Dr. Becky Kennedy
Appearances
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
That's why phones shouldn't be in the bedroom for kids.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
But so many times, it's actually an issue of frustration, tolerance, and that's often not kind of labeled for parents.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I'm taking a deep breath and trying it again. It could literally be
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Does our brain like encode it differently?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
So then it is a cheat code for coping skills if you put it to song.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And so the way I play around with it now, even in my own writing is, okay, I have to write a new article.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And I'm like, I can't do that.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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...
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Love Miss Edson.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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%.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Thank you. I'm honored to be back here a second time. I love speaking with you and look forward to the next time.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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...
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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,
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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...
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I'm so happy to be here.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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,
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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...
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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,
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
He's clocking. He's clocking.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yeah, could be.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
My son, my son.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
My son did not ask me that. And he knows that our phone rules are non-negotiable.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Another thing is like all feelings are allowed. Not all behaviors are okay, right? Stuff like that.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I think so many young girls especially become expert at what people need of them by becoming distant from what they need for themselves.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
No, I want to. Let's go into this. I have a lot to say.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
From you. Do I value always responding to people on text right away?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Like three-hour-long conversations?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
We like go to our seven-year-old and we're like, don't you want me to have adult conversations?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
You become a parent overnight. You do. Yes.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Someone said codependence. I don't know that much about that word, but something like that.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yes, exactly.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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...
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And your body actually needs the reminder that you're safe to not kind of add to that turbulence.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
They're like, that's literally what I'm thinking. I was like, I know. I have that thought too.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I've tried it a million times. I don't know about you.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
To be right in a heated moment when you're like, I'm going to be right.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
No, but it's a very hard urge to resist.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And kind of other things in adulthood. And so, yeah, that's what we want to try to avoid when we can.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And I think whether you're talking about being a CEO or being a parent, it's actually all the same.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
What do you do?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
I live in the world, you know. But I think it's profound how it's changing human interaction and expectations and gratification.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
That's right.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
It's a familiar feeling.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Okay. I love Sushi Go.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yes. I'm big on practice. Maybe on both.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
Do you think those people exist?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
And, like, kind of in the way that she was feeling a lot more lit up inside out instead of outside in.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
That's great.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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.
Huberman Lab
Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults | Dr. Becky Kennedy
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?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Yeah. Look, I think actually... you know, what you're saying about your son and daughter is that they're actually, and this can happen a lot in families, it does, and it definitely happens a lot when there's especially two kids in a family because the binary becomes I have one kid like this and I have the other kid like this, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
So there's this way in which it's adaptive to both be able to gaze in and know what you want And to gaze out and notice what's going on for other people. And most of us as adults find one of those things more natural or either more naturally oriented to kind of gazing in and being like, this is what I want and this is what I want to do. And I'm good at prioritizing my own needs.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And other people are more toward the end of the spectrum of I'm gazing out in my environment. I notice how everyone else feels. I might even to some degree feel responsible for making them feel better. Neither extreme is great. The balance of both is actually helpful. So often in families, these two things can be extreme in both kids where I'd say, we want to help your daughter at times.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Notice, hey, it's not your job to give someone else's strawberry all the time. Other people are allowed to be upset. You can support them or you can do your own thing and find your own Legos. And we want to help your son in that situation sometimes come out of his like Lego world and notice that there's other kids or there's other things going on. There's something in between both.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And I think, again, this is another one of those false binaries. And I actually think both sides are also very incomplete because this idea that I don't really say no to my kids. I just want to keep my kids happy. I can just tell you for me, I wouldn't define that as like love.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Well, to me, the things we really want to work on with our kids are practice. They're not like a moment, is this tendency to want to keep our kids happy. And I have this belief that optimizing for happiness in childhood is actually what causes a ton of fragility and anxiety.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
resilience a lot of us want for our kids as they get older we want them to be really resilient and i think the reality of life is you never get rid of the whole range of feelings i don't know one adult who doesn't feel disappointment who doesn't feel jealous doesn't feel anger who at times doesn't feel less than other people now the situation is different most adults know how to read so the situation isn't i'm the only one in my class who doesn't know how to read
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
The situation is changed, but the feelings are exactly the same. And so what kids learn in childhood, when their body is essentially forming their factory settings, their defaults, what range of feelings should I expect to have throughout my life? And even more profound, what is the range of feelings where I feel capable as a human? And the more in childhood your parents...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
help you avoid hard feelings, fix things for you, step in too much, distract, give you a quick win. We think that makes a kid's life easier, but the message a kid takes from a parent is the feelings that overwhelm me also overwhelm my parent. Nobody in the world thinks I can feel capable when I'm frustrated.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Nobody in the world thinks that it's okay to be slow, kind of on the slower end of developing a skill. Fast forward to adulthood, there's basically one feeling that kid feels capable of having. Happiness. The range of feelings instead of wide like this, that a kid feels capable feeling, is like this. That's the essence of fragility.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
If I feel anything but successful, if I feel anything but ease and comfort, my body has this massive alarm going off, which makes sense because every time in childhood I felt anything else, there was an alarm because everyone did whatever they could around me to, quote, rescue me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
It usually comes from the best intentions and it's almost counterintuitive. So I'll give a couple examples. And again, one moment with a kid does not make for a pattern. So my examples are meant to be illustrative of like, this is a general pattern. So let's say your kid comes home, they're in kindergarten, they're in first grade, whatever it is. I'm the only one in my class who can't read.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Now, I think our natural urge as a parent, because it's understandable. We don't love seeing our kid upset. They're really obsessed to say something like, that can't be true, or everyone reads at their own pace. But sweetie, you're so good at chess. You're so good at math. And if you think about the visual of this moment, because I think the visual really matters.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Picture your kid in a garden, okay? And there's all these benches. And the benches are essentially experiences. So right now they're sitting on the, I'm the only one who can't read bench. Really, Jordan, you and I know, that is a more general bench. It's really the bench of other people are further along in something than I am. Or I feel jealous or I feel behind.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Again, I actually think that's a bench you're on at various moments in every decade of your life. So my kid is sitting on the bench and we either want to pull them off the bench and we're like, look at that sunny bench. Or we do something that's also well-intentioned but harmful is we say something like, you don't really feel that way. We kind of say your bench isn't your bench.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
No, no, no, it's not that big of a deal. That can't be true. And so what happens is our kid is feeling upset, quote, on this bench. And then they learn my parent is also scared of me being on this bench. So actually what happens in their body is they encode their difficult feeling next to our fear of their difficult feeling.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
It should be no surprise that when our kid doesn't make the soccer team the next year, our kid has that much more of a kind of tantrum reaction because they have learned how to react to that feeling. It has a lot to do with how we respond to the feeling. And so resilience building in that moment and actually confidence and capability building means saying something back to your kid simple.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
I'm so glad you're talking to me about this. I believe you. Tell me more. Oh, that sounds like a hard day at school. I'm actually just saying this thing that overwhelms you doesn't overwhelm me. And more so, I still like you when you feel this way. I don't have to escape from it. That means, let's fast forward to... Someone got a promotion in your analyst class before you did.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
What do we want for our kid is to figure that out. What happened? What's going on? Let me stick with it. Not to say the next day I quit my job. And so a lot of that, though, it doesn't happen just when you're 22. It happens from all the resilience building blocks that have already been set as a pattern in much earlier days.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Yeah, I don't think dismissing someone's feelings or minimizing it or distracting, I would say none of that is going to help them build resilience. Our kids can only learn to tolerate the range of feelings we tolerate in them. That's what resilience comes from. Essentially, every feeling is overwhelming to a kid because, again, kids are born with all the feelings and none of the skills.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And the number one way kids build skills to manage feelings is not from a book. It is not from a class. It is not didactic. It is they absorb the way we react to them when they're in a hard place. And so are basically, quote, sitting down on the bench with them and basically saying, yeah, tell me more about this. And then what happened? And yes, quote, allowing your kid to talk about it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
They might not want to talk about it, but essentially giving them the message of the things that overwhelm you don't overwhelm me. I don't need to run away from them. That is such a big percentage of how kids build resilience.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
That's a lot of it. Being able to say to someone, this stinks and you can cope. I believe you and I believe in you. It sounds like that's essentially what your wife says. That would be hard. And you're someone who's always cope with hard things. And that's what would happen again.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
That's so beautiful. I think that actually is the essence of what our kids need from us in hard times, because when our kids are having a hard moment, and again, their hard moments can seem small to us because they didn't lose a lot of money. It's actually just that they didn't get invited to a slumber party. But in their world, that's the same feeling.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And so when we're in our low point, someone's ability to believe that we're feeling that way, but also see a more capable version of ourselves than we can access in that moment, what feels better than that combination? Nothing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
So I really mean this as a true question. When you asked me how to discipline a child, tell me more what you picture.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Part of the work I love doing with parents is sometimes when we're like, well, like flesh it out. What do you mean? And what really matters? Like we tend to like hear a lot of our own solutions. But OK, there's a couple of things here. Number one, again, going back to our job, such our role. What is our role? I believe a parent's role is very akin to a coach, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
What would you do if your kid is not making layups? And do we feel, let's say even a kid is making layups. My kid is a great basketball player. They make layups. But in this game, they missed every layup. In the next game, they're missing every layup. I just want to know if any of us are thinking, what kind of consequence do I need to give this kid?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
That's right.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
It's really interesting. As a parent or coach, you might be frustrated and be like, what the heck? I know this kid can make a simple layup. There is nobody even guarding them and they are missing layups. They're not even putting them up against the backboard. We might be frustrated. But if we heard ourselves or a coach say, look, I am going to have to take away your TV time.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Why would that help now the next time they take a layup? just going to feel like a shitty basketball player, they're probably going to be less likely to make the layup. It's just that we've been doing this to kids for so long that we call it discipline, but it actually makes no sense. This is the biggest thing we challenge at Good Inside. It doesn't make sense.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
It's not how we even treat professional athletes anymore. We've modernized there. It's just kids are the last area to modernize because they're not a group of people who are able to speak up and say, this doesn't make sense and this makes us feel like shit. So I think a different framework. Okay, so my kid keeps hitting someone with a Nerf gun. And what you said was so insightful.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
My kid, maybe they just don't even have the impulse control to have something as awesome as a Nerf gun. Yeah, that's what it is. Right? And not shoot it at someone. If every time I threw food from my plate, it stuck on the ceiling. And you're like, Becky, don't do that again. I'd be like, I feel like I've just got to see if that keeps happening. I'm newer to the world. And if I did it...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Jordan, multiple, that's what I'm saying. Multiple things can be true. I would not judge you by any interaction I watch with your child. And there are moments where our kids take over in our homes for all of us.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And someone's like, you don't respect Jordan. I'd be like, no offense. This is not anything to do with my respect for Jordan. I just found this phenomenon pretty fascinating and I wanted to see if it would happen again. This to me, and I want to make this usable for you and our listeners here, I call this your MGI. When our kids act out, we all have an LGI, least generous interpretation.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
We all do. My kid doesn't respect me. My kid's a sociopath. My kid has no empathy. And then we intervene from that interpretation. A massively helpful thing in any part of life, and you can't use it in the moment until you've really practiced it out of the moment. A kid has this Nerf gun. I said, don't point it at your sister. They pointed at your sister. I agree. Bad behavior.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
What is my most generous interpretation? If you really force yourself to answer that, you do something powerful. You separate identity from behavior. Okay, you probably say some version of, I have a good kid who's unable to control themselves with a Nerf gun, and every sibling has some anger toward another sibling, and this seemed like an opportune moment to take that out.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
It just all was a perfect storm. And so... What should I do? This actually goes back to our job. I think a lot of times we get into situations where we're punishing and, quote, disciplining, even though I don't think that's the right word, our kid. Because again, we're not really doing our job as parents, right? Where we're not setting a limit.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Where maybe the intervention is, and again, this is where our intention matters. Because I'm going to say the same thing, but you'll hear it differently. Look, you're being ridiculous with that gun. I can't trust you, and so I'm taking it away. Intervention is taking it away. A kid is going to feel like a shitty kid.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And you're going to feel bad at the end of the night versus, look, the truth is it's really hard to have a Nerf gun and make responsible decisions, especially when other people are around. I'm taking the Nerf gun, but it's not because you're a bad kid. You're a good kid who had a hard time. My job as a parent, my number one job is to keep you safe. And I actually love you so much.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
I'm willing to make decisions to keep you safe, even if you protest and get mad at me. And this is one of those decisions. The Nerf gun is going away. Maybe there's a time in a week or two where I'll take it out, where it's just you and I. There's no one around. We'll play with it safely. And as we do that a few times, you'll show me you're increasingly capable. But for now, it's going to be away.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Like we do that not to our kid. We do that for our kid because we actually want to protect them from doing things that make them act like a bad kid.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
I think about someone, I don't know why, like someone who's trying not to drink alcohol. And like if someone's, hey, you really shouldn't drink alcohol when you're in a bar. Someone would just say, yeah, if you're early recovery, you probably shouldn't be in the bar.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Yeah, you don't go to the bar. It's hard to have that urge when you're trying to build skills. And it's actually our job to protect our kid. And that's actually going to help them make better decisions over time. Where probably a Nerf gun isn't the first situation where they're going to build impulse control. we would have a hard time having impulse control with a Nerf gun.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
I think that's too negative of a question. I think there's a couple things I'm seeing. Number one, I see a lot of confusion around boundaries and a lot of orientation toward keeping your kid happy, which generally means not setting boundaries. And the thing about this, and I think there's a lot of talk about cell phones and pledges and John Haidt is amazing in the work he's done.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
My perspective starts younger, which is the cost to not being able to set boundaries with your kids has never been so high. It has never been more important to set boundaries because back when you and I were young, if our parents didn't set boundaries, I don't know, we like stayed up an hour later or had an extra cupcake.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Now, if you can't set a boundary, your kid's on TikTok at age seven, playing video games for five hours.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And the other thing I would say to parents is if setting boundaries and tolerating your kid being upset with you, if honestly with yourself, that's hard. The idea that the first boundary you're going to set is delaying your kid's cell phone, that's a joke. Like a boundary setting is a muscle. And we have to build it when our kids are young around all types of things.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And then when you tell your kid, no, we're not getting you a cell phone, their reaction isn't even as intense than other kids because they're thinking, well, you've always set boundaries. You've always tolerated me being upset with you. You're not becoming a new parent overnight.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
So I think one of my favorite things is to show parents, though, you can set boundaries in a way that helps you be closer with your kid. Kids know when their parents aren't parenting. They know it. They won't say it to you because short term it feels good.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
I can't even tell you how many teens in my practice back in the day would tell me stories of essentially parental neglect and not neglect like they weren't there, but they weren't being a parent.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
It sticks with me all the time. And I think the lessons of it can be really, we can rewind, right, to when our kids are much younger and apply it. So, yeah, there's a 16-year-old girl and she's such, I don't even know the right word, a pizzazz. That's my most generous interpretation. And so she comes in and she had been cutting, right, her arms for years.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And I asked her about it and she had been cutting for two years. And I said, oh, have you seen a therapist? Because she told me her parents knew about it. She goes, no, you're the first one. I saw. I said, oh, so let me just see if I got this right. You've been cutting your arms for about two years. Your parents knew. And this is the first time you came to a therapist.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Like, how did that connect those dots for me? And she goes, well, my parents did tell me I had to see a therapist two years ago. And I told them, oh, so you're saying I'm a f***ed up kid. So you're basically saying I'm the messed up one in the family. Fine. I'll go to a therapist. But I'm going to lie about everything. I'm just going to waste your money. And that's how it's going to go.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
All this, like, rage. I don't know why I knew it in the moment. I was like, I'm just going to say nothing. I actually think that's one of the most important parenting strategies also is do nothing. Wait. And her countenance and everything about her body language completely shifted from this, I don't need anyone. I don't care about the world, scorched earth, to she just had this downward gaze.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Yeah. First of all, no two kids in the same family are alike. But I do believe all kids need the same things. But how they are able to receive them are completely different. And what their kind of developmental arcs look like and how long it takes things to click are also completely different.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And when she finally looked up, she was so sad. And the words that she said to me literally were, can you believe they let me make that decision? I still have the chills. And the way I think we can zoom out from this. is our kids will never say to us, thank you for making a decision for me, but they feel it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Imagine being on a plane and you're flying from LA to New York and you're like, I've got to get to New York for this meeting, for this podcast, for this wedding, something very important. And the pilot is saying, look, I have bad news. I just have this light go off. I don't know what exactly it means, but we've got to make an emergency landing in Iowa. And everyone in the plane is like,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
No, this isn't important. You're overreacting. Oh, my God, I said this wedding. And then you hear the pilot because everyone's freaking out because, oh, you know what? Forget it. You know what? Everyone's upset. I'm just going to keep flying the plane. Now picture the passenger cabin as upset as they were. Now I'm like 10 out of 10. What? My being upset is enough to make a pilot change decision.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
This pilot is now more interested in keeping me calm and happy than they are keeping me safe. That is terrifying. And that is what we have to keep in mind when we're making decisions as a parent to keep our kid happy rather than to actually help them with what's really important. And again, our kids will never say thank you. They're not giving us five-star reviews in that moment.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
But I think if we actually start to see their protests and tantrums as a sign we're actually setting a limit and a boundary, our relationship with the tantrum changes because we no longer see it as a sign we're a bad parent. We see it as a sign that we're doing our job.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Look, I like it. I mean, in general. And what you're saying is I'm always watching to see if something's on the verge of behavior that is going to make him feel like a bad kid or him feel out of control or is going to overtly harm someone else. And at the same time, there's a lot that we can do to cope that isn't that. I don't know. You can go hit a pillow.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
That's very different than hitting a sister. Right. And I think a lot of us know adults. If you would just say one second, I need a moment to go scream in the bathroom, that would save us all a lot of headache at work or, you know, at the home. So here's an example of it that happened the other day in my home. OK, so my daughter comes out. I make her breakfast. I hate that breakfast, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
It was either avocado toast, which he loves, eggs, which he loves, or cereal and milk, okay? Like, it was, it's not my first rodeo. I'm not making something random and new right before they're getting on the bus. And it's so tempting in this moment. I want to be like, oh, you're going to eat breakfast. I made this. You like it. You're going to eat it. We just latch onto something.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And then we know what happens. I mean, nobody wins. All of a sudden now we're like really fighting about all types of things. She gets on the bus. I feel like a horrible parent. My whole day is ruined. I hold resentment. I'm probably mean to her when she got off the bus. And then I go to bed, like just feeling shitty about myself. Like the whole day is ruined.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
So I think in these situations, like I don't like that for breakfast. I'm not eating. Or even a situation where my kindle mom is like, I hate you. We almost have this urge to prove and do all of our parenting in like the next 30 seconds. I have to like do all of it. It's almost like I don't trust myself to figure it out. And then we hear someone around us.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
We hear our parent or literally our parent watching us like, you're just going to do nothing?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Here's my perspective on this. Quote, doing nothing on the outside usually means you're doing a lot on the inside. You're regulating your own emotions as an adult versus doing something on the outside, which looks like, oh, you're going to eat breakfast or you can't talk to me like that. No dessert tonight. We're, quote, doing something on the outside, but we're doing nothing on the inside.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
We're just taking our own frustration and we're like, I don't really want to deal with that myself, regulate that myself. No, it's going to vomit it onto my child. And it looks like something, but it's actually just stooping to their child level and, again, not being a parent.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Doing nothing, it's funny what I always tell parents, why I call it a strategy with a capital D and a capital N, because if someone ever says to you, you're just going to do nothing, I want you to think, no, I'm not just doing nothing. First of all, do nothing is a very difficult strategy to employ. And I am choosing do nothing. It is a choice I am making. It is mindful restraint.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
That is what the best leaders, you think again, the best CEOs, the best professional coaches respond. Again, think about LeBron. LeBron is with a group of kids and you're like, you're the worst basketball player in the history. And he's like, no, I'm not. Have you seen my stats? Can you imagine? You're like, you're so pathetic. What?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Versus if he says nothing and someone would be like, LeBron, are you just going to let that eight-year-old get away? That no one would say that. They'd be like, thank you for being an adult and just letting that moment pass. And I think in some ways we all need to like channel. our inner LeBron and recognize it as a sign of leadership, not as letting someone get away with something.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
I love rapid fire. And actually, I bet there's going to be a common thread like there almost always is to our seemingly unrelated parenting struggles. That's a challenge I'll take on.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
I think there's so many different things you're saying. First of all, is just how much is fun or joy of value in our family? Jumping on the couch is fun. Playing games and playing hide and seek or these silly things that kids do or how much do we just value joy and fun?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And is what my kid doing from a place of joy and fun or is it from a place of making a bad decision or really, again, you're probably not letting your kid draw a Sharpie all over the wall if they want to have fun there. Grandparents are going to call that being easy on a kid. And another framework is joy and fun and cultivating our family home to feel that way is actually a value of ours.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And when we can allow it, we do.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
So I think that's one. I think another thing is something I think we all need to just pay attention to, because again, it relates to generations and what's harder and harder is, I can tell you for my kids who are now 7, 10, and 13, one of the things I really care about as a skill, I think it's one of the most important life skills, is frustration tolerance.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Your ability to tolerate frustration, which in the world we live in, is getting to be a rarer and rarer skill because dopamine and quick wins and easy satisfaction is just dime a dozen on our phones or on iPads for kids, etc. And so to me, that's just really important. I think everything that happens in adulthood that really leads to true success, none of it comes from childhood early success.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
It actually comes from childhood success. tolerance of frustration and struggling. That's what makes for gritty, resilient adults is I don't expect to be successful right away. I'm able to tolerate working towards something and not yet having success. Ironically, the longer we're able to tolerate the space between wanting and having or between not knowing and knowing, the more successful we are.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And so the only thing I think that relates to is, okay, I let my kids jump on the couch too. My couch looks like shit, to be honest. And again, I'm like, when my kids are out of the house, we'll figure that out. It's not a value. But again, if I think, is that one sign that my kids struggle to hear no and respect it and tolerate frustration?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And if I say, yes, it is, because I just don't really love setting boundaries, that's a different thing. That's not about fun and joy. That's about... poor kind of frustration tolerance environment. But if I say to myself, no, actually, that's just an example of joy and fun. And there's plenty of other situations in life where my kids are learning how to tolerate frustration.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Then again, that feels like an important ingredient in a good home.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
That's exactly right. And I think what you're checking in with, Jordan, which is important, is what are my values? And you're saying like, I actually, I value being able to say yes to my kid when I can. Not from a place of fear, but from a place of fun. That's a fun thing to be able to run around on your couch as a kid. And if I value that, then I'm acting in line with my values.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And that's a great parenting decision then.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Those are a bunch of questions. So let's take two questions. One is what's going on with boundaries and are we doing them right and why aren't they seemingly working? And separate but unrelated is when I say my kid isn't listening, what might be really going on? And then what leads to more cooperation?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
There's so many big picture things you're saying. A strong belief I have is every parent is doing the best they can with the resources they have available. That's always been true. I really do believe that. That doesn't mean that we necessarily got everything we needed from our parents. They could have been doing the best they could.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And there could be things that we thought, I wish I had more of this or that, which is kind of our opportunity when we become parents, that it's not about blaming your parents. It's about saying, what do I want to take? And what are things I want to do differently?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And the second thing, and this is, again, really I think what Good Insides stands for, the only thing that comes naturally in parenting is how you were parented. Which makes sense. Parenting is a language. Like if you were raised in English and you wanted to speak some Mandarin to your kids, you would never expect to just pick up Mandarin naturally.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Right? You would probably tell a friend. First of all, I think I would say to a friend, that's amazing that you want to speak a new language. That's so cool. You're taking that on. And did you download Duolingo? And the other thing about language that's really helpful to think about it that way is is what language do you think you'd speak to your kid when you're most stressed out and overwhelmed?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
back to English. We all go back. And if that happened, I don't think you'd say, oh, all that Mandarin I've been practicing is just not worth anything. I'm back to square one. Okay, you go back to English and then you go back to your Mandarin lessons.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And the reason I think that's so useful is I think it counters what we've been told, that there's a maternal instinct for women that, quote, I should be able to figure this out on my own. This is, to me, good insight is essentially like a great version of parent school. Every other area in our life, a doctor, a lawyer. They get specialized education.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
I believe parenting in a way that feels in line with your own values is a skill. Some moments come naturally, but a lot don't because in those moments you probably hear your own parent's voice and anything new feels awkward, not because it's wrong, because it's new.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
I mean, without a doubt, I think that is the main thing. But I'll give you another one. Keeping our kids happy to make it even more extreme, what it does is it steals our kids' capability. We steal it. We make ourselves feel capable in the moment and we make our kids feel not capable because we deprive them of the experience of seeing that they can get through hard things and hard emotions.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
So I think that is the biggest thing. I think another version of that is this thing I keep hearing. Am I not supposed to say no to my...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
kid or I'm not supposed to say no or there's this version of my kid is my friend but again the best friends I have if I was really acting out they would call me out on it like and by the way they do it in a way that lets me know they love me and that's the place they're calling me out from so So I just want parents to think, sure, you want to think about yourself as a friend.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
A friend doesn't let another friend do everything they want to their own destruction. And so I think bringing these two things together, there's this real short-term focus. Like, act good inside as they were very long-term greedy. in our parenting approach. Your kids are going to be out of your house way longer than they're going to be in your house. And the stakes only get higher.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
By no means is any parent perfect. And there's not one system that works for every kid. But in every other area of our life, we probably invest a good amount in education and don't expect to figure it all out by winging it. And so I think there's a happy medium because I think in the workplace, if you show up on day one and your boss goes, well, do a good job today.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
So whatever feels hard now, again, it's going to be a bigger stage later on. And the biggest gift you can give your kid What if my kids go into college and adulthood feeling like, I know how to deal with frustration. I know how to bounce back from failure. I know it's okay to feel disappointed and that I have a way to get through it, not just distract myself from it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
I know I'm going to feel jealous of people and I know how to deal with that. That is what makes for really strong, resilient kids. But it requires us to tolerate our own frustration in the moment and not just make a situation easy. I think a lot of people have said to me, like, good inside doesn't really seem like a parenting approach.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Like, it obviously is, but it feels like as applicable to my kids as it does to how I interact with people in the workplace and leadership training. And I think that's all true. I also think we can go a step further. I think these ideas are really relevant to what we see in politics and just in the world in general, where people are increasingly unable to hold two sides.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
seemingly oppositional truths at once. People also seem to be struggling with separating who someone is from what someone does. We kind of judge someone based on a single idea or a single behavior, which I would say is the collapse of behavior and identity. I think all of this just points to how impactful it is in terms of what happens in our house with our kids. It's not only...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
about their behavior. And it's not only about their early patterns that are going to impact them the rest of their life, but it's actually the adults they become and the decisions they make. And at the end of the day, the adults are the people who rule the world. Even now, as a founder, because Good Insight is a tech company. We have this amazing app.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
All these people who want to optimize every area of their life. That is what our app is. It is AI. It is all the things. It is right there. It's technologically sophisticated. And I take pride in the fact that as a CEO of a startup, I have an executive coach. My founder friends, if I ever heard any of them say, I would never get a coach, I don't think they'd get an investor to invest in them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
I think they'd be like, I think we can create a world where parents kind of brag about the education they're getting. You remember when you went home from the hostel, you're like, what do I need? And they're like, a car seat. And you're like, okay, that's it?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
It's really nasty because then what happens when parenting is hard is if we're told it should come naturally and we should be able to figure it out from Instagram clips, then we just blame ourselves. We feel like something's wrong with us. We feel like a failure.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
This whole comes naturally thing, that has actually held people back for years, which then holds back the next generation because we just pass on our issues to them. And so I'm actually very heartened by this generation of how many of them are saying, I'm going to be on Instagram. I'm going beyond a podcast here and there. I actually don't care about anything like I care about my kids.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And it's time for me to put my dollars and my energy into the things I really value. And I have so much hope that this is the generation that's going to create very resilient kids. And by the way, build their own resilience as adults along their way.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And you're like, OK, I want to do a good job. But then you realize you don't have a job description. Right. I think anybody would know I can't do a good job if I don't know what my job is. And I actually think most parents, they actually don't have any clarity in what their job is. What is my job when my kid's upset? What is my job in general? And a lot of it actually comes down to boundaries.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
So I don't like the idea that we have to learn 20 million different things. That's overwhelming for me as a parent. So I think the things that are missing came more naturally in the past. More space to figure things out, more time, less supervision. Like, I don't think we had as many parents rescuing kids because we didn't have so much instant gratification in our life as parents.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And so our tolerance for our kids tantruming about a puzzle was higher because we're like, what else am I going to do than tolerate this tantrum?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
So the thing I think these kids are missing is a space to struggle, to not know, to be left out sometimes, to not be able to read right away, to just be able to struggle and muddy your way through it, and to also not have your parents watching and orchestrating every moment to put you in a bubble. Like, I can't even tell you how many people I know. And again, it's such good intentions.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Call the school. My kid has to be with Jordan and Chris in class next year. They have to be with their best friends. And I'm like, I don't think people did that when we were kids. I don't even think they knew the number to call. There probably wasn't a number to call. And what I hear is, and again, there's nuance. There's always nuance. But Oh, my goodness. Like, I really believe this for my kids.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
I would never want to deprive them of the opportunity to find out they're in a class with none of their friends. Because what they will have to figure out that year is going to be so helpful for them when they're older. And so I think this goes back to that do less, do nothing, and really think my job again isn't to keep my kid happy. It's actually...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
to optimize for resilience, which means creating an environment that represents adulthood. We can support our kids, but supporting and solving are very different things.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
So to me, parents have two jobs in almost every situation. So there's a wash, rinse, repeat nature to learning this. And those two jobs are setting boundaries and validating your kid's emotional experience. And we often think about those two things in opposition, but to me, they really are two sides of an effective parenting equation, and both really matter.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Okay, Jordan, confidence. I think we think confidence is a kid feeling good about themselves. I don't think that's what it is. I think confidence is self-trust. And I think they're very different because if you're optimizing for your kid feeling good about themselves, you tend to actually build a lot of self mistrust around any emotional experience that is distressing. So here's an example.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
The reading is a good example, but another example, maybe your kid saying, all these other kids on my travel baseball team have gotten like really good. I don't know if I'm going to make it this year. Okay. And then we say things to our kid. Maybe we're like, that's true. I kind of know my kid's not going to make it this year. Now, I don't recommend saying it's true.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
So let's start with boundaries, because I think boundaries are very poorly misunderstood. And whenever I hear someone say, my kids don't respect my boundaries, I actually kind of know that their definition of boundaries is probably off. So here's my definition of boundaries. Boundaries are what we tell our kids we will do, and they require a kid to do nothing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
You're really not good at baseball. Obviously, that's not what I would say. But I think we say these things to our kids, maybe even after they don't make the team. That tryout was so unfair. This coach really has something against you. We think that's building confidence because we're trying to optimize for good.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
If we're optimizing for self-trust after my kid doesn't make the team, I might even say, look, you even noticed it earlier. Some of these kids over the summer, they're hitting the ball a lot farther and they're pitching a lot faster. And when I hear my kids say, it's so unfair. The coach has it out for me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
What I'd probably say if I was on my game, I don't know if I would be because none of us are perfect, is you're really disappointed you didn't make the team. This is actually a huge thing. And I'm going to say it, especially with boys, is they tend to take their vulnerable feelings and turn it into kind of indignation and anger and orient out almost like someone must have done this feeling to me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Who did this vulnerable feeling to me? And I actually think this can't happen overnight. Our job is to help our kids almost reclaim their feelings. It's not about fairness. My kid is disappointed. I am on this with my kids about referees. Nothing bothers me so much as at the end of a game, I hear these kids being like... Oh, we lost the game. That ref was awful.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
To me, it's like such early entitlement, which really is just the inability to tolerate your own frustration. That's all entitlement is. This can't be my frustration. Who did this to me? It's the referee, right? And it's like, I can't have this feeling, so I vomit it onto someone else. To me, when I hear that,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And I think about confidence, which again, confidence isn't your ability to get a win every time. Confidence is your ability to have a bad loss and then say, what did I do? What could I do differently? What part is actually under my control? Which again, you think an NBA player, like their best strategy after losing game is blaming the ref. Again, it's pathetic.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
We would never want that player in our team. We'd be like, refs, whatever. I miss my foul shots. I'm going to go to the gym tomorrow so I can make more. I didn't pass as much as I was hogging the ball. And to me, we have to help our kids in terms of confidence really see that confidence isn't about being the best.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
It's about tolerating being you when you're not the best and getting more of a sense of what's going on inside you than blaming the world for your struggles.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
So in a way, they're an assertion of your very appropriate parental authority, which I don't mean that in a creepy way, but like truly, we are the authority. You are the pilot of the plane. And so boundaries are limits. So boundaries, though, are within your control.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And maybe it came from fear for her. Another place it could come from, to me, this is a powerful question. What jobs do I not want to work my way out of as my kid's parent? And what jobs do I want to work my way out of?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Like I can tell you, as my kids get older and they inevitably make mistakes or find themselves in tricky situations, a job I'm always going to be happy to have is I want them to know they can call me and I'm going to be able to help them right through it. I do want that job. I want them to have other people who have that job, but always happy to have that job. water bottle rememberer.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
I don't really want that job at all. I really don't. Toast maker in the morning when they're, nope, I would like my kids to know how to make themselves breakfast and remember their water bottles and check in at the orthodontist. So at various ages, I think I can say to myself, okay, Becky, Am I working my way out of water bottle rememberer or am I locking myself in?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Because then we have a kid who's 10 and I say to them in a moment of frustration, you have to remember your water bottle by yourself. This is insane that I'm still doing it for you. But I have to a little bit look in the mirror and say, okay, so first of all, am I setting my kid up for success? This is a skill. Do I help my kid with their own handwriting? Write post-it notes on the door.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Remember water bottle. We all need visual prompts. When my kid does it but still forgets, again, this is a water bottle. It's not an EpiPen. Am I like, you know what? This feels harder than I thought, but I'm not doing it. I'm not purposely letting them fail. No, again, intention matters, but this is an okay thing to go through.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
It probably will be part of the arc of, oh, man, I was thirsty at soccer practice all Oh, yeah, that stings. Oh, you forgot. Okay. I want to work myself out of that job. And so I think your mom worked herself out of that job. And what happened is there was enough of a vacuum that you worked yourself into that job, which made you more confident and capable.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
I guess I don't think kids inherently are born with one or the other, but a lot of this comes from the messages, the responses. Kids are just expert in noticing this I believe you and I believe in you. Do my parents think I can become capable over time about something that I initially find difficult? Or do they rescue me from it?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
So if you're saying my kid doesn't respect my boundaries, you're saying I'm giving the power of my intervention to my kid, and we have to help parents reclaim that. So here's a perfect example, and it relates to listening, because a lot of times when parents say my kids aren't listening, we're just not setting boundaries. So, for example, get off the couch, stop jumping off the couch.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Which is really a way of saying they don't think I'm capable of doing it. And so what I noticed with kids over time who have higher self-esteem, number one, they've learned to figure things out for themselves. But that process is messy. What it really means is in the home, parents were tolerating tantrums. They were tolerating whining. They were saying some version.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
I remember my son whining about this puzzle he was doing. Probably three or four years doing a puzzle he couldn't figure out, please. He's just doing it for me. I can't figure it out. And as a parent, of course, there's a moment. Permission to anyone listening to be like, you know what? I'm just doing the puzzle. I can't deal tonight. Fine.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
But I remember this thing I said to him vividly because I was like, wow, that just felt really right. I said, look, I'm not finishing the puzzle for you. But let me tell you why. The best feeling I think in the world is the feeling you get when you think you can't do something and then you take a breath, but then you watch yourself make progress. That is literally the best feeling in the world.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And I won't take that feeling from you because I just know it's going to come today, tomorrow, sometime soon. Okay, now again, he didn't say like, oh, that feels so poetic. He kept whining. You know what I mean? He did. But to me, kids with high self-esteem, have been in environments where they go through the mess and then figure out after.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
It's only after mess that you're like, wow, I guess I'm capable of more than I thought. That's what self-esteem is. And then they take that in to the math class later and they're willing to take on the bonus problem.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
They're willing to put their hand up and get something wrong because they know not from knowledge of someone telling them, from experience, that they can get through those things and bounce back.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Yeah. And look, and again, our intention matters because a different version of that is this is a puzzle. Do it or don't do it. But by the way, you're just giving up and you could definitely do this puzzle. I picture Pam being like, but I'm doing the thing Dr. Becky said. The reason I even said that is because, first of all, I don't know if you could do the puzzle. Who knows? It was kind of hard.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
When our kids are younger, essentially. We're forming their talk tracks. We might as well do that in a way that works to their advantage. We have this opportunity to build identity that a kid thinks they're capable and nobody feels capable from early success.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
These are things we say to our kids all the time. Maybe they're jumping near a glass table, whatever the reason.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
You actually feel fragile because you feel so attached that your identity is linked with early success that you can do a very, very narrow range of things. This is the best news for a parent. They're like, wait a second. So my kid not doing the puzzle is a good thing? Yes, your kid not being in class with their best friends. Yes, you're not doing a bad parenting job by being there to support.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
You're actually allowing your kid to access over time their capability. It's just a lot messier than what we think that will look like.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
You know what's interesting? Zero.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Because I don't think anybody who's heard me talk ever says, Dr. Becky, she sounds really soft. I don't know if you feel like that in this conversation.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
I guess that's true. But honestly, this sounds weird. And I don't want to, maybe this is wrong to say, but I'm just going to put it out there. What will happen is there's often a wife in a heterosexual marriage, okay? And they're like, my husband is worried about raising snowflakes. And this is the best thing. When they say, look, can you convince my husband? I'm not going to do that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
I'm not walking into a dumpster. Yeah. You'll probably disagree with half of it, but at least then you and I have something to bounce our energy off of. And we might not be on the same page, but at least we have common language. And then we have something to talk about instead of just escalating. And then there might be things, but I think break it down how we approach parenting.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
So a boundary is not saying, please stop jumping. We don't jump. or if you don't stop jumping, I will take away your dessert tonight. Because again, a boundary is something I tell my kid I will do as the parent and it would require my kid to do nothing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
There's so much between punitive control and soft permissiveness. I don't think until Good Inside we've actually been given a roadmap for what the in-between looks like. And I think in our heads and in our hearts, when we hear certain examples, we're like, I could have used that and it wouldn't have made me soft. So I think we need to get more people to dip their toe in.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And sometimes a reel isn't the best example because we're all short circuited. How much can you say in 60 seconds? It seems it's so short, but I actually don't get that a lot from people because I think the tone of it, it feels in line with how CEOs and coaches talk to employees and players.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Seems pathetic. And same thing with a coach. Again, it's actually the same thing. The thing that people don't understand about good inside and why I would never call it gentle is we put so much emphasis on boundaries. And when you hear me talk about a boundary, you're like, oh, that does not sound soft at all. You actually are like, I'm actually not even setting boundaries.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
My punishments and threats are soft boundaries. That is soft because not acting from a position of power, you're not true power.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
No. Tell me about it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
In all those situations, I'm not communicating what I would do and the success of the intervention requires my kid to do something, which is just not a bet. We really want to make a boundary in that situation would be saying it looks like it's hard for you to get off the couch. If by the time I get over to you, you're not off.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
No, but I do want to say that I have a deep passion to connect with more dads because what I see also that's very hopeful, I feel like dads these days, like they really want to be involved. And it's not just about time. Like, they're like, I want to be a kind of different version of a dad. I want to be present. I want to also be the one my kid comes to when they're upset. Maybe not just a mom.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
I just think that's amazing. And in a way, I still feel like there's more shame from moms almost getting a real parent education than there is from dads. Because I think this idea of maternal instinct, I've never heard the world talk about paternal instinct.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
So there's almost more openness, which is kind of amazing that maybe the dads can be the one to say if they're married to a woman, like, hey, together, why would this come naturally? This is a new language. This matters to us the most. This is all parent education. What we do is preventative mental health care.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
There is nothing more impactful on your kids' overall mental health as they get older than the dynamic with you early on. And, of course, the dynamic with us early on is dependent on how much we have access to true education and resources. And so to me, maybe dads, and I would love dads from your show, like I want to think like how can we get dads to really help also like lead this movement?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Because I think they can have a lot of amazing impact.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
I will pick you up and put you on the ground because it's just not safe to jump near that glass table. So. This actually always leads to the second part of your job because we have some fantasy that when we deliver that boundary well, your kid's going to say, oh, dad, I really needed that. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. They never do that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
It's really interesting. Like all these dads who come into our app first, I just did this book tour. We had so many men who's honestly, my wife told me about the app because women are like, I'm a failure if I need this. It's so interesting. Men are like, I don't feel like that. Like, why would I know what I'm doing?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
But I find I'm like, oh my goodness, all these men have now been lowering the shame for their wives to feel like, hey, let's educate ourselves together. I just feel like that's so cool. I saw over and over.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
It's true. And I think that's why, again, what we really want parents to do is say, it's just so interesting. So often we do align our choices, our money, our energy with our values. I think parenting is the one that like culture makes it really hard to do that because of this narrative that it should just come naturally. I think that narrative is way more harmful than hurtful.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And so, yes, it's the one we care the most about. Of course, we love the heck out of our kids. And I think there's this duality. Maybe we're ending on a way we started. I can be a hyper-masculine dad and want to really show up in a different way than dads have in my whole lineage for their kids. Those can be equally true. I can be firm and have limits, and I can be loving and connected.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
What if we didn't have to choose in our families? And then, if we raise kids that way, I really mean this. The world that those children, when they become adults, will build... will become a very different world than the fractured one we live in. And I think I am a long-term optimist in thinking that the way we really do change the world is what we're doing in our home. It's like a huge factor.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
They always protest, which is what we do as adults. Also, when people set boundaries that we don't like, we get upset. And then you can do the other part of your job. which is validating their emotional experience. Oh, you really wanted to jump on the couch. Oh, you're really upset. You really wish you could make your own decisions. And so the boundary is the limit we set to keep our kids safe.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Yeah. So a couple things, and you're going to notice a trend. We have to understand before we intervene. I think that's like for parents. Okay, so what's the thing we have to understand? And here to me is a principle to hold on to. Information doesn't scare kids. Noticing changes and scary things in their environment and not understanding those things terrifies kids.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
So it's not the information often as much as it's ironically the lack of information. And again, imagine being in an office and just hearing layoffs, 20%, hard times, and nobody talks to you. And imagine just what it feels like to go around the office. Then imagine a sturdy leader. That's what good inside parenting is. It's sturdy leadership.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And by the way, when you really learn the whole thing, you're like, this, by the way, is just working at my workplace, too. It's like all the same stuff. Because imagine a CEO saying, hey, I know where it's gotten out. Let me just tell you something, even though it's a little premature and I wouldn't have done it. But here we are. We will have a round of layoffs.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
I know that's not what anyone wants. Here's what I know. We're going to announce it on Friday. Here's what I don't know. I don't have the exact list yet. I'll announce more on Friday. It is a tough situation. As a company, we're going to get through it. That's who I want to be as a CEO. I can name what's true, and I can talk about things that people already are noticing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And so that's the principle that guides me. So already your kids know about this thing. I think we almost get out of reality. Wish they didn't. They're so young. They're hearing you say grandma has cancer.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
So either you're going to talk to them about it or you're going to pretend like they didn't hear it, which, by the way, Jordan, is one of the biggest things we do to undermine a kid's confidence.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Oh, no, no. You don't hear anything. They're like, oh, I guess I can't trust myself.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
So what I would say, even now, a big thing also is learning about the stuff and educating ourselves doesn't mean we're going to be perfect parents. There are no perfect parents in my family. We have a mantra that says perfect is creepy in general. I think that's helpful to think about. So we're going to get it wrong. But actually, then we can repair and go back to our kids.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
So I think you can say, hey, I want to talk about something that happened. You heard that loud noise. And then we need to give our kids stories. Take all the disparate things kids notice and weave them together. And we all do better with a quilt than random patchwork floating. Because when kids have patchwork that isn't quilted together by a parent, they have to make up their own story.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Then they tend to perseverate on it. Your daughter going through it in play, I actually think is adaptive because kids learn through play and they gain mastery through play. Like for all I know, she's like, and then the bad guys left and she's just actually trying to gain mastery of it. But sometimes kids do it in play over and over because they're like, nobody's telling me what's happening.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
So I just have to figure it out. So I would just tell her the story, a version that's appropriate. So again, there's a version of like how truthful only a parent knows the version of truth that, again, isn't avoiding because that just makes kids fear and is developmentally appropriate. But like death is a good example. Some people say weird things. Grandma's in the clouds. Grandma's sleeping.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And then validating their emotional experience that generally comes up in the face of our boundary is how we stay connected to our kid and actually how we also help them build emotion regulation skills.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Like, What? Grandma died. Death is when the body stopped working.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Oh, no, we're not going to see her. Thank you for asking me that question. Again, it kind of goes back to resilience. When we believe kids can tolerate something, they become able. to tolerate that thing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And just a line that I find sometimes naming what's true is one of the best things we can do. So it might seem simple, but even just saying to your daughter, you're still thinking a lot about what happened and period. Like that actually is really helpful for a kid. You're just noticing they're processing. We're not fixing. We're just, wow, you're still really thinking about that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
That stuck with you. Yeah, I think about that sometimes too. Can actually be a missing piece for a kid in their processing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
No. I think we all, again, like it's one of the main things with kids. We all learn the best when other people are imperfect. None of us like to learn from perfect people. It's full of shame because you're like, I could never be like that. And so I actually bet your audience just is more willing to learn from you and has more trust in you. It's like what I say all the time.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
I just yelled at my kids. I was on my phone too much. My kids don't have Dr. Becky as a mom and I wouldn't wish that on them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
So if you go in our app in our library and you look at if you search for frustration, the first thing is that building resilience and improving frustration tolerance. Having a hard time losing actually is a sign a kid needs more frustration tolerance skills because they're not tolerating the frustration of losing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And those skills then also help in academics and struggling at math, winning and getting in 100, whatever it is. And so it all relates. And so to me, when kids show us the things they're struggling with, it's good because you're like, oh, that means at this age I can already know the skills you need help with. That's like a huge leg up in life rather than figuring it out at age 18.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Which is actually, I'm telling you, the confidence and frustration tolerance, I think it'll blow your mind. Because actually, it goes back to how reassurance sometimes diminishes confidence. In the moment, it feels good.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
But when they're older and someone else gets a promotion before, if the only way they feel good is getting a promotion at the same time, that's more fragile than being like, okay, sometimes I make mistakes. Sometimes something happens here and I can still find myself and keep going. That's like the thing we want.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Great. We already kind of talked about what a lot of people struggle with boundaries. One of the things we struggle with validation is we have this false equivalence that validating my kids' feelings means I agree with those feelings or I would have those feelings. That actually goes back to multiplicity. I I am not upset. My kid is upset.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
I think you'll get so much, but, like, even better than that is the next time you're reading a book, when you make a mistake in front of him, there's nothing more powerful. It's like... You learn more from your boss saying in front of a group, hey, guys, I'm sorry I yelled earlier, whatever.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
You're more likely to say in your next meeting to your team, I'm sorry I yelled just because they did the thing and made it more okay. So you guys making mistakes in front of your kid, believable ones. Maybe you're doing a crossword puzzle. Oh, I got the whole thing wrong. Oh, I burned garlic. Oh, sometimes when I burn garlic, I feel like I'm a horrible chef. Am I a good chef? You know what?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
It's okay to burn garlic. No one's perfect. Because when we just say to our kid, it's okay to make a mistake. It's all here. That's not how kids learn. It's through experiences. So this is just one of many things, but that's actually probably going to be more powerful over time.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
You struggling, then the lessons we directly teach them, which don't end up sticking because again, it just speaks to logic. But logic is obviously not even present in the moment when we all get upset.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Thank you. Excited for a part two. And this was really fun. Thank you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And part of being in any healthy relationship is recognizing that other people feel the way they feel and that that's okay. Exactly. I pick them up. Oh, you wish you could keep jumping on the couch. You wish is generally a great statement to start any validating phrase because you're speaking to the thing you're not allowing your kid to do that they really wish they could do.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
we hear someone around us, you're just going to do nothing. We almost have this urge to prove and do all of our parenting in like the next 30 seconds. You're regulating your own emotions as an adult versus vomit it onto my child. And it looks like something, but it's actually just stooping to their child level. And I am choosing do nothing. It is mindful restraint.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
You wish you could have ice cream for breakfast. You wish you could stay up later. You wish you could watch another TV show. And this is the other thing. People think when you say that, that means I'm letting my kid watch another TV show or I'm letting them know I'm holding my boundary and I'm validating how they're feeling.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Yeah, we have this kind of obsession with punishments and threats. I think it's because it's how we were parented.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
But I thank you for being honest because I think me too. I've said those things. Here's how it usually looks in my house if I'm not setting a boundary. I'm like, hey, if you don't get off the couch, I'm taking away your dessert tonight. And then my kid probably doesn't get off the couch. And then it's whatever time at night. And then I think most of us, okay, this is what I do.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
I'll be like, sorbet isn't dessert. Like berries and whipped cream isn't really dessert. Like I make something up because I don't actually want to deal with another meltdown. And then we totally undermine our authority. We're just like making stuff up. So we just feel desperate, I think, when we say those things.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Well, and if we, again, if we think about, because I really do think what we give parents is leadership training, which is, again, just something, why wouldn't we need leadership training? This is a harder leadership job than any CEO position. It is. CEOs like to say sometimes, like, it feels like I'm dealing with toddlers. No, no. In your home, you are literally dealing with toddlers.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
So again, I just picture a CEO for someone who's late to work a couple of days in a row saying, if you don't come in time tomorrow, I'm taking away your ability to expense lunch. I'm sorry, if I heard that, I'd be like, that's the best you've got. That just doesn't feel like what excellent CEOs say. You know what? Hey, let's meet. Look, I'm on your team.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Something's getting in the way of you being on time. I know you don't need me to lecture you about that. Let's get to the bottom of this. Let's work together because getting to work on time is really important. And we both know that. Like you're working with someone, you're being on their team. And if a CEO said that, I don't know anyone who'd say that CEO is really permissive.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
They'd be like, that CEO is effective. And punishments and threats, I actually think we know they don't really work in the workplace or on the sports field anymore. It's just the last place to modernize is parenting.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
It's such a good question. So there's a couple things that we need to understand, I think, about development. And I think there's other things we can just reflect on in terms of why do I listen to people? Because when we say kids don't listen, what we really mean is my kid isn't cooperating when I ask them to do something I want them to do and they don't want to do.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Because again, if you said to your kid, iPad time for two hours, they all, quote, listen. So that's not really what we're talking about. So number one, in terms of just development, and I think this is one of the core things that drives almost all of our interventions, is that kids are born with all the feelings and all the urges and none of the skills to manage feelings or urges.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And that gap between a feeling and an urge and a skill, that gap always explains bad behavior in children or adults. Why do I yell at my husband sometimes? I don't know. I was overwhelmed with my own frustration from the day, and that frustration overpowered my skill in my body to manage the frustration, right?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
Why do we sometimes speed our urge to speed, even though we know we're in an area where there's cops around, is greater than our ability to manage it? So The thing about that gap and why it's so helpful is then you can look at your kid's bad behavior through the lens of my kid doesn't have the skills they need. to meet the feelings and urges they have.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
And then it transpires from there, okay, what do I do with my kid who doesn't know how to swim? I think swimming is a beautiful example because we really understand that it takes a while for kids to learn the skill of swimming. And none of us would pay for a lesson where the teacher goes, go to your room and come back when you can swim. If you can't swim next week, no iPad.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
What's even the theory of why that would work? And at the same time, when you have a good swim lesson, I don't think any of us think the next week our kid is going to swim successfully. And so I think it takes time. Anything worthwhile takes time. I have a kid who's a little more people pleasing and I have another kid who has about 0% people pleasing in him. Their arcs look different.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
If I said to that kid, even if I tried, which I don't even recommend to make it about guilt, hey, I'm really sad. He'd be like, why would I care? That does not affect me. But those are just strong-willed kids and their arc, their skills are different. So that's number one. Number two, I think we have to also understand that our kids over time pair their big feelings and urges with our boundaries.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
So your kids wanting to jump somewhere dangerous and learning not to jump, that just takes time for any kid. And it also depends on their temperament. Just learning to swim. Learning how to manage urges and manage feelings, it takes time. Our kids have a feeling or an urge to jump on the couch or an urge to hit their sibling, and that urge has to actually get paired with our boundary.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1163: Dr. Becky Kennedy | Parenting with Connection over Correction
That's why we say, I won't let you hit. That's why we hopefully notice the signs our kid is about to hit and pull them to the side then to interrupt that arc. And over time, those things in the moment, along with some things that help outside the That's how a kid eventually learns how to essentially regulate emotions and urges so feelings and urges don't come out in the form of behavior.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
That is completely accurate. And I think, you know, I double down on that and say, I think when we have kids, we have this unconscious mindset. wish that they're going to heal us. Ooh. And they trigger us. Ooh. That's what happens when you have kids. So I say it again? We have an unconscious wish that our kids will heal us. And in reality, our kids trigger us.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Because I think in general, we all have the wish that something... in the external world, something we can gaze out at, will finally give us the comfort and the sense of safety and security that we've always been yearning for.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
And it's also like the only job that falls under like very difficult, very impactful, very ongoing that we literally get no training for. Right. And like if my friend was a surgeon and called me and said, I'm not doing surgery. Right. And I'm messing everything up and kind of messed up this person forever. And I'm so bad.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
And part of adulthood, I think, involves learning to gaze in, not from a place of it's my fault, but from a place of actually, like, I have the power, and it's hard, but I have the power to do that myself.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
The third thing I want parents to know, and, like, to me, this is... I should have said it's the first thing. I messed up my order.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
OK, then this is I'm excited. I'm excited. We can put the third thing out there. I'll leave everyone with a cliffhanger with the third thing. This one's important. That one's even more important. OK, so I think first of all, again, and we have to understand before we intervene. So how do we build resilience? Well, what is resilience? Right. And we have to really understand that.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
And I think that resilience really is our ability to tolerate hard things. And the word tolerate is important because we all think it's the ability to get through it. The getting through happens when it happens.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
And the truth is the longer you can tolerate something, not something toxic, that is so not what I'm talking about, or abusive, but the longer you can tolerate something hard, the success is going to find itself and it's going to be more likely because you were able to stay in the hard place.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
I can give you two different examples very concretely. Right. So this is something I teach to a lot of parents in one of my favorite, my frustration tolerance workshop, which is relevant for school, for everything. So let's say, and I'll say my three-year-old is doing a puzzle. I can't do it. You do it for me. You do it for me. This is a good example. Right. And as a parent, I get it.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
You've gotten home. You're like, this is like the last thing.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
I was going to have a nice night with my kid. I get it. But I'm really driven by impact. And so I actually get this sick joy when my kid is on the verge of a meltdown.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Yes. Especially when I've been working a lot. Because I'm like, if I'm going to spend 20 minutes with my kid, I'm going to make it count. And it's nice if I'm there for a pleasant 20 minutes, of course. But if I want to have impact, I literally can picture my impact on him.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
But in a way, I think that's a really important reframe. Especially if you're a parent who travels a lot or you're not around a lot, to be like, wait, I can have impact. It's not easy. It's certainly not convenient. That's the one word parents need to know. Having kids is not fun or convenient in most situations. It's not fun. at all. And this is like your, it's like your Super Bowl right now.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
I guess this is your opportunity, you know, because my kid and how I respond to the puzzle is not going to remember anything about the puzzle. Their body, not from that one time, but from patterns is going to be developing expectations around what can I do when things get hard?
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Yeah, and what should I expect? What is my self-talk? A parent's words become a child's self-talk.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Especially when paired with an emotional situation. So when I'm frustrated, did I have someone come? And I always say like frustration is now like super bright. Do I expect someone to come and turn off the light? No frustration. Or do I expect someone to come and by the way they're present with me, they dim, they dim the light. So it's just not so blinding. That's emotion regulation.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
And then I started poking around and it turned out she never went to med school or never went to residency. I'm pretty sure I would say to her, hey, this is not that you're a bad surgeon. That's not what this is. You weren't adequately prepared. And it's probably time to invest in resources.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Like, that's the best it gets. There are drugs that will do that better for you, but they have, you know, that's not what we recommend for people long term. Like, when we're talking about true emotion regulation, we're talking about a dimmer. Because it's impossible to deal with something when it's a 10 out of 10. Even 9 out of 10 is really hard.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Once you get to an 8 or a 7, it's not pleasant, it's not convenient, but you... you start to be able to tolerate it. And from there, you can, you know, get maybe to a six or a five. That's the goal for our kid. So I'll model this. My kid is freaking out about the puzzle.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Now, to be clear, are there some times that I'd be like, I'm giving myself permission to do the puzzle because I can't deal with this? Of course, I'm a normal human. Everybody has to give that permission to themselves.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Like zero. No, no, no, no. Everyone listening to what I'm saying, don't think like I actually do this all the time.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
And that will eventually get to point three. And I wouldn't wish Dr. Becky as a real parent on any kid. It's just like... You learn the most, I'm sure you too in life, you learn the most from people who struggle and repair. Of course. But here's this moment, and I can go through an older kid example too because it's not as obvious, but my kid is frustrated.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
My kid's going to be frustrated for the rest of their life in higher stakes situations. They're going to be given something from a boss and be like, I don't know how to do this. And I actually don't, first of all, I definitely don't want my kid when they're 25 to call me and be like, can you do my project for me? I definitely don't want that. I don't want them to be indignant.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
How could this person have? I want them to have some type of weight. I don't know what I'm going to do, but I have a feeling I can just think this through or get a little further. So that's what I want there. That is not unrelated to the pattern of how I interact now. Wow. So I could say, here's the piece. Once in a while, I do that. Not great for long-term resilience.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
So here's what I might do, okay? And my kid is starting to have a tantrum. And even he's saying, do the piece. I can't do it. I'm going to say, sweetie, sweetie, this is so hard. This is so hard. And I have real kids. It's not like they are going to say to me, oh, that's so helpful to hear. No, it's not going to happen. They're going to still freaking out.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
But their reaction is different than the power of my intervention. Also two separate things. I might say this. I might say, oh, so many pieces. I don't know where it goes. Does it go here? Does it go here? Does it go here? And if my kid is like, do it for me. I really, and I've said this to my kid. Listen, sweetie, I'm not going to do it for you. Here's why.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
I know you're capable of figuring this out. And the best feeling in the world is the feeling you get when you think you can't do something. And then you wait a little bit and you see that you can do a little bit more. And I'm not going to take that feeling away from you. And so I'll take a deep breath with you. We can take a break. But, like, I know you can do this. Okay? And...
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
And I just want to say, too, because I think it's important that if she said, don't worry, I got all my tips on Instagram. I'd say, OK. I mean, you might want to do a little more in depth than that. I think you deserve a little better than that. And yet this is what parents are set up for.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
When I hear people be like, does that work? Yes. I mean, doesn't that work for adults? Imagine you're having a hard time at your job and you're saying to your manager, like, you do this one. If they're like, listen, I'm not because I know you're capable. And like, it's okay if it takes some time. It's okay if you take a break. I can be here to like kind of think about where could that piece go?
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Ooh, is that an edge? Ooh, edges in the middle. Probably not in the puzzle. Where do, oh, you're right. Edges go on the outside. Look at you. My kid experiences the win and what their body learns. Is when I get frustrated, I don't look for the answer for someone to take that away from me and give me immediate success.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
By the way, if we really want to get into it, if we want to know what entitlement is, entitlement is the accumulated experience of feeling frustrated and then having someone else give you immediate success. Wow. That's what it is.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
And I'll never forget seeing the family of 16-year-olds who was like horrified their kid had a full-on tantrum at 16 because they weren't flying first class. Oh, my gosh. And they were like, every parent's nightmare. And they're like, how do we get an entitled kid? The most well-meaning parents. But this was a kid every time something didn't go his way.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
And I think money makes this more complicated because you can – buy kind of your way out of kids' frustration. You can. So it's almost hard to resist that if that's an option. But every time it was like frustration, success. Frustration, a new option. Frustration, I figured it out because someone else does something for me.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Well, when you finally get to the point at 16, if that's your circuit and then you're frustrated because something's surprising, it's not really about first class. Your body actually is like, WTF? Like, I literally was not built to tolerate this. And then it ends up looking awful, but really, it's really vulnerable, right?
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Super vulnerable. So I want to give you one more example of resilience. There's three lines I think every parent needs to know. And I honestly can almost reframe that saying I think every person in a relationship needs to know. Whether you're in a romantic relationship, a work relationship, it's the same stuff. Because
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Another resilience building moment I can imagine is kind of like what I said to you earlier. Let's say your kid's a little older. I'm the only kid who doesn't know how to read chapter books or I'm the only one of my friends who didn't get into honors math.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Yeah, I'd say that. I'm the only kid who didn't get into honors math. I tried out for the lacrosse team. All my kids, my friends made it.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Everyone, me included. Okay. My first instinct is to quote, make my kid feel better. Hmm. oh, you're gonna make it next year. Or you made varsity soccer and none of them made soccer, right? Whatever the thing is. Or we say, you're gonna see it's not a big deal. Okay, so here's the image, I'm big on images.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
We say, right? Yeah. The truth is we kind of say it because we're uncomfortable and we're just kind of making a kid a pawn in our game. But like if you picture your kid on a bench and if you picture like them kind of in a garden, that's what I like to see. That's like the parable for life, the garden. And there's a bench.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
And essentially when your kid says, I'm the only one who didn't make the lacrosse team. let's say they're sitting on the bench of, what is it, disappointment, or maybe it's embarrassment, or both, or feeling surprised and let down. I don't know, it's something like that. That's the bench. And as parents, we tend to have two instincts when our kid is on the bench of some type of distress.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
When I've asked parents the number one reason why they don't get the support they even think they need, the number one reason I get, the number one reason I hear is I should be able to do this on my own.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
We either want to tell them that their bench isn't their bench. That's not a big deal. Even though they're like, but I'm... But that's how I feel. But I'm on it. Or we kind of see a sunnier bench and we're like, just come with me, right? But like, you're the best at, you know, at soccer. And so we're like, right?
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
And both of those reduce resilience because resilience is kind of like your ability in that garden of life to like whatever bench you find yourself on, you're able to sit in it, not drown in it, but sit in it. Like, cause when you're there, you inevitably will be like, you're not terrified it. You're not spending all your energy, like running away from a bench.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Like if you saw that, you'd be like, dude, like what? Just, just a bench, you know? And so how do we help our kids? feel like essentially like it's okay to be them no matter what bench they're on. Or it's really, it's okay to be you even when you don't make the lacrosse team. Because that's really the essence. That's the core thing that resilience is about.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Great. So to me, these three lines will play that out. So to me, as soon as your kid says something distressing to you, we have those two urges. We have to recognize them. We're not bad people. Just, I always say, say hi to them. Hello, urge to make it better. And here to me is the first line every parent needs in their toolbox. I'm so glad you're talking to me about this.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
That's right. I'm so glad we're talking about this. Because, and again, if we think about it in an adult context, If I was like, I'm so mad at my husband, he never, whatever it is, he never is home for bedtime. And he forgot the one thing I said. And if I was like, hey, like, you're never doing anything around the house. And I am really frustrated.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
If he said to me, you know what, Becky, well, you're upset, but like, I'm so glad you're telling me about this. Like, you know, relationships, I'd be like, I think we're good now. Like, I don't even know what was I upset about. Because what someone's really saying to you when they say that is this feeling in you that you're feeling is real.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
And I still want to be in a relationship with you when you're feeling that way.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
And so our kids need to absorb from us from a resilience perspective. My parent can tolerate this part of me before I learn to tolerate this part of me.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Yeah. And there's a shame. And I think there's a really strong societal message as a woman. I can say the maternal instinct is like a real thing that people think we should have, which really is a way of saying parenting has kind of traditionally been a woman's job. I think they're shifting around that. It's great.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
And it should just be something women have an instinct to do, which is a really great setup for any parent when they're struggling to say, I guess it's me. And I think when we're struggling, I mean, I think when we're struggling with anything, we have two paths. And this is where I think we'll be talking about parenting, but you don't have kids. I'm sure some of your listeners don't have kids.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
This is in some ways about kids, in some ways 0% about kids and parenting. Like when we're struggling, we can either say, what is wrong with me and it's my fault? Or when we're struggling, we can say, what resources and support do I need? And they're two completely different paths. One is activating and has hope and has the likelihood of change.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
And one is actually spiraling into an abyss and a freeze state. of shame, which makes it impossible to change. And I think parents have typically said to themselves, what's wrong with me? This should be easier. You kind of also see on Instagram, it looks like everyone else got their kid to smile for a holiday card. And you're like, that's not what happened to my kids.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
And you feel like it's your fault. And then you don't talk about it. And then you fake good. And then the next person's like, well, that person seems to be having a hard time. And Then then honestly, we feel small. You know, we don't get those resources. We don't feel empowered. And kind of happens generation after generation until until it's not supposed to be depressing. This is so hopeful.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
You know what we see a good inside and we we hear all the time from our members is I came here for my kid. Like, yeah. That is not why I'm here now. Like I now ask for a raise. I now can stand up to my partner when they're mad at me. I now know that it's okay for me to go away for a weekend with my college friends, even when my partner and my kids are upset. Like that's their feelings.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Like I can have empathy and I can still do the things I need to do for myself. And in that way, I feel like what we're talking about is a lot of stuff you talk about is actually just, I call it sturdy leadership. And what's interesting to me is I feel like we have a lot of models for sturdy leadership in the workplace. Like, there's a lot of thoughts now.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Like, you can't really just yell at people and expect them to get better at work. And I even think that's, like, been modernized on the sports field. Like, the best coaches, like, kind of know you got to connect before you correct. And what's kind of amazing and sad, and yet we're there, I think, hopefully now, is, like, parenting young kids is kind of the last place
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
to modernize where sturdy leadership kind of gets applied and what it really looks like and how it benefits everyone. But that's really what good insight is.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
I use sports analogies all the time and connect before you correct. There's a lot of phrases I'll take credit for. That one's not mine. I actually can find, I don't know who said it first, but it is beautiful and it gives you an order of operations, right?
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Where I think about this all the time, like my kid is hitting their brother or my kid lied to my face about something that, you know, is important. Like, I don't know whether they studied for a test, whatever the behavior is, right?
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
And I find out and I see them hitting and I just kind of send them to their room or I like take away their iPad or something, which I always say is like the worst thing. Because when you're a parent, it really is like now I have to deal with taking away their iPad. I don't even want to do that. I like when they have iPad time. Right, right, right. Nobody wins. Like why did I do that, you know?
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
But I think about a basketball coach and I think about a kid who is missing layups all the time. And I think about watching my kid's basketball coach, if that's my kid. And the coach is like, you go to your room and you come back here when you can make a layup. And I feel like all the parents would be like, Why, like, why would that even, what's the theory of why that would be effective?
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Forget, like, what is my, you think my kid is now going to their room and Googling how to make a better shot? Like, yes, you might have to pull the kid out of the game, but you probably want to say, hey, like, this is not your game right now. I believe in you. And like, we're going to get in the gym tomorrow and get to the bottom of this and figure this out.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
And if that was my kid's coach, I just don't know if the parents would say, that coach is really condoning bad behavior. They're really encouraging. That coach is making it seem like it's okay to mislead. It's like, it doesn't make any sense, but we actually have a system of doing that to our kids over and over. And then we wonder why. So many teens and adults feel so awful about themselves.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Well, when you reflect back to a kid that they're a bad kid, during the stage they're forming their identity, that will stick with them for a while.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
And totally possible. To me, if there's one thing I ever want someone to take from anything I say is, it's never too late. It is never too late. Repair is amazing. It is never too late. The parent who's listening now is like, oh no, I guess I messed up my kid forever. You did not. By the way, I sometimes say bad things to my kids, too. We're human.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
But to me, it's the starting point of, right, my kid is good inside. That's why everything we do is called that. And to me, that idea isn't just a phrase that sounds nice. To me, it's actually a core principle. that is very different from a punishment or fear-based approach, which is if I believe my kid is good inside, and I always find visuals helpful.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
So I look at one hand, I'm like, this is my kid. This is who they are. That's their identity. And they are good inside. And then I look at my other hand very far away and say, like, this is their behavior. This is what they did. And I would agree with a lot of parents telling me, like, oh, they lied to your face? I would agree, like, not great behavior. They hit their sister?
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Definitely not great behavior. But those things are different, and it's really important with your hands to keep them separate because you could then look at one hand and say, I have a good kid who hit their sister. And the only reason we want to punish and come down so harshly on our kids is because those hands collapse.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
It's because I see the bad behavior and I don't even realize it's so fast in my brain, but immediately I assume I have a bad kid.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
That is my kid. It's collapsed. And to me, I mean, good inside is more things, but everything else flows from the foundation of like actually separating behavior from identity, which I think you get this, but not everyone does. So it's important to name that doesn't mean anything. condoning the behavior. Like, trying to understand behavior, we think means approving of behavior.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
But trying to understand why my kid is missing a layup, I don't think anyone thinks means that I think it's cool that my kid can't make a layup. They're different. But that separation is the foundation for everything.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Is it okay? I don't, for some reason, the reason mistakes that when I think about feels very like shame inducing. So, and it feels like final. So like what are the three things that I want to like myths or things I'd shift?
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
I think that would be number one. Number one is that trying to understand your kid's bad behavior is the foundation for effectively changing their behavior.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
You can only change what you understand.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
That's a great thing to acknowledge. I don't understand why you're doing this.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Stop doing it, right? And if a parent said to me, I'd be like, Louis, that is so beautiful. We know exactly where to start. And this goes back to not having the skills. Why would you understand a kid's behavior? It's very complicated. And so it would be like a surgeon saying, I don't understand how to do this surgery. And I'd be like, yeah, of course. Well, you don't go to medical school.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Let's get you into medical school. There are places where you can do that. Really. So we have to understand before we intervene.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Right? I think that's like a principle of everything.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
100%. There might be experts. There might be the right community. There's courses we can take. There's so many resources right now. There's the book. We do a million workshops, right? The reason I do workshops is because I was like, I have this private practice where I see a very limited group of people.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
I'm going to try to answer all that. You'll let me know which parts of the question I lose as we go. So what you started with just resonates with me so strongly. And I think it really is the reason I get out of bed every morning, right? Parenting is the most important job in the world. And it is the hardest job.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
And I was like, honestly, at the end of the day, I kind of have some version of the same 10 to 15 sessions all day long. They're always about the same topics, right? Slightly different story, but same core things. And I was like, I would like to democratize access to that. So that's what my workshops are. They're just... things that would come up in private practice, but to more people.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
So there's so many resources. That's number one.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Number two is that our job is not to make our kid happy.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Because when we focus on making our kids happy. we actually start to make them fearful and less tolerant of all of the other emotions that will inevitably be part of their life into adulthood. And so when our kid says, I'm gonna make this up, like, I'm the only one in my class who can't read. It's like the most painful moment as a parent. Oh, I feel my kid's pain, right?
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
And maybe, let's just say it's true. They really might be. We have the urge to say, everyone reads at their own pace, but you're amazing at soccer, but you're so good at math. I want to make them happy. All that does for my kid is, because during childhood, Kids are not just learning about a situation with a parent.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
They're taking interactions and they're making generalizations, not from one moment, but patterns about what emotions are safe? What emotions can I deal with? What can I tolerate? And what emotions, as soon as I feel them, do I need to like turn off right away? And so when a kid says, I'm the only one who can't read,
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
The truth is when our kid is an adult, they probably won't say that, but they'll probably say, I'm the only one who, whatever it is, didn't get a job yet. I'm the only one of my friends who didn't buy their own house, right? Whatever it is, like we're always gonna feel that way. And so when we make our kid happy, what we actually say to them
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
is I am just as scared of this emotion you're feeling as you are. Wow.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
I'm terrified. I want to run away from it. I want to do anything but this. And so what a kid's circuit is, I feel, let's say it's this, I feel less than, or it could be, I feel jealous. I feel sad. I feel disappointed. And what gets layered next to that in the circuit is my parents' fear, my parents' avoidance. Those things get put together. The irony is when you make-
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
happiness a goal of childhood, you actually set a kid up for an adulthood of anxiety because they have a range of emotions that they've encoded as wrong and fearful. And to me, anxiety actually isn't a feeling. It's the experience of wanting to run away from a feeling.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
And it's probably the job we'll have for the longest number of years because everyone knows it's more than 18 years, right? So And someone said to me, I'll never forget, it's the only job you care about on your deathbed, which I was like, OK, that's heavy. But I think that's I mean, I wouldn't know yet, hopefully, but I think that's true.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
And you can't really run away from a feeling inside your body. That's what anxiety is. You're like, wait, this is not going to win. And so to me, the idea of we want to help kids become resilient, resilience over happiness and resilience comes from being able to tolerate and sit with the widest range of emotions, not constrict ourselves.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
That's right. Because like when I, you know, I always joke when I was in private practice, I saw a lot of, you know, 20 year olds, 30 year olds, 40 year olds. And not one of them came to my practice saying, Dr. Becky, like I had the best parents. And, you know, those emotions, other people feel like jealous and sad and like those hard things. I got rid of them. My parents got rid of them.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
I've never felt them again. Like that's never that obviously has never happened. But what happened over and over, even though no one said it, but their stories and behavior really exemplified it was I am now 23. I'm now 45 and I'm literally no better able to regulate frustration and disappointment and sadness than I was when I was a toddler. Wow. And but the stakes are higher.
The School of Greatness
3 Keys to Becoming the Parent You Always Needed
Way higher. So emotion regulation, that is the goal of childhood. I mean, that's the goal of adulthood too, by the way. It's still the goal. We're all working on it.