An Honest Take on Parenting Today (With Dr. Becky Kennedy)
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Here's what I'm hearing from dads. Okay. They're just opting out. We interpret struggle as our fault. Yes. What's the antidote to that? I mean, I think there's a bunch of antidotes for that. I had an experience when my show took off. There was a big, dirty secret that I carried, which was... What's up? What's up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. And this is the episode...

that I've gotten the most requests for from the people of the internet. That's you, the folks who listen to our show, the folks who are always checking us out on YouTube or on the social screens or wherever people happen to consume the show. This is the episode people have been asking me for. I recently flew to New York City and sat down with my new friend, Dr. Becky Kennedy of Good Inside. What many believe is she's the parenting expert,

on the planet right now. And she has an incredible, vibrant community. And we sat down to talk parenting, how to be married with kids, everything. She is one of the leading voices with parenting today. I'm so excited. We had a great time hanging out and I can't wait for you to hear my conversation with the great and powerful Dr. Becky Kennedy. Check it out.

Dude, thanks for inviting me into your studio. This is awesome. I'm so happy to be talking to you. This is the coolest, man. Yeah. Okay, so when I started doing this, I never would have thought that on the Instagrams, on the internets, that more people would send me back and forth your stuff. And so as I got into it early, I thought I was the smartest guy in the room because I

And you have changed my parenting and my approach to being married probably more than anybody else. You and Esther Perel, probably the two people who have impacted me the most. So thank you for doing that, for showing me like, it's kind of like flying on an airplane and then you think, I could probably drive this, right? When it comes to like how to be a good partner, how to have kids, all that stuff. So-

I'm imagining we'll get through one or two of these questions that I have. I've got tons of these things. And as I'll tell my audience, this is a thinly veiled, I need your help. That's what we're asking here. So I want to start here.

What I've seen over the last, I've been working with young people for a long time, for a couple of decades. And what I've seen increase over the last probably 10 years, but especially in the last five, is that kids feel like, seem to be holding the emotional space of the household. Like the whole house rests on kids, whether they're teenagers, whether they're college kids, or even newborns. Like the whole mom, parents are looking at their kids to say, are we okay? Right.

And my gut says that doesn't feel right. That feels too much so that a kid can't carry that. Am I out to lunch here? I do not think you're out to lunch here. And, you know, I have a little more to say. You're definitely not out to lunch. We'll start there. It's always a good starting point. I mean, I think what you're also pointing to is some things happened in terms of like an overcorrection where...

I don't know, when we were being raised or even generations before, it was like, parents in charge. I don't really care about how you're feeling. Go to your room. You know, pull up your bootstraps. Let's move on. And then I think there has been this overcorrection to how are my kids feeling? And I am not only so hyper attentive to how they're feeling, but now we've gone from not caring about kids' feelings to...

My kids' feelings have the power to dictate what I do as a parent. And I actually think, you know, I love a pilot metaphor. I have so many. We'll see how many I can get in today. But if you think about one version of a pilot, the whole passenger cabin is upset. There's turbulence. You're like, oh my God. And let's say version one of a pilot was like generations ago as a parent who'd say, everyone be quiet. You're making a big deal out of nothing. Zip it. Okay. And

not really what I want to hear as a passenger. I'm kind of like, does the pilot even realize it's turbulent or I probably get more activated. But pilot two to me is the overcorrection, which is

And everyone has to be calm. In fact, I'm not even calm when you're not calm. And maybe someone could come into the cockpit and tell me how to do this. And you're like, oh my goodness, I'm not even scared of the turbulence anymore. I'm really scared that this person is my pilot. Like literally, my feelings have gone from not important to contagious in a way that is equally as kind of scary to me. And I think a good inside what we stand for and then what we try to make very practical is

is kind of thinking about parenting as that pilot you want. You want a pilot who's going to validate your experience. Hey, I hear there's a lot of screaming. We get it. There's turbulence. And even a pilot who says, you guys want to keep screaming back there? Do your thing. Because what I know, and this is the boundary point, is I've kind of flown planes a long time. I know I'm going to get us to the ground safely. So it makes sense you're upset. I know what I'm doing. And I will see you on the ground safely.

And I know if I'm the pastor, they told me my experience is real, but they also weren't taken over by my experience. There's a validation, but then there's also this boundary and differentiation. My pilot didn't become my anxiety. And I think what you're saying is we have to, we kind of have to come back a little bit towards, toward the middle. You've got a, you gave me a word. I've probably quoted you a hundred times.

The word sturdy. And that's the best word. Like it's not rigid. It's not soft. It is like a tree. It'll sway, but that sucker's rooted into the ground. If I back all the way out working with parents, I almost am struggling with asking a parent to be sturdy because I don't feel like adults are sturdy right now. I know. I feel like they're all over the place and almost needing a kid to be anchored, right? Yeah.

Am I crazy? No, I think this is what we're saying is you don't want a pilot who looks to the passengers to know if they are safe on a plane. So where do you tell a couple who's struggling like in a marriage situation?

I mean, I think sturdiness in what you're saying, it is this ability to just define it. Kind of to me being sturdy is your ability at once to know what's going on for you, to know your values, to know your limits, to be connected to yourself while at the same time, you're kind of just still porous enough that I can connect to you. I can know what's going on for you. I can see that as real as important, but I can balance that with,

What is going on for me? I'm not taken over by it, but I'm also not so threatened by it that I have to push it away. And I think what you're saying is how can we be sturdy for our kids if often we don't feel sturdy ourselves or sturdy in the partnership we're in?

Given that's a foundation for our family. And I think this is actually the right question. And it is why I feel so passionate about the work that is good inside. Because I think we approach the whole system at once. That's it. Right? That's it. Yeah. That's what it is. How can I understand how to validate my kids' experience and understand that?

Yeah, it wouldn't be a big deal in my life, but it is a big deal to not be invited to a birthday party. How can I see that as real for my four-year-old, but not add on my own anxiety of, oh my goodness, my four-year-old's never going to have friends. And not call that mother and say, you should have invited my kid. Exactly. Right? And so I think what it starts with is developing a different type of relationship with ourselves. If I'm someone who grew up in a kind of stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about household.

We don't do this in our family. You're soft, whatever it is. Then it makes sense when I see my kid upset. I get very triggered. I yell or I shut them down because at some point,

It was adaptive to shut my own emotions down during my earliest years. And so I think sturdiness as an example, if that's a parent I'm talking to, I'd say, look, I know you want to show up in a different way to your kid. That's amazing. And let's have an order of operations in which that makes sense. I can't give out what I don't have inside me. It just, the math doesn't work. So I might even say, tell me about something hard in your day.

It can be really hard if you grew up thinking emotions were soft. And actually, the starting point before I talk to my kids differently is even just to be able to say to myself, I had traffic today. That wasn't the biggest deal in the world, but I'm also allowed to take a moment to say,

That was annoying. My morning didn't start out the way I wanted it to. Right. That is not what I imagined. That's not what I would have wanted. Our ability to even just take a moment and say that to ourselves, that's going to make us better able to not be so thrown off by my kids' emotion because I'm building up the skill inside. I had an experience when my show took off. There was a big, dirty secret that I carried, which was I'm out here...

traveling the country talking to folks, but my daughter, she was five or six, wouldn't hug her dad. And I couldn't figure it out. And at first it was like, I'm a big guy, I could pick her up. And she would go rigid. And it was kind of a funny game, but also it wasn't funny. And it wasn't until my wife said, is there any chance that her body's identified you as not safe? And I remember thinking, I said out loud, I don't yell, I don't hit anybody. She goes, no, no, no, you're a great dad.

But we all can feel the nuclear reactor here, right? And I got frustrated and I went and sat with a therapist and I was like, and nine months later, I remember a, and it was going through some hard stuff, right? And I remember speaking the words out loud. We were all wrestling and I said the words, Josephine, get off me. And I remember saying,

I was like, no way. Right. And now three or four years later, I'm a human jungle gym. She can't get off. But I realized the angst and the turmoil in my house was you keep doing this. It's funny because just maybe a month ago, I was sitting in front of that same therapist and I said, I just need what I know to be true to be here. And she's like, that's a long journey. And but what you're saying rings true with me, which is my kids can't not be anxious anymore.

if I'm electric all the time, or if me and my partner aren't doing good, they can't, they don't have anything to anchor into. And so, but I walk around blaming them for the tension in the house and all they're doing is absorbing and putting back into the world what I'm putting in there.

I feel like we have a culture that loops and loops on this idea of being happy, happy, happy, happy. And then, which depending on where you, what you Google, it's always spits out some kind of curve, right? The U-shaped happiness curve of your life. But there's this idea that having kids takes happiness from you. And now for the first time in history, people are just opting out completely. How do you balance and you do the best at this of telling the truth and also telling the truth?

How do you navigate looking at somebody saying you can, we're in a world and a little sliver of history. You can choose whatever you want. And having kids isn't the funnest thing or the happiest thing all the time. But also on the back end, the research says the depth of joy is pretty profound. Yeah. And there's something worth, it's kind of like doing a workout, right? There's something worth going in there and being uncomfortable for an hour so that 30 years from now I can roll around with my grandkids, right? Yeah. How do you,

Walk through that season with somebody talking your happiness shouldn't dictate right it shouldn't dictate Every minute of your day and there's some things to sacrifice for yeah I mean, I think you're asking so many so many questions here like in all the right ones. So number one is

What is the difference between kind of short-term convenience and... Gosh, that's the right word, convenience. It's convenience. I think that's what... I actually feel like humanity... Humans, we like convenience. It's hard to fight it. It's dopamine. It's ease. It's the thing that short-term, our body's like, yes, please, more of that.

And so there have always been these moments, I think, in history where, you know, society, we have more convenience in our life. Obviously, the car is one, the plane, the internet. Something has happened, I think, in the last number of years where...

I think we will always choose convenience over what is long-term good for us. It's hard. But I think we're seeing even in whether people are deciding to have children or not, even how we interact with our kids, that we are prioritizing convenience in a way I think that we never have before. To the degree it makes us kind of worried at times like, oh, why?

What is it going to be like in 20, 30 years, right? Obviously the world, right? We have a lot of inconvenient moments. And I think that is something around parenthood that we just have to talk more about. Having young kids is...

is massively inconvenient. I think that's like the best definition. Like I go to the grocery store, I'm just trying to get milk and some orange juice. My kid has a meltdown and I'm like, now I have to leave and now I have to put those things back and I can't even pay for them because the line is too long and now I have to get back there. That is inconvenient.

inconvenient. And we don't say that enough. It's not rainbows and butterflies when you have your three-year-old freaking out and you're six-month-old on your chest, right? And I actually think the more we can help people anticipate these inconvenient moments...

know that those moments aren't a sign that something's wrong with you or wrong with your kid. It doesn't mean you're doing something so bad. And when we can help a generation of adults build more coping skills for the inconvenient grocery store meltdown, for the inconvenient, no, you do it for me, puzzle moment with your kid, for the inconvenient moment of, I thought I was going to have 10 minutes alone with my kid after work before they go to bed. And instead they're protesting and they're having a hard time.

all of those moments are a gap between our perceived unconscious expectation and reality. And I think speaking more honestly about parenting doesn't make parenting less desirable. It actually makes parents a lot more competent and a lot more equipped for all of the ups and downs that are just inherent in the journey. Well, that's what I love about what you guys do here at Good Inside is it's the same way when I talk to a husband or a dad who grew up

Getting beat up, getting thrown around and finding himself not wanting to repeat that, but there's no other plan. And if I can take away, if I can demoralize it and I can take away this, like you have character issues and say, dude, you lack some skills, man. You've never practiced this before. That's exactly it. But you give parents permission to say, you've never had...

a meltdown with a three-year-old. I remember getting two kids out of car seats and thinking, I would rather set myself on fire. Like I can just, it will take me 30 seconds to go in that store and get what I need. And yet it's the in and the out. But you distill it down to a set of skills people don't have. And when it's a skill, then I can practice it. It's a free throw. I can practice that. If it's a shame-filled failure,

I'm not going to practice. I'm just going to try to bulldoze through it or I'm going to try to go around it, right? Ignore it. That's right. I mean, I think, I really think parenting is the last frontier where we glorify instinct alone. Instinct alone. It's insanity though, right? It is especially insane because again, you want to go to the doctor who has the best medical school. They wear that with a badge of pride and I don't know one investor anymore who'd invest in a

CEO, founder who said, I'm never going to need executive coaching. I do it by instinct. You're like, I'm glad we established that this meeting is over. Thank you for saving me my time. And yet with parenting, there's this idea and it's put out in society, especially with moms, but anyone, maternal instinct. I should be able to figure this out on my own. It shouldn't be this hard. I mean, you are one person

human, raising a totally different human. There is nothing harder than that. And I think I love a good metaphor to really drive this home. And so to me, most parents I know would say, there might be some things with my kids that

I want to do similarly to how my parents did it with me. But there's definitely a lot I want to do differently. Some people say I want to do almost all of it differently. But if we think about that... I don't like those people. I'm just kidding. And if you think about parenting as a language, it's like saying I was raised in English and I want to speak to my kids in Mandarin. No amount of wanting to learn Mandarin...

is going to help you learn Mandarin if you're not learning and practicing Mandarin. If I said to my friend, I just feel like now that I'm a mom, Mandarin is going to come naturally. I should be able to figure it out on my own. They'd be like, yeah, that's just not how Mandarin works. You can learn it, but

But you will have to learn the skills and practice. And then in your worst moments, Becky, you are going to end up yelling in English. Like that's just what's going to happen. And I really do think good insight is like a language for parents where the only thing that comes naturally in parenting is,

is how you were parented. And so if you want to do things differently, I do think loving our kids, a lot of these moments, that deep love can come naturally. But yeah, handling a grocery store meltdown, knowing what to do when your kids ask you hard questions, but how does the baby get in the belly? And you're like, okay, okay, you're really asking me, okay, okay. Or lying to your face or being woken up at 2 a.m. for the ninth night in a row.

I think you're right. That's not character. That's not love. That's skills. And the best news about skills is you're not behind. That's right. Anyone can learn it at any time. What do you... Well, here's... Tell me if I'm crazy. I get... So I'll get a call and it will be a dad or it'll be a wife. And they will say, or dad or mom, and they'll say, um...

Our sex life has fallen apart. And we've been married 10 years. And then we talk and we talk and we talk and we talk. And then they'll say, oh, we have a five-year-old, a three-year-old, and a one-year-old. And I'm pretty sure my partner's pregnant. And I'll often just stop and say, hey, call me back in five years. There's going to be survival sex. There's going to be just gaps. You're going to have to learn how to communicate in other ways. We don't have a...

That's right. None of us talked about what this is supposed to feel like. That's right. And that I'm allowed to miss somebody or miss the old days. Yes. And we're creating new, new days. Yes. But there's no skill in how do we sit down and talk about... All right, now we have this chaotic world. What's intimacy look like in this new world? What does laughter look like in this new world? What does getting away look like in this new world? Am I bananas? I think that what you're saying, and I said this recently to a live audience who seemed to really resonate, is...

We have a better understanding of how kids learn how to swim than we do about anything about child development. Because if you think about, I don't know if you did swim lessons. I did swim lessons for my kids. You spend a lot of time and a lot of money, and it just takes a long time. Right. Where imagine if you didn't understand the swim process. The first, second lesson, you know what you'd say?

This isn't working. This isn't working. I'm just going to pull my kid out of swim or this is a bad teacher or my kid's never going to learn how to swim. We know that when your kid puts their face in the water and blows bubbles, by the way, you're still years from swimming, but we're like, yay, right? Because you know to expect it. Right.

Whereas, what is it like to be partnered up and raising young kids? What's going to change in my partnership? What is the energy shift going to look like? What is it like when my kid starts to hit to know what are the skills they need to learn to stop hitting? But

How long will it take between learning skills, practicing skills, and seeing it show up in the game? I was talking to Duke women's basketball coach, and it was interesting. She's like, you watch tape all the time, and you look at players' reads, and some players in certain moments, they have tough reads, so we have to change it. And you practice, and you practice, and you practice, and then in the game, it doesn't show up. And you practice, and you practice, and then one day, later than you want, you're like, oh! There it is. There it is. But all of this actually has so much to do with

with expectation because how we all end up feeling in any moment isn't just a feeling. It's often the feeling and how surprised we are by the feeling. And I always think if we can remove the surprise, feelings are still hard, but they're a lot less explosive. So if I know a couple examples, I have a five-year-old, a three-year-old, a one-year-old, and I'm sitting being like, I don't have sex with my partner anymore. If I can say to myself after,

I knew this stage was coming. By the way, still permission to feel sad, to feel lost. How else can we feel close? But the way it's going to feel, the level out of 10 is going to be totally different. If I understand why kids lie, my reaction to lying to my face...

It's not going to be like, let's throw my kid a party. I'm not going to throw my kid a party for lying at me. But if I understand developmentally what's happening, my reaction's totally different. And so I think this is really a call in parenting. We need education. Like we need school to some degree, not in the ways of like homework and being yelled at by teachers, right? But the best part, education is power.

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That's CozyEarth.com slash Deloney with code Deloney. And listen, stay cool, my friends. I want to talk about loneliness and parenting. Yeah. I've got to go back and find the study, but I remember sitting there like stunned by it that there was an old, I think it was Native American proverb, but it may have been from somewhere else, that no woman should be left alone with a crying baby. It was just kind of a cultural ethos. That's madness. Yeah.

And I got to thinking about the suburban neighborhood I grew up in Houston, where you have a kid and you go home and they put you in this box in your house and you just stay there alone.

And then you switch out, right? So my wife was teaching. She would teach classes at night. And then I would just be with this kid who didn't want anything to do with me. And all I felt when I couldn't, I remember just sitting there sobbing, thinking, I can't get my kid to stop crying. What a loser. You know what I mean? What a loser. Not knowing that a six-month-old is a bundle of, it's a nervous system that's just out in the world, right? I couldn't, I could not get him to stop. But I didn't have anyone to tell that to.

And I just went and sat on it and sat on it and sat on it. And then I thought, I can't do this. I remember when my wife said, hey, the bottles, she had pumped and the bottles were in the fridge.

I didn't know he was supposed to warm him up. I remember giving my kid a bottle and he was shaking and I was like, oh, he loves this. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't even know what I didn't know. But I knew over time I sucked at this. I'm failing here. I'm just going to go work a little bit more. That's how I can help my family the best. How do we talk about being lonely as parents? Especially as young parents or teenage parents. I don't know any parent that wants to feel out of control.

yet you're stuck in your house by yourself and all you have is whatever nonsense is out there. Yeah. I mean, I do think that aloneness is always the enemy, right? Where, again, we think feelings give us a hard time or experiences give us a hard time and feelings, experiences, things that happen, those can definitely all be hard. But the thing that's hardest for humans is feeling alone

in a hard experience, feeling alone. That's the difference of trauma, right? That is trauma. I think that's what trauma is. It's an event with high emotionality that's stored in aloneness. Now, obviously some events have higher potential for that, but yeah, you come home, you have this baby, nobody's taught you anything and worse, they've told you

Trust your instinct. You're like, well, my instinct might be to yell at a child. So I don't know. And they tell you, this is magic. It's so great. Exactly. Everything's wonderful. So expectations are here. Skills are here. And reality's down there. And reality's down there. Where like when I see a new mom, especially, I'm always like, I really had a hard time in the beginning. And let me just tell you, the beginning was like 10 and a half months. And they're like, oh. I was like, yeah. Yeah.

There were more unenjoyable moments for me. I struggle with dependency. Like a lot of people, if you love being around people who are independent, then the beginning stages of parenthood are really hard, especially hard. And you're right when you're then alone. I think what we have the tendency to do, especially when we're alone, is we interpret struggle as our fault. Yes. And so then...

it's not even the struggle you're responding to as much as the story that it's your fault or that someone more, you know,

you know, better would do it differently or that again, it should be easier or that you're not cut out to be a parent or that how I feel in this moment is representative of how I'm going to feel every moment. We do all these grand things. We make it our fault. We make it global when we're alone. And we make it forever. And we make it forever. What's the antidote to that? I mean, I think there's a bunch of antidotes for that. I just cannot overstate the importance of

having more of an education for parents. And I don't mean I love Instagram. I do. I love a 60 second clip. But that is a crumb for a parent because you also can't even describe something with nuance. And so we all get these more extreme views of what it should be like. So I think education is one because even if you're a little alone with a crying baby, but in your head, you've learned enough times, it is not my job to

to stop a baby's crying. That's actually not my job. That's not good for anyone. This is not a sign of failure. Babies cry. I'm going to support my baby with these words I've learned and practiced. That moment is going to be hard, but it won't spiral you into an abyss. So I think education is just one thing. I think another thing is how...

having some type of community or village. And even if that's online, because sometimes you're a new parent, you're in your house, you're like, I can't even really leave the house to get to this group. That is not one more sign that you're a bad parent. That is a sign you're in an incredibly difficult stage.

And I do think one of the things big picture when we're struggling is we can either say the struggle is a sign of something that's my fault or the struggle is a sign of something I need. And when I need something, that's not some, again, signal that I'm weak.

knowing what you need is like a really important sign of strength. And so maybe I do need to log on somewhere and have a safe talk. Maybe there is a Zoom group. Maybe there is a friend I can text. Hey, were the first couple months like both incredibly exhausting and mind-numbing to you at the same time? Most people who are honest are like, that's exactly what it was. Exhausting and difficult and mind-numbing all at the same moment. That, I remember my wife saying, she went and found three, I have to go find them, but she went and almost, not almost ceremonially, but ceremonially,

I went and said like, "Hey, y'all are gonna be my three ride or dies during this. I'm gonna text you at maybe 3:00 a.m. if you're up and will you text me back?" And it was just those, "Hey, this is happening." And getting two other moms were like, "Exactly, exactly. It's supposed to be like that." And then go, "It still sucks, but okay." That's right, because you're removing, if you picture it, you're removing aloneness. Once I know I'm not alone, meaning once I know there's not something wrong with me for feeling this way,

it becomes lighter. It doesn't become easy. There's no moment of like balloons and rainbows when you remove aloneness, but the difference between hard and impossible is big. Gosh, that's so good. The difference between, say that one more time. The difference between hard and impossible is big. And I think a lot of moments in parenting- That's so huge. It's just, they're hard. And that's what I think is so important for parents to know. The best it gets at certain moments is hard. You don't go from impossible to,

Too joyful. That is not an arc anybody has ever had. No, and ironically, the better we get at managing the hard...

the less often hard becomes impossible. And then the more space there is for moments of joy and connectedness, right? But that actually all comes from how we learn to manage the hard. Because if not, the hard becomes impossible and crowds out everything. And I think what your wife spoke to, community, honesty, education, and just someone saying, you're not

crazy you're not crazy that's how it was for me too or it wasn't like that for me but that's okay and it is like that for you and that doesn't mean anything about this is a good time you should probably go talk to somebody right or level up i remember taking a picture of a rash and just sending it to her text group and then being like all of them wrote back like normal normal normal and i was like oh god because you know i was like oh my kid's got some rare you know whatever yeah and it was just okay good that's right that's right so i want to take a left turn here great

I want to talk to, let me say this, I'm just going to be as raw as I can with this. So here's what I'm hearing from dads. Useless. They don't want me around. I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to ask anybody. I definitely don't want to do this like my dad did. And also this gnawing sense of, this data just came out the other day that 25 to 35 year old women have just passed men in earning potential.

And like, I'm just redundant here. And what they're doing because they can, because there's still society off ramps for men, they're just opting out. They're either leaving or they are leaving with a video game controller. They're leaving on the couch.

Or they are deciding like what I did. I'll just work 90 hours. I can't help in any other way. I'll just put some money in the checking account and then I'll feel good. I mean, you're asking me this question at a really good time because I've been really obsessed with dads in the last kind of couple months and really thinking about dads. And I'm also seeing other dads who are leaning in in a way that...

I haven't seen or read about in, you know, generations. And so I guess my number one thing I want to say to that is just dads really matter. Okay. Dads really matter. And I think when we look at the world we all want to build where people can be in healthy relationships, where you know that strength is actually so deeply connected to how you relate to what's going on inside you. So yes, being strong relates to how you're able to manage your feelings. And dads,

And dads have, I think moms have a role to play there too. Dads have kind of really amazingly unique role to rewrite a different story for their sons and their daughters. And I think one of the things you're putting together, and I think a lot of dads struggle with this, is equating kind of knowing what to do

with being important. Those are two very different things. That took me a long time. That's right. And dads can even still have a really positive impact on their kids when they don't know what to do. And I think there's a way of naming this, like every parent. But if dads feel like, oh, I'm just in the way and I don't know what to do, something that's always helpful to say to a kid is, I'm not sure.

sure exactly what to say right now, but I want to tell you I'm here. I'm not sure what to do and I'm worried I'm going to get it wrong, but I love you. You're a good kid. We're going to get through this. Like you can just put out there the first part. I don't know what to do. I'm not sure how to respond to this. I feel like there are words I would want to say and I don't have them right now. And I want to assure you,

I'm here with you. There's a guy I have high, high respect for and his kids are just extraordinary. And I asked and he said, I just started taking him to breakfast once a week. So I started out with my son and it was boring and then it was boring and then it was boring and then it was, hey, dad, I think there's this girl. Yeah. But it was, or, hey, explain to me some deep theological. But it only came from presence and presence and presence. I think that's right. The input.

is more and longer than any of us in this efficiency-oriented world that we live in would want it to be. You do get a lot of rejection from your kids, and I think we take the bait way too often as if that's the whole truth. If you actually reframe your kid's pushback or eye roll as they're trying to just figure out how much to take in from me and how close to be, and they're young, so by the way, no adults do that.

terribly well either. Right. You know, but they're just kind of muddying through it. Right? And they're also kind of

unconsciously testing out how much can I trust my parent? How much can I trust my dad? Because I'm going to say it wrong one time and I'm going to get overwhelmed. And before I even go to kind of the depth I'd want to have in the relationship, I need to know that I have a parent who can take it. And so they do kind of test out. I don't want to go to breakfast with you. I have nothing to say to you. And again, if we can just think, do not take the bait.

And I think there's a way in which this has felt like weak. I can't let my kid get away with that. But I often tell people, like imagine Steph Curry or LeBron and you see them with like a group of eight-year-olds or 16-year-olds and they're like, Steph Curry, you're the worst shooter in basketball. And then you hear Steph Curry being like, you can't say that to me. You'd be like, Steph, like get a hold of yourself. Like that's like, you know what a sturdy person does? Yeah.

They don't respond because they know who they are and they don't need a 16-year-old or an eight-year-old to prove it to themselves. They're secure enough that they can hear something about them

that they know isn't true and they don't need to prove their own truth in the relationship. So I tell, especially dads, like channel your inner LeBron. Like you would not want to see LeBron saying, you don't want to go to breakfast with me. You're like LeBron, dude, like, come on. You're like NBA all-star. Just like take a deep breath, relax, you know? Okay. But the next step is we're going,

It's almost like the Good Will Hunting scene. Like we're having this, we're gonna sit here. Yes. We don't have to say anything. That's right. I'm gonna eat. That's right. So this is me taking a Johnism and you tell me if this is right or wrong. Okay. I'll often tell parents and maybe I'm hitting the pendulum too hard.

your nine-year-old doesn't get a vote in your emotional state. And that may be too far, but I want parents to practice. They don't get a vote, dude. They're nine. Like we as a society don't let them drive or buy cigarettes, right? Because they're nine. And so my nine-year-old can pop off all day long. I can sit down when the smoke is clear and talk about that's disrespectful. Yes. Or in our house, we have a values like this is who we are.

And that way I can point back and say, we all agreed. Like you're at the table. This is not how we talk to each other in this house. Yeah.

But I'm not going to outsource my feelings to my 9-year-old or my 15-year-old. And it's hard. Yeah. Right? It's hard. Because then if we're not outsourcing it, the reason it's hard is we actually have to do it for ourselves. I've got to do it for myself. That's right. But it is true. And so I don't mind you don't have a vote. I guess I'd put a tweak on it just because— That's a little bit overdramatic. To me, I think our kids—

They feel our intention over our intervention. They feel our mindset and they feel, are you looking at me like we're on the same team and you like me? Or even though you're saying the same words, are you looking at me like I'm a nuisance or like I'm difficult? Or you look at your phone while you tell me that thing. That too, right? So I think there's something to, and again, I think everything at Good Inside, we always come back to these two things at once. I can validate my kid's reality and

And my kid needs to know I'm not overtaken by it, that I have their long-term interest in mind, and I won't let their short-term protest get in my way of doing what I know is good for them. This is like a pilot saying we need to make an emergency landing, and you might be on a plane being like, oh, man, I have this meeting, I have this wedding, and maybe you think it's not that big of a deal, and you start protesting. Then imagine your pilot saying, I'm not overtaken by it.

Oh. You're right. Actually, forget. We won't land. We'll go through the storm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wanted you to say to me, it does stink. Yeah. That you can't get to your wedding. But I also don't want you to...

change your mind. And so I think you're taking your kid to breakfast and they're like, I don't want to go with you. I'm just going to stay quiet the whole time. Validate something in there. Just even if it's like, I get it. It's not what you want to do. That's boring. Yeah. Yeah. I get it. I'm just like not high on your list of people to have interesting conversations with. I get it. You know? And

We are going to go. And if you're quiet the whole time, that's how today's breakfast, but it's important for me. Maybe not for you. It's important for me that we get good time together. Like, I just think as a kid, they're not going to grab. And then we think we're going to say these things. I think, John, this is the other part. We say these things like, it's important for me to get time together. You can just sit there. You know, maybe that's how today's goes, but we're going to go out for pancakes, whatever it is. We think our kid's going to look at us after and be like,

Dad, you crushed that moment. Thank you. No. Right. Or I set a boundary. You know, oh, no, there's no sleepover on a Wednesday. And I think my kid's going to say, that is reasonable. I do have a school tomorrow. Good call, Dad. Good call. I love you. You're a sturdy leader. You know, like my kids have never said that to me. And so kids are allowed to protest. We still, as the leader of our home, just like the CEO of a company, you have to make good long-term decisions.

term decisions, even when the people around you are focused on short term ease and comfort. That, though, impacts. We have a very unintentional culture. We're just getting to the next thing. And that suggests if you bring a child into the world, you owe it to yourself and to your community and to your neighbors and to your kids.

you have to start being intentional with your life. At least some, like I'm a realist, some percentage of the time. Like I prioritize short-term ease too sometimes, right? I always say like, I don't want to fall off the wagon, but sometimes I'll park it and climb off and roll around in the mud and then I'll get back on it, right? That's fine, right? Again, there's no perfection here. There's no parent. I know, definitely not me. It's like, I am always making long-term good decisions. No, I'm like a human, hello. But there

There is something to a little inventory of like, all right, let me look at this week. What is my, I always say at Good Inside, we're very long-term greedy in our parenting. Our kids are going to be 18 and over. They're going to be out of our house for so many more years than they're in our house, which also means for so many more years than they're locked into a relationship with us.

they will choose whether they want to be in a relationship with us. And so these long-term decisions matter. And we don't build strong relationships with our kids by saying yes to them all the time and giving in to short-term stuff all the time because they end up resenting us. Why didn't you make good decisions? Why didn't you land the plane when you needed to? I needed a pilot. I didn't have my pilot license then. And so that stuff really does build a long-term relationship, but it won't lead to a short-term high five.

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Talk me through that. Yes. Because when you said it, I've been teaching on guilt for years. And when you said it, I was like, well, I was wrong on that one. So walk me through guilt. So this to me is like how so many of the different things I think about happen, where I just keep hearing these things from parents. I'm like, what does that mean? What do you really mean by that? And so something I'd hear, especially from moms, though it could be from dads is,

okay, I put my kid to bed for 39 straight nights. I'm going out to dinner with my college girlfriend who's in town, but my kid's clinging to me and they're like, you have to put me down. And then they'll say to me, I feel so guilty. And then I don't go.

Or I want to sleep in one weekend morning, but I feel like if I tell my partner, they're going to tell me how tired I am, and then I'd feel too guilty. And I kept thinking, this is interesting because our emotions are information and our emotions have evolutionary purpose. So what are we doing that some emotion is getting in our way of doing something that's good for us? And that's when I realized I don't think people in those scenarios are talking about guilt at all. Because to me, what guilt is...

It's a feeling we have when we act out of alignment with our values. And again, and that's important because even if it's uncomfortable, it's an important feeling. Yeah. Your body's like, I'm going to make you feel uncomfortable, not to send you into a spiral, but to get you to pause and ask yourself, well, why did I yell at the taxi driver? Why am I late to every meeting? If I can actually reflect on that because guilt helps me reflect, then I can change.

Amazing. But then I kept thinking, but going out to dinner here and there with a friend, I know that woman. That's in alignment with her values. Okay. And

Whatever the other, sleeping in one weekend morning, like that person values rest. So what is this? And then what I realized is there are so many moments that we say, I feel guilty, that we're not talking about guilt. When we say I'm too guilty to have dinner with a friend once in a while, I'm too guilty to sleep in and let my partner take care of the kids one weekend morning. I think what we're actually speaking to is our tendency to,

to notice other people's distress, my kids' distress that I'm leaving, my partner's, oh, but it's going to be hard to take care of the kids alone, to situations when there's distress. And I look at those feelings of distress and I'm kind of like, no, I'll take those from your body. I will put them into my body and I will call it guilt, but it's not really guilt. It's just my tendency to take on other people's emotions and process their emotions for them.

And I have a Johnism, the tools you use to keep you safe as a kid will by and large destroy your adult relationships. I mean, that's right, where everything we struggle with in adulthood was an adaptation in childhood. I think that form of guilt, it does everybody, like you're saying, a big injustice because number one,

We have to start with a place of true compassion. And I would say further appreciation. Anybody who's listening is like, I do that. Maybe I'm not guilty. Maybe I'm just taking in other people's emotions to start with. Hold on. I would say to myself, like, thank you. Thank you for your years of service. Really. Thank you for your years of service. Yeah. That protected me. That was adaptive. Yeah.

during all of my early years when I needed to figure out who I needed to be in my family of origin to get the most love and protection I could. And if taking care of other people's emotions was the way I did that, then like, boy, was I a crafty eight-year-old to figure that out. Can I click on something? Yeah. So peacekeeping is one. I found love by being sexually active a lot. I drank too much and did drugs as a kid.

I'm hearing more and more 35-year-olds looking at their 18-year-old self or their 16-year-old self with a lot of condemnation or their 21-year-old self trying to survive. And so like saying I'm a people pleaser, that tends to have less cultural baggage than some of these other things. Yeah, let's start with that. And there's something about telling us like, dude, hug your 16-year-old self. They're doing what they could to survive. That's right. We don't let them buy beer. That's right.

They were doing what they had to do to survive. Yeah, you're talking about like, you know, being very sexually active. You could say, okay, well...

what was my body was seeking connection and closeness in what ways was that allowed growing up? That's right. If I was a, if I'm a man, like, was I a boy who could have gone to a parent saying, I'm having a hard time with math. I feel left out by my friends. Would I have been greeted with like a hug? I'm so glad you're talking to me about this. Or would I have been given? Shut up, get out. Exactly. Or like even hearing that suggestion, are you like,

You must not know my family to even ask that question, but that's evidence of, oh, so what did I do at age 5, 8, 11, 16 to figure out how to be close to people given that's a basic evolutionary need? It's oxygen for a child. A hundred percent. And so, wow.

I figured out that one avenue was like a lot of sex. Yeah, physical contact. Okay. Well, even if that doesn't work for me now, I can still take a moment to understand its origin.

And yes, have some appreciation for that kid part of me that was kind of thinking, okay, this avenue is closed off, this avenue is closed off. And instead of shutting down as a human being, I was like, wait, I found it. Reckless sex, okay. Be compassionate to that kid, yeah. And almost like appreciative. You can appreciate someone's attempt to protect you totally separate from the impact that form of protection ended up having. There you go. Yeah, if you sit with addicts in...

Let me rephrase it. If you see people who are struggling with addiction, it's like, how do you know when you say like, no, alcohol works. Right. It's amazing. That's right. It's amazing. That's right. Right? Marijuana, it's amazing. Yeah. And over time, it may not be adaptive, right? That's exactly right. And there's an exhale. Yes. Yeah. I love that idea of being compassion and seeing where that behavior has...

Behavior sounds so like I'm your dad, but like where that... Expression. There you go. As you're older, where is that still trying to... Where's my body still trying to take care of me in those ways? And where is it now maladaptive? That's right. It's not helpful. And I think this goes directly to kind of this next generation. I feel so passionately about raising where if we teach kids that they're acting out behavior...

is not a sign of who they are, but it's a sign of what they need. That means they are going to be more and more likely to figure out other ways to get what they need that are more adaptive. Yes. Right? And so even though we're talking about sex at age 16, this is actually the same as thinking about hitting. Okay, so my kid at age three is hitting not because they're a bad kid,

Not because they have some character deficit. It's because they're frustrated that their sister has their favorite truck and they don't yet have a skill to manage that frustration. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so we can teach that and then...

By the way, anger is a healthy emotion. Anger tells us what we need. I don't want anyone to ever lose touch with their anger because anger in that way is a sign that you still have some type of self-confidence, self-respect to think you deserve things. Now, learning how to manage anger, that comes to skills and curiosity. And I think as a culture, we've received such little curiosity and compassion in our early years for the source of our behavior. Mm-hmm.

that we almost think compassion is dangerous. Like someone's like, I'm going to be compassionate about this awful behavior. Like whatever you've tried, I promise you, shame locks you into bad behavior way more than compassion does. All day long. Every time. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's a great minister in our community that says, whatever you think your hate's doing, love will do better, I assure you. Right? And so you can hate this thing or you can say, come sit down. Yeah. Exactly. How do you, on the flip side of that...

If we can look at childhood behaviors, there's often a kid saying, I don't have the skill set here or I'm expressing a need for something. Was it like 65% of homes are single parent homes now? What do you say to the parent that's working three jobs and they see these behaviors in their kids? They know they're there and they're between a rock and a hard place. Yes.

I mean, the first thing I would say is probably no words at all. I just want to give that person a hug and say, holy moly, you are managing more than is humanly possible. And again, the setup of childcare and of support for parenting is completely lacking, right? And I think that's also one of the reasons we see declining birth rates. People are like, yeah, I don't know. I can't afford it, yeah. Yeah, and I don't know about this setup anymore, you know, and I'm starting to question it. The next thing I would say to that parent is,

There are probably ways to think smaller. I think when we're struggling with our kids, we think really big and it can get away from us in terms of, okay, it's hard for you to connect with your kid. And then parents are like, I'm going to take them to the amusement park on Saturday. And then I'm like in traffic and I'm spending so much money and I'm resentful. I'm going to be without my phone for three hours. I'd be like, look, I...

With all due respect, you are rarely without your phone for five minutes. Let's just start with five minutes, right? And I'm not saying that because I don't believe in someone. I'm actually saying that because I do believe in someone. So let's just set ourselves up. So that single parent who's working three jobs, like, can you say to your kid today,

I just want to tell you you're a good kid and I love you. I want to tell you I'm sorry for the moments I yell. That's a sign of my exhaustion, not a sign of anything about you. I just did an intervention in 10 seconds. I can kind of say, okay, did one small shift today. And then I could do another small shift tomorrow. And that's kind of as good as it gets. Can we do three minutes? Okay, cool. Yeah. All right. I'm going to run through some rapid fire here, okay? Yes. Okay.

What do you tell the mother or father who doesn't want to play their kids because it's boring? I would say number one.

it's okay. Can we say that out loud? Yes. It's okay. That play feels boring. It feels boring for a couple of reasons. Our life is full of so much dopamine now and so much instant gratification where play is slow and without dopamine. So that's number one. Number two, a lot of people find play very hard with their kids because nobody played with them. And so if you realize, oh, I'm doing something that generationally

has never been done before, of course it's going to feel deeply uncomfortable. Set yourself up for something small. It's two minutes of Play-Doh. It's a five-minute game. And then I think those increments probably over time feel less boring because, again, you've worked up for them. And...

We've had to get creative in our house. We have a wrestling mat that we roll out that especially... I thought my son liked it. My daughter loves it. But yeah, yeah. Okay. Finding things that can also... Okay, awesome. Is my kid manipulating me? They're good at home or they're terrible at home, but they're good out there. So I know they can. So it must be... And I guess the meta question here is projecting adult ways of being and navigating social situations onto a child. Yeah, I don't think...

I don't think manipulating is a helpful framework for kids or adults. I actually think the single biggest thing we can change as a parent isn't a strategy, it isn't a script, it's our mindset. As soon as you think about your kid as manipulating you, you're in enemy territory with each other.

And then we're going to intervene like they're our enemy, which means they're going to get defensive. They're going to feel disconnected, power struggle, screaming, et cetera. I would say the same thing as an adult. As soon as you think my friend is manipulating me, enemy territory. It's actually just not useful. Whether or not it's true is irrelevant. I think instead you can say, what would make my kid behave one way at school and another at home? What would make me...

Behave one way at work and then give it to my husband. Is it because I'm manipulating him? I think someone there would say, oh, probably not. Maybe you're, again, you're exhausted. Maybe he's actually your safe person. Maybe he has to establish what is okay and what's not okay while still not kind of demonizing you. And I think that's what I would shift about that. Is it true that kids, by and large, do what works contextually? Yeah.

I don't think it's even that intentional where kids... I was wrong on that one. I just think our kids are trying to figure out how to kind of operate in the world and how to build skills. And they usually see us as like the safest container, which doesn't make bad behavior okay, but it does mean it's a clue... Contextually, yeah. Exactly, to what's going on. And if we see it that way, we can almost oddly become...

like almost weirdly excited when our kids have a hard moment because if you're oriented by impact instead of just by short-term ease, then you know when your kid lies to you or when your kid says, I'm not going to bed, that you actually have an opportunity to build skills for anxiety, to build skills for shame. These are things that are going to happen. Yeah.

over and over. And so you see these hard moments not as a sign your kid is manipulating you, but actually as kind of like a high impact opportunity. Like a pathway back to them. Dude, I love that. Okay, last one. Okay. What's the, oh man, we could have talked about kids and technology. We'll have to do a whole other show on that. Two more real quick. Sleepovers, yay or nay?

I'm not, I think it depends on the kid and depends on the family. So I'm not yay or nay is like a rigid rule. I think it's great in general for kids to have opportunities, to have risk, to be uncomfortable, to consolidate skills away from you. That's the only time kids do consolidate skills. Whether that happens in a sleepover or it happens in another type of environment is really based on the family and what feels right to them. That's so true.

Okay, great answer. Last one, where are you most misunderstood? I think that we get kind of lumped into...

snowflake parenting soft quote gentle and i think like we started with this idea of sturdiness really shows the difference but as a world as a society we are getting increasingly bad at holding two seemingly oppositional truths at the same time i actually think this is one of the things good inside can bring to the world it's like if we raise a generation of kids who know

I can have a relationship with my feelings and I can be firm and boundaried and assertive

actually those things work best together. We are showing that you can kind of have both at once. And that's the model of parenting where I think we can be misunderstood, but I feel so passionately about continuing to bang the table and say, yes, parents, you are an authority. You set limits. You make key decisions. You set boundaries. And while you do that, you can stay connected to your kid. You can have both at the same time.

I'm not even going to say anything after that. There we go. Appreciate it. Awesome. I've been on board with the benefits of red light therapy for a long time. And that's why I'm excited to tell you about Bonn Charge. Our lives are lived almost entirely inside under the harrowing glow of fluorescent lights, little screens, medium-sized screens, and big screens. All of this stuff affects our mood, our sleep, our anxiety, and studies are showing it. And this is why I love Bonn Charge.

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All right, that was my conversation with the amazing Becky Kennedy. And listen, we've linked to everything, the Good Inside app, which is incredible. If you're a parent and you're just looking for what to do next when you get all kinds of wild things, it's a great app. We've linked to that. We've also linked to her book, Good Inside, and all the other stuff we talked about. Thank you so much for joining us. Check her out on social media. She's a great follow. And I'll see you soon. Be good.

kind. Right now, it feels like that's pretty much all we got left. Be kind to each other and find somebody to serve. I love you guys. Stay in school. Don't do drugs. Bye.