The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Dr. Becky Kennedy - Parenting Do's & Don'ts, Emotional Validation & Resilience, Confident Kids, & Foundations For A Family

Episode Date: November 18, 2024

#777: Join us as we sit down with Dr. Becky Kennedy – the visionary founder & CEO of Good Inside, a global movement empowering parents to lead with confidence & raise resilient kids. In this episode, Dr. Becky reveals insights on how to navigate parental guilt, setting boundaries with screen time, balancing emotional validation with resilience, & the foundational principles of effective parenting!   To connect with Dr. Becky click HERE   To connect with Lauryn Bosstick click HERE   To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE   Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE   To Watch the Show click HERE   For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM   To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697)   This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential   Head to the HIM & HER Show ShopMy page HERE to find all of Michael and Lauryn’s favorite products mentioned on their latest episodes.   To learn more about Good Inside visit goodinside.com.   This episode is sponsored by Nutrafol   Visit Nutrafol.com and enter the promo code SKINNYHAIR to get $10 off your first month’s subscription and free shipping.   This episode is sponsored by Prolon   Go to ProlonLife.com/SKINNY to get 15% off your 5-day nutrition program.   This episode is sponsored by Bloomingdale’s   It’s the perfect time to give you and your loved ones a better night’s sleep with 20% off when you use promo code SKINNY20 exclusively at bloomingdales.com.   This episode is sponsored by Mint Mobile   To get this new customer offer and your new 3-month premium wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to mintmobile.com/skinny.   This episode is sponsored by Primally Pure   Visit primallypure.com/skinny 15% off your order.   This episode is sponsored by Lightbox Jewelry   Shop now at LightboxJewelry.com  and use code SKINNY10 for 10% off your first purchase from Lightbox Lab-Grown Diamonds.  Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to The Skinny Confidential, him and her.

Aha! Essential, him and her. Everything I'm doing with adults in therapy is the polar opposite of everything I'm telling parents to do with kids. My client came in and said, I was going to ask for that raise. I didn't. I was nervous. I would never say, well, no phone for the week. No phone, you're punished, no dessert, right? But every time our kids struggle with anything, our first reaction is to take something away. Or if they do anything good, we feel like we have to reward them or give them a sticker chart.

We send them at a time out. And in a way, I realize we're raising kids through a method of behavioral control. No one says it, but we just see a behavior. We kind of assume our kid is that latest behavior. We send them away. We kind of extinguish the bad and try to reinforce the good. It's not a way of raising humans. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Skinny Confidential, him and her show. Today, we have Dr. Becky Kennedy on the podcast,

on the show. It was one of our favorite episodes in a long time. We could have talked to Dr. Becky on and on, and I know we're new parents, so this was fascinating for us. But even if you're not a parent, just thinking about the way you were raised and thinking about what your parents did, or anybody that's been thinking about having children or starting a family, this episode is very interesting. Lauren and I actually took notes and listened to this episode again ourselves because we learned so much.

So for the parents out there, you're going to love it. For the aspiring parents, you're going to love it. For anyone that has parenting friends, they're going to love it. For those that are unfamiliar with Dr. Becky, she is the visionary founder and CEO of Good Inside, a transformative global parenting movement that disrupts conventional parenting practices by empowering parents to become sturdy, confident leaders and raise sturdy, confident kids. Good Inside currently has members across more than 100 countries and millions of followers across social media platforms, including nearly 3 million followers on Instagram alone. kids. Good Insight currently has members across more than 100 countries and millions of followers across social media platforms, including nearly 3 million followers on Instagram alone. Today,

we talk all about how to become a confident parent, how to raise confident children, what to do and not to do, what to think about and not think about, how to manage the heavy responsibility of becoming a parent and raising confident, sturdy kids. With that, Dr. Becky, welcome to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. This is the Skinny Confidential Him and Her. Dr. Becky is in the house. I am so excited for this episode because I actually just had such a hard time leaving my children. I was getting ready and I had to come here and rush out and leaving them, they're pulling at me. They wanted me to stay. They asked me if we could go get milkshakes. And there's this guilt that you feel as a mother when you're working and have to leave and they

want you to stay. So I guess my first question is, what do you tell moms specifically about feeling guilty? That's a great one to jump in with. I have a lot to say about guilt. Maybe I'm going to put that to the side here because I think we say to ourselves that we feel guilty when the feeling is actually something a little different. It's definitely uncomfortable, but I actually would bet it's probably not guilt. So I can get to that. More practically right away, I think we set ourselves up or struggle with these kind of extreme narratives we tell ourselves if we're a working parent. We tell ourselves either, oh, it's so much better for my kid.

They see me working. This is good for them. Or we tell ourselves the other narrative, which is I'm messing up my kids forever. How could I not be there for this moment to take them a milkshake? And I actually think there's something in the middle that's really important because the more we tell ourselves it's all good for our kids, the more we actually set ourselves up in our hard moments to feel like it's all bad. The nuance in between is, wait, in this moment, it's really hard for me to leave my kids. It's hard for me. It's hard for them. And then I think

we can get even smaller. Is there anything I can do in this moment that would make it a little easier for both of us? Right? So number one to our kids, setting them up for our departure is huge. Your kids are two and four, right? I'm not doing that. Can you talk about that? Giving them, think about you managing your work schedule and travel schedule without a calendar? What would that be like? Chaotic. Chaotic. Okay. And if you really live that way, and then one day someone's like, here's a calendar, immediately, I don't know about you, I would feel relief even though my schedule is as busy as it was pre-calendar because I have order and I have predictability. To some degree, when we leave our kids, whether it's literally to go for a walk or go for a week-long work trip, and they're not

prepared, they're basically saying to us in that moment, are you ever going to come back? Could you leave at a moment's notice? Is someone else going to be my parent? I thought we were going to go for milkshakes, and all of a sudden you're leaving, and I don't know when you're going to return. None of that is what they say with their words. They say it with their behavior, by tantruming, by clinging, by acting like we are abandoning them because they just don't know. A visual calendar is life-changing for kids, whether you have a working parent or not a working parent. And your kids are young, so it doesn't have to look like ours. It could be a week at a time. There could be a green day when you're home and a red day when you're not. You literally count.

There's two more green nights until we go. Oh, two red nights. And then it's green again. Where are we? They could cross out the days. Now they have predictability. They have kind of a sense of agency and control. So now instead of your departure being something that's kind of unexpectedly done

to them, it's something they're participating in. That's actually genius because we came to New York, we told my daughter to go to see Tea with Eloise. And she asked me as I was leaving, when are we seeing Tea with Eloise? And you're right, she doesn't have context of when the day we're going. But we tell her, we'll say in two sleeps. Like, and then she counts. Right. The colors is genius. The colors or a ring.

You know, like if you're made a paper ring, like our decoration, you kind of cut strips of paper and you put it in a circle and then the next one goes through. And so if it's two more sleep until mommy and daddy's back, they can rip one off. And then it's something when they cross something out or rip something something physical it makes it more concrete and then they can hold it in their minds in a much easier way so it sounds like for children similar to adults it's it's just having the advanced notice and knowing what's going on i think a lot of parents and we've been guilty of this too you kind of want to brace them for that moment so you don't really talk about the moment and then you just rip it like a band-aid and they're like what the heck is going on here well i thought i was being smart to

delay the to delay it all what i do and that's so much makes more sense to prepare them tell me if you if you like this i mean we haven't had the tool and i want to implement what you're talking about i think there's a visuals is a great idea but i try to talk to them and say hey this is what i'm going to be doing and i'm going to be gone. And I like, they don't like it sometimes, but I would just talk them through like, I got to go here. You got to go to school this day or this many sleeps. And I feel like when I say that, at least our daughter, our son's so young, she will kind of like compute in her head and be like, okay, now she gets what's going on or what I'm trying to say. Yeah. None of us love to feel surprised by things, even adults. Like I often think it's not the feeling as much as it's the being surprised

by a feeling that really dysregulates adults and kids. And so this is not to say, you know, two weeks before every day, you should be like, remember how many nights? I mean, there is something to like, kind of, okay, that's like too much. But I think we often go to, again, the other extreme. And then we don't even know what our kid's reacting to. Are they reacting to us leaving? Or are they just reacting to being a kid and having no idea what's going on? Right? And I think when we come to like the foundational understanding of what drives this, our kids are dependent on us for survival, right? Literally, they can't survive without us until they're, I don't even know how old they'd have to be, but way older than your kids. And that's what really drives them, this mechanism

of attachment. And so they're very attuned to like, where's mom? Where's dad? What's going to happen? Because they need you in a different way than we need our partners. We love our partners, right? But a lot of us are like, if push came to shove, I could survive in the world. I could get food. I could get shelter. I could get water. Kids are not that way. And so they're especially attuned to our coming and going. And I think when we know that, a lot of us parents, we almost tend to avoid it or walk on eggshells. But again, if you remember, it's not the feeling, it's really the surprise that would then make them more hypervigilant. We can kind of reverse our approach. So I think that schedule, talking about it, and then something I come to, and I'm sure this will come up again in a different context, so it'll be consistent consistent validation and hope. Those two together are like a winning parenting combo. Validate how your kid's feeling and reflect hope in their kind of competence and capability. Give me an example. Great. So this morning she's like, I know it's so hard when mommy has to say

goodbye. That's the validation. I know you're going to get through these next couple of days and mommy always comes back. My kid's upset because, I don't know, they're, you know, won't join the soccer birthday party. Oh, there's something about being at this soccer party that feels tricky. That's the validation. I know you're going to join when you're ready. That's the hope and kind of competence. Over and over, those two things.

If we do just one or the other, which we usually do, we either just say, you're going to be okay. We forget the validation. That doesn't feel good to adults or to kids. Or we just kind of only do the validation. I know it's so hard. It's so hard. And that also doesn't feel great because they're like, are you in this kind of abyss with me? Are we just both going to kind of not survive this? They want both. You want to validate where they are. And you want to reflect that you kind of see a more capable version of them than they can access on their own. It's the same usually in a marriage. You're like, I'm so nervous about this. You want your partner to say, oh, yeah, well, that's a big meeting. That actually makes sense that you'd be nervous. And here's something I know about you. When the

moment comes, you always crush it. I have a feeling that's going to be how it goes. But if they just say one or the other, it feels a little empty. Wow. That's helpful. You're saying, hey, I'm so nervous. I'm like, yeah, I get it. You should be. Right. I'm glad you, well, two things. One, I'm glad you mentioned all of those things about children. We were with a producer last night, Taylor over there, who does not have kids yet. And he said, maybe you could treat kids like a dog and they don't have the concept of when you're gone. I

said, I don't think that is correct. Right. So I'm glad that you just proved that point. The second thing I want to say for, as we're just jumping into this, for people that are unfamiliar with you talking about your foundational principles, and then you can't maybe dumb it down so quickly, but you, what are your kind of foundational best practices for parents? Great. Thanks for starting there because I really do think good inside is this, what I would say is a first principles approach to parenting. So understanding the foundation is even more important than understanding little scripts and strategies. So this really all started when I was in my private practice. I was seeing parents kind of like you who would have often young kids and

they'd say, I'm not really here for therapy. I'm here to get parenting advice for something going on with my kid. But then in other sessions, I'd see adults, maybe also like you, who are just there for therapy. They were there for couples therapy, for individual therapy. And it just started to strike me and it started to feel really bad where I realized everything I'm doing with adults in therapy and I'm watching these things really change adults' lives is the polar opposite of everything I'm telling parents to do with kids. My client came in and said, I was going to ask for that raise. I didn't. I was nervous. I would never say, well, no phone for the week. No phone. You're punished. No dessert. Right. But every time

our kids struggle with anything, our first reaction is to take something away. Or if they do anything good, we feel like we have to reward them or give them a sticker chart. We send them at a time out. And in a way, I realize we're raising kids through a method of behavioral control. No one says it, but we just see a behavior. We kind of assume our kid is that latest behavior. We send them away. We kind of extinguish the bad and try to reinforce the good. It's not a way of raising humans.

It's interesting. A lot of people have said we no longer raise dogs that way either. It also just doesn't work. And that's never what we do with adult. If you guys get in a fight and one of you says to the other, that's it, I'm taking away this necklace I gave you. I mean, can you imagine what that would do to our relationships? We'd only get more angry. And no wonder our kids get angrier and angrier until their adolescence. Then they rebel like crazy because we've missed out on actually forming a relationship with them for 14 years.

And so I could, what if I just strip away all the assumptions, right? And there's so many assumptions we have. Like if you don't punish bad behavior, you're reinforcing that. That's just an assumption. I don't know if that's true. And I was really left with one idea, maybe two ideas. Our kids are born good inside. You have kids, like, they're good. They come into the world good. But something else is also true. Kids are born with all the feelings and none of the skills to manage those feelings. There's a huge gap. All the feelings, none of the skills. And feelings that don't have skills come out in bad behavior. This is true for adults and kids. That person where the special is no longer available at the restaurant and you hear an adult freak out, same issue.

Feeling of frustration, clearly even though they're 40, has never learned the skills to manage frustration. So the feeling comes out as yelling at the waiter. Not excusable, but that's probably what's happening. And for generations, with this gap, all the feelings, none of the skills, we've said, okay, so we're gonna to punish kids. We're going to send them away. We're punishing them for not having the skills they need in life. I just remember thinking, why don't we teach them the skills they need in life? Instead

of punishing the behavior, which is simply a symptom of not having skills, why don't we get to the core of the issue and actually teach them how do you deal with anger? How do you actually have true self-esteem? How do you manage frustration so you can actually stick with hard work instead of saying, oh, I give up. Maybe someone else will do it. And when I started to think these thoughts, honestly, everything changed. And I came up with this totally new approach to parenting that we call kind of sturdy leadership. We teach parents how to be sturdy leaders, the same way you'd kind of expect a pilot to be during a turbulent flight. And it's just really kind of caught fire and led to, honestly, a lot of good results as well. What, explain what, you said a sturdy?

Yes. A sturdy leader. Sturdy leader. Explain exactly what that means as a pilot and also as a parent. Awesome. So I love words that evoke meaning because I don't know about you, but for me, the word sturdy like has a feel to it. Like I can picture someone, you know, and I think in our hardest moments as a parent, like that's the word we need to be. You know, we're often not.

Me too. I'm reactive. I'm, you know, avoidant, whatever, but I'm looking to be sturdy. So let me explain it with the pilot and then I'll back into parenting. So right now, if you just picture being on a flight where it's super turbulent, right, and you're kind of freaking out as a passenger, there's kind of three different versions of a pilot who might come on. And I think this kind of is similar to three different versions of a parent. So you're kind of screaming. Everyone's really nervous. Pilot one says something like, everyone stop screaming back there. You're making a big deal out of nothing. Stop freaking out because you're getting in my way of doing my job. I'm trying to focus.

I know if I have that pilot, first of all, I'm thinking, wait, do you not even notice the turbulence? Because it feels pretty turbulent. And my freaking out is enough to make you freak out. I now feel probably, again, less scared of the turbulence and more scared that the person's my pilot. It's kind of pilot number one. Pilot number two, I think would be the opposite, would kind of open the cockpit door and be like, it's really turbulent. And like, does anyone know what to do? And do I have any pilots there who wants to take over? And they kind of abdicate their authority in that moment. And to me, pilot three, that sturdy pilot comes on and says, hey, I hear you screaming back there. I get it. It's turbulent. And it's okay that you feel nervous. If you want to scream in this moment, scream away. I know what I'm it. It's turbulent and it's okay that you feel nervous. If you want to scream in this moment, scream away. I know what I'm doing. I know we're still going to land in Los Angeles and I'm

actually going to get off this kind of loudspeaker right now so I can go back to doing my job. I'll see you when we land. There's this combination. They validate what's going on for someone else, even though it's different from their own experience, and they embody their authority at the same time. If I bring that to parenting, let's picture a classic two-year-old having a tantrum about, I don't know, not getting ice cream for breakfast, right? Something like that. Pilot one is just like, I'm going to send you to your room. Oh, you're making a big deal out of nothing nothing and you're ruining this morning for the family maybe we yell to go to your room or no ipad tonight by the way all of which we end up taking back later it's like i don't like oh did i say no ipad tonight like i don't i don't know i didn't really mean that right and so people think they're

like so powerful in the moment we always undermine our own authority when we just randomly yell punishments we just feel desperate that's's the truth. It's just desperate. Pilot two is like, oh, well, maybe we do ice cream for breakfast and I don't want you to get upset. And again, we almost make the child the parent because now they're the one in the driver's seat making decisions. We didn't change our mind about ice cream for breakfast because we wanted to be some cool, fun parent. We change it because we're scared of our kid's tantrum and they feel that and that terrifies them. Pilot three, which is parent three, is the essence of a sturdy leader. Sturdy parents set boundaries and stay connected to their kid. And going back to that idea of feelings without skills, they set boundaries around behaviors, but they always see the good kid who's truly struggling underneath. So that pilot and

that parent in that situation would say, oh, you really want ice cream for breakfast. I get it. Ice cream's so yummy. And that's just not an option for breakfast. You can have whatever. You could have a waffle or yogurt. Those are the only options. Now, to be clear, you say this and I have to clarify this. No child, not my kids either, are going to look at you in that moment

and be like, oh, that was amazing parenting. That was amazing. And I'm going to calm down. There is no round of applause. There is no immediately kind of calming down. Okay. And this is a little kind of calming down. Okay. And this is a little bit of a wash, rinse, repeat that we have to get used to to get the result we all want, which are kids who can feel their feelings but are not overwhelmed

by their feelings. My kid will then keep protesting. And then I do the same thing. I know nothing sounds good except for ice cream. I get it. And if you have a kid like my kid, they're going to lunge for the freezer. So my back's already going to be against the freezer. So I don't have to pull them off because I know my kid is going to do that.

And I'm just going to say, I'm not going to let you open that. Look, eating breakfast totally on you. I can't make you eat. If you don't want to eat, you don't want to eat. That's fine. But ice cream is not an option. So do you keep reinforcing that until they finally give up? Yeah. I mean, I would say, I don't know if so much they give up, they feel, and this is really, again, I like words,

visuals and feelings. They feel your edge. If you think about a tantrum, a kid is like an egg without a shell. Every feeling inside them just explodes out of them. That's actually, they're really scared in that moment. That's kind of why they look like they're in fight or flight. They're really overwhelmed. And to some degree, they're saying, is there an adult here who's less scared of my feelings than I am? Is there an adult here who can see my feelings as real, but won't let my feelings overpower them? And they test that a little bit. They're not really trying to test you. They're trying to feel out how the world works. When they really feel your conviction, because they smell our ambivalence. When we're like, I don't think we're going to do ice cream for breakfast, they go further. They're not trying to take advantage of us, but they don't feel that edge.

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but I'm not doing the other thing. Boundaries. Boundaries. And he's boundaries, but he's not validating. You split the sturdy pair. Yes. And I don't know how that doesn't sound like the right way. It sounds like I need more boundaries and he needs more validation. Well, I think our dynamic has been, and I think this is a lot of couples and I don't say this to be sexist at all, but when there's a tantrum, I think it's like, I'm calling dad. And it may be the dynamics different in the, you know, in different relationships, but in our relationship, it's like, I think when the kids start to tantrum that way and you're validating, it's like, well, well dad's gonna come in and set the boundary but then i think what they the kids are smart they learn okay i can push the boundaries with mom i

can get the ipad what do you do we'll give an example okay let's let's this we'll be really honest we went out to have hamburgers last night and the kids wanted to go on their ipad and i'm the pushover, and he's the boundaries. Do you have the iPads with you? Yeah. Should we just not bring them? Well, to me, really, what I really try to do with parents is I don't think it's about a right way of parenting.

To me, often parents come and they're like, it's not working. I feel burnt out. I don't feel connected to my kids. I want to actually have a relationship with them when they're old enough to choose. Our house just feels like a disaster. So I just always want to respond to what parents are doing. And if you're saying, let's say you're saying iPads at the table aren't working for us, if you were to say that. I'm not a fan of them. I would like no iPads at the table.

Great. By the way, they're the gaming iPads. So at least their brain's working a little bit. No. I'm justifying it. Go ahead. So let's just say you two together. And this is really important. It has to be together if you have a partnership or else kids split. Right. You're like, we're going to not do that anymore. Right. Okay. Number one, that decision is really important because again, I'm going to go to the pilot. Imagine a pilot coming on and being like, you guys, sorry, we can't land in LA. I know you're going there. Maybe you have a wedding. You've worked. We have some issue. We have to make an emergency landing. Is that okay with you? Can you imagine them being like, is that okay? No one's going to be upset about that, right?

You're like, are you really asking for my permission about making them do what you got to do? Don't, right? And if a pilot was thinking, oh, I would land in Kansas, but Michael and Lauren are going to be like really upset. You'd be like. How are you even thinking that? Just keep us safe. And so I think that framework is really important. Too often we don't even know how many times we're making decisions to, quote, keep our kid happy. That's actually not keeping them happy long term. Our job is to be that pilot. If you need to make an emergency landing, you do it. If people give you a bad review on whatever airline, so be it, right? So let's say the two of you come together and you're like, this is like that situation. We just want to have a phone-free, screen-free time for their mental health, for family meals, for all the things. Then you would have to set a true boundary. And I want to explain this, what this is for everyone even listening, because most people get boundaries wrong. People say, I set a boundary with my kid, but my kids, they don't respect my boundary. They don't listen. A boundary is something you tell

someone you will do, and it requires the other person to do nothing. And I love that definition because in my own life, it helps me evaluate if I set a boundary because if we think about the classic example, look, we said no iPads at the table, but then I'm like, how did my kids get it, and they're watching, and I said no iPad. Did I set a boundary? Okay, a boundary is something I will do, and it would require my kid to do nothing. It's a great way of saying, oh, that actually wasn't a boundary. I guess I made a request, but a boundary would be saying, we're going to go out to dinner tonight. And just like we've been doing the last week, because I wouldn't do this for the first time in public. I'm a sane person. It's not where I would experiment. Just like we did last week,

there's no iPads while we eat. And so because of that, I'm not even taking the iPads with us. They will not be with us. And so at the restaurant, you're like, iPad, iPad. I'm not even taking the iPads with us. They will not be with us. And so at the restaurant, you're like, iPad, iPad. I'm just going to tell you now what I'm going to say. Sweetie, we don't have an iPad. I know that's a big change. That's the validation. And I know we're going to get through this meal. That's kind of the hope.

And I'm holding my boundary. And maybe us even not bringing our phones. Can I walk you through my thought process? Yes. Can you tell me if this is flawed logic? So we had Katherine Schwarzenegger. I don't know if you've ever talked to her. Yes.'ve had her on the show and we, in this topic of iPads and bringing kids to dinner came up and it got a lot of buzz online, as you can imagine, because

there's parents that some use, some don't, and there's people are very opinionated with anything parenting, as I'm sure you know. My perspective personally, and I'll say that I empathize with parents wanting to bring their kids to restaurants and then have them sit with them. And I'll say that I empathize with parents wanting to bring their kids to restaurants and then have them sit with them. And sometimes those tools can enable them to sit for a long period of time. But as an adult, I start to think when Lauren and I were going to dinner tonight, and when we're at dinner, our phones will not be out and we will not be sitting there and looking on the phone and staring at a screen while we're engaging with the couple we're going to dinner with. And I think about children like this, if you train them from a

young age that every time you need to go and have a meal, that you have this crutch where you sit so that that then enables you to sit longer while also not having to participate in the conversation. My logic is that 10 years of doing that is going to create that habit for life. Are you trying to get Dr. Becky's approval and validation? So my personal boundary, if I could wave a wand and we could agree would be the kids can come to dinner with us, but if they come, we don't bring iPads or phones and they are, it's not even, it's not allowed. And if that. You just gave therapy. That's a good idea. Just nothing. If they cannot participate that way, then they cannot come to dinner. And I think it's a selfish thing that parents do personally.

This is where I'll get the shit on the internet. To say, well, I need to be able to go to dinner with my spouse and I want to bring my kids. So this is the only way I could bring it. And I don't have childcare. And I said, yeah, but if you fast forward and you're creating a behavior for life, are you really, is it for you? Is it for them? Or what's the long-term effect? So the boundary for me, and I told, again, we were all at dinner last night. I said, my perfect world, there would be no iPads ever at the dinner table. And if that's a requirement for them to come to dinner, then they don't come to dinner. Here's where I would add to that. Learning how to sit at

dinner in today's world versus when we were growing up, it's hard because I think the bigger picture with screens and why I, for example, don't do screens at the table is I feel like what I'm saying to my kids is the world is not entirely for optimizing your pleasure. In every moment, you should not be entertained. Sitting at a restaurant, ordering and waiting, those are life skills that ladder up to what we know are the most important adult life skills, which kind of is like waiting. Sometimes you have to wait in line.

Like I feel like that's just true in life. And to me, what worries me about screens more than the particulars of if they have a screen at the table, will they always expect a screen at the table is how is my child just learning how to operate in the world? What is their set of expectations? And to me, one of the most important skills for kids to develop, it's like one of my passion projects, is what I call is just frustration tolerance. It's our ability to tolerate frustration, not get out of frustration. Because in life, often the best you can do is just tolerate it. You just tolerate it.

And screens have such low effort, high gratification, where most of successful adult life requires high effort, very delayed gratification. It's like completely the opposite. And when our kids are young, really what we're doing is we're building their circuitry for what to expect in the world, how to think about themselves, how to think about what they're capable of, what skills they've learned. And so to me, that's like the much larger picture. Now, again, if your kids have had iPads or they expect it, I just, I wouldn't start at a restaurant. I'd actually think this is an actual skill.

We don't expect kids to swim in the ocean before the pool, before the training pool. And we give them often swim lessons for a while before they actually swim independently. So I'd say the same thing at a restaurant. Okay, tonight is the first night we're going to have a screen-free dinner. And that's screen-free for everyone. And this is what's so helpful. Even a two-year-old can understand this. Sometimes mommy and daddy have screens at the table. You probably see that. Starting tonight, we're not. And if you see us, and if you see us kind of like sneaking, you can say, screen! And you, oh, you're right. I shouldn't have that. And this might be hard for all of us. And we're a

family who values connection and togetherness at the table. And so we're going to work hard to do that. Tonight, I'm just making this up. I'm going to set a timer. Do you think we can do it? Can everyone sit? And you can even sit on your hands. You can put your hand here and take a deep breath like, I can sit, I can do it. Or you can even say, this is boring and I can do it. Because for kids, it is boring. That to me is actually the point. Sometimes life is boring. Let's build the skill of being bored, right? And I would do a minute and the next night I would do two minutes. And before I went out to dinner, you better bet in my house, just for my own sanity, I would have worked up to something. Now, all of a sudden, beyond setting a boundary, I've actually set my kid up for success. Instead of the first time ever I'm going out to dinner, I'm going to

end up yelling at them because they have never been in that type of situation before. That is fantastic advice. I'm using all of that. I'm doing screen-free dinners. I'm a new woman. And I think I watch children and waiters come in. And to your point, interacting with humans, some people don't like this, but it's an important skill set to have for every interaction in life, whether you want to build a business or you want to have a great career. This is the bar. And what I realize, it's really hard to teach kids these uncomfortable behaviors or these frustrations you're talking about. It's hard to get people to sit still. It is really easy to train them to do things that are low effort.

Meaning now kids show up and the minute they sit down at a table, where's the iPad? And you're training them that this is the moment when they sit down that they just get to sit there and stare at a screen all day long. And so for me, I'm just super passionate about having people think about this and how it moves into the future because I think in the moment they're like oh what's the big deal it's a scream it's like what does this look like long term you're speaking to something at good inside we talk a lot about our parenting approach being very long-term greedy I actually think our parenting approach brings a ton of short-term wins we can get to that but if I had to choose I'd say I'm gonna be long-term greedy

with my kids and your kids because what happens when they're 18 and over out of your house is so much higher stakes than what happens in your house. And so the way we parent our kids today becomes the way they think about themselves and how they relate to others. And it's something that is amenable to change. We all go to therapy, but you can think of it as like their factory settings or their kind of blueprint. And to me, the greatest privilege you can give a kid is kind of the emotional privilege of, I know how to deal with things that are frustrating. I believe I can do hard things. I've bounced back from failure. All the skills that really set a kid up. And that has to do with a lot of these everyday

interactions. And so I would like you to talk more about the interactions. I really want to instill good manners, looking adults in the eye, saying hello, shaking hands, all these things that I think are really important for children. And I don't have a blueprint on how to do that. How would you encourage really strong interactions with really young children? Great. So number one, I would say just like swimming, we have to expect these skills to take time, right? Because again, if you teach your kids swimming in the first day, you're like, you're not swimming. I'm never taking you back to swim class. Parents be like, you're crazy. That's an unrealistic expectation. And you've just layered shame. So now it's going to be harder for them to learn how to swim. Me too. I do this with manners all the time. And we tell

our kids, you're so rude. Or did you see Bobby who said thank you? Right? That just sets us back. Right? Because I've just made my kid feel worse about themselves. Number one, modeling truly is the most important thing when it comes to manners. Our kids pick up on how we interact with people. Like you said, if I'm on my phone not greeting people, they're going to think this is the family value. And after you model it, you don't have to say to your kids, see, I said thank you for so-and-so having us over. Just model it and know that it matters. Two, practice it in your home.

Like actually role play it. Let's say your friend Molly is having you over for a play date before you go. We're going to Molly's house. I wonder what, hmm, what can we say when Molly gives you lunch that's a little different than the lunch you're used to? Like I'm going to give a couple options. One, ugh, disgusting. Two, fine. Three, thanks for lunch. Which one? And like you can make it playful. And parents are often worried to do the first.

Our kids say these things all the time. We're not like putting that idea in their head. That's probably what they're going to say if we don't prepare them. Like, oh, that's exactly right. Oh, that might be tricky to say in the moment. Do you think you could say that? That would be so cool if you could say that. So I'm actually preparing my kid.

Maybe even if it's that important, I'd say, I'm going to give you breakfast before we go. Let's pretend it's that situation. What were you going to say? Oh, you're going to say thanks. Oh, you think you could say thanks to breakfast for me? So again, I'm really treating this the way we think about so many other things in life. Learning manners, learning how to get through hard things, learning how to manage your emotions. These really are skills. And if you think about yourself as like a coach, what does a basketball coach do if a kid

can't make a free throw? They practice free throws. When you see young children and some are shy and some are outgoing, how do you deal with these personality traits with the interaction? Yes. So I think that's a really, really good point. Like what is the role of temperament? I think we really misunderstand shyness and I think we really do a disservice to our shy kids because there are kids who just take longer to kind of come out of their shell. And I'll never forget my private practice. I saw this family of, I think the kid was like four or five. And then right after a family of like a 16-year-old.

And word for word, the first session was like, my kid's the only one. They don't make eye contact with people. They're always the last one to join the birthday party. They're so clingy. Why can't they be more confident? Okay. And then the second family was like, my kid was on this text chain. They got suspended on school. You know, there was some issue. Why can't my kid see other kids doing something and know that that's wrong and like think for themselves? Why can't they be more confident? And I just remember thinking, wait, when our kids are five, we refer to confident as like right away doing the action and kind of doing what all the other

kids are doing. And then when our kids are 16, we define confident as noticing what everyone's doing and waiting and doing something different. Like that's really not fair to our kids. So I think when you have a kid who, I don't like to label anyone as shy, but tends towards shyness or just like is a little more reticent, then the skills around socialization will just take longer. Right? So I think we have to have a little more patience. Don't discount the things you practice in your home, them saying thank you to you, clearing their plate. Even if they don't do those things in public, they're learning those skills. And going back to this formula of kind of validation and competence

that is so important for kids who are a little bit shy i also think it's funny we tell our kids don't talk to strangers don't do that stay away and then in the other interaction say hi to everyone be alcohol and it's it's confusing it's confusing it's contradictory yeah my daughter said that the other day i said go say hi to your teacher and she and she didn't know her yet and she said you told me not to talk to strangers. I'm like, fuck. And that's a really good in-between just to say back to her, you don't know her yet. And so you're not so sure about talking to her.

That makes sense. Take your time. I'm sure you'll greet her in the morning. On a morning, you're comfortable. Like that is so confidence building to hear that. You had a viral moment. We've got a few, but you've had a viral moment around not focusing on making your kids happy. Yes.

Let's talk about that. It's a chapter in my book too. And again, kind of making our kids happy to me is almost the opposite of what matters most in life, which is building resilience, right? In my mind. When I think about my mom growing up, I don't remember a moment where I was like, I got to feel happy here. I remember a lot of other things, good things,

and I have a great relationship with my mom, but I never remember feeling like I better be happy in the moment. Yeah. I think that's a lot of people of our generation, right? Yeah. I think this generation, when we see our kids upset,

there's a lot of us, we have this instinct to fix it right away. Right. And I think I hear this anecdotally from people. Oh, I just, don't you just want your kids to be happy? And I can't help myself. And I was like, no. Or people will say like, what's the goal of parenting? I just want to raise happy kids. Right. But if we think about adulthood, I don't know if all of us here would be like, most of the time, the thing that's going on for me is just happy. Like there's hard moments. And so if I think about what I want for my kids when they're older, I want them to be able to cope. I want them to feel resilient. I want them to feel like it's

okay to be themselves in the widest range of situations, not the narrowest range. I think this really comes to life with an example, right? To really kind of bring it together. And I think, again, another metaphor I think about is this idea of like a feelings bench, right? So if you picture one of your kids right now, picture them like wandering around a garden and there's benches everywhere. And it's kind of the garden of life and each bench is a different experience. We often find our kids on kind of painful benches. So maybe your four-year-old's not there yet, but it might be the bench of, I'm the only kid in my class who can't read. Okay. And this to me, that idea of, do I help my kid become resilient or do I maximize my kid's comfort and ease and happiness is like kind of at odds. Because if my kid is on this bench of, I'm the only one who can't read, they're kind of more

generally on the bench of other people have things I don't have, or I feel less than, which I would say is going to be something they're going to feel a million other times over the course of their life. And I think as a parent, we have one of two instincts. We either have the instinct to kind of yank them off that bench and bring them to the bench we see in the sun, the happy bench. My kid says like, I'm the only one who can't read in my class. And I'll say, I don't know, but you're the best one at soccer. And they all suck at soccer. Something flies out of my mouth. Because I'm like, come be happy.

Or I kind of try to convince them that their bench isn't their bench. I'm like, wait, that can't be true. Or that's not such a big deal. Everyone else is an early reader and you're reading perfectly on time. Whereas both of those approaches, number one, actually make a kid, I would say, much less confident and create a fear of distress. Because a kid's kind of saying, I'm distressed, I'm upset, and I come to my parent, and I guess my parent is as scared of my upset feelings as I am because they're kind of willing to run circles

and do anything for me not to feel it. They're even trying to convince me that my feeling isn't my feeling. I'm like coming to them saying I'm upset and they're like, no, you're not. But I am. That's why I came to you. Or you shouldn't be. Or you shouldn't be. Whereas I think there's really, I've distilled this into three lines because I like to get concrete, that are the essence of optimizing for long-term resilience instead of optimizing for short-term happiness. Number one, I'm so glad you're talking to me about this. That to me is a line every parent should have in their vocabulary. I would say every partner should have in their vocabulary when someone's saying anything that's upsetting. Because what you're really saying is the part of

you who feels upset is still attachable to me. I like that part. I'm not scared. I always think someone in a company is like, I need a raise. And you're thinking as a boss, like you're not getting a raise. If you start the conversation by just saying, I'm so glad you're talking to me about this. Defenses go down. You're on the same team. Immediately the conversation is going to be more productive. The second line I think is the ultimate confidence producing line for a kid because i think about confidence as self-trust not feeling good i believe you i actually think like those are healing words for a lot of our childhoods just the only one who didn't get a chapter book i'm so glad you're talking to me about this yeah and they handed them out and I got this picture book and everyone else got chapter books I believe you and then tell me more literally tell me more and then what happened and if you

think about your kid on this bench what you're really doing is you're just sitting down next to them that's what you're doing you're just sitting you're like tell me the story of kind of what happened and then what happens 99 times out of 100 is your kid truly gets off the bench to walk away before you do. You're like, oh, they're fine. They just had to kind of like get it out. They had to know they weren't alone in their feelings. That actually builds a kid who becomes incredibly confident and resilient because the next time they're the only one who, I don't know, doesn't have a cool pair of sneakers or wasn't invited to a birthday party or was the only one in their analyst class who didn't get promoted. They're going to be upset, but they're not going to spiral into the darkest part of the abyss.

And that's all about, again, not trying to make our kids short-term happy, but making them long-term resilient. Beautiful advice. I mean, I've learned more about parenting from you in the last 40 minutes than I've ever learned in my life. I can't believe it. The other thing about parenting, and I empathize with parents. And again, like, it's so funny. We were in this phase where half of our friends have kids and the other half, Taylor, that they don't. So it's like, we're not going to, the ones without, it's one of those things where it's like, you can't know anything about it until you start doing it. Right. As I get older and I work with a lot of young people,

one of the things that I talked to Lauren a lot about is I don't want my children in a future long-term version of them to be surprised by the world. Meaning like, I don't want them, I see a lot of young people and it's sometimes as I observe it as I'm older it's like they're surprised that the world is maybe not as kind as they had been told or they're surprised that things are not fair or they're surprised that there's certain people that are just sharks out there that'll take it like and what I tell her all the time is I want to create a version of my child that when they get to that world, it's the easiest transition possible for them where they're not cynical, but they're also not like, what the hell is going on here? I think that's exactly what we're talking about. And I think people think so. The world is harsh. So me punishing my kid and being harsh prepares them. That actually does not prepare them for the world. That actually makes them very fragile because they, again, don't actually learn how to cope with things. Like,

when my kid is really upset that it's not fair, you took my sister to ice cream and not me, and I send them to their room, like, do I think they're Googling? Like, how do I deal with fairness in a better way? They just, they're scared. I guess now they're scared of me as a parent, but that actually doesn't teach them anything. Kids do well in the real world when they have coping skills for the real world. And when a kid becomes older and realizes, wait, this thing isn't fair, the way they'll cope with that is if they're able to say to themselves, it's true, this isn't fair, and I can also deal with it, and I can move past it, and where is my agency, and what can I do? So I have a

kid who's saying, it's not fair, you know, you took my sister to ice cream and not me. What I would say to the kid is, you're totally right. It's not fair. So does that mean you're taking me now? No, sweetie. It's just, you know, over time in our family, different people get different things and kind of probably all relatively evens out. But no, if you're upset, I get that. Feel free to cry and, you know, we're going to get through it together. That actually builds a really tough adult. We just had Kourtney Kardashian on the podcast and she had told everyone that she did co-sleeping for a long time. I think she said she did it with one of her kids until they were 11. And there was a lot of different opinions on it. Do you have a black and white opinion on it or is it more gray? And if so, what is it?

You know, when it comes to anything, definitely sleep. Okay. I think parents need to do what works for them. I think that's really important. If co-sleeping is working for you and your kid and you're like, hey, we both get decent night's sleep. I feel like I can move on also with like the other aspects of my adult life. Like there's adults who are like, I don't have sex with my partner anymore because my kid sleeps in the bed with us. And I'm like, does that work for you? It doesn't. Okay. It doesn't work for us, Lauren. It doesn't work

for us. And that seems to not be working. You know, someone else is like me and my, if you have a partner, we love it. It adds amazing. I have nothing to say about them. That's working for you. So I think it comes down to that. Like, does this work for me? Does this also work for my kid? And what I mean, does it work for my kid, even if they seem to like it? One of the things I would think about as my kid gets older is just their independence. How able are they to be independent? I know a lot of 11-year-olds who are incredibly independent and could co-sleep with the parent. For other 11-year-olds, the co-sleeping is just one of many manifestations of, oh, this kid isn't really developing in general skills for independence. I

might intervene a little differently. So that's really what I would say. I think I've worked with a lot of families who, as their kid gets older, sleeping in the same bed or the kid crawling in at 2 a.m., it's just not working for anyone or the parent starts to feel really resentful. They feel guilty about working toward independent sleep, but they feel really resentful that they don't have kind of their own bed. And that's where I'd say we can come up with a plan that doesn't involve cry it out,

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We've talked a lot about kids and parents, but can we talk about the parents? One of the most replayed portions of your TED Talk was self-repair. I want to talk about that a little bit because I think we're talking a lot about the focus on the children, but let's turn it back on the parents and talk about what we need to do. Yeah. And I'm so glad you're highlighting that. To me, if a parent really is like the leader, the kind of the CEO of the home, then it makes sense. Even if in a big company, if like the associates were struggling, you would probably change things at the level of leadership, right? And that's kind of how I think about parent. It's not your fault, but it is our responsibility as the leader. So let's talk about

repair and self-repair. Even with everything I'm talking about, and I should have said this earlier, no parent, me included, does any of this kind of quote good stuff all the time. Like my kids have Becky as a mom. They do not have Dr. Becky as a mom. And I mean this from the bottom of my heart. I would not wish Dr. Becky on any child. Because again, Michael, to your point, how we interact with our kid informs their opinion on how they're going to interact with the world. Do we think it's going to be adaptive for a kid when they're 28 to be like, I'm looking

for a partner who is perfectly attuned to my needs, who never gets upset, who always gets it right? Where is that person? That person is zero. There's zero places. So that's not even adaptive. But what kids need, they need imperfect parents who repair. and they repair more often than not. So I think one of the things that gets in the way of repair is actually the way we chastise ourselves after we yell at our kid, call our kid a spoiled brat, said we'd be at the soccer game and just totally forgot, arrive late and made our kid feel guilty for being upset that we were late, even though probably they were scared waiting for their parent on the side of the road, whatever it is, we feel so awful that we actually can't repair with our kid and just say a simple, I'm really sorry I yelled. It's never

your fault when I yell. And I can get to that line because a lot of people are like, but I think it is my kid's fault, but it's never your fault when I yell and I'm working on, you know, managing my emotions just like we're working on with you. It is because we almost can't face the moment again. Like if you're really chastising yourself for a moment, you actually can't repair with someone because it feels so eviscerating to face the reality of what you did that you actually just avoid it and everyone kind of suffers. So the first step to a good repair with your kid is actually doing a good repair with yourself. And it seems so cheesy, but it's so important. And I think this actually gets to a core principle of good inside, that who we are,

kind of our identity, is different than what we do, our behavior. And in all the classic models of parenting, there's no separation between behavior and identity. My kid hits, they're a bad kid, I send them to their room. My kid says, I hate you, they're a rude, spoiled, bad kid, I take away their phone, whatever it is. We see behavior and we assume identity. Good inside actually depends on separating them. Because you're good inside, you're a good person who was having a hard time. And people often say, doesn't that let even yourself off the hook? That is the single concept that keeps you on the hook. If you want to let yourself off the hook for change, blame yourself and be awful to yourself

because you will hold yourself in shame and that literally freezes you and you can't change. So repair starts by saying to yourself, I'm a good person who yelled at my kid. That sentence is really powerful. I'm a good person who yelled at my kid. I did something I'm not proud of. That's okay. I can repair. I can figure this out. And only after that, you can find your kid probably say the same thing. I'm sorry I yelled. It's never your fault when I yell. You know, I'm working on managing my frustration so I can stay calm and not yell at you when that's happening. What are the pillars of a good marriage or relationship that we need to be doing in front of our children? Number one, just how we communicate with each other, especially when we're upset, is really important. Because I think kids hopefully

will learn early being in a partnership with someone isn't unicorn and rainbows. Like it's hard. And I think too often generation after generation has still this like movie kind of ideal, which sets them up for failure, for feeling like no partner is good enough, right? And for not actually learning the skills to communicate respectfully even when you're upset. So working on that really matters and naming when that's not happening to your partner to repair. Hey, I was upset earlier. Still, when I'm upset, it's not okay for me to talk to you like that and I'm sorry. And you kind of want your kid to be like with an earshot. You don't have to turn to them and say, see I'm upset, it's not okay for me to talk to you like that. And I'm sorry. And you kind of want your kid to be like with an earshot. You don't have to turn to them and say, see.

But again, they will really absorb that. Next, when you fight, talk to your kid about it because they're scared. Again, they're always paying attention to us and the state of our relationship. Hey, you heard daddy and I yelling earlier. I'm sure that felt scary. We're okay. We're working on communicating more effectively that felt scary we're okay we're working on communicating more effectively even when we're upset but i just wanted to say i'm sure that felt

bad and then i think just connectedness especially in this age where our phones take us so far away from each other our kids seeing that we say to each other hey let's have dinner together without our phones hey i see you on your phone could you put that down so we could talk? And the other person hopefully saying, Ooh, you're right. Let me just finish this thing and put it in the other room. I think our kids seeing that in us these days is really important for down the line. So I think every parent aspires to create a better life for their children than they had, maybe, or they try to improve upon the life of their children compared to the way

they grew up. That's an aspiration. How do you guard against creating entitled children? So I think every adult says this. I don't want to have an entitled kid, but we have to start with what does that really mean under the word so we know what we're optimizing or avoiding. To me, what entitlement really is, is fear of frustration of frustration okay and I want to explain this so I think about something that happened years ago I'm in my private practice I'm seeing this very wealthy you know parents they were self-made did really well and they came to me precisely because they were flying from Hawaii I guess they called first class. Their 16-year-old son gets up to board and the parents say nonchalantly,

it wasn't a big deal to them. Oh, sweetie, we're not boarding yet. We're not first class. And the kid just had a total meltdown, like a parent's worst nightmare. And they basically came to me saying like, how did we get here? The most well-meaning parents, lovely.

And I think the kid was really, really lovely too. So if we think about entitlement, because that's a prime example as fear of frustration, everything that kind of went on in the 16 years before this event kind of starts to make sense. This was a kid where it seemed like every time he was upset, there almost was this quick exit out of frustration. We both live in New York City. I don't think this kid had ever been on the subway as an example. Now, do I think the subway is the key to not being entitled? No, that's literally one concrete thing. But I think about the driver they had. This kid wants to be somewhere in a second. It's like in the car, right? This kid didn't make soccer.

No problem. We have this extra nanny who could take you in the car. We'll drive you right away to some other town and you make that soccer team. Every time there was an ounce of frustration, what got wired next to it was someone basically frantically running around to get that kid out of frustration and into kind of relative success and ease. So during our kids' earliest years, they're learning what feelings am I supposed to feel? Then what feelings do I have coping skills for? What feelings can I be resilient in the face of? Or what feelings overwhelm me because I have

the feelings and none of the skills, but then actually also overwhelm like everyone else around me? So much so that they will put structures in place to make sure I don't feel this way. Now, no parent thinks this way. They're not like, I'm doing this so my kid doesn't feel frustration. But the truth is when our kids are frustrated, it's frustrating for us. Dealing with your kid up being upset, it's hard. Like we have to have frustration tolerance of our kids' frustration. And I think one of the patterns that happened was there was just always a way out. And I think for this family, money becomes that much more of a compelling way.

It's just always available. So it was like always a way out. And I think for this family, money becomes that much more of a compelling way. It's just always available. So it was like always a way out. The truth is to not have entitled kids, you actually have to have kids who learn to deal with the frustrations of the world. They wait in line. And would you category disappointments as well? All of it. Frustration, uncomfortable feelings, which is why, and I'm a practical person, so I'll give some action here. My kids live a pretty nice life. I mean, they weren't like that kid. But still, when I think about my kids saying, oh, do I have to go to my sister's soccer game? Can I just have a play date? There's moments where I'm like, no. Literally, the whole point is you will go to your sister's soccer game because it's not optimizing your own kind of

schedule. Because in life, to not be entitled, you sometimes have to do things you don't want to do. Why are you learning to fold laundry, even though sometimes someone does that? Because good people learn how to fold laundry. And by the way, it's not like they celebrate it right away. It's actually just kind of annoying. Why are you going on an errand with me even if I have a babysitter at home? Because it's kind of not about you and you're just going to deal with that. Why am I saying to you, oh, you weren't invited to that party? That stinks. Instead of, we'll plan our own party and you can have five friends and we'll make our party better than that kid's party is because actually being long-term greedy, I want my kid to actually feel capable in the face of frustration. And that's the thing about entitlement I think we miss and

the literature misses. When I think about that 16-year-old who had a tantrum like the Delta lounge, wherever it was, he was very vulnerable. In some ways, what he was saying through his behavior is, I have not felt frustration a day in my life. So I don't know what to do. Where's the exit? Where's the exit? You've always given me an exit. Where's the exit? Where is it? You're supposed to be. I can't deal with this. It's so vulnerable and fragile. And I don't mean that in a mean way. I mean that in like a very empathic way because these kids have actually never learned the skills to deal with all the bumps in life. They've just had their road kind of smoothed over for them. So when they get to a bump, not only do they not know how to deal, any bump feels like a mountain if you've been given a perfectly, you know, smoothed out road. Wow. Before we go, I have to ask you

this because I'm sure everyone who's listening who has children has experienced a tantrum. Say your daughter or son is tantruming like no other. You cannot snap them out of it. What is the Dr. Becky way to get them out of a tantrum? Great. So I'm going to upgrade your question to a different question. I actually think when we're frustrated with our kid, it's often because we have to ask a different question to ourselves. So I actually think if you just say that way, if I'm really frustrated, I should stop trying to answer my question. I should figure out a different question to ask. The question is, when my kid is having a tantrum, what's really going on for them? And what's my job? What's my job? Totally different question. Totally different question. Okay. Okay.

My job during a tantrum is to keep my body calm and to keep my kid safe. My job, and this sounds like this is so, you know, kind of mind-blowing in the best way. My job is not to end a tantrum, ever. The more energy I put into ending a tantrum, the more my kid thinks I'm scared of their tantrum. I've layered my fear on top of their fear, which, shocking to no one, leads to more fear and a much longer, more intense tantrum, right? If you think about a tantrum as this kind of explosion like this, our job is to provide a container, which is that boundary. So keep my body calm, keep my kids safe. When I mean safe, sometimes during tantrums, like kids really start

like throwing things or like, I don't know, they'll, you know, get something in their room. That always, we have to stop it. The phrase, I won't let you, is really important. Not, we don't. Not, please stop. I won't let you. I'm not going to let you throw that vase. I'm not going to let you take all the glass tupperware and throw it around our kitchen. Whatever it is. I'm not going to let you open the fridge right now.

That's the boundary. And then what I'm going to say to myself, honestly, is like a mantra. I kind of just wait it out. I might say to myself, I'm safe. This isn't an emergency. I can cope with this. That's actually my favorite mantra because the only reason we get activated during our kids' tantrums is because our body kind of confuses whose feelings are whose. It's like, wait, wait, my kid's having a tantrum. And our body then starts to feel unsafe, which is why we want to shut it down.

We often want to shut down our kids' tantrums just to stop ourselves from feeling whatever uncomfortable feeling we're having, right? It's a lot of cortisol. It is. So that's why really our body needs to be told, I'm safe. And it responds really well to being told this. I'm safe. This isn't an emergency.

I can cope with this. And then you actually can say very little to your kid. They're not hearing it anyway. Their frontal lobe is completely offline. They are fully in their most like reptilian part of their brain, fight or flight mode. They actually can't even comprehend language, but they feel your presence.

They feel your energy. You sitting down, making sure your kid is safe, which might mean carrying them to their room not to leave them there to sit with them there because they started throwing blocks i'm going to pick you up i'm going to carry you to your room my favorite line you're a good kid having a hard time we're going to get through this i sit in against the door so they know i'm there my kids kind of doing whatever tantrumy things they're doing which of course my kids used to do too when they were young and i'm seriously saying to myself i I'm safe. This is an emergency. I can cope with

this. Someone else I know says to themselves, this tantrum will end whenever it's going to end. I just need to weather it, right? Something like that. And then you wait. It sounds like you're talking about a twister or a tornado. Doesn't it feel like it does yeah where can we find all these dr becky isms like i know you have an app tell us about that i would like to get signed up immediately to your app i've learned so much this episode and i think michael has too i think i've gotten i think we're on the same page after this episode which is we're gonna throw the ipads away i don't know we're gonna throw them away to throw them away. Maybe not on the full same page. No, not throw them away. I just, they're not going to come to dinner anymore.

And neither are our phones. Are you going to be okay with that with Twitter? Yeah, it's fine. Okay, we'll see. It's called X now. It's called X now. Okay, X. I'll let Dr. Becky know.

Okay, tell us about the app. Where can we find you? Where can we get more of your tips? So I really do think about parenting like a language where most of us parent in the way we were parented. It's kind of like whatever language was spoken to you. And most of us want to do things a little bit different. Some people a lot of it, but some people it's just a little shift. And so at Good Inside, we believe that parents don't only need an approach that actually makes sense. They need a modern, technologically sophisticated tool to make that approach super

accessible. So I used to have all these workshops for all these different things. I still have that. And some people love that. But I started to hear from parents who were saying, I have five minutes. I have like in-between moments. I'm brewing my coffee or I'm scrolling in bed or I'm like on the pickup line or taking a walk. I have five minutes in the thought of a workshop. I just like, I can't do it. And I get it because I still think those parents need something. So we just thought like, what if I could distill all the most key things from different workshops, from what I know kids kind of need at different ages. And it took less than five minutes a day for a parent. And so we knew we had to do an app to

personalize it to your kid's age, make sure it was developmentally appropriate. So that's what's in the app. And then we also have this amazing chatbot in the app. I mean, I feel like in the world of AI, technology is being used for so many things. Parents should not be left behind of kind of the AI tech revolution. So now if you have a question, it really feels just like texting me. I, no joke, used it the other night myself because I was spiraling and could not access. What did you ask it? How did you get it to figure out what you, did you just basically feed it a bunch of information?

There's so much content I've produced. So you just put all that. But also there's a way of talking to people that I think it's the how of getting ideas that matters as much as the what. And honestly, training that chatbot was something I'm super involved in because I know kind of the way I have insights about people,

like that's also how I'd want it to talk to a parent non-judgmentally, really understanding any of us can just make small changes at a time. And the other night I was kind of spiraling about some social stuff that was going on with one of my kids and getting into like what I call fast forward error. Like, you know, you fast forward 20 years, like, oh, my kid's never gonna have friends or, you know, whatever. And I literally said I literally said to myself like okay like get in Dr. Becky mind I couldn't my husband was out my best friend wasn't picking up the phone I was like this is so insane like should I go to my own app and like ask my chatbot my kid is going through some social changes can you give me a parenting pep talk that's literally what I wrote it and it answered. I wish I could get it for. I mean, it was everything I needed to like feel my feet on the ground. And then I I felt I felt like I

actually felt good going to bed instead of like waking up at 2 a.m. feeling like, you know, shitty parent worrying about my kid. That is so genius to be able to just ask you like ask your app. I'm getting that right away. It's amazing. And so all of that, it's in the app store. If you just search good inside, you'll find it. We the app store. If you just search Good Inside, you'll find it. We make it easy. If you go to goodinside.com, you can get it there. And just what I want parents to know is this parenting gig is so hard. Okay. I feel like that. It's so hard. And then we tell ourselves when we struggle, like it's our fault,

or I'm not good at this, or it's easy for everyone else. It is not. I really believe that the world has set us up for feeling bad. It would be like our friend telling us they're a bad surgeon only to learn they never went to med school. We'd say like, you're not a bad surgeon. It's just no one really prepared you for this very hard job you have. And that's what we live every day. And I think the bigger message I want to say to parents and even our app is it doesn't have to be that way. Like I am such a fan of parents up leveling support.

That could be our app. It could be the parent coach in your town you heard good things about. It could be whatever you trust, whatever sounds compelling, up leveling support, I think is a sign of everything you're doing right as a parent, never a sign of anything you're doing wrong. Where can everyone find you if they want to follow you?

Oh, okay. Goodinside.com. My podcast is Good Inside with Dr. Becky. My book, guess what it's called? Good Inside. My Instagram handle is a little different. It's my name first, Dr. Becky at Good Inside. That's the whole handle.

But if you type in Good Inside to anything, the chances are, yes, you'll find me. I'll link it all out too. Amazing. Thank you so much for coming on. Come back anytime. I could have gone on. Thank you for doing this. Thank you.