Dr. Becky Kennedy
Appearances
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Well, and now it's because if you think about the circuitry that kids get used to with dopamine and the space between wanting and having in general is low because when you don't know something, you want to know it. Here, you do know it.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Our tolerance and our kids' tolerance for wanting and not having is so low that what's so sad is the learning space has gotten massively compressed and people fear frustration. This image, when I've gone over this with kids and even teachers, I know teachers who teach this in their class, okay, today we're going to learn this new thing.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I think this is a great question. There's a couple of things that are coming to mind. So first of all, all of this is a matter of extent and patterning. Yes, we do not want our kids to feel like it is their job to take care of our emotions. It's not a good situation. And I think the difference here actually comes down to what the true definition of empathy is.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
We're going to learn whatever it is, you know, how to read a short word. Everybody in this class is here, not knowing. Everybody in this class is going to get here. And probably today, most of us, and you can actually do it now, are going to be right here. What does this say? The learning space. How are we supposed to feel when we're in the learning space? The class can say, frustrated.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Okay, here's an interesting assignment, different than you think. The goal today is not to tell me if you can read the letters that are in front of you. I want you to raise your hand when you feel frustrated, which feels like this. Oh, I can't do it. Because I'm going to come up to you and I'm going to give you a high five. And I'm going to say, you are in the learning space. You are learning.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
How amazing is that? Like, Andrew, I really believe this has the power to change learning. Because then when we talk about proficiency or when we talk about years from now, My kid is saying this happens all the time. I get questions about this all the time. My kid says they want to do whatever it is. It could be a coding class. It could be a lacrosse class. And they do it once.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And then they always come home and they say, I want to do it. I quit. Or maybe they're on a swim team and they want to quit. Do I let my kid quit? Right? To me, the question is actually like, most likely, none of our kids are going to be Olympic swimmers or like professional basketball players. I think about this a lot with youth sports.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
The whole goal in my mind for most people with youth sports, not everyone, but most, is learning how to deal with frustration, learning how to do things you thought you couldn't do, character, sharing, being a good teammate, sportsmanship, right? All those things are hard skills to learn.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
So the reason I'm signing my kid up for basketball is actually just because it's like a good medium for all those things. And so I want to be sure that if my kid is quitting, it's not because they're escaping the very, very natural learning space that is so important to be in in life. And this happened. Actually, my oldest wanted to quit baseball. He'd played for years and he wanted to quit in...
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
The conversation we ended up having was, look, let's wait to the end of the season. Like, and this goes back to values. It's not we don't quit, but like in our family, we really value and try as much as we can to keep our commitments. And not just to ourselves, to each other. And so the rest of the season, you might be thinking all the time, I don't want to be doing this.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And again, in my head, I'm thinking, good. That's like a good life experience to watch yourself go through that as long as it's not toxic. And at the end, you know, we'll talk about it. Interestingly enough, he had the best baseball season he'd ever had. He had a grand slam, which no shade to baseball. That's as exciting as youth baseball ever gets, right? And still...
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
He was like, I think I'm done. Like, I just want to... And I felt really good about that. I was like, look, you ended on, like, you're playing really well. It wasn't just because you got moved down in the batting order. Like, if that's the reason why I could get moved down to the batting order, they're not starting on basketball. I hear this all the time. Now they want to quit.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I don't have any rigid rules. But if that becomes a pattern, that worries me. Or not worries me, but... Forget youth sports. That's just not a great circuitry that would be conducive with kind of resilience and confidence in adulthood.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
To me, empathy is noticing someone's feelings and caring about them. It's not taking care of them. That's a big difference. So let's say I'm crying and my kid comes over and this whole situation, maybe somebody died. And they're like, oh my goodness, mom, can I give you a hug? And do you want me to get you a cup of water?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
That's why phones shouldn't be in the bedroom for kids.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I already have it. I mean, our frustration tolerance program, it's a workshop. It's within our membership, right? So it's one of 30 workshops. To me, it's one where, you know, the thing is no parents say, Dr. Becky, what I'm really dealing with is low frustration tolerance.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
You know, they'll say I have my kid is having tantrums or they won't do their homework or kids with ADHD tend to have low frustration tolerance. Right. So to me, it's like one of the first things I recommend to new members where I say, OK, you might like this is the thing. This is like the key thing that underlies a lot of tantrums that underlies entitlement. It underlies not sharing.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
It underlies why you throw the board game when you're about to lose. It underlies quitting. It's not homework. And again, the MGI, the most generous interpretation is, wait, right, the commonality in all those situations is my kid is frustrated.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And if what they're learning or what they've practiced is when I feel frustrated, it's so intense that sometimes I think, like, do our kids learn that their emotions operate on a dimmer switch or an on-off switch? We want our kids to operate on a dimmer. Like you said, if you're at a 10 out of 10, you can't operate.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
But if every time—and I'm so interested in this literature you mentioned because I was thinking, what would happen in the first number of years of a kid's life if every time they're frustrated— Well-intentioned, but again, just under-resourced parents, turn it off.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Okay, I just want parents to know, you don't have to say, no, no, I do not want you to be a parentified child. Like, that is so, that is so kind. Yes, that would feel great. Okay, that's totally fine. I think the line is, and every parent just knows this for themselves, where it might get to, oh, you know what? I love that you're noticing I'm sad. And I love that you care about that.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
then what I think would happen, and I'm wondering, is then something that could be like a five out of 10, I feel like would feel like a 10 out of 10, because you never had a dimmer, right? Because if you only operated when a light went on with always going off, then even if over time, years later, the light was at a five, it still could feel blinding, right?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And so this idea of a dimmer, you want your kids when they're frustrated, that's what frustration tolerance is. Nobody says I'm frustrated. I can't read. Yay. No one says that. But if it kind of comes up, oh, there's that light. We want their bodies to think, okay, all I need to do and I have skills to get my 9 out of 10 to an 8, an 8 to a 7. When I'm at a 7, that's where learning happens.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
That's very different than it's at a 9. and kind of like, who's gonna turn it off for me? Or the reason in those situations could say, I'm not doing my homework, is they don't have the skills to bring it to a seven. And so their choice is to stay at a 9 or 10 out of 10, which no human can do, or walk away and bring it to a zero.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And so what I'm saying is our frustration tolerance workshop, which I want every parent to take, but I also just want to get into schools, is literally the thing that helps you teach your kids how to get frustration tolerance, how to... You really can do this. It sounds sick, but, like, you can get your kids to like being in the learning space, to be like... I'm going to thrive here.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
The good feeling is eventually going to come. I'm relatively comfortable here because I just have watched myself survive it that many times. And so the benefits of that workshop and just the program is not only tantrums, but actually it is a lot in academics. So many times when kids have issues in school, ADHD is real. Dyslexia is real. That definitely can be a component.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
But so many times, it's actually an issue of frustration, tolerance, and that's often not kind of labeled for parents.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And I also want to let you know those are my feelings, not yours. And I am really able to take care of them myself with whoever is a friend. And you're still really allowed to be a kid who can go play, who can go have fun. who can even not listen to me once in a while when I say it's bath time, that's actually your job. So let's go do our jobs well.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
But I don't know about frustration for a year. I guess I always think how we experience a feeling is the feeling plus the story we tell ourselves about the feeling. And the feeling kind of is at a certain level, but the story we tell ourself about the feeling and what it means about us or how capable we are of coping with it, that can make a feeling that was here go to here.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Something about frustration of a year, like... It's interesting, we're talking so much about stories, but again, if one of the things I try as a parent is when my kid is saying, I don't know, what would it be to quit? You know, I...
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I hate gymnastics right and you're thinking okay like first of all quitting is not always weak or wrong sometimes quitting is a very brave awesome great thing to do definitely sometimes the absolute best thing to do a hundred percent but as a parent sometimes and I get this a lot like I'm conflicted like I don't know what's right first of all there's probably not a right and again our parenting never hangs on one decision so just let that go
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
But I think what I would be curious to just experiment with, again, maybe it's because I'm so obsessed with frustration tolerance, especially in this world that is so working against frustration tolerance. I feel like it's like even more of my duty as a parent to help. Okay, let's just have an experiment where I would say, okay, talk to me about why you want to quit gymnastics.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And I might know in the back of my head, maybe they're not as good as everyone anymore. Right? Or maybe they just don't like it. Who knows? But I might say, you know, look, maybe this isn't relevant. I'm thinking about when I did, you know, I'm thinking about a different sport. When I did track growing up. And there were like whole years where I was like, I love track. I love track.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And I don't know if I ever told you this, but when I was 11, I hated track. I went from love to hate it. And part of it was, and again, say something kind of relevant to your kid. Part of it was there was a new kid at school and I was kind of the track star until she came in. And then I was like second and that just kind of stunk. And no, I didn't tell myself it's okay.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I kind of told myself this stinks every day. And part of it was all my friends were doing soccer and I kind of felt left out. But I finished the year and the next year something interesting happened. And this is what a kid will say. I'll go, oh, what, you love track again? You know, and it's this amazing moment because they're always going to say that to be like, no, no.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I ended up deciding that next year was my last year at track, and I stopped after that. But I can't explain it. It just felt like I came from, like, a different place. Almost like I felt more settled, I think, after. Like, I really knew. And I don't know if that's relevant to gymnastics. I do know you've loved it for a while. It's kind of new to not like it.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And sometimes when something's new and you don't like it, you just got to go. But other times when something's new and you don't like it, you want to like figure it out. And I don't know, I'm wondering if we should give it a few more weeks to try the figuring it out thing. And again, maybe your kid says, no, I want to quit. And you're like, fine.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And in some ways you've already had the experience, no matter what they do. But I think that's what I think about playing around with with kids way more than I think what parents say is, so should they quit or not? It's so binary. It's so rigid. And I think we're missing the nuance of the story and the process that matters more than the eventual decision.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And to me, that comes down to what empathy is, the delineation of like, what is a parent's job and what is a kid's job? But also, I think all of this can get misrepresented in social media. And I don't want parents to think that they always have to chastise their kid for acting in a caring way.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I don't know if I realized those parts, but you know what is interesting is it brings up the word we kind of mentioned before but didn't talk about, and maybe it'll be surprising that I say this, is shame. And I think shame...
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
is the biggest blocker to learning and shame I think could be defined like a lot of things in many ways but it's the experience of aloneness I think shame is the feeling you have when you kind of feel like a part of you is not attachable so for a kid that's an existential threat to not be in attachment with someone and in that way when you're not attachable you're alone you're alone
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And so, so many of the things that happen with our kids, because I'll model another story and maybe I'll get some flack for this because it's probably counterintuitive. But I think about like one of my kids, my resilient rebel, who was in a hitting stage when he was younger. hitting. And he was just also in like a, it was in like a couple of weeks he was hitting.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And then, and there was this one, there was this one time where we were doing a family puzzle and he was younger. He was probably like three. It was really hard. It was more for my older kids. He was kind of doing his own thing. I think he was playing with blocks on the side. We leave, we come back and like, A couple of the puzzle pieces were missing that were in. And I just knew, I knew it.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
He saw it. I know most generous interpretation. He felt like, oh my God, I can't participate in what the rest of the family is doing. And so you know what I'm going to do? Because I'm a smart kid. I'm just going to stop them from participating. And so I'm going to take the puzzle pieces and hide them. I knew it. I know him. So we come back and we'd worked really hard on this puzzle.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Of course, you're angry. But again, I can either do nothing on the outside or do nothing on the inside. In that moment, not always, but chose to be an adult. And I was just like, I know you took the puzzle pieces. I just want, you know, and he's like, what are you talking? No, I didn't. You know, maybe he's four. No, I didn't. And I was like, we're working on this puzzle. I get that.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
It's probably frustrating, but like you need, I'm not, I didn't have the puzzle pieces. That was not working. And then this is truly going back to stories and going back to shame. If you feel like you're the bad kid who's doing bad things and you're the only one who's like that, you are shut down from learning.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
So I went up to him on the couch and my husband, I remember watching me being like, what are you doing? And this is how I started. I go, I don't know if I can tell you this, which any kids would be like, I don't know if I can tell you this. When I was probably about seven, I did something really bad. That's what I said. And he was like, I can't even tell you.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
He like every part of his anger like diffused. And you can really draw a kid in by just saying to them, And I go, okay. And this is true. I go, my sister was two. And she had these, like, oily stickers. And I really wanted them. And I asked my mom. And she said, no, we couldn't go to the store. No, those are, you know, my sister's stickers. And you're never going to guess what I did.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
But that's not the worst part. He's like, what? And I go, my mom asked me if I took them. I knew I did, so you know what I told her? And he said, you told her yes? And I go, no. I told her no. And he literally goes, And I feel like in that moment what's happening is he's saying, like, so many things that you can never say didactically. Like, Mom, like, you're my mom. I love you.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I hold you on a pedestal. And, like, even you. did something that wasn't so great. There's like so much hope and goodness. And then I didn't, in that moment, I did not say, and you cannot say in these situations. So now you can tell me that you just have to like trust. Because I think the shame of the badness, shame freezes you, right? As an animal defense state, right? Shame freezes you.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
So a kid who's lying to you is always in shame, right? And you can't get a kid to unfreeze and move to a different place of telling you the truth if you're adding more shame through fear. Like, the math doesn't work. But you can through stories. Now, true story, he did not right after that say, you know.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I was just like, I remember my husband who, okay, when he's saying this, he was like, we have to punish him. We have to, you know, we have to punish him. I was like, in the moment, that's going to feel very cathartic to us. That's what punishment does. It makes you feel very powerful. It makes you feel very cathartic. It doesn't work.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
It just doesn't, especially not with kids who are strong-willed. I was like, just give it a couple days. It's probably a good three days later. And he brought me the puzzle pieces in a bag. And he just said, I took them. And he truly started crying. And I did not lecture him. I feel like the whole arc, the whole lesson had basically already happened. Honestly, like the day after.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
So again, and this is what I think we miss as parents. And like, we're almost afraid to like just name the humanness of it. And I kind of gave an example earlier. He's going to want to do something bad again. We all want to do bad things. That's not a bad urge. It's just about having the skills to do something differently when you have the urge. So I think a couple days later and I do this.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I do these little like role plays. They take like 20 seconds. I was like, oh my goodness. Look at the puzzle, because we had still been working on it. What if you want to take it again? He goes, I won't. I go, I know, but I think you might want to. Remember how I took the oilies?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Feelings, that's an urge. I teach my kids, an urge means you want to do something. My kids will say, an urge is not a behavior. Behavior is doing the thing. That's not okay. But the only reason your urge doesn't convert into behavior is because you have a skill to manage the urge. And you can't build skills if no one teaches you them. So I said, what could you do instead?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Could you run to me and say, I really want to take the pieces? Could you say, I need time with you? Because at the end of the day, I think he felt left out. And we did. And by the way, this kid, is he like perfect now? No, he, you know, but like it, It brings together so many things. Number one, when we trust ourselves that we have time.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
When we realize shame, the fear of being the only one, being bad, being unlovable, being alone is often the biggest blocker for kids. When you really realize that, punishment and sending your kid away makes no sense at all. And you can kind of give yourself freedom to tell stories, right?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Because when we're really struggling with something, you don't want to look at someone, especially someone who's perfect. Right? It's like when you really have a bad experience as an adult, the only thing you want to hear is your friend who I don't like, you know, I'm mortified. I sent this email to my boss.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
The only thing that would make me feel better is someone like, let me show you the email I sent. I'm like, oh, wow, that's worse. That's the only thing that makes me feel better. Not because I wish bad upon other people, but because you want to know you're not alone. And other people's stories do that, like vulnerability. It's kind of like, it's like this magic, this magic trick.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Yeah. And I use that at management. Like we had someone do a presentation at work and it was for a bunch of people and it did not go well. And I met with her and she knew it kind of didn't go well. And honestly, the only thing I said to her, I don't even manage her directly. She's more junior. And I really mean this. We had in clinical psychology grad school, like it's intense.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
You do a session when you're first doing sessions and like everyone's watching you. They're like watching you do therapy, which is helpful. But I remember my first one and I felt like pretty okay about it. I was like, this is my first one. I was okay. I got torn to shreds. They were like, that was not good, you know?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And now obviously I'm on the, I feel good about my clinical abilities, but the only thing I said to her is I was like, look, and I shared it with her. And I said like, I've been there. Like, eventually, I look back on that. It helped me learn. That day, I just felt awful. I wasn't like, this is my learning space moment, you know?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And so if you're feeling like that, I just want to let you know, like, I've been there too. This is the starting point to getting better. This is going to, like, make you stronger. I know that. I've lived that. And I think storytelling in that way is probably like a really underutilized kind of quote tool, almost dehumanizes it to call it that, in management and in any relationship.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I think that's right. And that's the thing. I think sometimes it's like, are we teaching kids what to think or how to think? Like after they're gone from our house, like it's the how to think. And you said questions. I love kind of Socratic questions for kids.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Like, oh, if again, a different version of a story would be like, oh, OK, I know you didn't take the puzzle pieces, but I'm just thinking for me, like. So what would make me take puzzle pieces? Oh, I wonder if I felt left out or I wonder if I was just really trying to get my parents' attention for a while and this was the only way to do it. And what would I do after? And what would I need?
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Now I'm going to get emotional. What would I need to know about myself or from my parent for me to share that I did take it? Maybe I would need to know that my parents knew I was a good kid. Hmm. Anyway, sorry, what were we talking about? Like, because your kids eventually make good decisions. Adults make good decisions for themselves because they ask themselves the right questions.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
not because they've heard their parents' specific lesson, right? Because they're able to say to themselves, like, what am I feeling right now? What am I really looking for? Why did I do that? So like asking questions, telling stories, asking questions without even answering them actually provokes a much more sophisticated developmental process in your kid than the lectures we all, me included.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Trust me, plenty of times at my kid that I've just lectured them. But again, they're just catharsis. They're not actually terribly effective.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
example because it's both cognitive and motor like you're fixing these pieces in different ways i have to get back to doing some puzzles i'm realizing and emotional you know i can really embarrass myself but one of my favorite things that i again i've just noticed my kids extending for puzzles because they all did a lot of puzzles when they're young is so funny i remember my kid doing like this puzzle and getting some frustration what i did is i did a puzzle to the side of him
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Instead of doing it perfectly, I kind of like mimicked. I was like, oh, this doesn't fit. Oh, it's not that piece. Okay. And one of the things I noticed is when my kid was really young, kids have a really hard time with puzzles and it's kind of a metaphor for life for when a piece doesn't fit.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
They keep trying it when what they really need to do is such a metaphor is put it down and pick up another piece, right? But I could tell my kid that, but I'm not, I always feel like just telling doesn't really work. So this is what I did. I'm not joking. I'm going to sing. Get ready, okay? So I was doing it over here and I just go, oh, it's not fitting. It's not fitting here.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
It's not fitting here. And I go, if it doesn't fit. Put it to the side and try another piece. And then I was like, oh, right. I can put it to the side. Okay, I'll get this one. And I didn't make it perfect. I was like, oh, oh, oh, that one fits there. Right.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I have heard, not anymore, my kids are too old, but there was a time, I remember me and my husband were like outside the playroom and we heard our son like singing this song. It's just, it's a mantra. It's self-regulation because is it cognitive? Is it physical? It's also emotional.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
It goes back to frustration tolerance where our kids need, they need mantras, they need skills, they need songs to actually up-level their skills to regulate the emotions that get in their way of doing great things, right? And, you know, that kid is interesting. Like, not really anymore. Now that I think about it, I want to revive it. He makes up songs through situations. What an amazing skill.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
right? But this stuff can like, and if anyone's hearing this, they're like, oh, that's unrealistic. Like, it's amazing. You do it one time. One time. Make up a silly song, model the frustration yourself, make up a song, struggle again, and then get success. Whatever it is. It could be with reading, with a puzzle, with putting on your sock. It could be, oh, it doesn't fit.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I'm taking a deep breath and trying it again. It could literally be
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
anything because it adds a little play and joy and you probably know what song does in the brain better than i do but probably regulating um i would put money that a parent to me like that's so weird becky you're right didn't take that much time i did it one time and my kids started singing the song and now they put their socks on by themselves
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Does our brain like encode it differently?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
So then it is a cheat code for coping skills if you put it to song.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Yes. So Ms. Edson was my second grade teacher. And I remember writing in her class, and I remember something she told us, and it's truly something that shapes me every day. And she said, if something feels too hard to start, it just means that the first step isn't small enough.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And then she really kind of made this even more concrete because what I remember in her class writing, and I still use this in writing today, is, okay, so if something feels too hard to do, the implication is, it doesn't mean it's my fault. It doesn't mean I can't. It doesn't mean I'm stupid. It literally just means the first step isn't small enough. That's very actionable.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And so the way I play around with it now, even in my own writing is, okay, I have to write a new article.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And I'm like, I can't do that.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Okay. So I'm in I can't mode. Okay. If something is in I can't mode, if it feels too hard, I hear her voice. It just means the first step isn't small enough. So I'll make it literally, I'll just make it smaller. I'm going to write a page today. And then often I'm like, I can't do that. Okay. Smaller. A paragraph. No. And I literally do it until, and some days it's a word. And I go...
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
could write a word. Okay. Now we're not. Okay. Right. And I really think Ms. Edson was ahead of her time. I mean, obviously now we talk a lot about frustration tolerance, growth mindset, but this really is a way of saying when things are hard, it's not your fault. And there's something you can do to build the circuit of capability.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Because I think when we're trying to do something hard, there are like, if you think about it, I don't know, you're on the top of a ski mountain, and on the one side is the I can't, it's too hard, and the other side is I can, we all have natural capability. I really believe this, every person. But it's just about figuring out how to get your skis, like, to the beginning of the ski slope.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And then maybe if we've practiced being on the I can't do hard things slope, our skis keep trying to turn, but we just have to keep getting them back. And so if we tell ourselves, I can't do this, and we just stay there, stagnant. But if you say, wait, smaller, smaller, smaller, smaller. Like I used this with a client a while ago. I can't ask my boss for a raise. I know I deserve it. Cool.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
No problem. Let's make it smaller. Okay. What would be smaller? I don't know. Let's get creative. Could you write down what you would say? Okay. No. Could you say the word to me five times out loud? Raise, raise, raise, raise, raise. I remember she laughed. She goes, I can do that. Cool. Let's What I think is so powerful about Ms.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Edson's advice is as soon as we get even our skis a tiny bit into the I can circuit, the I can slope, we're actually just a lot more likely to stay there, or at least that becomes a bigger part of our identity, right? So with this woman that I was working on this with, one of the things we were working on, it was just, okay, so you did that. Amazing.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
The next thing I even just had her play around things saying to me, can you say to me, I deserve a raise. It was very interesting. I think this is one of the reasons she had trouble speaking up for it. It was really hard for her to embody that. We said that. She couldn't. I remember a week she said, I'm going to write it down and bring it. She didn't. Again, I like parenting. I didn't punish her.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I didn't send her to her room. I said, okay, that was just too big. Let's make it smaller. Let's write it together. Wrote some things down there, right? I then had her write it as an email and send it to me. And I then had her practice it with her best friend. And then she asked her boss for a raise. Like, I mean, I don't even, this, like, probably no one's surprised.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Yeah, like, that makes sense. She'd gotten through a lot of steps. But it's just applicable in every area of your life. So even anyone listening, we all have something in our I can't category. This is too hard or I can't. And we just stay there. And if you hear Miss Edson, Saying, wait, if something feels too hard to do, it only means that the first step isn't small enough.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And if then the next smallest step feels too hard, no biggie. Like, no judgment. Make it smaller, make it smaller, make it smaller. And then allow yourself to eventually build up from there.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Love Miss Edson.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Yeah. And the similarity is so interesting. What I think that the powerful thing about Ms. Edson's advice is she's almost saying make something small enough so you can get your first win. Yeah. Having a win is really powerful. It's kind of addicting. You're like, what's my next win, right? You're on the win circuit.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
You know, one of the reasons we want to create so many more resources for parents and when parents come to us and even say, this is a problem, this is a problem, this is a problem. I often just start, I would say, okay, like what is the smallest thing would change that would make you when you go to bed at night be like, today was a better day. there's some bigger stuff. I hear you.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
How am I not going to tackle that? We'll tackle that in time. But like, I want to get you a win today. And then all of a sudden when a parent starts to build, it's kind of their own self-efficacy, their own like, oh, wait, I did feel good about that one moment. I did feel more connected to my kid. I said this one thing.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
It's momentum, you know, and we have to give ourselves the opportunity to build momentum, which really usually only starts by taking the smallest step anyway.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I'm going to give you two things. One is kind of a one small thing, but it's kind of a bigger theoretical thing. And one thing is very, very, very concrete. So the bigger thing.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I really believe that the single biggest thing that gets in our way of feeling more empowered and capable as parents is that as much as we say we value parenting, and I think parents, people do, or parents are like, yeah, what do I care about more than parenting? It's kind of the lowest on our list in terms of what we invest in. You know, people invest in all types of things.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And I want to be clear. Yes, like we have an offering at Good Inside and our membership, but that's not what I mean. For someone listening, they might be like, there is that parent coach in my town who I've been like saying I'm going to call. Or maybe it's a therapist or maybe it's a parenting group at your school.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I have a boss who's, I don't know, going through a really hard time or having a really hard time at home. And I kind of notice it. I'd probably want my boss to level with me and say kind of, again, you're right to notice I'm going through a hard time. But at what point would it feel like, ooh, am I safe in this organization, right? I think we probably all have a point there.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Or maybe someone listens to me and they're like, no offense, Dr. Becky, there's someone else I follow on Instagram and they have a course and I like them better. I'd be like, do that today. Like align your even purchasing decisions with your values. Because we're not expected to know this naturally. We're not.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And as long as we don't have the resources around us, a little kind of, someone described it to me as like a onesie, twosie thing. Like it's just not giving ourself what we deserve. It is like a surgeon saying they're not good at surgery when you find out they never went to medical school or residency. Right.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
You'd be like, well, I just didn't really get resourced in the way you deserve for this very challenging job. So that would really be the thing, if I'm really honest, because I'm not, as much as I'm about a quick win, I'm not about a quick fix. I think that just sets us up for more like a band-aid. Having said that, I love a quick thing. So a couple of things I think people can do with their kids.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Telling your kid at night, and I'll model how I would say it. I think most people, it's not just me, when you put your kid to bed, it's like, oh, you're like, I just want to be on the couch. But it's when your kid's willing to spend five extra minutes with you because it's the cruel irony at night. You want time without your kids and they just want a little bit more time with you.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
If you allow yourself to lean in, And you can just say to your kid, almost like in a whisper, I think whispering to your kid is one of the most underutilized, simplest strategies. Whispers are so sacred. They feel sacred. They feel like they know they're just for you. Whispering to your kid, like, I just want to tell you there's nothing you could ever do that would make me stop loving you.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Or I just want to tell you you're a really good kid. We're in a hard stage, but I will never, ever, ever think of you as anything but a real person. Don't expect your kid to say anything. But just that takes 10 seconds. And if you're like, whispering feels awkward, don't whisper. Just say it. It doesn't matter. If you're thinking you don't know my kid, they're a teenager, text them. Text them.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Sometimes a text to a teen can feel like an unexpected whisper from a parent, you know? And that's it. And that's the single thing.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
today and then maybe i'm gonna add a third just do something like that for yourself give yourself credit put your hand on your heart tell yourself it's parenting things really hard like i'm doing enough i'm not messing up my kid forever that's not a thing like and i've got this
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And I think it's the same thing with kids. Kids really do need to feel like they have sturdy parents. Again, I always go back to pilots because I think airplane examples are so powerful because there's very few times in adulthood that we actually feel like our safety is truly dependent on another adult, like 100%.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Thank you. I'm honored to be back here a second time. I love speaking with you and look forward to the next time.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
When you're a passenger in an airplane, you are 100% dependent, so it's kind of the closest dynamic. And you can imagine what it would be like if the pilot was saying, going through a really hard time, who wants to come in and give me, you know, I don't know, you know, tell me a nice story.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Like, oh my goodness, like I get you're going through a hard time, but this is really not feeling great, right? And what that means and which is, you know, kind of even a larger point is if you're a pilot, you need to make sure you're really doing a lot of self-care more than the average person because of this outsized responsibility you have. This is what I think about parenting.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And it's why from, you know, the bigger theme here is this is what gets me out of bed, you know, every morning. So motivated is not just to help parents understand tantrums or emotions or, you know, the latest struggle in their house. Although I actually love that.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
It's to say, hold on, we've been really sold an awful story about what it really means to be a parent and how parenting really, first and foremost, is a journey of self-care. How can I be the sturdiest person possible? Who do I need in my life when things go poorly so I don't lean on my young children and give them a responsibility that is not theirs?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
You know, I was just saying to someone the other day that when you have kids... All of the unhealed parts of your childhood come right before your eyes. They are just triggered over and over and over with your own children. Like, you know, oh, my kid's whining. I can't deal with that. Oh, well, whining is probably triggering because it's kind of representative of helplessness.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
What was it like in my family if I kind of felt helpless? Was that allowed? Did I grow up in a... You know, if you don't stop crying, I'll give you something to cry about family. Okay, if I don't resolve that, I'm going to act that all out on my children and pass that along. So all of kind of...
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
These situations where parents are feeling all these different emotions from a trigger, from something in their life. I think it goes to what I always tell parents, you know, you have a first and foremost job of self-care and taking care of yourself. That doesn't mean traveling to Europe for the year and leaving your kids alone. It means what is going on inside you? What skills do you need?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
What networks of support do you need? What do you have around you to help you on the hardest journey of your life and the most rewarding one of being a parent so that you don't have to say to your kids, you know, oh, you know, can you kind of take care of me?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
That's exactly right. And I think self-care... has gotten, you know, misrepresented. It doesn't mean getting a manicure every week. It could if that does it for you. But when I think about self-care and I really think about the work we do with parents at Good Inside, we always say Good Inside and like our app. It's not parenting. It's for parents.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
It's for the journey of what it means to be a parent. It's for your own stuff. It's for your triggers. It's for finally learning how to set boundaries. It's about finally learning that it's okay to get your needs met. even when they inconvenience others. It's learning that your relationships are strong enough that they can get through hard moments where people are upset with you, right?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
It's about finally saying to, if you need to, your mother-in-law, we can't have any visitors on Saturday. And the reason I'm finally able to do that is because I understand my self-value and all this stuff. This has nothing to do with the fact that your kid isn't sleeping at night, but that is the foundation.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
for intervening in the way you're proud of when your kid is waking you up at two in the morning, right? So that is the self-care. It's really like a, not just self-care, it's self-establishment. It's self-growth, really.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Yeah. I mean, I think you're speaking to how differently we feel emotions. I mean, you know, I think about one of my kids who I call a deeply feeling kid, right? So my image is always she's just more porous to the world. And so if you think about someone who's more porous, that their pores are literally wider, a lot more is going to come in. And guess what? A
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
She's a kid who, by the way, you're in a certain area in New York City. She's like, I can't be here. The smell. For me, I'm wired differently. I was like, I literally don't smell anything different. Now, does that mean she's wrong? No. I actually bet knowing her, she smells things. And then she lets me know how awful it is and she can't stand on that corner.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And for me, in that moment at least, because we're probably all volatile in different ways, I look steady as a rock. Right. I have another kid who, yeah, is pretty steady. until he feels like his authority and power is threatened, and then he better watch out, you know?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And so in one moment, someone might see him as, oh, wow, that kid's really volatile, but in probably 90% of other moments, he's kind of cool as a cucumber. So I also think it's important to categorize kids not as, like, always one way or another, but we all feel emotions differently. None of them is wrong or right. To me, the goal... is to not be locked into any one thing.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
That, to me, rigidity is always the enemy. That's what holds us back in adulthood, if we're always one way. I can never handle someone cutting me off in traffic because the emotion takes me over and I have road rage. Yeah, that's not good. That's a very rigid, limited way of living life. But it's probably also limiting. to say, I've never really gotten riled up about anything.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Forget road rage, but it's kind of amazing to get riled up once in a while and to feel really passionately about something and to feel something enough that you want to go do something about it, right? So there's no morality on it. I think what's tricky, I can even say as a parent of three kids,
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
is each of my kids, I always kind of imagine this, if I have all these different parts of me, they each need a different part of me to kind of lead. Like they almost need different lead parents, right? So my kid who is my deeply feeling kid, I know what's so important is that I believe her experience and I better be ready with certain boundaries because she feels things so intensely.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
especially when she was younger, I have to step in more often. There's more difficult behavior, right? My kid who's really, really steady, I try to sometimes, even though it's convenient because he's so easy, you know, there's definitely a lot going on in there. And sometimes I wonder...
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Does he almost feel like all the emotional space is taken up by his siblings and the only thing left for him is kind of steady as a rock? And that can lead to a rigidity later in life, right? So I think these are like moving systems. So much of how we experience emotions growing up is also dictated by the system and kind of the roles our siblings play.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And so I don't know if that kind of gives you enough of an answer, but I think- That's very, that's informative. Yeah, I think the thing I'd really want parents to know is I think we place a lot of morality on it. And if we're honest with ourselves, we're probably just comparing our kid to how we do things. So if you're someone who's pretty steady, you're like, my kid is crazy. They're dramatic.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
right? If you're someone who's a little more out there, you're not as bothered by that kid. And then you have another kid, you're like, that kid's kind of boring, right? Because they're so flat. And so, I mean, I think this is true in couples too. Whenever we're fighting, we're probably just saying, why can't you be more like me?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
When we're triggered by our kid, we're like, why can't you be more like me? Right? That's probably what we're always saying to each other, going back to communication. But if you take a little different perspective of, hold on a second, there's no wrong or right way to feel emotions. Some behaviors are not allowed, but all the emotions have information.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I'm so happy to be here.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And what might my kid need right now instead of, oh, my goodness, is my kid messed up? Or why is my kid not just a little bit more like me?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I mean, to me, this is something like I always just say, I always phrase it as emotion talk, right? Just emotion. Knowing that emotions live within you, knowing that there's names for them, that they're normal, that they make sense. To me, it's like the ultimate leg up in life. It's like it gives your kids such resilience because we can't beat our emotions.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I feel like we've been trying that for generations. Like if I just only didn't feel so angry or so jealous or so sad. Our emotions are so primal in our body. And I really do believe emotions, they're information. That's what they are. Why would we ever want to not get the information our body is giving us? And sometimes it's almost dramatic what happens in an amazing way.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
So many people, I think about so many times I have people in a room for therapy, they start crying. I'm so sorry. you're feeling something so intensely that your body is producing water from your eyes to get your attention. Like that's, that must be really important information. Why are we saying sorry?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
So that's a great example. Like I even think about a conversation I have had with my kids and I like to just have these moments here and there. Whenever I talk about good conversations with my kids, I think people think I have these 45 minute. No, they're usually 10 seconds. I say one thing, my kids say, can I have a snack now?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And I think that's a great conversation because I know it gets in there. Do you know that tears have really important information for us? I'm going to be like, what? What did you say? I'm just thinking. So many people think tears are bad. Tears are kind of amazing. It's like our body is trying to stop us and it's like asking us to pay attention to something really powerful.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I just think it's kind of an amazing thing. Our body does. And my kid goes, can I have pretzels? Oh, sure. I'll get you pretzels. That to me is a win. I just want to tell everyone.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
That is a 10 out of 10. I'm bragging to people about that. I'm like, I had the best conversation because I know this is seeping in. Because in the moment, my kid is crying. You think it's going to be helpful when my seven-year-old is crying, tears are amazing. Or like, F you, mom. No one wants to hear that.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
But you know when that's a great conversation? Around the dinner table. And again, your kids will roll their eyes. Kids roll their eyes about everything. I always think rolling their eyes or stop is kind of a kid's way of saying, there's a lot coming at me. I'm my own person. I just need to push it away a little. So that on my own time and under my own control, I can take it in.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And we take eye rolls or whatever it is so personally that then we end up getting into a power struggle. Why are you rolling my eyes? And we miss this opportunity. If we just say nothing, then our kid is going to take in what we just said. Just walk away. Let the whole process happen.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
You know, it's kind of like if your boss comes in and says something like, oh, look, that project really wasn't as good as it, you know, could have been. And I really need these things done. And then imagine, you're rolling your eyes at me. If your boss just leaves the room, you probably think, I didn't do that as well as I could. I'm going to go work on it, right?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
So I feel like not taking the bait is a very important parenting tool. But I think those moments with our kids to talk about emotions and to talk about our own, especially when it comes to struggle, right? Yeah. One of the things I think a lot about, I try to be intentional with my kids, especially when they're younger. I just think kids are flooded by their parents' capability.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And it is so hard to learn in environments where someone's capability is so far beyond your own. I'm not a good cook, but if I was really learning to cook, I would want to learn from someone from here or there, you know, burnt some garlic or messed up the broccoli. And then it was like, okay, well, I guess I could do this next time. Okay.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
But if I'm learning to cook from someone who is whatever celebrity chef, that person's like way too far from me. And I almost feel shame. So I think about this with our kids and how this relates to emotions, where when your kids are younger, especially if you just think about the first 10 minutes of their day,
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Like they're trying to figure out maybe how to brush their teeth, how to go to the bathroom, how to turn on the sink, how to wash their hands. They always put their shirt on the wrong way. They can't get on their socks. There's so many things. And you come out dressed perfectly. And then I can't get on my socks. And you go like this. Okay, one, two.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And kind of in those moments, I always think that I'm just kind of saying to my kid, I can do everything easily. And they don't know our history. They don't know. We struggled to put on socks for five years too. I put on my shirt backward, you know, until college. They don't know that.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And so I think, again, in these calm moments, you have this opportunity to say something like, I cannot finish this crossword puzzle. Or like, I love New York Times games, right? And it's so fun with my kids now that they're older. But my connections was really hard today. I just, I really struggled with it. And I was like, oh, I can't do it. I can't do it. And then I took a deep breath and I...
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
tried it a little more, and maybe I said, and I did it, or I didn't do it, whatever it is. And it gives my kid, first of all, it gives my kid an opportunity to just notice that I struggle too. It gives my kid, again, kind of an arc and a story of, oh, someone I admire so much. Every kid admires their parents. They've had hard times. They still have hard times. They work through things.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
They burn garlic. They can kind of talk themselves through it. That is such a more powerful kind of lesson in emotion regulation than teaching your kid kind of directly.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I love this topic because it's so interesting. Right now, it's kind of review season at Good Inside because I also am the CEO of a company. And to me, the things I talk about with parenting and my kids... and for other people parenting their kids, they are the exact same principles, exact as leading a team.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And so when I think about review season and the way we get feedback and the right and back and forth, it brings us all together and I'll explain. So the other day I said to my kids, I love resolutions. I actually do love resolutions, right? Because I love just the opportunity to say, what is one small thing? I'm like, I value and I'm going to hold myself accountable to do.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
What I said to my kids was, I want you to come up with one thing, just one thing for now. And it has to be something like manageable and real that I could do that would really make me a better mom to you.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I asked my kids this. I actually asked my kids this relatively frequently. It's like a review, right? Because it's something I do at work all the time. And what I say at work is because often my direct reports say nothing. I said, I just want to tell you something. I need one thing from you by the end of the day. I need it because like, I know, I know I can get hot.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I know I can get a little reactive, right? I know I'm always go, go, go. And there probably is a moment that, you know, I need to pause. I know, I know I have a lot of issues. So if you don't tell me one thing, I don't trust you as much. So here's what happened with my kids. At that point, it was only two of them. It just happened the other day. My son says, my seven-year-old son says,
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Sometimes when you're trying to get some work done at home and I want to get your attention for something, this is what you do, mom. One minute, one minute, one minute, and then you still don't give me full attention.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
He's clocking. He's clocking.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I'd rather you tell me five minutes and then give me your full attention. That's literally what I would do. I was just like, that is a really good suggestion. And I really needed to hear that. I can do that. This was a couple days ago. Okay. I have to admit, two days ago, he was trying to show me something. And he just goes, you're doing it. You're not really giving me your attention.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And I said, you're right. Thank you. Change is hard. I actually do need about two minutes. Is that okay? And then I'll put my computer down because I'll sometimes look at him and kind of look at, you know. And he goes, okay. It was kind of, it was so beautiful. My daughter said, At night, she goes, it's so interesting when you give people this opportunity, how generous they can be with you.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I think it's been true at work and home. I know when it's my bedtime at night, I always want to do one or two extra things. I know. I always have to get my water. Mom, it's just how I am. That's what she said. And you get this rushing voice and you go, come on, it's bedtime. And that's like the last voice I hear before bed. And I really don't like that voice.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And so can you just know that I always need to do those one or two extra things and not use that voice? And again, I said, you know what? I wouldn't want to hear that as the last voice. You know, and I think at night especially, it's a little digression. I always feel like I'm in a rush. I don't know, an extra two minutes with my kids. Like, my kids are getting older.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
They're not even in my house for that much longer. I just have to remind myself, I'm not in a rush. Like, this is the best use of my time. So I said, and that one I've been really good at. And So how do we show our kids that we're fallible? One way is actually like asking for feedback, especially when you have older kids.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
When you have a teenager, this is the number one thing that can change things around. You know what I'm thinking about? It's hard to be a teen. And I'm definitely not a perfect parent of a teen. I'm sure you have a long list. But for right now, can you name one thing that I could do? That would make me a better parent to you.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And I want to follow this through because what a lot of teens will do or parents will say, my teenager tells me something ridiculous. They'll say, well, you know how you make me charge my phone at 9 or 10 p.m. out of the room? You could let me sleep with my phone, which maybe his parents are like, I'm just not going to do that. Or they'll say, you know what you could do?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
You could give me $1,000 every week for an allowance, right? And so parents will say, my kid doesn't take it seriously. This is where, like to me, one of the most important life skills, parenting, management, friendships, it doesn't matter. is differentiating someone's words on the surface from their needs or their feelings or their fears, whatever it is, underneath.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And not responding to the words, but kind of cutting under them. Let's even say I can say the phone thing. What would be so great about having your phone? Just help me understand it. I know in my head I'm never going to do it, but... We don't realize just because we're not going to do something someone asks, it doesn't mean we don't owe that person the right to try to understand why they want it.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Right? So I might just ask questions. It might probably end with, look, I actually hear what you're saying. All of your friends are on Instagram until midnight. It sounds like you legitimately do miss out on conversations. By the time you get to school, you feel out of them. Like, I'm not even joking. I feel like if I was your age, I'd be like, that's like basically the worst thing ever.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I believe you. Having your phone after X time is just one of my non-negotiables. It's actually just because I love you so much that I feel like my job is to protect you. I wonder if there is some other way that we can figure that out. Or my kid says $1,000. I might say, what would you do with $1,000? Oh, you want to go to more concerts. Oh, your friends all get more allowance. Tell me more.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
No matter what your kid says to you, there's information. So I think feedback is one. I think repair is another way. Repair is the most important relationship strategy to get good at. And I just hope everyone hears the duality in that and realizes what that means. Because if you're going to get good at repair, You have to mess up. The only way to repair is to mess up.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And so if I'm telling you, get good at repair, I am telling you, you have to accomplish step one, which is yelling at your kid. You have to. And you're going to do it anyway. I do it. But if you then tell yourself, wait, I'm getting good at repair. Step one is messing up. I crushed it. Amazing. I'm half the way there.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Yeah, and I think everything I'm about to share applies, you know, in the workplace, right? Like, can a boss be, you know, really upset in front of the person they manage, management, right? So it's all the same stuff. So I guess zooming out is a start. Emotions are normal. Emotions are unstoppable. You can't not feel sad just because you have your five-year-old in the room, right?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Then when you repair, which is when you take ownership, hey, I'm sorry I yelled, just like you. I'm managing my emotions. Emotions are really tricky. Emotions are really hard. And do you know what?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Even though you're going to have a leg up on this compared to most people when they're adults because you're learning how to regulate emotions, you're still going to be practicing that when you're my age. That is my responsibility to work on. It's not your fault. And I love you.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And I think the other thing that kind of forms my perspective is it's really hard to not show someone that you're sad. Like, you might think you're doing that well, but kids are extra perceptive. They are actually built to be more perceptive than we are because their survival depends on adults. So they have to always notice, is my adult around? Is my adult okay?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Yeah, could be.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
My son, my son.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
My son did not ask me that. And he knows that our phone rules are non-negotiable.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
But that kid, if that's a rule, you would never give it to them. But I think so many times, and then we'll get back to power. We shouldn't be afraid to learn more. I actually just think that's what it is. Our kid says, all my friends get this. That's not true. Why don't you just learn more? Oh, they do?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
It's like learning more about what someone says doesn't mean you ever have to change your boundary. Most of conflict is about a lack of understanding anyway. When you learn more, you're trying to understand. You understand your kid, understand someone wants to raise and you think it's ridiculous. You can learn more. Tell me what's been going on. What have you been doing?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Learning more about someone's position does not weaken your position. And I think that's really, really important in any form of leadership. Now, in terms of the power dynamics, There is something about the word power that like, you know. Isn't that weird? Yeah.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I mean, I think the way I think about it and what we do at Good Inside a lot in terms of our leadership and parenting style, I don't use the word power, but I think it's about embodying your authority. Parents have authority. Pilots have authority. Bosses have authority because they're the ones... kind of who have the job of setting up the whole system for success. That's their job, right?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
My job isn't to make my kid happy. My job is to help create the conditions for my kid to be like a real functioning, confident adult. That's what I believe, right? A pilot's job is definitely not to keep passengers happy. It's to get everyone safely on the ground. A boss's job is not to keep everyone happy. It's to set up the conditions for health and success of the business, right?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Now, if you know that's your job, it's no one else's job but the CEO. I mean, to some degree, all the management, but that is their job. And so there's a difference where if the CEO believes a job needs to be done a certain way, it's not that they have power. It's just their role involves having that authority. And if someone else disagrees, it's up to them to say you can keep the job or not.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
It's just you have different roles. And I actually think owning that very outright, it's actually something I recently said at work. in a review around something I really wanted and kind of owned like in my role as a CEO. Like that is under my role to decide this is important. And now we have to figure it out. Let's see. I would love some input on how we're going to get this done.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Same thing for a kid. One of the lines I said over and over and over to my kid when they were younger, and I see so many good inside parents tell me that their kids reflect back to them later, is my number one job is to keep you safe. So what does that mean? That kind of relates to power. It can mean, why am I not letting my kid, I don't know, jump up and down on our kitchen counter?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
So they really attune to what's going on for us, right? And so I think... The kind of question is less, do I show my emotions to my kid or not? And it's more, okay, if I'm sad, my kid is going to notice. What do I do then? And as a principal, one of the things I think about often is information doesn't scare kids as much as the absence of information scares kids.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
It's not because I'm pissed that my kid isn't listening. I'm not letting them jump up and down on my kitchen counter where there's a light above their head because my number one job is to keep my kid safe. Is that power? I mean, I guess I think it's authority. How would I embody that authority? I would say, it looks hard for you to get down. I'm about to pick you up and put you on the floor.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Because I have authority, right? We get to this phone discussion, let's say, and I really do believe that the phone has to be charged out of the room at a certain time. I'm going to understand. I'm going to understand. I'm going to listen. Hopefully I'm connected to my kid and they feel respected by me in a million ways. And it might lead to me saying, look, my number one job still
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
is to keep you safe. And that really means making decisions that I really believe are good for you, short-term and long-term, even if you're upset with me. This is one of those times. And so I love you. This might be a point of conflict. I know we're going to get through this. And that is my role as a parent. And it comes from a place of wanting to protect you.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And I think when you embody your authority in that way, kids never say thank you, and they will roll their eyes. And kids always feel loved and protected. They really do. I hear it from my kids. You know, maybe this is so true. Sometimes things happen with my kids, and I'm like, no one's going to even believe this.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
But I was walking with my 7-year-old the other day, and I said, what does it mean to be a good parent? What does it really mean? I'm curious. He really thought because... It means you're kind of strict. And I said, what do you mean strict? He goes, you have certain rules that you think matter. And he goes, but it also means like you also have to be loving and fun.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And my heart, like, hurts hearing myself say this, like, in a good way. They know. I think kids know. And maybe he says that because that's what we are. But I think kids know. And I can't even tell you how many kids I used to work with, and teens especially, the pain of their parents not embodying their authority was so clear. They knew that they shouldn't be out at a certain time.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
They knew that they were hanging out with kids who were like bad news and their parents had no idea. And they felt unanchored. Like they really, really knew not that their parents weren't exerting power. That word isn't their parents weren't embodying their appropriate authority to protect their kids.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
So let's say there's something really awful. I don't know. As a parent, you're a family member. Someone died of cancer. I don't know. There's something really horrible that you just found out, right? There's wildfires right now. Let's say you evacuated and you found out your house burned down. You're sad. Your child is going to notice that and you want your child to notice that.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I have some reactions to that. I think, I mean, I kind of think you're talking about values and principles, right? And so I think there are, in my house, to be honest, it's not like we have some wall of like, these are our family values. I've seen those in people's homes. Yeah, that's not.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Not organized enough to do that. But if I thought about a couple that come to mind, like my job is to keep my kids safe. By the way, safe does not mean they're never in a situation without risk. That's not what I mean. You know, but in general... That's its own form of danger. Exactly. The minimization of risk is also not safe, right? So, but in general, my job is to keep you safe.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I'm not going to let you do things that, you know, endanger yourself or others. So that's one. Another principle I think about is... I will always tell you the truth, even if it's uncomfortable. Like you can always count on me for that. We call that kind of, I call that truth over comfort, right? So if my kid says to me, how are babies made? That value is useful, right?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Another thing is like all feelings are allowed. Not all behaviors are okay, right? Stuff like that.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
To me, what's very different is these kind of rigidities around behavior. Mm-hmm. We don't swear. Swearing is a behavior. We don't cry in public. Behavior. We don't tantrum here. That's a behavior. Behaviors all the time are a manifestation of feelings that overpower skills. So saying we don't do certain behaviors, to me, it doesn't even make logical sense.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Well, what if I'm in a situation where I have a really intense emotion and don't have the skill to manage it? The behavior is going to happen, and then I feel like a bad person. That's very different than values around intention. I want to be truthful with my kids, even if things are uncomfortable. I might fumble around with the words, right?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I might even sometimes lie because I didn't do that value in action. But what I can come back to is, okay, nobody lives their values 100% of the time. So I think we're talking about actually something core to what we think about at Good Inside, which is I'm a good person with values who is totally imperfect and sometimes acts in ways I'm not proud of. Both are true.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
When families have values that are very behavior-based, what ends up happening in the kids is they start to equate certain behaviors with morality. These are good behaviors that make me loved in my family, and these are bad behaviors that kind of make me feel like I'm not the right part of my family, and they even make me wonder, like, Am I lovable? Am I good inside after all? Am I worthy?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
That's not good. Because whenever we tie behavior to identity, that's shame. And we've tried to motivate kids with shame for hundreds and hundreds of years. And it does not work and causes a lot of problems. I think another one, which is interesting, especially as my kids get older, I said this to my teen recently. I said, this is really tricky.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
One of my jobs, as always, has been to create guidelines and rules with you. You know, it's always going to be kind of collaborative. Some, because of my authority, will be directive that I believe are going to keep you safe. I think this really relates to a phone. I want to tell you another part of my job that might sound contradictory, but I actually think we just need to hold them both at once.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
You don't want your kid to be a teenager and adult who goes around the world unable to pick up on emotional cues from other people. That's not adaptive. And so the patterns we set with our kids when they're young inform their view of the world when they're older. And so here I am, let's say it's the situation of somebody dying and I'm upset.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Another part of my job is to be there for you when you inevitably go against those guidelines. And I want you to know that we have rules around what can and cannot be done online.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And I'll say this here, like, and like, if you do kind of become part of a really inappropriate text conversation, if there is bullying, if you do come across some images online that make you feel really uncomfortable and you're like, I shouldn't have seen that. You're not getting in trouble with me. I'm not going to throw you a party. I will be there for you to help you through those moments.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Those things sound contradictory. And in our family, we know two things can be true. And those are both true, right? To me, that's a really important thing for a teenager to know.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Great. Two of my favorite topics. I have a couple different ways of defining things. I'm like you. To me, I like defining things in ways that are very concrete and very usable. That's all. And if there's multiple ways of doing that, that's great.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
So the way I think about guilt, and this will probably set us off in a direction about what is not guilt also, is guilt is a feeling I have when I act out of alignment with my values. And in that way, guilt is a really useful feeling. Real useful. Because it makes me reflect on, wait, I didn't act in line with my values. I wonder why. What would I have had to do differently? What got in my way?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Wow, I'm so glad I have that information from my body to have this deeply uncomfortable feeling to set in that process, right? So if I yell at my kid... I'm going to feel guilty, right? I think about a time when my kid told me, you know, I lied to you. I did take that eraser from that kid in school and I feel really guilty. And I said, first of all, I'm so glad you told me that.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I'm so glad you're feeling guilty. That's the right way to feel. Now, there must have been something so hard about seeing something so shiny and fun that you don't have. I totally get that. And you're right. That's not in your values to take it. So that's a useful feeling. That feeling is going to help you not do something like that again. Let's figure out what you can do. Not just to say sorry.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
This is what parents miss. You know what's going to happen another time? You're going to see something else pretty cool. Someone's cubby. And you know what most people think? You're going to have the thought again. I would too. What can you do the next time you have that thought? All of this comes because of guilt. Useful feeling.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Guilt is a feeling you have when you act out of alignment with your values. Now, to me, guilt is one of the most misunderstood feelings because what you hear all the time, and you'll hear how much it kind of conflicts with this definition, is something like this. I haven't seen my friends in years. There's finally a dinner. but it would require me not to put my kid down to sleep.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
First of all, as a parent, tell yourself, it's not my kid seeing me sad that's going to destabilize them. It's seeing me sad and me making up a bogus story or denying it because then my kid goes, pretty sure my mom was upset. Oh, she's not? Oh, she's pretending like nothing happened? Oh, she looks sad, but she's saying she's not sad. That is really upsetting.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
You know, and if I'm talking to someone, I'd say, okay, well, I'm guessing you're not leaving your kid alone. Now, again, my husband or my mom, someone who's a totally safe adult, Becky, I told my kid and she was clinging to me like, no, mommy, I needed to be you. I need to be you. And so I'm not going to dinner. Do you know what I'm going to say, Andrew? Because I feel so guilty. This is right.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Oh, someone asked me to be in the PTA meeting. I'm so busy. I can't, but I can't do it because I feel so guilty. Okay. Again, I'm just curious. I say, well, it sounds like you really want to go to dinner with your friends. She's like, oh, I do. All I do is parent these days. I literally haven't seen these friends in years. They're in town. And I said, tell me about your friendships. Yes.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I know that I'm kind of more than just someone who puts down my kid for bed. And I love doing that. But this matters, too. So I said, this is really interesting. You really value your friendships. your life right now feels out of balance and that your friendships, that part of your burner of your stove is like really low. Okay. And you're not going because you feel guilty.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I just want to share an idea. Guilt is a feeling you have when you act out of alignment with your values. It seems like going to dinner would be in line with your values and almost, it's like, yeah, it's true. So what is this feeling? And here's what I think the feeling is. I call it not guilt just because I haven't figured out a more sophisticated term. But here's what I think is happening.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
A lot of us, especially women, when we were growing up, we learned to notice everyone's feelings around us. And we learned that our value, really, and our worth, really, and we were kind of best and good girls when we took care of everyone else's feelings except for our own.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I think so many young girls especially become expert at what people need of them by becoming distant from what they need for themselves.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Yeah, and kids are oriented by attachment. They have to learn with their families, how do I become the most lovable, safest version of myself? So I have a friend who, it's true, I remember her, even in middle school, I can't come. My dad's traveling and my mom really needs me to stay home and watch a movie with her, right? And I know this mom well. It's like, oh, you don't love me.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
You don't, right? I mean, this was so she became expert at always noticing other people's emotions and not only noticing them, taking the emotions from them, kind of like taking them into their body and almost metabolizing them for them. That's not guilt. That is taking someone else's emotions and taking them into your body at the expense of taking care of your own needs.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And so I have a visual for this because I think it's really powerful where let's say it's the situation where a mom is saying, I really want to go out to dinner, but I feel so guilty. First thing is just powerful to say that is not guilt. It is something else and it is real and it is powerful, but it is not guilt. What is happening?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I'm on one side of a tennis court, like me and you, Andrew, but let's say it's a tennis court, and you're on the other side, and in between, instead of a net, it's like a glass table. Over here, I am here in my desire to go out with my friends because I do value my friendships. Okay, over there, you're upset about it, and let's say instead you're my daughter. You're like, no, no, don't go.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
No one else can put me to bed. That is definitely hard to deal with, but that is... daughter's feelings. Those are not your feelings. Those are your daughter's feelings. And some of us slash a lot of us have developed this tendency where we're on this court and all of a sudden, all those feelings from your side somehow go through that wall and they come to your side and you call it guilt.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
It would be like hearing your boss say, oh, yeah, 20% layoffs. What are we doing? I don't know. Oh, hi. Everything's great. How are you?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
It is not guilt. And to me, one of the most liberating things, and this actually relates to empathy, is to give that feeling back to its rightful owner. Because what that means is if I really give it back, Now I have a boundary. That's my kid's feeling. That's not mine. And I can now actually empathize. People said, no, I was empathizing. I wasn't going out. No, no, no, no. That's not empathy.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
You weren't going out with your friends because you couldn't handle the distress in your body. You just made your daughter's feelings your own. You just engaged in something almost selfish. This has nothing to do with your daughter. In those situations, that's why we say weird things to our four-year-old. Like, don't you want mommy to have friends?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I feel like Ford's like, why are you asking me that question? It's like a pilot being like, don't you want me to make an emergency landing? Like, if you need to make an emergency landing, don't ask me for permission. Because once I give it back to my daughter, I can do this. I can say, you really wish I would put you to bed tonight. You're right. It feels so different when grandma does it.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Oh, it does. I'm going out. It's okay if you're upset. I'll be back and I'll kiss you and I'll see you in the morning. And then this next part is so important. When you walk out, I don't want any person having any illusion that the daughter's going to be like, yes, you go girl. No, she is going to scream. That's okay. Going back to the boundary. You're allowed to take care of your needs.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
What you'd want is your boss to say, you just heard something. You were right to hear that. We are about to go through a really tough time. I'm stressed about it. That's why I yelled. You might be stressed. Here's what I know. This is going to be hard and we're going to get through it together. Now, all of a sudden, that emotional experience has a container. It has a story. Humans need stories.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And other people are allowed to be inconvenienced and upset by it. It doesn't mean your needs are wrong. It doesn't mean their feelings are wrong. And it definitely doesn't mean you feel guilty.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
We like stories. And so often we think it's the emotions that dysregulate a kid. It's the lack of a story to explain it. So let's say this really did happen. People always say to me, okay, but... Dr. Becky, my kid is four. I'm going to say that their aunt died. They don't even know cancer, right? We don't have a better alternative.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
No, I want to. Let's go into this. I have a lot to say.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
So here, this is such a beautiful example where I'd ask myself or I'd ask you to ask yourself, okay, I already, you already named one of your values, which is interesting. I really value my relationships. You said that. Okay. That's one value. And I think this is, I'm going to ask this question. Do you value quick responses all the time from you on text message? Is that a value of yours?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
From you. Do I value always responding to people on text right away?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Like three-hour-long conversations?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
This is to me, this is such a powerful process. And then after this, I kind of want to link it back to how I've actually told my kids about. why I do go out to dinner with friends, right? So I value deep relationships. I value relationships. I value deep relationship. And if I'm honest with myself, responding to someone right away, that's actually not my value.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
But again, we can hold multiple things at once. That doesn't mean I don't care about those people. I just laid out all my values. What I think is so powerful as a not guilt diffuser is naming this directly to the people. So it doesn't have to be on text, but you're seeing person X and you know, I'm never that good. I just want to tell you, I really value our friendship.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I can't even tell you how many parents I've seen whose kids have all of these issues because of the made-up stories. I just said she went to sleep for a while. Six months later, my kid has a lot of trouble sleeping through the night. Yeah, they haven't seen their aunt who went to sleep one time. You know, it creates a huge issue no matter what bogus story you make up. Kids can handle the truth.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I really value these times we have together. Something I just also want to get off my chest is going back and forth quickly on text. That's not something that's easy for me that I do very often. And so you might text me and it might take me a while. And I just wanted to name that to you. Now, look, someone else always has the right to say, well, that's interesting. That doesn't work for me.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
One of my top values with friends is someone who's always getting back and forth. To me, that's actually great. Great. Now we know, OK, what are we going to do about that? That's fine. You know where someone stands. And the reason I relate this to the situation with going to dinner is I remember early on. When my daughter said, why do you have to go to dinner with friends? Or why do you and dad?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
This is it. Why do you and dad go to dinner without us? I know the couple you're going out with. You both have kids. Why can't you bring us? Right? And this is where we say we feel guilt, but we don't because I'm like, time out. she's feeling this feeling, not me. And also, I don't need her permission or approval. That's the real parentified thing.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
We like go to our seven-year-old and we're like, don't you want me to have adult conversations?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
But you know what it is? It is asking your kid to do your job for you. Again, can you imagine a pilot say, do you think we should make an emergency landing? You'd be, that's how a kid feels when they're asked that. They're like, why are you asking me that? Here's what I said to my daughter in that situation. I really did. I want to tell you something. I love being your mom. I really do.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
It's one of the most important things in my life. I also really like being married to dad. And I really like the times we have when it's just us and other adults. That's really important. I remember saying this, maybe I was really trying to double down. We actually, we had that before you guys were here.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And so one of the reasons, I want to be honest with you, why do we go to dinner without you? It's not so much we go to dinner without you. We think of it as going to dinner with each other and just adults. Is that something we really enjoy? It's really important to us. It's a really important part of us. And that's why.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Being really vocal about your values as opposed to looking to your child unconsciously to give you permission to have those values, if you want to use power, that's a power move. And it's amazing. This is true at any time in life. The more you can locate someone, the more you respect their boundaries. I use that word a lot, you know, like locate. I'm sure you know people in your life.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Like, can I locate them? You kind of know who they are. You know what they value and you respect them, right? When you can't locate someone, You feel very uneasy around them. You're kind of like, where are you? Who are you? What do you stand for? And as you can see with my daughter, I wasn't saying something mean. I was saying something true.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And so I think with the friendships and when you say, is this guilty? It's like, well, maybe my step and my action is just actually being honest with this person. I'm not very good at responding right away. I want to let you know I deeply care about our friendship. I'm not very good at responding to kind of small talk over text conversations.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And they can handle the truth when it's told to them from a loving, trusted adult. It's kind of like me and you. Someone can tell us a hard truth, but it's from someone you feel safe with and that you feel like also believes in you and says that honestly, it might be hard, but it doesn't feel awful. So... It's about saying to your kid, you saw me crying.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And I just wanted to let you know that so you didn't misinterpret it. Like, I wonder what would happen. I wonder if people would kind of respond really positively.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
You want the pilot to do their job. And again, in these, you know, I think I have so many pilot metaphors around sturdy leadership. And I think it really is such a metaphor for how we teach people the skills they need to parent. Because again, no one becomes a pilot overnight. No one becomes a CEO overnight. No one becomes a lawyer overnight or a professional basketball player.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
You know, I think we actually laud CEOs these days who say, I don't know how to do leadership as well as I'd want to. I'm getting executive coach. You all want to work for them.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
person right the amazing athletes in the world get amazing coaches and they go to amazing training camps because they're amazing right and so I just somehow with parenting it's like the last area where people think I should become an amazing parent overnight I shouldn't have to invest in skills or education even people who invest in skills and education for every other area of their life that they probably care about less there's so much shame we've internalized that we should be able to do it naturally
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
You become a parent overnight. You do. Yes.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
That's still what it is. And they're like, what do you need? And they go, you need a car seat to leave the hospital, which, by the way, you definitely need. That's all? Like, just a car seat? Like, how am I supposed to manage this?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
One of my favorite kind of sentences to say to kids around this, because I think it really builds their confidence, is just, you were right to notice that. I was crying, and I'm feeling sad. And look, you saw that. I'm going to tell you why. Making this up, Aunt Sally died. Do you know what dying means? Dying is when someone's body stops working.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Because the thing I want parents to know, because there's just so much shame, and maybe we should talk about shame, right, is the only thing that comes naturally when it comes to parenting is how you were parented. That comes naturally. That lives in your bones. That lives in your circuits. And there might be some people who say, amazing, I have the greatest privilege in the world.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Then what will come naturally is exactly what I value and what I want to do. I would say more often people would say some version of definitely not what I want to do or parts I'll take, parts I want to do differently. And to me, it's kind of like if you were brought up speaking English and you really want to speak Mandarin or you want to speak Mandarin half the time to your kid.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And someone said, are you going to learn Mandarin naturally? I feel like someone would say, how does one learn Mandarin naturally? You would, I don't know, you'd probably sign up for, you know, Duolingo. You'd find an app or something or a course. And you'd then practice and practice. And you'd be able to make progress because you actually learned something new.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And so I just think big picture, like parents are, they're so under equipped and set up to feel, and this is I think has to do with shame, that when my kids are struggling or when I'm yelling a lot, it means something is wrong with me or something is wrong with my kid.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I feel like these days in almost every area, if a CEO is saying, I feel like I'm struggling, is it my fault or my employee's fault? They probably say, I don't know. There's probably people around. Who can help me? Who can teach me? Why do I keep yelling, right? And same thing with almost every other field.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And to me, more than like if there's any legacy I get to leave in this world, it's not even the approach itself, even though I think our approach to parenting is very different. I just want parents to know like there is no shame in investing in learning and growing in parenting. And to look at that like they probably look at every other area of their life.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Someone said codependence. I don't know that much about that word, but something like that.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Then I'd pause, write something, just be a monologue. I'll see how my kid responds. I might add... I'm not dying. Kids actually really need to hear that in hard times. I'm not dying. No one else is dying. I'm safe. And you know what? I'm sad. And I'm still your strong mom who can take care of you.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I've never heard of that, but I love that. And it is in parallel, I think, with so many of the things I teach parents. So even the idea of locating someone, to me, like my version of people in my life that I know and love, even if I don't agree with anything they say, that I can locate They're like an egg with a shell. They have a shell. There's a boundary. We're really talking about boundaries.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
We all have different levels of porousness to the external world. And I think if you know, and there's pros and cons of both. Like, I really mean this. I am not terribly porous to other people's experiences. I really have solid boundaries. There are definitely moments in my closest relationships because what people will say to me, okay, like, I know these are my feelings and not yours.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Like, we're in a close relationship. Like, can you be here a little bit more with me? And that is true. Like, that is what I want to do, right? And sometimes it can be a little distancing, right? And a little separate. People on the other end of that spectrum, if they know I'm very porous, I tend to, to me, one of the ways of also thinking about it, I think I gaze in before I gaze out.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And I think a lot of people gaze out before they gaze in, right? They spend a lot of time in other people's brains and less time in their own, right? What do they think of me? What do they think, right? If that's what's going on for you, then the shell to your egg is, isn't always intact. And so there's a spillover. It's like, whose feelings are whose? Whose thoughts are whose?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I'm spending so much time worried about what that person thinks of me. I almost like, what am I, what do I, what do I think? Right? And so the exercise you're naming is actually just a resetting of a boundary, right? And things that are absurdly concrete are are necessary for the most primal parts of our brain to actually understand. My name is Becky Kennedy.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
That sets the stage for such resilience and is kind of the opposite of everything's fine, my kid keeps seeing me crying, they keep hearing words they're not used to hearing, die, cancer, Aunt Sally, funeral, whatever it is. That situation is what makes kids feel really, really uncomfortable and unsafe.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
To me, what I say, I don't usually say that. I'll say, my feet are on the ground. When I do a grounding exercise, everyone in our community knows this, my hand is always on my heart. I think there's some amount of having contact with your body. My hand is on my heart. Sometimes I used to do this with clients, especially after an emotional experience, going like this.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Name five things in the room is probably another way. There's a red clock. I'm wearing a white shirt. They're very, very, very basic as a way of kind of coming back into your body. Two mantras that I find help parents a lot actually make me think about this exercise. One is I am the pilot, not the turbulence.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
In our kids' turbulent moments, when they are that turbulence, what so easily happens is we merge into that with them. And then it's no wonder our kids can't calm down or episodes last forever because we're just turbulence and turbulence together, right? So I'm the pilot, not the turbulence. Also...
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
One day I'm going to do a partnership with some airplane company because I feel like airplanes are just so beautiful because the pilot gets a cockpit. They get a boundary. Like, it's, right? That's what parents need. So that's one. And the other one, when your kids are upset or after there's an argument, some people get very dysregulated just knowing someone's upset with them, right?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Which is, again, kind of whose feelings are whose. I find one of the most effective mantras, and again, these sound cheesy, is just, I'm safe. This isn't an emergency. I can cope with this because our body, if you tend to be porous, you get activated just by other people being activated, even though it wasn't your feeling in the first place.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And your body actually needs the reminder that you're safe to not kind of add to that turbulence.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
So, all right, I'm going to respond to that. And you just cut me off. You're like, Becky, that's not the direction I want you to go in. Because I guess MGI, which is I call most generous interpretation, is to me the embodiment of not what I do all the time. Definitely not because I'm imperfect. But what I think is just a useful framework to try to employ as much as possible.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Because the idea of what is the most generous interpretation of someone's behavior, like projection, counteracts our very natural human tendency, which is just what is the least generous interpretation, right? We all come up with the least generous interpretation of people's behavior all the time. And it's just quick. It's easy.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And I think it's because in our brain, if we see something bad or annoying, it's just easy to think that that's the whole, right? So I can't even tell you how many times every parent I know We'll say, my kid doesn't listen. They hit all the elevator buttons. They hit other people. And then I said, and I know what you're thinking. They're a sociopath.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
They're like, that's literally what I'm thinking. I was like, I know. I have that thought too.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
No. It means you are a good kid who has not yet learned the skills to regulate urges. That's all it means. That would be the most generous interpretation.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I have a kid like that, too. He wants things for himself, and he derives a lot of joy from things. Those types of kids are going to do things. Okay. That's my resilient rebel. Okay. But... Projection. Why am I bringing that up? So what's my most generous interpretation of why this projection would happen? Why would a kid say, you're mad at me? Or, you know, I can see how mad you are at me.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Or why would someone even say in adulthood, you seem really, really stressed out, right? Again, the gazing in versus gazing out. I think it comes back to in our childhoods. I mean, that's what often a lot comes back to. Were we taught that we have an emotional life that lives inside of us? Then were we taught how to understand that emotional life?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Then were we taught how to manage and cope with that whole emotional life? Most people were not. So it becomes this very, very complicated conundrum. The emotional life is happening inside me. Again, like you can't beat it. It's happening. Our feelings can't get rid of them. And they're very powerful. They're sensations.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
But if your framework was always you're getting punished, you're getting ridiculed, you're being a baby, then you develop a very conflictual relationship with your feelings. Like they can't be real. They almost can't be mine. That's really what they can't be mine.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
people like this often blame other people a lot for things they never did when they're really frustrated and upset because it's almost like, this can't be mine, so, like, Who did this feeling to me? You know, there's a lot of that in the world. Who did this feeling to me? Who put this in me? Right? It's so fragile and so sad almost. And so, you know, toxic.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
But projection, in a way, is the only way that I can understand my emotional life. is by imagining you having an emotional life. I don't know. Like a lot of these things, I hear myself say this. I like Mel, I was like, what a vulnerable way to go about the world. What an awful way to live in your body that you're so overwhelmed and almost so self-abandoning
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
That's exactly right. And the terms I would use to match your terms are coherent narrative. What is therapy? Why does therapy help people? It's interesting. Therapy doesn't change what happened to you. Therapy doesn't change your past. Therapy does not take away the pain. But the pain was never the thing that really got in our way. It was the pain plus a lack of a coherent narrative and support.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
of the information in your body that it must be someone else's. So that's what projection is, right? So what do we do when we see it, right? I don't know, what's an example, right? Like you're so stressed out, you've been so stressed and you're thinking, maybe you're thinking of partnership, like I feel like you're the one who's stressed, right? never helps in the heat of a moment to be right.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I've tried it a million times. I don't know about you.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
To be right in a heated moment when you're like, I'm going to be right.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
No, but it's a very hard urge to resist.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Yeah, and I think, you know, this is so true in relationships, definitely at work, and definitely in parenting, is... You don't have to represent everything you believe in in, like, a given moment. Like, we're not so fragile, like, to be like, no, and you're projecting, like, I have time. Like, this is a heated moment. I can kind of chill out. You're so stressed, and I think I'm not.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I think there's projection. I might say, like... Oh, I am? Who cares? Just like get through the moment, right? And then maybe after, if it feels important, I say, I feel like this thing happens sometimes where when you're stressed, you say, I'm stressed. I don't know. Like, let's talk about this. That's when that happens. I think this is really true with kids too, right?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
This happened the other day. And in some ways, it's the same strategy, which I jokingly on Instagram called do nothing with a capital D and a capital N. Because so many times in hard situations, especially when you're accused of something that's not true, people will say to parents, oh, so you're just going to do nothing. I'm like, take away the just.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Like doing nothing in a heated moment is a very sophisticated technique because really what you're saying is you're doing nothing on the outside and you're being an adult and managing your feelings on the inside.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Versus doing nothing on the inside and just yelling or reacting on the outside. So the other day my son came to me before school, my youngest. And he goes, my sweatshirt's still dirty. And I was like, oh man. He goes, you promised me you would wash my sweatshirt before school. Between us, he never asked me that, okay? And here's my fork in the road. It's like, we all know what it would be easier.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
By the way, I wanted to say back to him, 99% of me was about to go, you never asked me. And then he'd say, I did. No, you didn't. And now you're lying to me. And all of a sudden, it's like, okay. You know what he was saying to me? I wish my sweatshirt was clean. That's what he was saying. That's what we're all saying. And I'm so upset about it.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And so early on, when kids have painful experiences from witnessing you or something else, giving them a coherent narrative is what they need. And without that, the way I think about it is they have what I call unformulated experience. It's just affect and experience that kind of free floats in their body, unformulated. That tends to later show up as triggers. right?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
The feeling is so big that it's like too overwhelming in this moment as a seven-year-old to be mine. So like, I kind of have to make it your fault to try to make sense of it. So what did I do in the moment? I literally did nothing. What I... You promised me you'd watch my sweatshirt. And I went like this.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I kind of was just like looking at him like I knew what it was like to want something and not be able to have it. And he's like, you did. And the moment I go, I did. Oh, my sweatshirt is dirty. You really wanted it to be clean. He's like, I really did. I was like, that's the worst. Not joking. And then he, by the end, by five minutes later, I didn't say anything. He got another sweatshirt.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
We moved on. I didn't say, I wasn't going to like ruin the moment by being like, see, you could cope or you never asked me. But I think in both these moments, whether someone's saying you're stressed or my kid's accusing me, I think about this a lot in parenting. I don't have to prove my parenting in a moment. I don't have to prove it to my kid.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I don't have to prove it because my mother-in-law is watching. Like, I trust myself way more than I trust one single moment to represent everything about me. And I think when we can gain a little bit of that confidence, we have a lot more freedom to just be effective parents. And two, also know there's a moment to do nothing.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And then if something's a chronic issue, if my son's chronically blaming me, when things are less heated, I'm going to say to him, you know, something and, you know, a calm moment.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And kind of other things in adulthood. And so, yeah, that's what we want to try to avoid when we can.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
You know, a question I'd have about that study, I'd be really curious if there was variation among subjects where some people that guilt part lit up a lot more.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
have a lot of focus on gazing out and determining their inner reality by what other people think about them. And the people who do not light up as much are the people who gaze in and have a deep sense of themselves even in the face
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
That's exactly right. And to me, like, I always, I say this to people I manage, I say, like, I think about this in general with adults. Like, I think such an empowering thing as an adult is just to know where you are in any given scale. So for me, as a leader, I'm always gas. I'm like, go, go, go. We can do this. We can get this accomplished. I'm probably like pretty far in that.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And given that, I know it's really important for me to have people around me who sometimes say like, whoa, let's look at this first, right? Yeah. I also know that sometimes if I do have a like, maybe I should slow this down. I should like really listen to that because that's like not right. But knowing where I am on a scale is important.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I talk about someone that I manage who she really needs to be more direct with the people she manages, just like, you know, like sometimes ask questions when she really wants statements and can have a little higher standard.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And I think it's helpful to know where she is in that scale because I remember saying, like, I want you to go as far as you can toward the other direction without being disrespectful because it's almost impossible to do that, right? right? And so I think for adults to know, let's say I gaze in or I more gaze out, neither is better or worse.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Probably again, mental health and resilience is about having just a lack of rigidity. And so to say, what is my starting point? Like anyone listening, what is my starting point? There's no morality. It's literally not better or worse. It just gives me information about which direction to experiment with. And I like to make this a concrete experiment, right? So
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Let's say you are someone who tends to gaze out before you gaze in. And you're always like, I can't do this thing I want to do because it would inconvenience someone. I told this story the other day on my Instagram and people went bananas about it. I was at the airport and I got a cup of coffee in the morning. And I like my coffee with just like a really little bit of milk. Right.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And I know to specify it if I'm asking someone else. I went to the counter and I said, hey, can I get a medium coffee? Not black, just a little, little bit of milk, pretty close to black. Sure. No problem. I go, I wait in line, then it's on the counter. I pick it up, Becky. And it's like light as can be. I got back online. I brought the coffee. And I said, hey, I asked for this.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I know there's a lot of people probably got lost. I asked for this, you know, darker. Could you pour out a good amount of this and then refill it with coffee? The person, you know, who knows if it could have gone differently a different day. Oh, right. No problem. Here you go. This happens with things that are so much bigger than coffee.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
But the coffee example is such a good one because what I'm doing in that moment is is I'm saying I'm allowed to have my coffee the way I wanted it and asked for it, even if it's awkward or inconveniences the other person. Now, can people be on the opposite extreme? And can someone hear this and be like, I probably need to do a little bit less of my own needs. That's what I'm saying.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
You have to know you are. But what I have found, at least with moms, is the idea of, ooh, you know, I asked for almond milk and this is whole milk. Or I always, I used to give my clients this experiment who had this struggle. I said, I want you at the grocery store. I have to be basically done checking out to say, oh, you know what? I actually don't need those paper towels. I can't even tell you.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
People are like, I can't do that. I can't like return it. Like, oh my goodness. It was like a panic attack. And the panic, the panic feeling is that would be a completely new circuit. That would be me saying, I'm willing to do something to meet my own needs. I actually don't need that paper towel. Even though it could get an eye roll or inconvenience temporarily someone else.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Those little experiments, and it might be the opposite. It might be saying to my partner tonight, you know what? We always sit down and talk about my work. And I actually did have a stressful day, but you know what? I wanna hear about your day. You go first. That's also an experiment. And for someone who's on that extreme, they're gonna also have a panic attack.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
They're gonna be like, this is deeply uncomfortable. But just knowing where you are in the spectrum gives you the information you need to get a little bit of balance.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
But this actually relates to what we started with in a way. I'm going to circle it back there, which is... And because I hear this a lot, you know, kind of some kids these days, they don't, They don't know how to tolerate stress or they're always overwhelmed. But part of it is, again, maybe this is my MGI, maybe they haven't been told the right story about stress or anxiety.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
This came up with my kids the other day. My older son had his first basketball game of the season. And he goes, oh, I'm really nervous, feeling a little anxious. And it's just so interesting, like, the way we respond in little ways to our kids in these moments form... Like, the way they end up thinking about those feelings later on. I said, well, of course you're nervous.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Being nervous means you care. You really care about basketball. Right? And obviously we've had many conversations about what feelings mean. But it was so interesting. I watched him go... Yeah, I do care. Kind of in that little sentence, being nervous means you care. I mean, think about it. You're never nervous about anything you don't care about, right?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
If being nervous means I care, I have a story to understand it. I now inherently feel like the feeling is normal. I'm almost like proud, you know? Like, yeah, I do care, right? My relationship with that feeling is going to be so different than if my parents are like, why are you nervous? There's nothing to be nervous about. Or, oh, you're nervous? Oh, does that mean you're not going to play well?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Oh my goodness, are you going to miss your foul shots? I mean, so in the first, right, my kid feels like being nervous is wrong. So I just set them up to... I feel like they're feeling the wrong feeling when they're feeling nervous going on. And the second, I'm lingering on my anxiety to their nervousness. Not a great combo. But the stories we tell matter. So in the workplace, you're stressed.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Yeah, you know, actually, this makes me think, maybe not right now. One more time. It would be really helpful to talk about what is stress? Why do we feel stress? How do we talk to ourselves when we feel stress? Does anyone here know the way you talk to yourself when you're stressed has the power to make stress feel a little smaller or a little bigger? That's really interesting.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I wonder, does anyone here use a session? Should we do something in the workplace about how to deal with stress? Because you're right. this is a stressful job. And this is where I don't think about power, but authority. And I want to own that and let you know that. Stress comes along with this type of job. I'm making this up. And this is why you get paid pretty well.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And this is why, you know, whatever else could be true. But one of my jobs is not just being honest, but actually helping everyone develop the best skills that maybe no one ever taught them before to manage stress. Let me know if that's of interest. I just think about that. The whole mood just changed. You kind of own your authority and you own the story.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And I think whether you're talking about being a CEO or being a parent, it's actually all the same.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
What do you do?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Going back to my daughter, it's one of the mantras that's been really helpful for me as someone who, again, just knowing myself, I always like to go, go, go. I get so much pleasure, probably identity, value from doing things. And so a byproduct of that is I always kind of feel like I'm in a rush because my body craves movement and checking things off.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
But being in a rush is never terribly helpful in close relationships. No one likes to feel like, come on, you get to the end of the story or it's not good. So sometimes I think efficiency and relationship building are like antithetical.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Well, it's a unitary experience being efficient. And so like when I can be in efficiency mode a lot and it's something that I have to really think when I'm going home to my closest relationships. And it's interesting now that I work so much more than I used to, it's almost reinforcing the efficiency mode.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
So I really know I have to, you know, my own therapy, like really work on like that's not a value of mine. All the time. At work, maybe sometimes. Even there, sometimes you got to get out of it to connect to people, right? And so that is something, again, where like knowing where I am on that scale, asking people to call me out. Oh, mom, you're rushing me at night.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Becky, I want to tell you the whole story. I'm not just trying to give you the TLDR. I want the experience of telling you the story. I'm like, right, I'm doing that thing. Mm-hmm.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Yeah, I don't know how... apocalyptic you want me to get about this. But I think I actually, you know, my husband and I were talking about phones and text and social media and AI. And I brought up something to him. He's like, I don't think I've, in all the arguments I've heard, I haven't heard that, where I feel like we're changing in a dramatic way our basic evolutionary drive around attachment.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
in a way where attachment has always been the primary evolutionary drive of humans. And with all the different technological shifts there have been, because people always say, oh, there's been this, there's been this. What's never been shifted is kind of the nature really of one-to-one human attachment.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
We're entering into something really new where let's even say text messages, 20 at once, 10 at once. Our bodies will always crave what's immediately gratifying over what is long-term good for us. Another way I think about it is our bodies will always choose convenience and ease and gratification over what's good for us long-term. So you think about all these pings coming in.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
It's a lot of information, this text, that text, this text, this text. And what you're doing in your circuitry and over time evolutionarily is getting used to the multiplicity of relationships, the multiplicity of information. It's just more gratifying than one-on-one. To the point that one-on-one conversation over text or even in person is
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
is going to have so much more of a gap than it ever has been in terms of how slow, how low stim, and how boring and awkward it is compared to, especially for kids who get this early, the constant information flow and gratification and stimulation. I think that's going to have a profound impact, not right away, but over time.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And if you add in social media and then if you add in AI, I mean, on the way humans just are even able to relate to each other. So, yes, I think like this advancement in technology and what's happening now. I think there's always been a tradeoff, always, between how short-term gratifying something is and how long-term good something is for us.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Because the things that are really good for humans long-term are the things that involve humans to tolerate frustration. I would say that is the most important skill, I think, for kids to learn. But the world more than ever is built now with insanely low frustration tolerance because we're built for so much information, so much consumption, and so much media gratification.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
This is actually, I think, the thing that isn't talked about with technology. It's why parenting has changed. It's why so much of parenting is about making kids happy and their lives easy because there's never been a generation of parents like my generation where our lives are just so much easier.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
We have so much less tolerance for our kids' tantrums because we're on our phones wanting our life to be easier. So we stop the tantrum. We make their life easier. We make them anxious. We make them fragile because of our lowered frustration tolerance. So I don't know where we're landing here, but, and by the way, I text like I'm not like a purist here. You know, I am a realist.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I live in the world, you know. But I think it's profound how it's changing human interaction and expectations and gratification.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I think that's right. And I think for parents who have young kids, I think these are such powerful and empowering things to think about when your kids are young. Because I think it's easy to think, okay, so I'll deal with this when my kid gets a phone.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
It's the circuits around even how your kid will use the phone, how much you're going to be able to set boundaries with your kid when they get a phone. All these have to do with the patterns early on, right? So if we go back to slow learning, is good, frustration and frustration tolerance is the name of the game.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
It requires a lot of inconvenient moments that matter so much for how not only your kid learns to tolerate the frustration inherent in life, but I think this is really important, how your kid learns to feel capable. Kids only develop capability from watching themselves get through hard things. They don't develop capability by being successful ever.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
In some ways, it builds up this pressure and a fragility if that's been the only thing they have. And when we think about this whole generation who's so anxious, kind of so fragile, I really believe the antidote to anxiety is capability. And we, and I'll give you an example, like we steal our kids' capability all the time when they're young in the name of short-term convenience for everyone.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
So here's an example. Like I remember this day, my oldest who's now 13, he was like three and he was really into puzzles when he was three.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
puzzles are like really hard right he was working on it something like i can't do it you know the classic wine which i just want everyone to know like no part of me is like i love that sound no like nobody likes whining okay but to me those are our like bang for our buck moments You know, they're not our easy moments. They're our bang for our buck.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
My kid is going to learn something about how to deal with situations they don't think they're capable of completing. That is such an important lesson. And I have a fork in the road. I can either do the puzzle for him, which gives me short-term convenience, stops the meltdown. But beyond frustration, tolerance.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Like one of the things I really remember thinking when my kid was young is if I do it for him, I'm stealing his capability because if he can get through this and kind of get to the point where he says, I did a puzzle I didn't think I could do, that's incredible.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
So I remember this because it felt so, he's still whining, but there are these moments as a parent, and this is what I like to help parents with, our wins are not based on our kids' reactions. Our wins happen when you just know there's this amazing feeling you have as a parent I know that was important. I know it.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And I remember saying to him with this puzzle situation, sweetie, I'm not going to do the puzzle for you. And I want to tell you why. The feeling you get when you think you can't do something, kind of take a deep breath, maybe take a break, maybe even the next day, watch yourself do that thing is literally the best feeling in the world. It is the best feeling. It becomes addictive.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And I will not take that feeling away from you because I believe you're going to get it. I could cry. And one of the things... I feel like people hear the story like, okay, Becky, great. I do not do that all the time. Sometimes I finish the puzzle. But when we think about what we want for our kids later in life, it might be, no, I'm not getting you a phone yet.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
How a kid reacts to that situation, it's not just about a phone. It's kind of, well, have you always just done the thing for me? Have you always just given me what I want? Do I have any ability to feel like I can tolerate frustration and wait and figure things out?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
That all layers into how kids react to not getting a phone, how kids approach hard math problems, how kids do or do not sit down to start their English essay. That is difficult to do. And all that stuff, you can start building those skills in the teenage years, don't get me wrong.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
But the leg up your kid has at 14 when they've been basically building those life and academic skills from the start and they've built their identity around capability, like that's what I want to give every parent and every kid in the world.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
It's so interesting you say that. I have two thoughts. Number one, when I think about the puzzle situation, that's like effort, effort, effort, effort, struggle, deep breath, effort, effort, nope, that's not it, effort, effort, and then you get the dopamine. That circuit, I just always think, that is such a benefit to my kid later in life.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
It's kind of the opposite of, you know, which we all do sometimes, but if it's the only circuit, being on your iPad all the time as a little kid and eat no effort, all the dopamine.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Yeah, and struggle. I think, you know, it's really interesting. My second had a lot of speech issues when she was younger, and I kind of noticed it. Like at a certain age, you're supposed to be building sounds and words, and she was replacing. Like as soon as she had a new sound, she lost one and had a sense something was going on. She had a pretty serious speech apraxia.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
She had to go to speech therapy three days a week, right, for probably a year. She now, you wouldn't know. But it was interesting. I remember that time, my older one, probably five, maybe she was two or three and six. And I remember someone saying to me like, oh, about my daughter, like, oh, poor her, kind of, you know, it's like a lot. And I don't think I said this, but it's so interesting.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I remember thinking, she's way better off than my son. If I'm going to worry about one of my kids right now, which I'm not worried about either, I would worry about my son. His early years were so linear, so without struggle. Like, she's going to have an early experience of struggling, working hard.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
She won't remember it with her words, but that circuitry, which are our important memories, the ones we don't remember with our words, the ones that our bodies remember, she has such an early experience with watching herself struggle and get to the other side. Like... I would wish that for every child.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And so I also think I want to also share that story because I think parents who have kids who have those early issues, it's so easy. Oh, I actually think it's really empowering to do a complete 180, to be like, wait, I'm not going to fix this right away. I'm going to support my child. I'm going to let them know I believe in them.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I'm going to let them know I see a version of them that's going to get through this. They're going to still struggle. And that is actually going to be like the best foundation and almost like the best leg up.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Yeah, and I think, you know, this is like a great lead into parenting. I hear this all the time where someone will say, I don't know if my kid's being bullied, but like they're, you know, they were told, you can't play basketball with us. You're the worst basketball player in the grade, something like that, right?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Where the way I work with parents, right, is, again, assuming this isn't chronic, I don't think step one is calling the school. I don't think step one is calling the other parent. right? If you zoom out, you're right. Like, I don't think a kid's going to be called the worst basketball player, you know, over and over in the course of the next couple decades, but they will be called something.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
They'll be left out. Or even if nothing happens, you know what's going to happen? They're going to feel less than in a group. Like, Probably a million times. I do, right, still. So we have this almost opportunity of like, okay, well, what skills would be useful when my kid is 18 and 30? And actually the struggle, again, is my opportunity. I always think my kids are in my home for 18 years.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I, it sounds like sick and I don't know if I really mean this, but I'm going to say it. I almost hope they have all the variations of struggles they're going to have later on because then at least I can kind of get in it with them and like build some skills and help them see that they can manage. And then I feel like those bumps are going to happen. Right. I guess it is like pilots, don't they?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
When they have simulations, there's no way they simulate perfect flights and say you're ready to fly. They simulate all the issues so that a pilot can learn the right controls and then they're really prepared. They don't take away the issues.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
It's a familiar feeling.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
But I think then what you're saying is you're able to separate your identity from any behavior. Being bad at music doesn't mean you're a bad person. And I think anyone hears that and they're like, obviously. But we conflate those two things 90% of the time. Right.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
That's why we really care about winning at Scrabble is like to some degree we think it means we're smart and everyone's like, you know, versus I'm probably the same level of smart whether I win at Scrabble or lose at Scrabble. Right. And to me, that's what confidence is. It's not feeling like you're the best at something. It's feeling like it's OK to be you when you're not the best at something.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Right. It's feeling at home with yourself. And to me, feeling at home with yourself is. is, first of all, it's an amazing internal motivator because you get to also figure out what you're really passionate about, right? And yeah, learning to participate in things and even have joy in things that you're not great at.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Again, these are things I think our kids really can learn, not from lessons, not from a textbook. not really from a teacher. They learn it from what we model. It's actually interesting. We play a ton of board games, my family. And I'm just, I think they're like the antidote to everything on a screen. So we have a million board games. I'm the resident. If anyone ever needs a recommendation.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Okay. I love Sushi Go.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
So She Go Party is the better version. It's actually a really great adult game, too. It's very strategic. We play code names. We play a lot of word games. We play Boggle. We play Ghost. We play Scrabble. We play Rummy Q. But the game I was going to say that we also play a lot of that I love is Scattergories. Okay. So have you ever played that? Yeah.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I whatever part of the brain is good at generating a lot of different things from a single letter is must be very small in my brain. I am so bad at categories. I mean, my kids are all pretty quick. I lose to everyone. My seven year old included. I'm horrible. It actually is a game I suggest often. I'm like, let's play categories. And I think that's actually so powerful for our kids.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I mean, I think a lot of us, if we look back. We think like it's one of the reasons my parents didn't really play with me or do things like they felt like they weren't good at it. You know, like probably right to demonstrate to your kid, I can choose something. I can have joy in something. I can want to do something that I'm not good at.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
That is, again, going to be more powerful to your kid than sitting down and saying, this is what we think is going to help kids. It's okay to do things that you're not good at. That's like logical words in the brain. That's not an experience they're building or internalizing. Kids learn from stories, from experiences.
Huberman Lab
Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And so I think that's one way in terms of how do I help my kids be confident, but also just be at home with themselves and do things they're not best at. Probably the best way to do that is to model it over and over to your kids.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Yes. I'm big on practice. Maybe on both.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Do you think those people exist?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Yeah. And I guess, you know, we were talking about this maybe before we started, but I don't know. I'm trying to think why this is, but I tend not to put anyone on a pedestal.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I feel like, and maybe part of it is in part of my private practice for years, I saw, maybe I saw the Stanford grads who were then living in New York. And they weren't literally from Stanford, but I'd have all these late 20-year-olds and their pedigree, like all look the same, top of their class, Ivy League, Goldman Sachs, this MBA. And like so many of them had the same
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
insane anxiety and emptiness. I still remember the way one of them described how they felt and she was brilliant with her words and she said, I walk around and it's like when I'm with people and doing things and at work, it's like there's a ton of color. When I'm alone, I feel like I am an empty room with white walls.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
It actually has a happy ending, which has a nuanced ending, but a happy ending where... I was actually saying this to a friend because it actually relates to my own childhood. I feel like I've grown a lot, had my therapy, and I feel like when I was younger, I was really hard-driving and really somewhat people-pleasing. And me and my friend who were both like that
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
were like that have kids who aren't really like that. And they're amazing kids and they do so well and they have this internal confidence. But sometimes we joke, we're like, but there's nothing that will drive you like feeling not good enough. There's nothing that drives you like feeling like every test score defines your self worth. And it's so sick, right?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Because we're almost like conflicted with our kids. Like they're all great kids, they're responsible, but they almost have a little bit more inner contentment, right? But I think about that young woman I saw and how at work she felt amazing until it didn't happen until she was 28. She didn't get the promotion she thought she was getting. And then, I mean... She never failed before.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And it's not only the never failure when your internal sense of self is built outside in, which you actually can do if you have a lot of accomplishments. It works for a while. But as soon as that stops working, if you have nothing, you feel like in an empty room with white walls.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
What's really compelling about the therapy over the course of a number of years is I still remember over COVID, we were then Zooming and she'd had her own place and she actually went through this process and she was very artistic of painting the walls in her actual room, talking about making something concrete.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
And, like, kind of in the way that she was feeling a lot more lit up inside out instead of outside in.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
But I just think—I guess I know myself, too. And maybe this is part of why I try not to put people on a pedestal. Maybe it's as I'm talking. People are like, oh, Becky gets it right with her kids, and she's doing this. And, like— Whatever I can share, that is part of my story. I also yell at my kids. I also feel like sometimes I'm on my phone too much. I feel like my life is out of balance.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
I don't get to see my friends nearly the way I used to. They probably often are like, where's Becky? Why is she not, you know, not only responding to texts, but remembering my birthday or whatever I forget. And that doesn't feel good to me because I used to do more of that. And so... No one has it all figured out. Like, humans, I think, are remarkably complicated, remarkably imperfect.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
We all have parts of us that feel really good, and maybe some of us play up those parts more than others. And we all have parts of us that feel confusing, maybe have some shame, feel, you know, I don't know, just more complicated. And so I at least want to get that out there about myself.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
So I guess my first reaction is I'm reacting to the word pushing because I'm not sure that's the... Like, the verb I would think about. Because I think the idea of pushing your kid, even, like, how much do I push? There's a lot about us there. It's like, is that my desire?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Oh, I mean, I grew up in a town where every kid got pushed. So maybe that's why I know something about it, right? I mean, I think we see this all the time. And it goes back to actually what side of the tennis court. Like, whose feelings are whose? Like... Is this my unlived dreams as an athlete in my youth, or is this actually about my kids' soccer skills?
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
You know, I think parents watching their kids playing sports is a prime example of, am I living out my unfulfilled dreams and projecting that onto my daughter? Or does my daughter like soccer? And, like, how can I really differentiate those, right? I think actually, though, making it back to that, a lot of this actually goes back to frustration tolerance and why it matters so much to me.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Like my approach to teaching frustration tolerance, which is like a hidden gem we have here at Couldn't Side, I really want to be in every school. I think it needs to be in every school. And I want to describe it to you, okay? So I literally have this graph. It's helpful. And I know you like to write things down too to make it concrete. We're like point one is not knowing how to do something.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
Okay. And point two, which is very far away, is let's say knowing how to do it or being very proficient. This could be soccer. I think a good example is reading. Okay. Like everybody starts out not knowing how to read. And let's say not everybody, but a lot of people learn how to read. The space between not knowing and knowing I call the learning space.
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Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults
It has a name and it's helpful to know where you are in a map. And the learning space has one feeling that you're supposed to have, frustration. That is the feeling you're supposed to have. And we have this idea that we shift from not knowing to knowing Like this?