← The Tim Ferriss Show
The Tim Ferriss Show
#784: Dr. Becky Kennedy — Parenting Strategies for Raising Resilient Kids, Plus Word-for-Word Scripts for Repairing Relationships, Setting Boundaries, and More
02:11:16
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- [00:00]
Tim Ferriss
Hello boys and girls, ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show where for more than a decade it has been my job to deconstruct world class performers from different disciplines, all different disciplines, to tease out the frameworks, the favorite books, the routines, and in this case, the word for word scripts that you can apply to your own lives. My guest today is Dr. Becky Kennedy. She is the founder and CEO of Good Inside, a parenting movement with members in more than 100 countries that overturns a lot of conventional modern parenting advice to actually empower parents to become sturdy confident leaders. We'll explain what that means and raise sturdy confident kids. Of course, there are a million people out there giving parenting advice and Dr. Becky Kennedy's advice. Her thinking on this has resonated incredibly well with me and that is why for years I've wanted to have her on. She is the author of the number one best selling book by the same name, Good. A chart topping podcast, Good Inside with Becky. You can see the theme here. A TED talk with nearly 4 million views on the Power of Repair. We'll discuss what that means and what it looks like. And an upcoming children's book that's my A Good Inside story about Hitting. Maybe I could use that too. You can find her online@goodinside.com and on Instagram rbeckyoodinside. And now just a few quick words from the people who make this podcast possible. With millions of nonprofits in the United States and around the world, how do you find the few that could actually make a big impact with your donation? Today's sponsor, GiveWell makes it easy and they've been a sponsor of this podcast for a very long time. I am a huge fan. Why am I a huge fan? Well, GiveWell researches charitable opportunities in global health and poverty alleviation and directs funding to those that have the highest impact. GiveWell wants as many donors as possible to make informed decisions about high impact giving. You can find all of their research and recommendations on their site for free. They have 39 staff researchers, including researchers with backgrounds in economics, biology and much more. They spend more than 50,000 hours each year looking for the giving opportunities that will maximize each dollar of your donation impact. You can make tax deductible donations to the recommended funds or charities and GiveWell does not take a cut. More than 100,000 donors, including me, yours truly, have used GiveWell to donate more than $2 billion and that includes Tim Ferriss show listeners who've donated close to $1 million, 960k or so now. To date, rigorous evidence suggests that these donations will save more than 200,000 lives and improve the lives of millions more. If you have never used GiveWell to donate, you can have your donation matched up to $100 before the end of the year, or as long as matching funds lasts so you can make your money go further with the help of GiveWell. To claim your match, go to GiveWell.org and pick podcast and enter the Tim Ferriss show at checkout. Just to let them know where you heard about this. So to claim your match, go to givewell.org and pick podcast and enter the Tim Ferriss show at checkout. Again, that's givewell.org to have your donation matched or to simply learn more, check it out. Highly recommend. GiveWell.org Way back in the day in 2010 I published a book called the Four Hour Body, which I probably started writing in 2008. And in that book I recommended many, many, many things. First generation continuous glucose monitor and cold exposure and all sorts of things that had been tested by people from NASA and all over the place. And one thing in that book was athletic greens. I did not get paid to include it. I was using it. That's how long I've been using what is now known as AG. AG1 is my all in one nutritional insurance. And I just packed up, for instance, to go off the grid for a while and the last thing I left out on my countertop to remember to take I'm not making this up, I'm looking right in front of me is Travel packets of AG1. So rather than taking multiple pills or products to cover your mental clarity, gut health, immune health, energy, and so on, you can support these areas through one daily scoop of AG1, which tastes great even with water. I always just have it with water. I usually take it first thing in the morning and it takes me less than two minutes in total. Honestly, it takes me less than a minute. I just put it in a shaker bottle, shake it up and I'm done. AG1 bolsters my digestion and nutrient absorption by including ingredients optimized to support a healthy gut in every scoop. AG1 in single serve travel packs, which I mentioned earlier, also makes for the perfect travel companion. I'll actually be going totally off the grid. But these things are incredibly, incredibly space efficient. You could even put them in a book, frankly. I mean, they're kind of like bookmarks. After consuming this product for more than a decade, I chose to invest in AG1 in 2021 as I trust their no compromise approach to ingredient sourcing and appreciate their focus on continuously improving one formula. They go above and beyond by testing for 950 or so contaminants and impurities compared to the industry standard of 10. AG1 is also tested for heavy metals and 500 various pesticides and herbicides. I've started paying a lot of attention to pesticides. That's a story for another time to make sure you're consuming only the good stuff. AG1 is also NSF certified for sport. That means if you're an athlete, you can take it. The certification process is exhaustive and involves the testing and verification of each ingredient and every finished batch of AG1. So they take testing very seriously. There's no better time than today to start a new healthy habit. And this is an easy one. Wake up. Water in the shaker bottle. AG1 boom. So take advantage of this exclusive offer for you, my dear podcast listeners, a free one year supply of liquid vitamin D plus five travel packs with your subscription. Simply go to drinkag1.com Tim that's the number one. Drinkag1.com Tim for a free one year supply of liquid Vitamin D plus five travel packs with your first subscription purchase. Learn more at drinkag1.com Tim at this.
- [06:17]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Altitude I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.
- [06:21]
Tim Ferriss
Can I answer your personal question now?
- [06:24]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
It is in an appropriate time.
- [06:26]
Tim Ferriss
What if I did the album I'm a Cybernetic Organism, Living Tissue over Metal Endoskeleton.
- [06:33]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Ferris Show?
- [06:39]
Tim Ferriss
Well, let's start with what popped into my head.
- [06:42]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Great.
- [06:43]
Tim Ferriss
And we'll just keep rolling with that thread.
- [06:45]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Love it.
- [06:45]
Tim Ferriss
And see if it goes somewhere interesting. If it's a dead end, I'll get us out of the dead end. But I want to talk perhaps about your TED Talk on the power of repair. Why do you think this struck a chord with people and what resonated with people from that?
- [07:01]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
A classic example is you yell at your kid for something, right? So I'll use this example, which is different than the one in my TED Talk, because it also leads to some, you know, common questions. So my kid's stalling in the morning like I gotta get my kid to school. Because also when I drop my kid at school, I have to get to work and my kids late on late. The whole thing were also rushed. And my kid is saying, you know, I don't know, whatever they're saying, I'm not going to school today. You can't make me Go to school. I'm not putting on my shoes. You put on my shoes and you're thinking like I have an 8 year old like that put on their shoes, right? And then we get to some crescendo moment where as a parent and I'll say me, myself, because I have this too, I just yell, scream at my kid, what is wrong with you? You don't do anything. You're eight years old. You know, we say all the, you're never gonna amount to anything in your life. You can't put on your shoes or, you know, you're so selfish, you're gonna make me late. You turn me into a monster. Why can't you listen the first time we say this thing? Depending on our kids temperament, they react in different ways. If they're kind of in the more people pleasing type, that immediately stops them. They're like, oh no, my parents mad at me. You know, I'm going to be good mostly just because I'm, I really need to see that they reflect that I'm a good kid. I like need that. If you have another temperament kid, they use this as a way of like, oh, you want to fight? I'll show you a fight. And they're like, I am not putting on my shoes. You know that was me, right? That is my third kid. Love him. What order are you?
- [08:24]
Tim Ferriss
I'm first, you're first, okay. But I was a pretty defiant little kid at points.
- [08:31]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
And so then you get through the moment, you get through it. And then I think after drop off there's this immense heaviness as a parent and you're cycling through different things that again, whatever your voice is might be your own voice or it's probably the voice you've internalized from your own upbringing in terms of how people would have responded to you if you were your kid in that moment. But it's some version of blame. It's either blame in or blame out. It's either, I'm an awful parent, why can't I stay calm and why can't I just get through the morning? And then that usually cycles with I have an awful kid and my kid's a sociopath and they're going to go to jail and they're never going to amount to anything. And either way you're blaming where repair would be saying to your kid at some point, hey, I screamed at you earlier. That probably felt scary. And this will be the kind of maybe, maybe the start of something controversial. It's never your fault when I yell and I'm working on staying calmer. So even when I'm frustrated, I can use a calmer voice. Like, I'm sorry, that would be a repair. I'm kind of going back to a moment that felt bad. Kind of like reopening that part of the chapter. I'm taking responsibility for my behavior. I'm giving my kid a story to understand what happened. And I'm kind of talking about what I would do differently the next time.
- [09:45]
Tim Ferriss
All right, this is great grist for the mill. And part of the reason, and we talked about this a little bit before recording that I was excited to have you on and have a conversation, is that the tools you're talking about really apply everywhere. And they're echoed by a lot of folks people would not necessarily associate with parenting, like Jocko Willink, Navy SEAL Commander, Extreme Ownership. And there are many other examples that I could give where I feel like what we will discuss in our conversation can be applied many different places, many different dojos for very similar tools and toolkits. With that said, I suspect one line where people maybe got stuck and you know exactly what I'm going to say is, it's never your fault when I yell at you.
- [10:36]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yes.
- [10:36]
Tim Ferriss
All right. Part of me loves that because just to invoke the great name of Jocko again, who did his first ever podcast, first ever interview on this podcast, 100 years ago. When you own things, you give yourself a degree of agency.
- [10:51]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yes.
- [10:51]
Tim Ferriss
Right. But also overly blaming yourself can be the flip side of maybe taking on excessive responsibility for other people's actions and feelings and so on, meaning sort of codependent or otherwise. So I heard everything you said, but I suppose, like some listeners, I was like, always, never. These absolutes are very strong words. Why say that particular line?
- [11:16]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
And when I share a script, to me, it's often words that are representative of kind of principles. I never like to get too stuck on words. I actually gave those words an example in part because I think it does bring up a lot of questions. But I never want someone to hear this and think, okay, I gotta write down that exact word. In general, take responsibility for your actions. Give your kid a story. Say what you do differently the next time. And I actually would hope anyone listening would say, I think I have my own brand of that. Amazing. That's better for you and your kid than my brand. So with that in mind, it's never your fault when I yell. Here's why I think that's powerful, even if you don't say it to discuss and really think about the way we react to our kid, yes, has to do with the situation in front of us, but we actually react to the set of feelings in our own body combined with the circuitry we have to manage those feelings. And I think the biggest thing to think about is that circuitry, those skills we have to manage emotions literally predated our kids existence that was there so far before them. Now when my kid doesn't listen and the morning is delayed, I feel frustrated. And that feeling is definitely co created with my kid. Separating frustration from my ability to manage the frustration are two really different things. And telling a kid basically, you make me yell, you turn me into a monster, is actually holding your kid responsible for your set of skills to manage your feelings. And the other reason, and then I'll be quiet for right now, that I think it's so powerful is I think about my son. I don't know, it could be my daughter, whatever. He's married one day, let's say, and he has some partner and I don't know, he had a really bad day at work and he comes home and for some reason I'm at his house visiting and his partner's like, oh man, I forgot to get toilet paper from the store. And then he sits down for dinner and maybe his partner ordered him the wrong thing, I don't know. He yells at her. I hear him saying like, well if you just got toilet paper and ordered me the right thing, I wouldn't be yelling at you. And I picture the cringe moment, like oh my God, that's like the creepiest thing. Like seriously.
- [13:25]
Tim Ferriss
And you're like, did I install that so far?
- [13:26]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
And then we hear ourselves say to our kids all the time, if you just listened the first time, I wouldn't have yelled. Or like, okay, well if you were just calmly playing with your sister, then you wouldn't get this reaction from me. And if that creeps us out down the line, like if we wouldn't say, I would be so proud to hear my kids say that to a partner, then I don't know why we think that's a good idea to say to our kids when they're young.
- [13:50]
Tim Ferriss
So there are many different branches off of this that we could explore. Let's maybe back up or zoom out, choose your favorite metaphor and perhaps you could just in your suppose framework or worldview, what it means to be a good parent. Could you define this or just speak to that and then we can use that as a sort of a foundation from which we can launch into a bunch of other Stuff.
- [14:18]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yeah, I should have a really succinct, really solid answer to that question by.
- [14:22]
Tim Ferriss
Now, but I. Fortunately, we have a lot of time.
- [14:25]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Maybe part of what I struggle with is I think we probably think about that word or that term good parent is like, what I'm doing on the surface is something observable or I think a core principle that I think about is actually separating kind of who you are in terms of your identity, which is not observable from what you do, and your actions, which usually is observable. Separating those two, I mean. But I think a good parent probably sees parenting as a journey of self growth and discovery as much as they see it about anything related to your kid's growth. So I think that's number one. Number two, I think a good parent really activates curiosity over judgment in a situation with their kids. And a good parent probably can put into action the idea that really being the sturdiest leader for your kid involves equal parts very firm boundaries and parental authority, as it does kind of warm, validating connection.
- [15:27]
Tim Ferriss
You mentioned curiosity over judgment. Now, when people hear this word judgment, they probably assume that as a negative judgment. But a judgment could also be something like good job. Right. So what would curiosity look like in place of either negative or positive judgment?
- [15:45]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yeah, I think the words good job, I've gotten a lot of press. Or parents like, you're not supposed to say, good job. Say good job. It's not gonna do damage to your kid. I think there's a lot we can unpack there. Again, there's deeper principles. Right. They're like, oh, what do kids really need when they have accomplishments?
- [15:59]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, I like how you zoom out. Because it's not the. Whether you're using crayons or the oil paints or the acrylics or charcoal. You have to learn the fundamentals of drawing. And to do that, you need to learn how to see things. So it's like returning to those first principles.
- [16:13]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
That's right. That's exactly right. So I think judgment, it can be positive. But I would say in parenting, actually, in any relationship, it's just so easy to see someone's behavior that feels bad or feels less than ideal, and we just activate our judgment about the behavior. And usually when you judge behavior, what you're unconsciously doing is you're seeing behavior as a sign of who someone is. That's why you're judging it. This person's such a selfish person. Right. My friend didn't call me back. Oh, they're so selfish. Or my kid keeps hitting on the playground, even though I say no hitting, and then we don't even realize, going to like, what's wrong with my kid? Why do I have such a bad kid? You know, my kid is never going to figure things out. I'm a bad parent. You just see something on the surface and you kind of feel like you know everything about it. I actually think. I've never thought about that. That's really what it means to judge something. I see something that's probably part of a larger story, and instead I think it's the whole thing. To me, the opposite of judgment in any relationship is curiosity. And I think curiosity is when you see something and you just wonder about it. To me, that's like one of the best words for parents. Wonder. I wonder why my kid is hitting. As soon as you use the word wonder, you're unable to judge because you're thinking and kind of conjuring up this bigger picture. Now, where parents usually go when they hear me say that, it's like, oh, so it's just, okay, my kid's hitting. And there's this, again, judgment. We even do there, where you must.
- [17:40]
Tim Ferriss
Deal with so many people, so many strong opinions.
- [17:43]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Well, part of it is. I get it. I have so much empathy for parents and even understand their skepticism of our approach because we have had shoved down our throat this very, very behavior, first punishment, first. We call it discipline. It's actually a joke to me. In any other area of life, if we allowed CEOs and coaches to talk to the people in our organizations, like we think parents do to kids, and then we call it disciplined, it would never fly and those people would be fired. But we've had that shoved down our throats. And so anything new always feels uncomfortable. And these are very new ideas. But I think about with other areas, even with kids, if your kid isn't learning how to swim, you teach them how to swim. And nobody says, oh, you just think it's okay that they're not swimming. It's like a weird. You'd be like, what? I'm just teaching them how to swim.
- [18:28]
Tim Ferriss
So I have a bunch of thoughts on this good job thing. I know that.
- [18:31]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Let's do it.
- [18:32]
Tim Ferriss
I like your potential replacements for that. Could you just. Just to give people a concrete example, like, what might you say instead of.
- [18:40]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Good job, A kid comes to us and let's say they, I don't know, a young kid brings us a painting, and we could say, oh, good job. It's amazing, right? Or let's say an older kid Brings us some paper they wrote and they got a good grade and we say, good job. Okay, again, good job does not damage kids. But I think in those moments we want as parents to kind of double down on building our kids confidence. That's usually the goal we're optimizing for. So then to me the question is, is that like the best of all options? Or at least we have other tools in our toolbox. And the thing that really builds kids confidence is learning to gaze in before you gaze out. We're in a world that is priming us to gaze out before we gaze in. Kind of like, look what I've done and can someone in the world tell me it slash I am good enough. That's basically the world we live in. And it makes you very empty and very fragile, Very, very anxious.
- [19:30]
Tim Ferriss
I'm talking about social media.
- [19:31]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Social media? Yeah, everything. I mean, so many things, right? Definitely social media. And if I think about this moment and again, I'm often very long term thinking, but my kids over and over show me things. What's gonna help them down the road? Well, I know when you're in your 20s and 30s, what's really helpful down the road is when you produce something. Maybe it's art, maybe it's a project. Being able to give yourself some estimation of that before others do is very helpful to your whole self concept and protective of anxiety and depression. I think I did a good job in this project. It's true. I didn't hear back from my boss yet, but I'm a little anxious about what my boss is going to say. But the fact that someone didn't tell me something isn't going to spiral me. And I think about the yearning and the searching and the desperation for a good job. Well, if every time my kid produces something again, what they wire next to that is someone telling them good job, then they go into the world unable to give themselves that type of validation and searching for someone to say they're good enough. So what do I like better? Anything that helps your kid share more about themself actually ends up feeling better to your kid also. So I think about, you know, a little while ago, my daughter paints stuff and she did, she gave me this painting and I'm a horrible artist. So anything she does is amazing. But what I said to her first, I said, oh, like tell me about the painting, like what made you pick red there? She told me this whole story, this whole story about how she hasn't ever really seen a red police car. And whatever it was, it Just, she shared her story with me. Same thing. I'm thinking about a kid giving us a paper. Oh, how'd you think of come up with that topic? Oh, what made you start it that way? Oh, what was it like writing that? Whatever the questions are. And I know it sounds, like, annoying at first, I get it. Like, as a parent, you're like, oh, really? Can I just say good job? And of course you can. But then again, I go to an adult example. Like, let's say, Tim, you redid your house. Okay. And I visited and you really worked hard on it. And I came, I go, oh, I love your house. Good job. It's actually kind of a conversation ender. I feel like you'd say to me, thank you. But if instead I said, how did you pick that color wall with that couch? You would. Oh, okay. Well, let me tell you. And let me show you my Pinterest board or whatever it was. And even if I never said good job, I bet you would feel more lit up inside and almost better than if I had just kind of ended the conversation that way.
- [21:52]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, for sure. I have a number of friends. I mean, I have a lot of friends with kids, but one who comes to mind, I'm not going to name him, but he's very good at this and one of the best learners of any skill I've ever met. He's just an incredible human. The other thing that he did, and this was even prior to books like Grit, I think that's Angela Duckworth. But instead of saying good job, another thing he would do is say something. I'm making this up as an example. But he would be like, I'm so proud of you. You worked so hard on that. To reinforce the effort, the process over the outcome.
- [22:28]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
That's right.
- [22:29]
Tim Ferriss
Which seems to make sense. Right? And you're not suggesting your path is the one only toolkit of purity and redemption in the sense that it can combine with other things. But the first principles are adaptable as long as you understand what those principles are.
- [22:44]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yeah, I think that every parent, some percentage of the time would be like, great job. That's cool. That's awesome. Okay. But those questions, process over product. Asking for a kid's story, asking them to tell you once you get started, it's easier. And yes, it actually focuses on what's more in a kid's control. And then setting up your kids to feel good about themselves, even if they're not always getting 100, is just such a massive privilege. And it actually makes them work harder because they're focused on their effort and process instead of just on a result.
- [23:16]
Tim Ferriss
What is your opinion of parents focusing or viewing their job as making their kids happy? Optimizing for happiness. Right. Because who's gonna poo poo happiness, right? I mean, it's silence. All right, so let's wade into the deep waters.
- [23:32]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
It's something people say is a throwaway comment. Like, my husband always jokes, you're at like, a dinner party. He's like, you just want your kids to be happy. Right? And he'll look at me and think, becky, please don't ruin this. Becky, don't take it. Don't take it.
- [23:42]
Tim Ferriss
Don't take the bait.
- [23:43]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
And I always do. No, I very much would say a parent's job is not to make a kid happy. And again, because we struggle to hold multiplicity, people will say, you want your kids to be unhappy. No, I definitely don't try to make my kids unhappy.
- [23:57]
Tim Ferriss
Can I just stop to say, you're not gonna like this video. Like, why are people so stupid and just, like, want to fight? It's like, obviously you don't mean that.
- [24:04]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
We think in these extremes, we see that in all areas. And holding two things as true or holding nuance is increasingly hard in this world, which is why it's even more important to kind of have some of these ideas in our homes. So you use the word optimizing, and I think about that a lot. So zooming out against, again, about kind of good inside in general is I would say our parenting approach is just very long term greedy. Because I just think my kids are going to be out of my house for way longer than they're in my house. They're going to choose whether they want to be in a relationship with me way longer than they're locked into a relationship with me. And however high the stakes feel, when they're 8 and 10 and 17, we know the stakes in life just get higher. And so when we think about making our kids happy, what we're actually saying is, I am prioritizing my kids short term ease. I am making my kids life easy and comfortable in the short term. And what ends up happening, not when you do that a couple times, but as a pattern is you actually narrow the range of emotions kids believe they can cope with.
- [25:12]
Tim Ferriss
100% for sure. True in partnerships, too true in a.
- [25:16]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Lot of relationships, you end up having adults who are remarkably anxious. So prioritizing happiness for kids leads to adulthood full of a ton of anxiety.
- [25:26]
Tim Ferriss
Because you're protecting them from a broader band of Emotional exposure. And so they don't develop the confidence that they can handle those broader ranges.
- [25:36]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
I have to sometimes use hyperbolic language with myself to really get me to do something that's hard. But I think good for my kids. I see my kid who's left out of a social event or who, oh, got the school project in a group where all of his friends are together, and my kid is the only one not with his friends. Or my kid is struggling to do a puzzle. And one of the things I say to myself is, becky, do not deprive my child of finding their capability. Do not steal it. Do not steal their capability. A kid doesn't feel capable when they do something easy. A kid doesn't even feel capable when they're doing something hard. Kids develop capability after watching themselves survive something that was really difficult and just get through it. And so if I say to my kid, I'll call the school and I'll switch the school group for you, oh, I'll do that puzzle for you. Because I just don't want to deal with you having a meltdown. Not once, but over and over, I'm actually stealing their capability. Capability really is the antidote to anxiety. And going forward, when I think about my kids going into the world, what's more important than feeling like I can be capable in a wide range, not very narrow, bubbled, cushion range of situations.
- [26:44]
Tim Ferriss
What does it mean to be a sturdy leader?
- [26:49]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
I love the word sturdy. There's certain words I love because even though I'm a psychologist and I have a lot of words to say, I actually think very visually. And to me, the words that make sense evoke an emotion that I can access. The word sturdy just does that for me. And again, I think sturdy leadership is what we want in a CEO. It's what we want in a partner. It's what we want in a coach. It's definitely what we want in a pilot.
- [27:11]
Tim Ferriss
So does that mean reliable, dependable?
- [27:14]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
I think there's a couple ways. I think it's a leader who is equally boundaried as they are connected to you. They're actually equally as connected to themselves. What do I want? What are my values? What are my limitations as they are able to connect to you? Oh, you might be different, but I'm able to hear and understand your values and wants and feelings. And to me, the way that can get kind of operationalized as a kind of really set of skills is you know how to set boundaries. And I think most people get boundaries completely wrong. So I know how to Set and hold boundaries, and at the same time, I'm able to connect to and validate other people's emotional experiences. Those are the two pillars of sturdy leadership.
- [27:56]
Tim Ferriss
Could you paint a scenario for us? You have great scripts, and people come to you for scripts. It doesn't have to be a verbatim script, but could you just walk us through a hypothetical situation that exemplifies someone being sturdy in this way?
- [28:12]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
I think sometimes the best way to do it is actually in this pilot metaphor. Can I do that first? And then I'll come to a.
- [28:17]
Tim Ferriss
Let's get into the pilots.
- [28:18]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Okay. So are you actually a pilot? Wouldn't surprise me.
- [28:22]
Tim Ferriss
I'm not a pilot. I don't know why I have landed a plane, but I'm not a pilot.
- [28:27]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Sully, right there. I got in Sully. Okay. Hear many things.
- [28:31]
Tim Ferriss
I'm definitely not the sturdy pilot you.
- [28:33]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Want, so I'm definitely not a pilot. You know, you're a passenger on a flight, and there's, let's say, a lot of turbulence, and you're very scared, and maybe even you look around, and everyone's pretty scared. I think there's three versions of a pilot that you might hear come over the loudspeaker, and I actually think they perfectly exemplify three different versions of parenting. So here's pilot one. Everyone stop screaming. You're making a big deal out of nothing, and I can't focus, and you ruin everything, and you're just gonna. All of your frequent flyer miles taken away if you keep screaming something like that.
- [29:05]
Tim Ferriss
Not super reassuring.
- [29:06]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Not reassuring. And the invalidation there as a passenger, for me, almost makes me worried. Does the pilot not know it's turbulent and, oh, my goodness me. Screaming and being scared is enough to make the pilot kind of freak out at me. Like, that actually doesn't feel good. It feels like I was contagious to the pilot and they couldn't handle the situation. Okay, that's pilot one. That's like when we say to her kids, if you don't listen to me, the next time you're losing dessert. You're so rude. You can't hit your sister, and you ruin every family vacation, whatever. We kind of just scream at our kids and we threaten things that, by the way, we never follow up on, and we just dole out punishment because we don't really know what to do. That's pilot one. Pilot two is almost the opposite extreme. Like, everyone's scared, and it is. You're right. It is really turbulent. And I don't know I'm just going to open up the cockpit door, and if any of you know how to pilot the plane, just come on in and take over. And at this point, you're no longer scared of turbulence, and you're just terrified that this person is your pilot. Right? Because there's this merger. My overwhelm became your overwhelm, and you just melted in front of me. That is so scary. The pilot we want to hear is the sturdy leader. And they'd probably say something like this, I hear you screaming. That makes sense. It's very turbulent, and I've done this a million times. I know what I'm doing. What scares you does not scare me. And so I'm going to get off the loudspeaker and go back to piloting the plane, and I'll see you on the ground in Los Angeles. And what's crazy is I think you think about a passenger in that situation. And I'm going to guess even if the turbulence was the same, they feel calmer. Because what a sturdy leader really does is they say to you, I see what's happening for you. I see your feelings as real and your feelings don't overwhelm me. There's a boundary. I can see yours as real and connect to them while I can maintain a separate connection for myself. And there's kind of this cockpit between us. That's like saying to your kid, oh, you know, they're having a meltdown because you say no to ice cream for breakfast, right? And you say, oh, you really wanted ice cream for breakfast. I get it. It's so yummy. And that's not an option, sweetie. You can have a waffle. You can have cereal. Let me know when you want to make a decision. And when I model, that parent will say, it's not working. It's not working. I'm like, what do you mean it's not working? Well, my kid still screams. I'm just thinking about my pilot saying my announcement didn't work. My passengers are still scared of the turbulence. Like, can you imagine? Who cares in a way that they're still scared? Their reaction is not a barometer for whether you are doing a good job. And defining it that way can get into real role confusion, can get us into a lot of trouble.
- [31:57]
Tim Ferriss
What do you mean by role confusion?
- [31:59]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Well, I think every parent wants to do a good job, but over and over, when I talk to parents and their kids are tantrum me all the time and they're rude, whatever it is, I'll say to them, what is Your job in this situation. And all of them was like, I have no idea. But again, I go to the workplace and I imagine someone at good inside, like as a company showing up and me as CEO saying, do a good job today. And them saying, but I don't have a job description. I'd be like, do a good job. They say, becky, I cannot do a good job if I don't know what my job is. And I need to know what that person's job is so I know what they're doing versus what I'm doing. That's totally fair. So I think as a parent, if you don't know what your job is, you can't do a good job. And what role confusion. What I mean by that is, number one, you don't have clarity on your job. Because I think any parent listening to this, if you think about any tricky situation, my kid's rude, my kid's not sleeping, my kid's lying. What is my job in this situation? If you don't know that? With clarity, that's at least your starting point. And often as parents, we ask our kid to do our job for us.
- [33:00]
Tim Ferriss
What would you offer as a sample job description?
- [33:05]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Almost always our jobs are those two things. Setting boundaries. Boundaries are limits we set. They're decisions we make. And sometimes, especially when our kids are younger, they're truly. They're physical. They're stopping my kid from running into the street or picking my kid up and leaving the park because they're having a meltdown, even though my kid doesn't want to be doing that. Those are boundaries. The other side is always seeing the good kid under the bad behavior and connecting to my kid in that way. Here's a good example. I hear all the time, my kid doesn't listen to anything. My kid doesn't listen to anything I say. For example, my kid is jumping on the couch right near a glass table. Get off the couch. Stop jumping on the couch. And they don't listen. I say, stop jumping on the couch. And then I say, if you don't get off the couch. Couch. By the time I count to three, I'm gonna take away your dessert. And then I don't really take away the dessert. Cause I don't wanna melt down later that night. Like, this is so common.
- [33:57]
Tim Ferriss
Okay, Sounds like a mess, right?
- [33:59]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
It's a mess. So number one, I would say, what is your job again? I think they would say, I'm doing my job. I'm trying to get my kid off the couch. But you're asking your kid to do your job for you. You're watching your kid, not able to make a good decision. This is your kid who you like and instead of helping them be safe, you're asking them to do something they're showing you they can't do.
- [34:21]
Tim Ferriss
So what would you potentially do?
- [34:23]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Great. So let's start. I can't even answer that without saying what's a boundary? Because that parent, I would say, is not setting boundaries, and this is true, separate from kids.
- [34:30]
Tim Ferriss
Is it fair to think about boundaries as rules you follow consistently or is. I guess there's probably more nuance to that.
- [34:36]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
I mean, I guess I think it's fair to say, but I would say it's not the most actionable, helpful definition.
- [34:42]
Tim Ferriss
All right, great.
- [34:42]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
To me, my definition of boundaries. Boundaries are things you tell people you will do and they require the other person to do nothing. That's a really important dual kind of definition. It's something I tell, let's say it's my kid, although it could be your colleague or anyone. It's what I tell my kid I will do. That's an assertion of my power. It's what I will do. I'm not letting my day be ruined by my 4 year old not listening. I just like myself and my kid too much to do that. So boundary is something I tell my kid I will do and its success requires my kid to do nothing. Get off the couch. Get off the couch. I'm not telling my kid what I will do and it requires them to do something to be successful. It's a complete giving away of your power versus and this surprises people because too often I think good inside. We get lumped in with like soft, permissive parenting. This is 0% permissive. Setting a boundary and validating my kids feelings. Being sturdy would sound like this. Once I tell my kid, hey, get off the couch. They don't. I'd say, look, I'm going to walk over to you and if by the time I get there, you're not off the couch, I will put my arms around you, I'll pick you up, I'll put you on the floor. Because my number one job is to keep you safe. And it's just not safe to, you know, jump near that glass table. Okay. Now in my own house, when my kids were younger, I'd go over to my kid and people have this illusion. So you do this and then your kid just gets off the couch? No, no, they don't. You do this, you get over there. If you have a normal child, they're going to look you in the eye and keep jumping up and down. Not because they don't respect you, just because they haven't learned how to control their impulses yet. So then I would do my job. I would put my arm, okay, I'm going to pick you up now. I'm going to put them on the ground. They will not look at you and say, thank you for your sturdy leadership. You're so amazing. I really needed that. Thank you for sa. No, they will scream. But actually, when you understand this kind of parents job visual, you set a boundary. Every time you set a boundary, your kid's gonna get upset until they get a little more used to it. But that's because when you set a boundary, you're basically just telling your kid you can't do something you want to do. Humans feel upset when they're stopped from doing things they want to do all the time. They get upset and it actually allows you to do the second part of your job. So I pick my kid up, they scream, no, put me down. I hate you. Whatever they say in the state. And then I can say, oh, you really want to jump on the couch. You really don't want to jump on the floor. It's so boring. Again, when I say that, that doesn't mean for one instant that I let my kid back on the couch. What they will try to do and my hands will be ready to block them. Nope, I'm not going to let you do that. This is where I think it really is, this revolutionary idea. In any relationship, I can be equally strong and equally connected to someone else. And that's true sturdiness and really doing our job.
- [37:37]
Tim Ferriss
Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront. There is a lot happening in the US and global economies right now. A lot. That's an understatement. Are we in a recession? Is it a bear market? What's going to happen with inflation? So many questions, so few answers. I can't tell the future. Nobody can. But I can tell you about a great place to earn more on your savings. And that's Wealthfront. Wealthfront is an app that helps you save and invest your money. And right now you can earn 4.25% APY. That's the annual percentage yield with the Wealthfront cash account. That's nine times the national average according to FDIC.gov so why wait? Earn 4.25% on your cash today. Plus it's up to $8 million in FDIC insurance through partner banks. And when you open an account today, you'll get an extra $50 bonus with a deposit of $500 or more. There are already more than a million people using Wealthfront to save more, earn more and build long term wealth. Visit wealthfront.comtim to get started. That's wealthfront.com Tim this was a paid endorsement by Wealthfront. I wanted to ask you about perhaps another facet of doing your job, but you can't trust everything you read on the Internet. So I will ask this question in the following way. This is from a participant in one of your workshops and they described your approach as one of coaching a nervous system to cope with being a human in the world. End quote. Is that a fair description of what we do? Yeah. Or would you say not quite close, but a miss.
- [39:13]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
What I love about that is it captures something that's so much more true than why most people initially come to us. They come to us because their kids are having tantrums, their kids aren't sleeping, their kids are being rude, their kids are being defiant. And what they end up getting is they themselves get rewiring to be sturdier in the world while they learn how to give that to their kids from the start. So I think that that's close.
- [39:43]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, I mean, that's referring back to what I mentioned earlier in this conversation. It's really simpatico with so many other things that I've been exposed to. But it seems like with good inside the child is, yes, you're interacting with the child. Yes, one of the objectives to become a better parent and be more connected and be a sturdy leader. And your child is also a mirror and a medium through which you get to work on yourself. Because if you're dysregulated, guess what? How can you expect your kid to be regulated? And I mean, some people are going to hate this because I recognize that human children are not dogs. But for instance, there's a great book, there's so many terrible books on dog training, but one which has a terrible title unfortunately, called Don't Shoot the Dog is written by Karen Pryor. She took clicker training from marine mammals and brought it over to shaping behavior with dogs. So clicker training is when you click to reward a certain behavior or getting directionally moving towards the right behavior and then you're able to sort of time mark that and offer a reward. But the reason I'm bringing this up is not that you should use clicker training with humans, I've tried that as a joke. It generally lands really poorly. But rather she reinforces over and over again why most dog problems are actually owner problems. And you need to be consistent. If you are trying to shape behavior, you also need to be very, very consistent with. And I know this might open up some debate, but rewards generally, not punishments. In her approach, it's almost all positive reinforcement. And when I see, for instance, I mean, she's not here today, but I have a very well trained dog and I have some tolerance for the monotony of dog training and I find it very soothing, actually. But when I see dogs that are misbehaving because they were never trained early on, and then their owners are freaking out, maybe hitting them, being really abusive, I'm like, that is an owner problem, that's not a dog problem. And I have to imagine they're probably similar examples in parenting. And there must be.
- [42:01]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
My oldest son said something once that I don't think he meant to be as profound, but it's something that sticks with me a lot. And it goes kind of problem blame, where we're in a situation in the car and essentially my husband thought my son had closed the door and he didn't and kind of backed out the car and the car got caught in the garage, the door anyway. And he kind of said something to my son and my son just said, it's not my fault. And my husband said, so it's my fault. And my son said, I think he was, I don't even know, eight at the time. He goes, you know, sometimes bad things happen and it's nobody's fault. And I think for parents this is always true. Like when your kid is really struggling, is it a kid's fault? Is it a parent's fault? Like, we're obsessed with fault. Why is it anybody's kind of fault? I always say to parents, it's not your fault. Your kids struggling the way they are, fault's just not a useful framework. You are the leader of your home, and if all the associates in some big company were struggling, I don't think you would start an intervention at the associate level. Leadership would say, okay, not our fault, but we're the leaders, so what are we going to do?
- [43:09]
Tim Ferriss
It's not your fault, but it's your responsibility.
- [43:10]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
It's your responsibility. Exactly. And the other thing is, I think when we become parents, it's not just like our kids problems are our fault or our problems. But I see a much more hopeful framework where through your kids, if you Want to take this on as a journey? You will learn everything you ever needed to know about yourself, your own childhood. By the way, you watch your partner's childhood play out, you're like, oh, that's how you were raised. I see it now. And there's so much learning, right? And that's hard. Learning is hard. Growth is hard. And it is kind of this amazing opportunity. Rather than my kid's problem being my fault or my problem, it could be like, there is an opportunity for everyone here.
- [43:47]
Tim Ferriss
What is the mgi?
- [43:49]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
I love a good acronym. So when I was in my clinical psychology PhD program, I'd always hear these amazing people speak. And I'd go with my classmates, be like, that was amazing. And I say, yes, it's amazing, but what are we gonna do about it? I'd be like, what do you mean? Just think about it. I really don't love thoughts without actions. I just like to know, okay, well, what do I do? How do I action on this great idea? And to me, this idea that your kid, all of us, we are good inside identity separate from behavior. It's a very powerful idea, but I don't find it as actionable as I would like. So to me, the way to action on that idea is this idea of mgi. And to me, this is something in all of our relationships, even if it's just after the fact, at the end of the day, we can ask ourselves, and MGI just stands for Most Generous interpretation. What is the most generous interpretation I can come up with of my kid's behavior, of my colleague's behavior, my teammate's behavior? Because I think what happens naturally is we default to the lgi. The least generous interpretation. So you see your kid, they lie to your face. Once, no, I didn't take Kit Kats from. I didn't eat before dinner. And they have, like, chocolate all over. And it's just so easy. You just go to, like, my kid is a sociopath. My kid doesn't respect me. You're like, well, my kid ate a Kit Kat. And like, all of a sudden, this is a matter of, like, respecting me, right? Or, you know, my kid is hitting. They're in a hitting stage. And again, we just go to, my kid is never gonna have any friends. My kid is clingy. They're always gonna be the loser at parties, and they're never gonna be able to converse with anyone. And then what happens and why the LGI is so almost dangerous is it makes us do this fast forward error. We take a situation today, we Fast forward to what that means about our kid. I don't know, 20 years from now. And then we respond in the moment based on all of that fear rather than what's just going on in the moment. And MGI really shakes us out of that. What is the most generous interpretation of why my kid would lie to my face? Whenever I ask parents that, it's amazing. Their countenance goes from like, so angry at their four year old to like, they're like, oh, they're probably scared of my reaction, okay. And then eventually, like, what do I do? But the mindset we're in in life determines the interventions we use. And I can promise you, as long as you're in an LGI mindset with your kid, with your partner, with your colleague, zero productive things can happen. And then we say, what do I do? What do I do? The answer is to stop doing from that mindset and ask yourself a different question, to get in a more productive mindset and then intervene from there.
- [46:30]
Tim Ferriss
So we're meeting for the first time. We have a lot of mutual friends, it turns out, but I have this suspicion that we have a fair amount of shared DNA just in terms of how we operate. And as you're mentioning the thoughts as being interesting but not that interesting, if there's no action to apply these thoughts, I thought that might be a useful place for a segue. So I read that you're a planner and that your husband gave you some advice around planning. Is this enough of a cue to.
- [47:02]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Prompt, no, it's not. I don't know, I need more.
- [47:06]
Tim Ferriss
All right, so this is from romper, romper.com and so this is the journalist speaking. I tend to catastrophize, to jump to the worst case scenario, and we're struggling with a difficult phase or unpleasant pattern. But I tell myself to have faith, to believe that we will work ourselves to a better place. And then this is I believe, quoting you. I'm guessing you're a planner. She responds, I'm a planner too. My husband said to me over the pandemic, I never thought of planners as pessimists, but the opposite of planning is not catastrophe. It's being able to say to yourself, I'll figure it out no matter what happens. The opposite of catastrophizing isn't predicting the good. It's saying to yourself, I'll find my feet. I'll be able to cope with what comes my way. So this is a, a roundabout way of asking what historically or currently have been your biggest challenges in Parenting that could be with your kids, it could be with your husband, could be other. But what comes to mind, it's a great segue.
- [48:04]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
And that is true where my husband said to me, when I, you know, during the pandemic, I kind of started this whole part of my career and I kind of burst into these, like, creative thoughts where I became much less organized and I had all this creativity. And at the same time, the pandemic was very hard to me. And this relates to one of the things that's hard for me in parenting and one of the things I talk about a lot. So people probably think I'm good at it, but I talk about it all the time, so I'm bad at it. That's why anybody talks about things all the time where he's like, wow, I think I didn't marry like a very logical optimist. I think I married like a creative pessimist.
- [48:38]
Tim Ferriss
He's like, look at this creative pessimist.
- [48:41]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
I think I'm short term pessimistic, yes. Long term optimistic. And what I mean by that is I love a plan. I love an action. People outside of me will be like, becky is one of the most productive people I know. And I think that's probably true on the surface. But the driver of that is I'm incredibly anxious when I want to do something and haven't yet done it. That the way I relieve my own anxiety is just to do it so it looks productive, but it's probably just an anxiety coping skill. And what that means is when I want to do something or there's a struggle and I can't get action on it, I have a really hard time.
- [49:21]
Tim Ferriss
What would be an example of that?
- [49:23]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
I mean, all during COVID in terms of. I think one of the reasons I probably in so many people say, oh, you were there for me in Covid and I produced so much content, is I just needed something to do. Because the pause of that, the slowness, there's not a lot to do to fix this. You just kind of have to be in it is really, really hard for me. Another example of that is, you know, I think about my kids and, you know, they're now 7, 10, and 13. So, you know, each of them, they go through these stages and, you know, maybe some social shifts or harder stages. And I think I talk so much about sitting with feelings and not fixing them, because my first instinct for sure is to just go in and make it better, make them happy. And that is something. Again, the parallel process of, like learning to just sit with my own feelings. All of us who can be prone to action, there's like, morality to it. It's like a better, you know, thing. And it can be better in some circumstances, but sometimes the best thing to do is just sit with it. And that is something I think I have worked on in myself, even, you know, through working on it with my kids.
- [50:30]
Tim Ferriss
In addition to your book, Good Inside A Guide to Becoming the Parent yout Want to Be, which has been recommended to me by multiple close friends even though I don't have kids. In addition to that, what other books or modalities do you think could be helpful for someone in relationship and. Or with kids? For instance? A few come to mind. Right. There's a book called Conscious Loving. I think it's by Gay and Katie Hendrix. I always mix up the Hendrix because there are two pairs. There's nonviolent communication.
- [51:03]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Great book.
- [51:04]
Tim Ferriss
There is, I think I mentioned, extreme ownership, which it does actually overlap in certain ways. You have, I believe, a quote from Dick Schwartz. Schwartz, ifs Internal Family Systems for people interested. I did a live session with him on this podcast. Got very interesting very, very quickly. Fascinating practitioner. Really useful system. Anything else come to mind? Any books, resources, anything at all that you would kind of add to that list?
- [51:36]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
The three books, I guess, that are top of mind would be, yes, Dick Schwartz's no Bad Parts or just his Internal Family Systems book. I mean, he knows I've been very influenced by him when I work with adults in therapy. And to me, some of the best gifts and privileges kind of we can give our kids is helping them understand the parts of themselves and talk to their parts as kids. Like, when I hear my kids do that, I always think, this is gonna help you more when you go to college than anything you learn in school. It's crazy. So ifs Eve Rodsky's book Fair Play.
- [52:08]
Tim Ferriss
I don't know.
- [52:09]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
That is, I think, so powerful, especially for parents who feel like they're the default parent, meaning they're the parent who maybe their partner takes the kid to soccer but realizing they have to be signed up for soccer, thinking about what soccer, where to sign up, getting them the shin guards, getting them the new cleats that actually fit and are the ones they want. That idea of mental load, the mental load of parenting is so intense. She really helps put a word, words and a system to that that I think makes a lot of parents say, like, oh, my God, I'm not crazy. Like, this is a thing. This is a system.
- [52:44]
Tim Ferriss
Why is it called Fair play.
- [52:46]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Because it's the idea that if you have a partnership, that you don't have to distribute tasks 50 50, but that the mental load has, like a disproportionate impact on your stress and overwhelm. And there needs to be more fair play amongst teammates in that way.
- [53:01]
Tim Ferriss
Got it.
- [53:01]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
And then this might sound, you know, like an odd recommendation, but Cheryl Strayed's Tiny, Beautiful Things. Cheryl is someone. I also wonder, like, do I share DNA with her where I'll read things she writes in there? And I think, oh, my goodness, did I steal her thought? I swear, I say this in my book. And she has said to me, no, I've always. I worry I plagiarized you, even though my book came out before your book. And it's very interesting. I'm just hearing my own three suggestions, and none of them have to do with kids.
- [53:26]
Tim Ferriss
But maybe that's super fascinating.
- [53:27]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Maybe that's my, you know, revealing something to me. The things we need to learn for our kids when we're parenting. If I think about a strategy or what to do with my kid, it's like something I put on a shelf that's important. When you open a closet door, you need the things on the shelf to take that are actually useful and feel right and move things forward. But what I hear from parents all the time is, I'm learning, I'm learning, I'm memorizing. But in the moment, I just scream at my kid, you know, and then they say, what's wrong with me? Right. To me, you need the key to the door that is the closet that has that shelf. Right.
- [54:03]
Tim Ferriss
Like, if you explain that one more.
- [54:04]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Time, like, if all of your parenting strategies are on a shelf in a closet and there's a door to the closet, and in the moment you're like, I want to get that strategy.
- [54:12]
Tim Ferriss
You need to be able to access it.
- [54:13]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
You have to be able to access it. And so for any parent listening who's like, that is so me. I know the thing I want to say, but then I just scream my head off at my kid. I would actually say, stop learning parenting strategies. You have enough on that shelf for now. What I would focus on are my triggers. What is happening with my kid that I am triggered, and I am at a 10 out of 10. And when you're at a 10 out of 10, nobody has a key to any lock.
- [54:38]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah. Strategy's not going to be forthcoming.
- [54:41]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
No, the strategies you need have a lot more to do with you. Not because it's your fault. And the beauty is when you work on those strategies where you're triggered with your kid. Guess what? If you're triggered when your kid's whining, it's not the whining. It's probably the fact that whining generally represents helplessness. I would guess if that's a particularly triggering situation. Helplessness was very shamed in your own family, was probably a pull up your bootstraps kind of family. If you're crying, I'll give you something to cry about. Family. So you had to shut down your helplessness because it was dangerous. You see it in your kid and you respond to them in the same way people responded to you. Okay, that's like a lot of therapy in 30 seconds. But let's say that's true. Or people are like, wow, that's weird. That's very true. You can memorize everything you want to say to your kid, but if you don't. And ifs is hugely helpful here, hugely helpful in my reparenting approach and trigger approach, if you don't get to know your protector parts and you don't do that type of work, then every time when that happens, that part is going to scream out. So the answer to showing up as the parent you want to be is this combination of, yes, I have to put the things on the shelf, but I have to know how to open the door also.
- [55:48]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So what advice would you give me since I'm currently wife partner hunting? I would like to have a family, but would like to hit some prereqs. I mean it's technically biologically not that hard to have kids, but I would like to have the build a family together adventure.
- [56:09]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yep.
- [56:10]
Tim Ferriss
Like to have that version if possible. For people out there who are single but would love to have a family, what advice might you give them in terms of positive indicators for people who will be leaning towards some of the abilities and self awareness and skills that make for a sturdy leader parent. If I was like, hey, here's my dossier of 10 prospects and you're like, well, let's ask a few questions.
- [56:40]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
And there's sturdy leadership on the list. One second, I'm assessing pre sturdy leadership.
- [56:49]
Tim Ferriss
They're like, ooh, dirty talk.
- [56:50]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yeah, seriously, seriously talk about that one in our next episode. So a couple of things to me again, being a sturdy leader has nothing to do with being a parent. And while I think it's actually through parenting and this is the beauty that people have such in their face, the work they need to do that, they can access that. You're right in pointing out how amazing you're doing some of this work before. So I think, number one, again, curiosity over judgment to me is very, very key for any sturdy leader at any age. So when you're dating people, you know, when you're friends with people and in general, they hear something that's happening for you and they're more curious and they are judgmental. Oh, I did this thing, I had this awful interview. Oh, what happened? Tell me about that. Or you even hear that they approach their own life that way, where people who have really intense, rigid judgments about anyone, they tend to be that way with others because they tend to be that way with themselves. And then that's going to be activated. Probably with kids. That's number one to me. I think tolerance for inconvenience, it's like a really important part of sturdy leadership, especially with kids.
- [58:00]
Tim Ferriss
How about you suss that out? I mean, you can go on like a traveling trip and see how they handle baggage, being delayed or whatever. I mean, you can try to engineer it that way, but any other way.
- [58:09]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
I think it probably comes up in our life all the time. Like, I don't know how much we're always optimizing for convenience versus, like, yeah, let's take the subway. It'll take us a little longer. But like, it's easy enough for, oh, there's a wait at a restaurant. I really want to go there. Okay, can I tolerate that? Or oh, I really want to go. I was just invited to this party. It's going to be so cool. I already committed to my friends in this kind of not quote cool, but random group dinner. And like, you know what? I'm going to miss that party. This is like my best friend's, you know, birthday party, whatever it is. Because I think that's one of the things with parenting that people don't talk about enough. It's massively inconvenient. That's really the word I think about all the time I show up, I'm trying to grocery shop, my 4 year old's having a tantrum. And it's just like, that's inconvenient that I've spent 10 minutes now dealing with that and I won't even be able to finish my grocery shopping. I also think in a relationship, the ability to be curious about your experience and not see that as any reflection on their own experience, which is really the ability to hold multiplicity. Like when you say to a partner, like, I was really upset you didn't text me back. Probably over the partner is their first reaction might be like, I wouldn't have been upset in that situation, or whatever. Are you saying I'm a bad person? Or we get very defensive because we find someone's experience of us to be counter of our experience of ourselves. And if we're very secure and sturdy, we'd be able to say to ourselves, okay, I can know what my intention was. And I'm not threatened by the fact that Tim was upset that I didn't text him back. I can be curious about it, be like, oh, tell me more about that. Oh, oh, I see that. And I don't see that as like a threat to myself. That, to me is probably the ultimate indicator because that happens all the time to our kids.
- [59:52]
Tim Ferriss
Oh, yeah, I can only imagine.
- [59:54]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Sure.
- [59:54]
Tim Ferriss
It happens all the time. I would love to ask you a few questions that one of my employees sent. She is a toddler in every instance that I've seen. She tries very hard to be, however she defines it, good parent. And I think maybe this conversation will lead her to think about the definition differently. But she sent a bunch of very good questions and we probably won't have time for all of them. She really took my question and my producer's question seriously, I should say. So she has eight questions, but I want to hop to number eight. This is about grandparents. Does Dr. Becky have any good tips on parenting our parents? Our boomer parents often use guilt and shame as teaching methods which we don't love or approve of. But how do we effectively introduce more positive ways they can grandparent our children when they are together or babysitting for us? This question could also apply to someone's partner. If someone reads your book, they think it's fantastic, they want to embrace it, but their partner maybe has a heavy handed, reactive way of handling things or. Yes, fill in the blank.
- [61:00]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
They're skeptical.
- [61:01]
Tim Ferriss
Right. So maybe you could speak to the grandparents and maybe that will also speak to the partner question.
- [61:06]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Although they're different dynamics, they're related and different. The grandparent one is a great one because I think there's a lot to unpack there. So if she was here, I'd first probably ask her questions about what it's like for her to parent in a way that's different from it seems like what her parents think is right. I actually think that's at the core.
- [61:24]
Tim Ferriss
What it feels like for her.
- [61:25]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yeah, what it's like for her. I mean, I think that what happens when you have kids and grandparents are involved is we don't even realize how much unconsciously we're just looking for them to tell us we're doing a good job. And most parents parent differently than their parents did. Most grandparents find that to be almost a criticism of how they parented. And so they're interested in criticizing their kids almost as a way of making themselves feel better. And then as the parent, we don't even realize we're back to being five years old and being like doing a good job. And the whole thing becomes very, very toxic. To me, the most liberating thing when you're an adult and it's just an idea, obviously it takes a little to get emotionally there is, I don't need my parents approval. I remember when I realized that that's actually amazing. That just changed my life in so many ways.
- [62:12]
Tim Ferriss
We won't lose track of the grandparents question, but was there a catalyzing event, conversation, revelation?
- [62:21]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
There actually was. I just remember going through my dating life and dating people that, you know, my parents like would have some things to say about and I didn't have. I happened not to have any like majorly toxic relationships, but they had opinions. And I just remember one day thinking the way it came up in my head is they're not dating this person. Like there was an I, I think there was a boundary. This like I'm in the cockpit, they can be chirpy passengers, but that's actually what they are. And, and by the way, I love my parents. They're incredible. And I think realizing that, and this is the thing, when you're a parent, realizing that about your own parents only serves to make your relationship better. Because when you're unconsciously looking for their approval, you get frustrated. You tend to show up in really confusing ways to your kids. You start to do weird things with your kids in front of your parents. Almost trying to bridge this gap between how I parent and how my parents want me. And my kids are like, who is my parent? They're doing all this weird stuff that they never do and then we really lose ourselves. So what I would actually say here, which sounds odd and it's probably not that dissimilar to what I'd start with with a partner. Although I think the dynamic is different with parents is the first step is actually trying to figure out what do I believe in, in my parenting. The sturdier you are in your boundaries, the easier it is to deal with pushback. And in fact the opposite is true with boundaries. The more I seek approval for my boundaries, the weaker my Boundaries become. And so that's where I would actually start. So let's say like, oh, I wish my parents understood my kids tantrums the way I try to understand them. And instead my parents tend to say, why aren't you sending Bobby to his room? Or you know, you have a bad kid or whatever they say.
- [64:03]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah. Or if they're babysitting, they just do that.
- [64:05]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
That's right. But even those conversations are so much easier to have once you've really grounded yourself in what you believe because then the conversation becomes less emotional. And here's then how I would handle it after that, how I'm handling Bobby's meltdowns. I think it's different than what comes natural to you. And we have a couple options. I'm happy to kind of go through it and why. You know, I'm also happy if you're don't really care about the why. Just share how I would like you to respond. That's in line with the way we're doing things. Because given you spend a good amount of time with him, it's just confusing for him to hear things so differently. I know you probably don't approve or at least it's going to feel weird because it's so new and this stuff really matters to me. Right. And then I don't know how egregious it is. Again, is it just different? Is it terrifying? You know, we want to differentiate, but the conversation is kind of me and my parent even are on the same team. And that conversation I have a lot more to say about being on the same team versus oppositional teams. That's a lot easier to have if I'm less caught up in probably what's happening unconsciously, which is trying to get them to kind of tell me that I'm doing a good job by my kid.
- [65:19]
Tim Ferriss
Let me bring up one other question of hers and I may bring up more, but partially because it also bridges to a question that I had. So this is a question about parenting. Toddlers could apply to all sorts of ages. Is it okay to tell my toddler that I'm upset by her behavior? For example, if she's whining and complaining about getting buckled into the car and I've tried to stay calm, but it goes on for so long that I get frustrated. Is it okay to say that I am frustrated by her behavior and I need a break? Or what is the best response to avoid guilt and shaming language? Because I was thinking, I was reflecting on the example you gave of the kid jumping on the couch. And I could very easily see myself like, okay, I've done the work, done the ifs, got the key to the closet, and I go through the routine, I set the boundary. If I walk over there and you're still on the couch, I'm calm, I'm calm. Then I put them down, they scream their face off, they somehow juke me and get back on the couch. Maybe I do it a second time. But by this point, my blood pressure is a little higher. By rep number three, there's a point where if it's rep number 20, there's a rep at which anyone will probably kind of break. So I guess my question is. But we can tackle. I want to answer her question because she was generous enough to send the questions. Is it okay to tell my kid that I'm upset? Or let me get her language broader. Frustrated, I think she said, right. Is it okay to say that I'm frustrated by her behavior and that I need a break, et cetera, et cetera? What is the best response to avoid guilt and shaming language? My broader question is, what do you do, let's say in the jumping on the couch example, when you've done the right thing two or three times and the kid is just hell bent, still being difficult.
- [67:13]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
So a couple parts to that question. Number one, there's this thing about, I hear it. I've never said you can't tell your kids how you feel. There's all these like random things people ingest. I don't even know who said that. But I think I'm not supposed to do it to not get, you know.
- [67:26]
Tim Ferriss
Whenever you're the Ten Commandments.
- [67:28]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
But I would say whenever. As a parent, you're repeating advice to yourself where you can't even name the person who said that. It's a pretty good time to say, like, I'm not gonna let that take up too much space in my head, you know, if I don't even know the name of the person who I trust enough to let that live. Oscar Wilde in my head.
- [67:42]
Tim Ferriss
Abraham Lincoln.
- [67:43]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
There's a big difference between saying to your kid, hey, I'm really, I'm frustrated. I'm taking a breath, I'm taking a break, I'll be back. And saying, you make me yell at you. Stop doing that. That makes mommy so sad. The insinuation that we say out loud that your kid, your three year old is making you feel something is actually especially toxic for kids who you said like you were, who are kind of rebellious, who already kind of struggle because they know, like, I'm a little more powerful in my family dynamic than I should be. People are a little scared of me. And now my parent is confirming that as a three year old I have the power to make her feel a certain way. I think we say because we're so desperate and we're like, nothing's worked. Will this work? But again, we all say all the things and then we repair and try to do a little better the next day. But I'm not such a fan. But what that has got kind of misconstrued as is never tell your kids how you feel. They're totally different. Saying to your kid, that's a great thing to say, hey, I'm getting heated, I need a break. And then I think it's helpful to say to a kid, I love you, I'll be back. Because kids are so attuned evolutionarily to attachment and therefore to proximity and kind of quote abandonment that a kid can feel like, oh, did I like make my parent go away? So, hey, I'm feeling frustrated. I need a moment. It's actually such beautiful self care. I'm going to go to my room, I'm going to take some breaths and I'll be back, you know, connect with you again in a few minutes or whatever it is. And that's especially powerful. What I want to tell parents, listening, if you know you're someone where you get reactive, you kind of get to the point where you boil over such a powerful thing to say to your kid, to preview to them before, hey, I'm going to start doing something different going forward. Know how sometimes you get upset, I get upset and then kind of there's like this big screaming moment. I'm really invested as a parent and trying to have that happen less. Just keep a calmer home. And one of the things I'm going to do is start to notice when I'm a little upset instead of waiting for it to get to a time when I'm very. And you could say to your kid, because that's what happens to feelings, right? If you don't take care of them when they're small, they get bigger and out of control. So I might end up saying to you at some point in the next day, ooh, now is one of those moments, I need a break. I'm going to take that and I'll be back. And what I'd say to a parent, you can practice this with a kid, they love it. I would actually. Okay, let's practice that. Oh, get off the couch. Oh, you're not listening. Okay. Ooh. Okay. Dad needs a break right now. I'm going to go to my room. What do you do when I go to my room? Right, you go to the art room and you color like you can actually practice this just the way we practice sports plays. Why do you run a play on a basketball team in practice? Because you know you're not going to do it in the game if you haven't run it over and over in practice. I actually think that's so powerful to think about our interactions with our kids in the same way. Then when the moment comes and you say, ooh, now is one of those times, your kid has had a rep already and the whole moment will probably go a lot more smoothly.
- [70:47]
Tim Ferriss
Do you have any other recommendations? Something, for example? I like that and it makes a lot of sense. And I'm wondering what you do in a circumstance where you can't take a time out for yourself. Let's just say she's trying to buckle the kid into the car. Tantrum, tantrum. Whine. Yell, yell, yell. She tries to do the right thing. Tries to do the right thing.
- [71:07]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
And her kid's still doing the thing.
- [71:10]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, doing the crocodile roll and the babysitter, whatever.
- [71:14]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
So I'll answer that question, but I really do think again. It's a framework shift question. Because people say to me all the time, it's like saying, when I drive my car to the cliff, what can I do so I don't fall off the cliff? Like, if that was a friend, why are you driving to the cliff all the time? How about we recognize that you're on the road to the cliff when we get to the point as a parent that we are so full of anger, resentment, burnout that we're about to explode because our kid won't allow us to buckle them into the car seat. The real question, if you want to make a change, is, how do I start to recognize I'm on that road way before I get to the cliff? What can I do? Why am I getting there so often? How can I get into a different road? To me, this is the whole idea of rage. This is actually something we talk about at gun inside all the time. Time. Because when you don't take care of yourself as a parent, when you lose touch with your friends or dance class or whatever, the thing that made you feel like you before you had a kid, you better bet you're going to be screaming at your kids all the time. Because to some degree, you're just saying, I Miss all the other parts of me that used to light me up. And so I think that's the better question now. Still, when you get there, this is where I think it's so important to establish that you said good inside. It's sturdy, not soft. If your kid won't get into the car seat, okay, hey, we're gonna play a game. We've already practiced. We've done the things. There is definitely time and place. Sweetie, I'm gonna buckle you into the car seat. You're gonna scream and cry. You're not gonna like it. My number one job is to keep you safe. And so I'm doing that again. My kid's gonna be screaming. I buckle them and then close the door as I'm walking to the front. And I say to myself, oh, my goodness, that was really hard. I'm gonna go to bed early tonight. I'm gonna call a friend. But again, that's an example. This is actually a good example because I actually heard this exact example from a parent recently that used to drive me bananas. The reason that situation feels so exhausting is because on some level, you have job confusion. You think your job is to get your kid happily into their car seat. If you know your job is to keep your kid safe and to do what you can to try to make it smooth. But then if push comes to shove, you're just going to prioritize safety. And you know that that's you doing your job. You actually don't feel as exhausted by it, oddly enough. It is like a pilot getting through really intense turbulence. We're on the ground. The pilot said, I kind of earned my wings today. Like, you know, you don't earn your wings by a smooth flight.
- [73:36]
Tim Ferriss
This is going to be a hard left.
- [73:37]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Okay, do it.
- [73:38]
Tim Ferriss
I'm curious how or if any of it will tie in. So you mentioned being a postdoc at one point, I believe, and my understanding is you worked with a number of people who had eating dis. What did you learn from that experience? And what were you studying? What were you working on?
- [73:57]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
So, yeah, I got my PhD from Columbia. Then my postdoc year, I worked with college students and grad students who were students at Columbia, and I did a specialty in the eating disorder kind of group there. So I saw a good number of eating disorder clients. I had an eating disorder in high school. And so I think through that, you know, and I'd been in recovery for a while, I also just started to put more pieces together. A couple things I learned. Our body has this remarkable way to act out conflict. If we don't kind of understand it and resolve it. I think this is like a lot of what anorexia and bulimia are, things that we don't understand, things that live kind of unformulated, we're conflicted about, and the body expresses it in these horrible somatic ways through an eating disorder, through so many other things too. But as an example, and this is not true for everyone, but often anorexia is this kind of conflict around your relationship with anger and taking up space in the world. It's kind of amazing. Like in anorexia, you both take up so much space because you get everyone's attention, right? And you take up no space. You shrink into a, like, prepubescent version of yourself. That conflict is being kind of represented in your body. I think bulimia, how much can I want? Is it okay to want things for myself? Can I want things? What is my relationship with desire? I actually think anorexia and bulimia have a lot to do with your relationship with wanting and desire, Especially as a woman.
- [75:29]
Tim Ferriss
Is there anything that you took from that experience? Questions, lenses, insight that also transferred over to some of the work that you do now? Or is it sort of looking, I guess, leading the witness a bit. But is it like looking at the thing below the thing below the thing? Is that what it has in common with what you do now? Or are there other things?
- [75:55]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
I think yes. That's the second part of that question. What is really underneath people's behavior? That's always really driven me. It's why I became a psychologist. Why do good people do things that work against them? Why do good kids act out and lie and do these things? Why do good parents scream and get into these kind of quick fix cycles even though they don't want to do that? I think I have, again, it's like the curiosity over judgment. Always been really curious about that. And then I guess through especially my work with people who had intense eating disorders. And this was true when I was in private practice too, and worked with teens who are really struggling, I think I really understood and saw how desperate they were. Like a very sturdy leader who could make good decisions when they couldn't, and how they'll say all the things on the surface that make it seem like they can be in control. But really they're deeply struggling and they're deeply in pain. And I think that probably helped me see kids struggle in pain underneath their disruptive behaviors.
- [77:03]
Tim Ferriss
Reflecting back on my childhood, I have a younger Brother and brothers got up to brother stuff. He would try to get me in trouble, or I'd wrestle him and beat him up. It wasn't malicious necessarily, but there were definitely times when he'd be screaming, mom, Tim is hitting me. And then she'd run into the room and he'd be in the room by himself. But I wouldn't say he was struggling. He was being mischievous. And maybe there's something underneath it, but seems like kids have this burgeoning sense of agency, and sometimes they're troublemakers or do things that they know are wrong. And I'm wondering how you handle some of those situations, because you could try to develop a narrative around the feeling or the pathology underneath it. But I guess maybe at face value, perhaps there are instances where kids are just doing stuff they know is wrong because it's fun or whatever. What do you do in those type of instances? Or how do you think about.
- [78:08]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Let's be more specific. Like, your brother's saying, tim hit me, but you didn't. Like, he's lying. Is that the situation?
- [78:13]
Tim Ferriss
I mean, that's an example. I mean, it doesn't weigh heavy on my conscience, but it was annoying, right? And when I look at his personality as an adult, it's like, yeah, he's playful and kind of a prankster and.
- [78:23]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Likes to stir the pot.
- [78:24]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, he likes to stir the pot. He's very, very smart. But I'm like, yeah, it makes sense.
- [78:28]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
I would say. I definitely don't think my approach is about pathologizing things or even always, like, seeing the feeling underneath. I actually think what's core is this idea, and I'm going to say it again, but I really think it's so different from how we usually intervene that it is worth repeating that you have a good kid underneath whatever is happening there. So, okay, why is my good kid stirring the pot? Right? And I. My third kid is like this. I mean, the stuff and the fact that he's my third. Me and my husband always say, like, we delight in him because I think we're less worried he will do stuff like, hey, why do all the bathrooms smell like pee? We just knew we should ask him. I just knew I should ask him. It's when he was, like, five. He literally goes, oh, well. I just thought it would be funny in every bathroom to first pee into the garbage can and then dump it into the toilet. That might be why, first of all, I just tried to stop myself from laughing. I'm like, that is actually so funny. Like, you also didn't tell anyone for days. You just were entertaining yourself. It's just funny. And I go, can you not do that anymore? He's like, yeah, no problem. And he never did it again.
- [79:34]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, okay.
- [79:36]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
No, I think it's really easy to be like, what is? My kid's a psychopath. Like, what are you doing? Right? But I think for me, maybe it's because of my third. What did I do? I think actually the most underutilized strategy in parenting, and this sounds like a joke, but I do want to name it to make it official, is doing nothing. Is doing nothing. Because you know what helped me do nothing? I have a good kid. Did something actually really smart and funny. It's just funny. And he's entertaining himself. Like, I see him as a 20 year old in college. I know exactly who he's gonna be. And I kind of know over time can, like, rein it in. And it's not like he does that like in the middle of his kindergarten classroom, you know, in the airport. Yeah, but he's maybe like your brother. He thinks funny things. He's industrious, he comes up with his own plans, you know, And I think the idea, wait, I have this good kid. Like, I don't have to take this all so seriously. Maybe I can trust myself to know when this veers into the domain of, like, really bad or too much. And maybe actually what I do is just say, hey, can you not do that again? And maybe I know my son is always going to be a kid looking to kind of push the envelope. Knowing that about him means I'm less surprised. I can set up boundaries a little differently. And I can actually. And this is what I think is missing a lot. And it goes back to knowing your kid's a good kid. I can delight in him. Delighting in your kid is so important as a parent. Your kids feel that and it changes. And it doesn't make behavior okay, all of it, but that element. And I think that's what's missing. When we're in really bad cycles. We just, we love our kid, but we actually really stop liking them. We don't even realize that. And that's really painful for everyone.
- [81:15]
Tim Ferriss
I want to ask a question also from my employee I mentioned earlier, which I was very curious about myself, which is, if your kid is hanging out with other kids who are bad influences, what does an intervention look like? And I think my parents actually did a very good job on this with me, but it was simpler in a sense, because no smartphones. We were living in a rural area. So if I wanted to hang out in our little downtown and get into stupid trouble with a bunch of troublemakers, it's actually quite difficult. It was too far away for me to bike, and they held the keys to the car, et cetera, et cetera. But they were good with certain things that I hated, like curfews for coming back from hanging out downtown after a movie or something, which was, in retrospect, very, very smart because a lot of those people ended up in jail, ODing, et cetera, et cetera. Right. They would not have been good influences.
- [82:12]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yeah.
- [82:13]
Tim Ferriss
What is the move? What does it look like?
- [82:15]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
So I think there's a lot of degrees here. Only a parent listening is saying, okay, when I say bad influence. Yeah. Like, there's stuff that feels legitimately dangerous. My kid's older. There's. I don't know, there's drugs.
- [82:24]
Tim Ferriss
I'll give you a specific example for a younger kid. Okay. So I noticed when I was a kid, I'm very sensitive to animals, and there were a few boys who legitimately liked torturing animals. Like, they liked inflicting damage on animals. And as far as I'm concerned, that's just not a good trait. But it's like, okay, so some kids, you know, fucking with frogs or squirrels or whatever.
- [82:54]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Peeing trash can.
- [82:56]
Tim Ferriss
No, no, like, mutilating animals is a step beyond peeing in the trash can.
- [83:00]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
I would say so.
- [83:00]
Tim Ferriss
But that kid is also, like, maybe fine in school, well behaved, et cetera, et cetera. And so you're like, that kid seems to have zero empathy. Like, that's not even. Not even registering on any scale. I don't really want my kid to be around that.
- [83:18]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Totally. So let's again, go degrees. So torturing animals, that's like kind of a known concerning trait in a child among psychologists.
- [83:25]
Tim Ferriss
Right.
- [83:26]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
It's part of, like, a triad. You would say, you know, you know, good grooming.
- [83:29]
Tim Ferriss
So that's serial killers.
- [83:30]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Definitely concerning.
- [83:31]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah.
- [83:32]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
So that would probably be the same almost level to me as a parent as, oh, my kid is hanging out with kids who, again, I think there's legitimate.
- [83:38]
Tim Ferriss
Sure. And that stuff I don't think the parents even have visibility into, unfortunately.
- [83:42]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
So there. I think one of the things you say to your kid, and I've now said this a bunch of times in this conversation, my number one job is to keep my kids safe. That is such a powerful thing to remind yourself. Now, safe doesn't mean risk free. It doesn't mean I keep my kid in a bubble, but keep my Kids safe. And so I'm not gonna let my kid hang out with kids who again, it's not like they have bad manners. It's not like they do something that's like a little pushing the edge and funny like my son did. Like, this is kind of where we would say is over the line. So what would I say to my kid? Hey, I want to go hang out with person X and Y. Listen, sweetie, this is part of a bigger conversation. This is where this line helps so much. My number one job is to keep you safe. And sometimes that means not hanging out with certain kids who are doing really dangerous things. And I know as an adult that some of what those kids are doing are dangerous. And so I'm not gonna take you downtown to be with them. Now again, my kid's probably gonna be angry. I don't have to say to them, cause I know my role. But don't you understand? I don't. Like we really lower ourselves to our kids level. Like I'm asking my 7 year old to approve of my decision. Can you imagine a CEO being like, we're going through layoffs if they have to, and they're going to everyone's desk. Is that okay? Is that okay? It's okay. Or a pilot being like, we have to make an emergency landing. Everyone vote yes. I need everyone's yes vote. Come on. Don't you understand? It's like you just have to do the thing you need to do when you're in a position of authority.
- [85:09]
Tim Ferriss
Just have to do your job.
- [85:10]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
No, exactly. Do your job. There's something else though, that happens a lot. So maybe it's not animal cruelty.
- [85:15]
Tim Ferriss
Right. I mean, another instance from when I was a kid, a lot of those kids ended up getting into a lot of trouble later, whether it was going to jail, drugs, you name it, they stole stuff. And it was a small town, so people kind of knew, like, eh, these kids are bad seeds. I mean, I know that's a big label, but not a great influence to have around your kids.
- [85:39]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yeah. So yes, again, I think that would fall under my role around the boundaries that my job is to keep my kids safe. That doesn't mean no risk. It literally does mean safe. That might lead to hard decisions that my kid's not happy with, but are part of my kind of being the true authority and the adult my kid needs. I do think the emergency landing is the most helpful thing. If my pilot said, we're making an emergency landing and someone on the plane said, but wait, I have a really important Podcast interview with Tim Ferriss. And they were like, you know what? Fine, forget it. Yeah, you don't want that. Our kids are going to face tricky situations. And again, every parent knows the line between safety versus kind of playground. You can't play with us. You're a poopy head.
- [86:25]
Tim Ferriss
Right, right.
- [86:26]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
And then I think it becomes a little more nuanced.
- [86:28]
Tim Ferriss
There one thing you said. Doing your job doesn't mean taking or exposing your kids to zero risk. And it actually made me think of a friend of mine, different former Special Forces guy, amazing guy. You'd never guess in a million years that maybe, no, he's not obvious. He's not in your face. He's more like a gray man for people who get the lingo. But he has two daughters and he's very jovial, fun guy. He's very easygoing. He's as tough as you would expect. But on the surface, his interactions are very. He's actually very soft. But he ended up basically creating this game with his girls where each birthday they have a birthday challenge. And it's something that's hard for them and it goes up as they get older. They get to choose their 10 challenges. It's kind of like having your employees choose OKRs or whatever. So they got into rock climbing and then into like, I'm going to do the cold plunge in the lake for this long, and then I'm going to do kettlebell SW this and this many this and that and the other thing. So for those people who've ever seen the movie Hannah, he's basically training both of his girls to be Hannah, which is like training this guy's daughter, Eric Ben, as the actor to be Jason Bourne. But he has inoculated them against a lot of types of fear by expanding their exposure to all of these different stressors and kind of making a game of it. And they do fail at points, but they get to contend with failure and then recover from it. I'm wondering if you proactively have done that with your own kids or how you facilitate exposing kids to this broad range of emotional experience so that when they get into the quote, unquote, real world, they're not fragile.
- [88:22]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yes, yes. Anti fragility is definitely a big, big goal. I guess I think that I don't often have to insert that as much as I have to be mindful of not removing it. There's a lot of opportunities for kids to be frustrated, to take on challenges. I mean, we're really talking about feeling uncomfortable, right?
- [88:43]
Tim Ferriss
Don't do their job for them, not.
- [88:45]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Doing their job for them and not narrowing the range of their resilience, right? If my kid is only resilient when they get the job and have an easy project and go to a dinner where all their friends are and get driven there and there's never any traffic, they're gonna be in trouble, right? They're gonna be in a lot of trouble. But we can't expect them to expect anything different if that's kind of been what we create for them during their formative years. So here's a good example. Talk about my youngest.
- [89:11]
Tim Ferriss
This is the one who pees in the garbage cans.
- [89:13]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
This is my.
- [89:14]
Tim Ferriss
I like this kid.
- [89:15]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
My resilient rebel.
- [89:16]
Tim Ferriss
I like this kid already.
- [89:17]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
He is something. He really is. He's my kid who wanted to get money to get a certain baseball card that my oldest son and he couldn't was going to the store and he didn't have money and he had two somewhat loose teeth and he pulled them both out by the end of the day because he figured he could get money from the tooth fairy. And he did. And I was like, wow, smart kid. Industrious, very industrious. High tolerance for pain. But I think he wanted to play sports. And he's my third, so he's been playing for a while. He tried out. He made two teams for different sports where he knew nobody. He knew no kids. To me, this is such an amazing life experience, joining a team where you know nobody. And I would say in both teams, he's not on the stronger end. That's a really powerful life experience in terms of, again, the capability you will build. We think our kids are going to find the capability before. And then we get frustrated. Come on, you can do it. It's not a big deal. Everybody in life finds capability after surviving, not even after thriving, just after surviving something hard. The capabilities on the other side, you can't expect someone to access it before. You just have to tolerate the before. Now I think it could be easy to remove that. I'm going to make sure I call a friend to join the team with you, right? And in some ways, we take our own anxiety and we add it. You know what I mean? Versus I really felt like my job. To me, here's like such a powerful line. I remember before he went to his first basketball practice and this team happened to be a team that they already knew each other for a year. So not only did he know anyone, there was, you know, some really nervous. I said, that makes sense. I'd almost feel nervous if you weren't nervous, makes sense. You're nervous to do something new. Yeah, right. And then after, you know, we walked home and he said, you know, I think when they introduced everyone, I felt better. You know, I said, you'll probably be a little less nervous at next practice, but you probably also will be a little nervous. And I think this idea of, like, when we build our kids capability, your friend who has all those challenges, that sounds amazing. And there's all different ways to do things in different fans. I guess for me, I see with my kids there's so many opportunities in life.
- [91:22]
Tim Ferriss
I should say it's not like the linchpin of his parenting. He's actually just super active with his kids and role models it.
- [91:29]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
To me, one of the most important things for building capability and anti fragility is actually this idea of validation and capability. This is hard, and I can do it. Often when you do only one with a kid, it backfires. So we'll be like, this is really hard. It makes sense. You're nervous about practice. Ooh. And we just live in that world. And sometimes our kid feels. Feels like you're validating my emotions, but I'm just kind of like building my anxiety where we leave that out and we do the opposite. It's no big deal. It's just a basketball team. You're going to be fine. Kids have been doing basketball forever. Right. That's often not great. And we think that's like building resilience. The lack of validation doesn't help your kid cope with the emotion. And so it's also not that helpful. Both is really powerful. Makes sense that you're nervous and you're a kid who can do hard things. Oh, it makes sense. You're not sure how this is going to go and you're feeling a little uneasy. And I just know five minutes in it's going to feel a little easier. That idea that I can see my kid where they are and I can almost see a more capable version of them than they can access. By the way, I think great CEOs do this too. This is a hard project and I know you're the one to figure it out.
- [92:32]
Tim Ferriss
Or good partners.
- [92:33]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Or good partners. Yeah, that's right.
- [92:35]
Tim Ferriss
I'll give a public thanks to my ex. She was very, very good at all this type of communication and perspective taking. So she was able to teach this old dog some new tricks which have stopped luck, and it's been incredibly valuable. Have you had any personal sort of parenting slips that you learned a lot from because one of the questions I often ask, so I'm force fitting it a little bit here, but it might work, is, do you have a favorite failure? Meaning something that didn't turn out the way you hoped or was a miss, whatever, but it ended up teaching you so much that in the long term, it was beneficial.
- [93:12]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
I hear my. My daughter's voice in this moment saying, I started good inside for you. And the reason she says that is because I had my first kid. And at this point, I also. My private practice and my first kid definitely had his meltdowns. He had his difficult moments, but there was something relatively linear, relatively. About his development. We kind of did the thing. Okay. Ugh, you're so upset. You're gonna figure it out. I'm here with you. No, you can't have that truck. I'm holding it. I'm keeping you safe. And he kind of responded in kind. He would kind of. Okay. And then I'd have all these people in my practice saying, Dr. Becky, like, I'm doing the things you're saying, but I swear they're making everything worse. It's making everything worse. It's not working. And even though I in general, like curiosity over judgment, in the back of my head, I was thinking what anyone would think. Like, you're just not doing it right. You know, you're not doing it right. That's all. But moving on. And then it actually kind of, in these sessions would make me have to innovate. I'm like, okay, well, that's not working. And I kind of do love problems and thinking through things like, try this, try this. You know? And then I had my second kid, and I feel like after a year and a half, I remember being like, I need to call all of those people that I was secretly judging. It's like, oh, my God. I know what you're talking about, because I am watching myself do the thing I was telling you to do when I was doing it with my son, and I'm watching my kid scream. Or by the time she was old enough to talk, be like, stop talking. I hate you. And I was like, what are you talking about? I'm being an amazing parent right now. Why are you saying that? And I would say for a number of months, I really mean this, it was like a dark place. Like, what is going on? And what is my kid? And why can't I give to her the way I know I can show up for my other one? And. And then I feel like after that period, this is usually what happens. I Feel overwhelmed. And then I have this thing I say to myself when I'm feeling really overwhelmed and like full of like self blame and pity, where I say like, okay, Becky, wash yourself in it. Fully embrace it. You're horrible. Everything's horrible. Like, go all the way to the extreme and go to sleep. And I say, and tomorrow I'm going to turn it into fire. Because there's a lot of energy and feeling awful and overwhelmed. And if you can like allow yourself to embrace it and not fight it, then I feel like there's a day where you can like use all of that for something productive. I feel like that's what I did. And I started to connect these crazy dots in my head. I was like, okay, so there are all these families out there who are telling me the same thing I'm seeing with my kid. Like, these kids, when you try to talk to them about their feelings, even in the best way, they explode. Their meltdowns are like animalistic. Hissing, growling, like really, I mean really intense. They act like a caged animal. And then I thought about probably 30% of the adults I was seeing in private practice for really deep therapy and the struggles I had in adulthood. A lot of fear of abandonment, a lot of emotion dysregulation, a lot of really low self worth. And it was crazy, Tim. I mean, I was like, oh my God, they were all my daughter and they were all those kids. Like I saw this whole thing and it led to this body of work where with the adults I was doing this really deep therapy, kind of going back to some moments and really reworking them in this like experiential way. And they would tell me things, I'm not joking, that I would then do with my daughter.
- [96:31]
Tim Ferriss
Could you give an example?
- [96:32]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Okay, here's an example. So your kid has this meltdown and some parents listen will be like, yeah, my kid has meltdowns.
- [96:38]
Tim Ferriss
Okay?
- [96:39]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
I'm not talking about the run of the mill meltdown. I am talking about it truly.
- [96:43]
Tim Ferriss
The exorcist.
- [96:44]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
The exorcist. It's animalistic because these kids, and I call them deeply feeling kids, they experience their feelings as threats. And so if your feeling is a threat in your own body, think about what you would do to get rid of it. You have to like expel it onto someone and they're so porous to the world that they get overwhelmed more easily and they fear being overwhelmed and then they fear they're gonna overwhelm you. And basically with these kids, their shame sits so close to their vulnerability. So whenever they feel vulnerable, shame makes it explosive. And then when you try to get close, like, hey, I'm here for you, or, hey, you're mad, it's too close, they actually do. It sounds so existential. But they fear that they are toxic, and then they will kind of make you toxic. And so they say things like, get out. I hate you. Leave me alone. And then as parents, we kind of take the bait. Fine, I'm just trying to help. And then we leave these kids alone. They're completely, 10 out of 10 dysregulated. And then they basically learn, see, I really am as bad and toxic as I worried I was. And we see this all the time in adulthood. Act itself out. And so this is a good example of what came from this most amazing adult I worked with forever. We went back to this moment in her childhood where, again, she'd be in her room because these kids would be in their room, and they're out of control, screaming at a parent, get out. And kids are oriented by attachment, which is a system of proximity. So when they say, get out, not calmly, we all say, get out. Someone's like, sure, I'll get out. But they're, like, not in a place to be making a decision. What they're really saying is, I'm so terrified I'm going to terrify you. And I'm so terrified, therefore, I'm bad. Because if I terrify you so much that you can't even be near me, I'm a vulnerable kid. That basically means, like, I'm not going to survive because I need your attachment to survive. And I remember going through, like, what she needed in that moment. And I remember, like, kind of going through this visual of this, like, wise adult being in her room with her staying, even though she screamed, get out. Because I always say with deeply feeling kids, when they're in that 10 out of 10 state, their words are not their wishes, they're their fears. Honestly, all of us, most of us.
- [98:46]
Tim Ferriss
That's a really interesting reframe. Can you say that one more time?
- [98:49]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
When we're completely out of control and overwhelmed and we scream things out in that state, our words are not our wishes. Our words are our fears. And I think even the visual, if you have a kid like this, what, they're screaming, they're actually screaming to their feelings, not to you, get out. Leave me alone. I have the chills. Like, they're not talking to a parent. They're talking to these terrifying sensations in their body. So we went through this visual, and I'M in the room, kind of like.
- [99:16]
Tim Ferriss
Visually, and you're doing this with your client.
- [99:19]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
This is an adult.
- [99:20]
Tim Ferriss
Exactly.
- [99:20]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
This is what helped me so much with deeply feeling kids. One of the things. I'm just giving you one example. And I was like, okay, so I don't remember if it was her mom or just some sturdy adult who wasn't seeming scared of her. I said, so she's standing at the door with you. I remember this woman saying, she's not standing. She has to be sitting. And I kind of explored that and the imagery. And just if she's standing, I just believe she's about to leave. Like, I don't believe she's committed to this. So she was sitting at the door, and I'm like, okay, so she's sitting at the door. This goes into so much more about deeply feeling kids. But in these moments, they need containment. They literally need to be with you in a smaller space because they're so fearful of how their feelings come out of them and, like, take up all the space that they need to essentially have us hold space with them. Like, your feelings only go this far, and I'm sitting with you at the door like, I would never let you kill both of us. So my sitting here with you is almost a way of saying, like, you are not so bad and awful and toxic after all. And if I cannot be scared of this one day, you will not. And every fucking time when you do this, and it's more details than just this, your kid will end by crawling over to you like a dog and coming into your lap for a hug, because that's, like, exactly what they need. But that idea that you can't even be standing. I kind of knew in these moments, she was screaming, get out. I was like, you're not in a place to be making good decisions for yourself. It would be like if my kid was trying to cross New York City street completely out of control. Like, don't hold my hand. You're about to die in our coming traffic. Like, there's something deeper. I'm gonna hold you. And I knew I had to be in the room. But I remember as soon as my client told me this thing about sitting down, I remember with my own daughter and talking to clients. I had all these clients at the time who had these kids because, like, I was kind of getting these referrals from these kids labeled as oppositional defiant disorder. Difficult, dramatic, all of these diagnoses. I was like, wow, Oppositional defiant disorder. You cannot, like, a child who you label as Oppositional, defiant. And we were all trying these things and everyone at the same time was like the sitting down and kind of imagining yourself in this just really sturdy way. It shortened the meltdown by like 90%. And again, that came directly from my work with, I think so many of my best interventions come from actually the work I did with adults, understanding what adults needed when they were kids and reverse engineering that to today's parents.
- [101:42]
Tim Ferriss
Fascinating example. And I can envision it and I can see it working. I suppose I've used different words for it, but a friend of mine recently recommended a book to me which was something like a highly sensitive person or something like that. Because what I say to people for myself, and I was like this as a kid too. It's like my senses are very, very sensitive, very porous, and it can be incredibly overwhelming sometimes. And I've become better at using that and managing it. But as a kid, I mean, forget about it. Different story.
- [102:17]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
You're probably what I would say is a deeply feeling kid. Mine too. And I say to her, you're a super sensor. Because with these kids, I live in New York City.
- [102:25]
Tim Ferriss
I like that.
- [102:26]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
And we'd be getting near the garage where we park our car, and she would not want to go into the garage. The smells of even near the garage. So easy as a parent to say something to a kid like, you're so crazy. What are you talking about? It doesn't smell any different outside here. And if you think about what you're really doing is you're saying to a kid, I know how you feel better than you know how you feel now. Again, the boundaries matter. Might there be a time, especially when she was younger, I'd say, I get it. You smell it. It's awful. You smell things I don't smell. And I'm picking you up, I have to carry you in the garage. That's independent from my action. But again, when we can't separate those two, we usually say super invalidating things to DFKs. We tell them they're dramatic. We tell them they're making a big deal out of nothing. A principle of all human behavior is we all need to be believed. And so if you don't get believed, you escalate the expression of your behavior in desperation to be believed. Then usually people lead with more invalidation, which means you escalate behavior further to try to get the original thing you were looking for. And with deeply feeling kids and parents, that's a cycle we really reverse.
- [103:33]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Trip down memory lane. That's Wild.
- [103:37]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
I'll send you the workshop.
- [103:38]
Tim Ferriss
Makes a lot of sense.
- [103:38]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Send you the workshop.
- [103:39]
Tim Ferriss
Yes.
- [103:39]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
We have a lot of adults do it separate from their kids. It's all the same stuff.
- [103:43]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, it is all the same stuff. If you could put, metaphorically speaking, a message on a billboard, could be a quote, could be an image. Anything non commercial. Just something to get out to very large number of people. Could be a reminder, a request, anything mantra that you find useful. Anything at all.
- [104:05]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Can I pick more than one?
- [104:07]
Tim Ferriss
Of course.
- [104:07]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Not in the same billboard. I don't know about the branding of all them at once, but I have too many things.
- [104:12]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, yeah, you can definitely have a couple.
- [104:14]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Okay, so I'm going to start with one that's probably most linked to our conversation so far. Just my ultimate mantra. This feels hard because it is hard, not because I'm doing something wrong. And again, to me, the idea that we struggle and it doesn't mean it's our fault is life changing. I remember during COVID when my kids were doing work, work and like, work from home, you know, when they were like in school at home, that was like the thing I put on their desks. And I think when you're talking about kids working on math or learning how to read, doing a puzzle or doing something at work or managing your first conflict in your romantic relationship, she put.
- [104:48]
Tim Ferriss
On their desk like a placard or like a little dry erase board or.
- [104:51]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
I mean, I just like post it note. I took like a post it note and wrote it messily and just put.
- [104:55]
Tim Ferriss
It up there and say one more.
- [104:56]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Time, this feels hard because it is hard, not because I'm doing something wrong. The difference between understanding something's hard because it is versus thinking it's hard because basically you failed has massive life implications on what we'd be willing to take on next as a challenge. Yeah, that's just a hard math problem. If it feels hard, that's because you're doing it right, because it's supposed to be hard. Oh, I'm doing it right versus I'm not good at math. I mean, it's just remarkable, especially academically, when kids are young, how powerful that is. If I could put something different on a billboard. You're sponsoring many branding campaigns.
- [105:27]
Tim Ferriss
Infinite billboard budget.
- [105:28]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yeah, okay. It would be one of two things. This is like different versions of a similar idea. Parenting doesn't come naturally. The only thing that comes naturally is how you were parented or we were never meant to parent an instinct alone. The whole idea of maternal instinct has had A profound impact on parents. Profound and awful. And it's not to say I don't think there's some instinct in us. Obviously, I get that, but it would be like a doctor saying, like, I didn't go to medical school. I have surgical instinct. Surgical instinct. And you're like, yeah, I'm just not gonna see you. And if your friend said that, yeah.
- [106:02]
Tim Ferriss
That'S gonna be a hard pass, right?
- [106:04]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
It's a hard pass. And it's just so interesting that I think we take learning seriously at every point in our lives. And then we get the job that's the hardest and most ongoing and most important job we'll ever have. And we're socialized to think we're supposed to be learning before, like, a CPR class, a pregnancy class, and then once your baby's like one. The narrative I hear from parents, we hear this honestly, because at good insight, I think way more than trying to help you through a tantrum. We're trying to elevate parenting. Parenting deserves education, because that's a good compliment. With instinct, like, there are things to learn. Doesn't come naturally. And I really. We have moms, especially, all the time, say, I feel like it's a sign I'm a failure. Which to me, I just don't know anyone who goes to medical school and says, like, oh, I have to go to medical school to become a doctor. Unlike my friend, who I don't know.
- [107:02]
Tim Ferriss
Has a surgical instinct.
- [107:03]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Has a surgical instinct. Or I get my surgical tips on Instagram, and I think that's enough. You would say to a doctor, yeah, that's cool. You want to stay up to date and some tips, but you probably need a foundation. And I think this goes back to fault. You know where it goes back to how when we struggle, especially as women, we tend to think it's our fault. Instead of maybe something more useful, like a little bit of anger, of like, wow, the system is pretty stacked against me. Nobody is setting me up to have clarity in my job, to know what to do and to actually feel resourced and supported. And then I think we'd find parenting hard, but we wouldn't find it as impossible as we find it today.
- [107:41]
Tim Ferriss
You said one of two things. Was there another variable?
- [107:44]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Just some version of part of me? I like to be punchy. If I was going to put something on a billboard, I wanted to create a conversation. So maybe I'd say something like, there's no such thing as maternal instinct. Not because I even fully believe that, but just to start a conversation and the limitations of that framework. And I think the. A massive amount of shame it's created, especially for women. And shame leads to an animal defense. Freeze. State freeze. You don't act. So what's kind of amazing and fucked up is if you can convince women that they should be able to parent on maternal instinct alone. It's just a great way of kind of ensuring moms forever feel really bad about themselves and don't talk about it.
- [108:28]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, that resonates. I mean, what do I know? I don't have kids, but just what I've seen with friends is there seems to be. Certainly there are maternal instincts, for sure. Just like some people may be better suited to empathy and bedside manner as a surgeon, but you also want them to go to med school.
- [108:47]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yeah. Two things are true. Two things are true.
- [108:50]
Tim Ferriss
And what I've seen amongst. Because there are all these battles in the parenting discussions, right? There's the attachment parenting versus the sleep training versus. And man, oh, man, these get intense. And I'm watching some of these things because I'm curious. But if one of the stories that sometimes pops up is related to mothering in different, let's just say, for simplicity, indigenous cultures. And what gets lost there is overemphasized, is the instinct and what that means and what you can rely on. What gets a little lost is societally, as you said, how for a lot of women in industrialized Western cities, let's just say, or westernized cities, or certainly coastal US in a lot of places in those societies. I've spent time in Ethiopia and all over South America and so on. It's like from a very young age, they are being taught how to take care of kids in whatever way makes sense culturally in that context. But it's like from a very young age, they're getting training that's like being born into Jira, dreams of sushi. And it's like, all right, you're going to start with washing the pots. I mean, from a very, very early age, they're being taught and getting a lot of practice, which is just simply not the case for a lot of women these days. So it would seem to make a lot of sense that they need to have the opportunity to be resourced, as you said.
- [110:26]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yeah. And I think the resources, again, that I always want for parents extend so beyond just your interactions with your kids. Like, learning to set real boundaries is life giving, like in every area of your life. And I think that's why when people are kind of involved in the good inside system for a while like when we interview users, it's interesting, after a little while, say, oh, I asked for a raise for the first time. My girlfriends from college always go away. And honestly, my partner always gives me a hard time every year. And so I don't forgo. And for the first time I realized, wait, Dr. Becky, like you said, those are my partner's feelings. I can care about them, but I don't have to take care of them. Meaning my partner can be upset and I can go on my trip. And then we always say, what about those tantrums? Remember how you came? And they were like, oh, is that why I came in? Right. So I think what I want for parents and what I'd want.
- [111:13]
Tim Ferriss
The billboard also says tantrums are the gateway drug.
- [111:16]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
They are kind of, you know, we come our kids problems. They're really a signal that probably there are so many opportunities for us to learn things that are, yes, gonna help them, but are gonna end up helping us even more. I want for parents really to feel like they do more than just put out the latest fire in their home.
- [111:38]
Tim Ferriss
So you are, and I love this about you. Well known, as I mentioned, for your specific scripts, your word for word scripts, even though the intention is to use them to highlight principles. I understand that. What are your most requested, the fan favorites? Most requested. As far as scripts, what do I.
- [111:59]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Do when my kid's having a meltdown that I just totally don't understand? So what do I do when my kid's freaking out about something? I don't understand anything about boundaries and saying no. How do I say no to someone without feeling guilty? How do I say no to my in laws when they keep popping over? So anything about saying no and boundaries and repair.
- [112:18]
Tim Ferriss
Repair.
- [112:19]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yeah. I feel really stuck and I just. I can't get myself to go to my kid's room and say the thing. I always feel like a script is like a door opening. Sometimes we need someone to open the door for us. And then when you get in the room you're like, okay, I can do this. That's kind of what a script can give.
- [112:32]
Tim Ferriss
What specific boundary setting or saying no, like within that subcategory, what are the things that tend to come up the most?
- [112:42]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Honestly, almost always when I'm asked a question, my answer is almost always reframing the question. How do I say no without someone getting upset? I mean this with love. It's just a bad question.
- [112:52]
Tim Ferriss
It's a bad question.
- [112:52]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
It's an impossible question. How do I say no and tolerate someone being upset? It's a great question. Love that question. So I'll shift to that. Usually when we feel stuck in life, it's because we're asking the wrong questions, not because we don't want the answers 100%. But I think scripts that.
- [113:05]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah, because you can also get a great answer to the wrong question and that can lead you astray.
- [113:09]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Right. I always say questions are like roads you walk down to make sure the road is like the destination you want to end in. Not kind of a cliff or something unproductive. And I'll share some of them here just because some of them aren't going to put out there. So how do I say no? I think saying no well, really comes from knowing your why and really being grounded more in your experience than the other person's. The reason it's hard for someone to say no is because they've actually already vacated their body. And if it's me, let's say, you know, here we are on Monday. But let's say you asked me, hey, can you do Monday at 3:30? I'm like, oh, I really can't for whatever reason, oh my God, what is Tim gonna think about me? And is Tim gonna be really upset? What am I gonna say when Tim says that? That's the only time you can't say no from that place because you're no. And setting a boundary comes from your place of authority. And if I vacated my body and I'm now spending all my time in Tim's head.
- [113:58]
Tim Ferriss
You've lost yourself in your fantasy of.
- [114:00]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
You've lost your. In your fantasy. Exactly. Tim's probably like, why are you spending so much time in my head? I would have just figured it out with you. That's what we do. So I think step one is actually coming back to ourselves. Like, why am I saying no? Okay. I'm saying no because I don't know how to pick up my kids from school or whatever it is. Right. It actually becomes a lot more self evident. I'm not able to make that time because whatever the reason is, right. And then I think one of the best thing with scripts when you're saying no, naming your intention, naming it, not just thinking it is really helpful in communication. I'm really excited about recording. I am unable to do this. I would love to find another time. Right. Making it really, really obvious what your intention is really does get in in a helpful way. It prevents someone else from misinterpreting it from you thinking, oh, Becky just doesn't want to be in my podcast. Right. And it also makes me feel sturdier because I'm kind of connecting to you along the way. One of the ways to think about boundaries and how to actually set them. Cause there's a lot of people who are like, I know I want to set them, but it's the holding. And I just feel so uncomfortable. And my mom's mad at me or my kid's mad at me. Okay. Okay. So right now we're sitting on opposite sides of the table. But imagine we're on a tennis court. I'm on one side of the court behind the baseline, and you're on the other side. But instead of a net, I don't know, there's like a glass wall. So, like, I could see you, but whatever happens on your side would stay on your side. Okay. The reason boundaries become hard to hold is because I'm on my side setting a boundary. So maybe it's saying to my mom, oh, you want to come over to see the kids? It doesn't work for us. We have to find another day. Or maybe it's saying to my kids, oh, TV time is over. Or, no, sweetie, we're here to buy a birthday present for your cousin. But I'm not gonna buy anything else. Even though you see that thing you want, that's my boundary. And on your side is your feelings. So if you're my mom, you're upset. And maybe your version of upset is guilting me. Who knows? Right? And maybe if you're my kid in the toy store, you're upset. Probably your version is screaming meltdown or who knows what it is, Right? What we say to ourselves all the time is, I can't set boundaries. I feel so guilty. Right?
- [116:01]
Tim Ferriss
Okay.
- [116:02]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
In my mind, guilt is a feeling you have when you're acting out of alignment with your values. That's why guilt is useful. If I yelled at a taxi on the way home tonight, I would feel guilty because that's not in my values to yell at anyone. Definitely not someone trying to help me. That guilt would make me reflect. Huh. I wonder why I yelled. What could I have done differently? Useful. But it's interesting when people say I set a boundary with my mom because I just need the alone family time, but I feel guilty. I said no to my kid because I don't want to buy them everything at a toy store, and I feel guilty. It's not guilt. It's actually life changing. It's not guilt because you're acting in alignment with your values. So then begs the question, what is it? It's our tendency to see other people's distress on their side of the tennis court. And this usually happens in childhood. We learn. We kind of say, I will take that for you. I will take your upset and bring it to my body and put it in my body to kind of metabolize it for you. And I will call it guilt, but it's not guilt. It is someone else's feelings that you're feeling for them. And not only is that not good for you, it's actually awful for the other person. Because if you metabolize, let's say your kids feelings for them, they never learned to deal with the stress. You can also never empathize, because the only reason I can empathize is if I actually see your feelings as yours. So I actually have to. When I do this exercise, this workshop where I'll say to someone, you have to give that feeling back to its rightful owner. So let's say I take my kid to a toy store and I say to my friend, I really do want to say no to them, but I have the money, and I feel so guilty. And even though I want to say no, okay, but now maybe it's not guilt. How do I deal with that? That what happens is you're on one side of the tennis court, and your kids, frustration, distress kind of starts to come over. And instead of going and hitting against the glass wall and going back to them, which, by the way, is what you want, you need people's feelings to say on their side of the court. It kind of comes over to me, and I'm like, I can't. What you have to do is actually almost put your hands up and, like, push it back. And actually the visual is powerful. That's my kids, or my mom is upset, she can't come over. If I actually think about it, that makes sense. I'm allowed to say no, and they're allowed to be upset. Is like a great life mantra. They're equally true. No one's a bad person. My mom is not a bad person for feeling upset that she can't see her grandkid. I am not a bad person for saying the time doesn't work for me. Those two things just happen not to kind of be in line with each other. So I have to hold them at the same time. They're both true. Neither is wrong, and neither is more true than the other. And if you see your mom's feelings as real, ironically now you can actually empathize with her. Because as long as you're taking on the feelings, you can't empathize. You're responding to your mom to take care of your own feelings that weren't yours.
- [118:56]
Tim Ferriss
You're putting yourself in the washing machine as opposed to looking through the glass.
- [118:59]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
100% what's inside the washing machine. That's right. And so holding boundaries, you get better when you picture that tennis court and you start to ask yourself, am I really feeling guilt? It's probably not. Can I give that person's feelings back? And then empathy actually helps you hold a boundary. Oh, I get it, mom, you wish you could come over. I know I'd be upset if I were you, too. Oh, does that mean I can come over? No, it doesn't. I'm just saying I understand. So that visual, I think, is powerful. Tennis court.
- [119:23]
Tim Ferriss
We have just a few minutes until our time.
- [119:26]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yeah.
- [119:27]
Tim Ferriss
And I thought I would just open the floor to ask you if there are any things we didn't touch upon that you'd like to mention. If there are any requests of my audience, my listeners, any reminders, closing thoughts, anything at all that you'd like to add. And people can certainly find goodinside@goodinside.com and we'll link to all your socials as well. Instagram drbeckyoodinside, I believe. And we'll put all these in the show notes, of course. The book Good Inside A Guide to Becoming the Parent yout Want to Be, link to the TED Talk. We will link to all the goodies in the show notes. But is there anything else that you'd like to mention?
- [120:09]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
No. I mean, I think that I find learning and reflection to be really such a brave endeavor. I really, really do. Because if you're thinking about yourself or thinking about why we do the things the way we do, or, oh, maybe I do want to intervene differently. Like, there's probably someone at this point saying, maybe my kid is a deeply feeling kid. Like, should I go learn more about that? And I feel like that's very brave because to do that, you're going to be confronted by feelings of like, oh, shoot, am I going to do that? And we all have wondering questions of, did I mess my kid up? Which you didn't. But we wonder it. And then we feel upset. And then to kind of push forward and say, like, okay, I'm going to tolerate those feelings in the pursuit of finding something that's going to end up feeling better to me, I just find. I find it very admirable and increasingly hard to do in today's world that we're all oriented around short term convenience and gratification. And so for anyone listening at this point, I just want to say thank you. I want to say, you know, there's probably a lot of tolerance of uncomfortable emotions along the way. There's no one we care about in the world in the way that we care about our kids. We're so invested in it. So thinking about getting support, thinking about taking a workshop or getting a resource on some level, it seems like, well, yeah, it's the person I care the most about. I'm going to do that, that. But there is this pull away of like, oh, I don't know if I want to look at something. And so the people who are willing to do that, I just think that's like my type of people. And I love people who are, who can do hard things. So I want to say thank you. And then the thing I want to hold right next to that is everything I said today. And I should have said this in the beginning. Like I myself definitely do not do 100% of the time as a parent. And it really matters to me that people know that, number one, just because it's true. And I don't want to misrepresent myself, but there's no perfect parent. Kids don't need a perfect parent. That would again, be weird. If we set our kid to think that their most important relationships down the road are going to be with people who are always perfectly attuned to their every feeling and need, that would be very counterproductive. And so again, maybe we end with what we begin with is the most powerful relationship strategy I believe we have in any relationship is repair. It's our willingness to go back, to take responsibility, to say, hey, I wish I handled that differently. To then hopefully actually do a little bit of like the investigation or resourcing. We need to actually do it differently. But I want to leave parents or any listener with that. There's nothing more powerful than repair. There's nothing as important to get good at as repair, which also means you have to mess up. Because the only way you can repair is if you did mess up. And so I just want to leave people with that more kind of balanced human note, because that's the thing I usually hold onto myself.
- [122:46]
Tim Ferriss
And for people who are curious, they want to explore the world of Goodinside and Dr. Becky Kennedy, where would you suggest they start in terms of dipping a toe in the water? Let's just for the purpose of applying some constraints. Somebody who doesn't, maybe they don't have the ability or the financial resources to go to an extended workshop or something like that. Where might they start?
- [123:11]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
I'd say go to your local library and kind of request the book. If it's not, you know, in, definitely get on the request list. For Good Inside, I would say come to goodinside.com and sign up for our emails. I'm bursting with new thoughts all the time and I always need containers for them. So one container is our email. Our kind of weekly thoughts for me. On Thursdays I send out Instagram my own podcast. I should say I'm on a podcast now. Podcast listeners usually listen to other podcasts, so maybe that's best. That's just called Good Inside. We try to keep it simple and goodinside.com is kind of the home for everything we do. And then I would say if your kid is I love to help people whose kids aren't just struggling. It's kind of like waiting to go to marriage counseling until you're like in a problem. It's never the best. But a lot of us wait. I really think of our resources inside our app as you know about your kids and your own emotional wellness. I think we make that very accessible, you know, compared to other emotional wellness resources. So that's there too.
- [124:06]
Tim Ferriss
Well, folks, there you have it. That is how you wade into the waters and I'm so happy we could have this conversation. Thank you for taking the time.
- [124:15]
Dr. Becky Kennedy
Thank you.
- [124:15]
Tim Ferriss
This is awesome and took a lot of notes for myself also. Best to be prepared. It might take a little while for me to get the kiddos online, but that is the plan and I really appreciate what you are teaching. These toolkits are incredibly powerful and as we have mentioned and alluded to multiple times in this conversation, you can apply these things everywhere. It is not limited to your interactions with your kids and to everybody listening. Thanks for sticking around. Thanks for tuning in and as always, be just a bit kinder than is necessary. Until next time. That includes other people, but that also includes yourself. And for links to everything we discussed, you can find them in the show Notes Tim Blog Podcast and I'll repeat myself, but thanks for tuning in. Until next time. Take care. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off and that is five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between 1 and a half and 2 million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums, perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange, esoteric things end up in my field. And then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun. Again, it's very short. A little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. Something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim Blog. Type that into your browser. 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