water bottle situation, or am I

parenting for them when they're 25 or 18? That's right. And I think one of the things maybe you and I take for granted, but I really learned because it makes sense we're never taught these things, the way we interact with our kids does impact them when they're later. They're really developing these circuits of how do I think about myself? What do I expect of the world? What am I capable of tolerating?

What do I need other people to fix for me? How much can I do on my own? So I agree. I always talk about that term like being long-term greedy in parenting, right? Because when our kids are out of our house, like the stakes really do only get higher. It feels high stakes to not have a water bottle for soccer, but whatever's going to happen out of our house, I don't know, remembering to be on time for your first job, right? That's higher stakes. And I know for me also, I don't want to call my 22-year-old

to make sure they're awake the first day of their new job. Yeah. And the sad thing is being a person who deals with college students a lot, there are parents that still do that. A surprising number of college students' parents with students at Yale University call them in the morning to make sure they're waking up before their important midterm. And that feels, to me at least, that feels really sad. If you raised a kid who was smart enough to get into Yale University, I hope you'd also let them screw up a few times with the alarm clock so they learn the habit of making sure

they could put their own alarm clock on before some big event. Don't be that parent everyone who's listening. We have a little, not like a formula completely, but question safety or comfort or is this for the moment or for long term? Really remember that capital D, capital N, do nothing, is actually a legitimate, very useful parenting strategy. Know that the struggle, the miss, the mistake, the mess up, that is part of the arc to independence and competence.

Right? part of the arc to independence and competence, right? And kind of pat yourself on the back for allowing all that to just transpire. I think that's so powerful. Before we end, I'm thinking about parents' happiness. I think about parents listening, and I think a lot of parents tell me, I feel like I'm less happy. I love my kids, I'm less happy. I love my kids.

I'm so happy. Am I less happy? Is that a weird thing? Does that mean I don't love being a parent? What are your thoughts on that? Yeah. I think that parents experience a lot of stress. A few months ago, the surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, just put out this public health report

saying that parental stress was a major public health threat to the United States, right? This is like on the cigarettes or obesity or something. And so I think one strategy for dealing with that is to normalize it. Like parenting is tough. It's especially challenging given a lot of the structural issues that parents face, the financial issues, et cetera, et cetera. It makes sense that you're going through this. And I think that's a strategy that comes from the happiness literature. Researchers like Kristin Neff often talk about this idea of self-compassion,

where you kind of first mindfully acknowledge, this is hard. This is really tough right now. But you recognize that it's a common human experience, you say. But this makes sense. All parents go through this. It makes sense that if I'm parenting

in a way that protects my kids, like failure and distress, that it's going to hurt a little bit. But then the final step is self-kindness, which I actually think is the remedy for so many moments of kind of parent unhappiness. You just ask yourself, what do I need to take off my plate? You know, how can I, what do I need right now? You know, these are questions that are really important for parents to ask. Even if you don't always have an immediate answer, you can get closer to this question of who could you ask for help to try to take some stuff off your plate. You can renegotiate the expectations you often have on yourself for what you need to be doing to kind of feel a little bit freer and more spacious.

Yeah, I love that idea. And I think that's so actionable to end on everyone listening. Like just like, what can I place down today? And like, I think we do this thing where a moment becomes a forever. Like, okay, I'm going to leave my playroom super messy. It doesn't mean I'm a lazy person or don't have a nice house. I'm doing that today. You can trust yourself to know you can make a decision today that's different than the

decision you make tomorrow. You could be like me and leave the playroom messy every day. I don't know. And it's also just the radical acceptance that like nothing's ever going to be perfect. One of my favorite parenting strategies is like, parenting is like just juggling way too many balls that you can possibly juggle and a bunch are going to fall. But your question is, which are the glass balls and which are the plastic ones? Like as long as you keep the glass balls from shattering the plastic ones, you can pick up and deal

with later. You know, the messy kids's room, that's a plastic ball. You know, there are lots of glass balls to kind of manage, but the little ones, the kind of plastic ones that can drop and you don't care about, that's fine. You have to accept that. Well, thank you. This has been great. Yeah, thanks so much for having me on the show. Thank you for listening. To share a story or ask me a question, the show.

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 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. Good Inside with Dr. Becky is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Newsom at Magnificent Noise. Our production staff includes Sabrina Farhi, Julia Knapp, and Kristen Muller. I would also like to thank Erica Belsky, Mary Panico, Brooke Zant, and the rest of the Good Inside team.

And 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.