Good Inside with Dr. Becky - When Talking To Kids About Hard Things, Choose Truth Over Comfort

Episode Date: July 11, 2023

Talking about illness or other hard topics with kids can be daunting. So it's understandable that you might want to put it off. But information doesn’t scare kids. It’s the lack of information that feels scary to them. In this conversation, Dr. Becky sits down with a mom who is struggling with how to have a hard conversation with her kids.Our podcast feed has gotten a little unruly, so in an effort to curate it for you, we are picking a few of our must listen episodes from the back catalog for you to enjoy. We will continue to rotate these episodes as the season unfolds. And as always, for more parenting scripts, resources, and full access to the entire podcast catalog visit goodinside.comJoin Good Inside Membership: bit.ly/3D3w0MQFollow Dr. Becky on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drbeckyatgoodinsideSign up for our weekly email, Good Insider: https://www.goodinside.com/newsletterOrder Dr. Becky's book, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be, at goodinside.com/book or wherever you order your books.For a full transcript of the episode, go to goodinside.com/podcast

I'm Dr. Becky and this is Good Inside. Hard conversations are just that. Hard. And when you have to have a hard conversation with a child, it's particularly difficult. The conversation I was planning to have today, with a parent on the show, was supposed to be about how to talk to your kid about money. But on this particular Thursday, the mom I spoke to was having a really tough day and needed to talk about something else.

So I'm just going to pivot and I might cry a little bit just to get it out of my system and then we're going to talk about the money, okay? Totally good. Okay, so real quick. So my husband has an insurable cancer and he was diagnosed three years ago and the thing with this cancer is that it comes back. He reacts really well to chemo but the cancer always comes back. So I think it's back. We'll know today or tomorrow. always comes back. So I think it's back. We'll know today or tomorrow. So every time it comes back, you know, I just kind of go, oh, I feel like we're doing really well emotionally, but obviously, when it comes back, I'm just kind of revisiting, you know, the trauma of the diagnosis. And this time

it's really compounded because I feel like we really need to talk or sound about it. And I just don't know how, you know. So I'm just like crying all day thinking about it. And I was like, oh, you should, like she'll think that it's like the worst, you know, session or it's like, but I really need to, like I'm gonna pull it together. I want to talk about money, but I just really need to get it on my system. No, I mean, really, Mike, I got your first of all, first of all, thank you for sharing all that with me. Second of all, that is a lot. That is, I mean, that's a lot for him.

That's obviously a lot for you. I mean, that's a lot considering, you know, you're trying to figure out the dynamic with your child too. And like, to have it seem like a way and recur, it's such an emotional roller coaster, or you never know where the next drop is coming. So those are scary roller coasters, but it's not a roller coaster. It's your real life. So that's much scarier. There's no off ramp. So this is what's here. I mean, I think this is what we should talk about. And I promise if you have some extra questions about the topic we were going to discuss,

you can send me an email and I'll send you some voice notes so you feel like you have something to use. And so we decided to change course and have this important and hard conversation. We'll be right back. All right, so let's talk about his cancer then. So tell me what you want to tell me about it in terms of, you know, how it's leading to like what's going on today and what you're struggling with yourself, with him, with your

child. Okay, so, you know, I hate when people are probably just with their tears, like when I watch movies and they're like, sorry, sorry. I'm doing this thing, but I'm just kind of feeling bad because like, you don't even much time, and I just really want to like pull myself together. Well, let me make this useful for you, okay? Well, it would be a useful to you. And the next, like, if in 20 minutes,

something like that at the end, you're like, oh, I just heard this and this, that's useful to me. Cause I can also do more of the talking and you can do more of the like being and sitting. So what would be useful to you? I love that. Okay, so I don't know how to tell my son that his dad has cancer.

My son is almost four, and my husband has an incurable cancer. He was diagnosed in March 2020, which was a pretty unfortunate timing. He has a cancer of blood. So he basically has cancer of plasma cells, which is a cancer of immune system, which made him in the highest group risk for COVID, so that was extremely scary, and our son was nine months at a time.

So I definitely feel like we do carry some PTSD from that and I don't think we entirely worked through that. And now that he understands so much more, I'm very scared and I really don't know how to verbalize it. So I just wanted to tell him something along the lines, you know, you're, that has cancer, there are different kinds of cancers, his bones are sick, he's doing well, he needs to get medication every week, because my husband is on chemo every Wednesday and he comes back home really week and depleted and my nurse unsees it. But then what happened is I went on Facebook group for multiple myeloma patients and I asked them, please tell me how did you, how did you talk to your kids about it?

And maybe 10, 15 people said, please do not mention it at all. My son, my daughter, told me after 10, 15 years, you know, that they've been terrorized, traumatized. They were living in fear of losing us every day. And that really made me pause because it never really occurred to me that I... So I just had this thought today like, wow, like I really, my husband and I really need to sit down with my son, with our son and tell him about it, but it kind of feels like I'm ending his childhood by telling him. A childhood of just like feeling like everything is safe and secure and you can't even consider something bad could happen.

Like, child, you're just ending that possibility, that effervescence, that kind of naivete, is that what you mean? Yeah, like the, you know, like the childhood of fun and innocence and yeah. Yeah. No wonder, it feels like a hard day. I mean, I mean, you have this going on with your husband, you're worried, you're going to be a childhood killer.

It's like, it's a lot going on. You know, it's a tough role. Okay, well, here's how I see it. Okay, so the number one thing I would say is there's no one right way to describe or handle situations that feel so wrong. I promise I have more specific things to say about that, but I think that's really important. Like, what's the right way to describe to my almost four-year-old that his father has multiple myeloma?

Like, I have more things to say, but the first thing I want to say to someone is like, I don't know, that's really hard to do. Really, really hard, sad things don't have linear, clean ways of describing themselves, right, or handling things. So there's something I think important about saying that to relieve ourselves of like, okay, well, if I don't do it this way, that's wrong. If I do it this way, I'm traumatizing my kid. If I do it this way, I'm not traumatizing my kid.

Like, that can't be that clean for something so nuanced and so messy. The next, I think you know this about me, but I'll say it, like, the thing I'm always guided by are principles. That's why, like, whenever I hear a new situation, everyone has new situations, the reason I think I can think through it with people is not at all because I've gone through every situation someone could gone through and I know the outcome

is just because I come back to like the things that guide me. And one thing that guides me is the belief that information doesn't scare kids as much as feeling alone and confused in the absence of information, scare skits. Now, that's a general belief. I also have a belief because I'm like a normal, reasonable human that we shouldn't like overflow children with scary information just because, you know, we want to be truth tellers. Like, I do not sit my kids down and be like,

look at all these images of these earthquakes that have happened across the world because you should know this. No. And yet, the thing that, like, makes me think about one path or another has a lot to do with, like, well, if information doesn't scare kids as much as feeling alone and confused in the absence of information scares kids, what is my kid noticing?

What is my kid picking up on? And like I can just say this for me, but it really might not be true for every other family, okay? Is that for me, if my husband had multiple myloma? I can't imagine my kid not picking up, not that he had multiple my Loma, but that things feel different. That people are crying, that dad looks sick, that dad looks weak,

that my parents are talking to each other in a different way, or maybe he'd overhear me saying multiple my Loma when I was in my closet, thinking I was talking to someone, you know, out of his earshop, but really his ears were pressed against my door, because he's like,

mom's looked upset why she being weird and going into the closet, and now I want to listen, right? And I get scared by the idea that my kid is picking up on like different pieces of things. And I know not everyone listening will be able to see this, but you can. But I see it as like,

oh, she's had multiple myeloma. She's crying. He looks weak. He's usually home on Wednesday nights, and he's not home on Wednesday nights. The two of them are going to the doctor a lot. Like, there's all these scattered pieces and kids have to put pieces together

if we don't put pieces together for them. But they often can't. So the whole, they can't have a story. They're just like confused and overwhelmed. Just like, I think if if I in a much less serious way, but if I was in a workplace and I was hearing layoffs and and and budget cuts and and this happened and where's that person who used to work here and no one said to me, hey, this is what's happening in the workplace.

Like I actually think I feel way worse picking up on scattered pieces that I couldn't quilt together. Then I would if I had someone quilt together the pieces, even if the quilt wasn't a nice quilt, even if the quilt was kind of awful, I still think I would do better having everything quilted together than having patches all over the place. So just so far, am I making any sense? Are you like Becky's stop with the quilt and metaphors? You've been told we've asked. No, it does totally make sense. I mean, it definitely resonates. But what do I do with what people said? So look, I understand what they said too. That's why I never am oriented by it's always right to tell your kid. I think about that principle. So

that a part of me wonders, okay, well, maybe he doesn't, I don't know, like maybe life is going on as usual. Maybe that could happen, right? Maybe it's like, look, Becky, right now I'm talking to you, I'm tearful, but, you know, like my kids at daycare from 8 a.m. until, you know, 7 p.m. And like, they really haven't, you know, and that, I really think, is like where the parents have

the best evidence of like what's going on in their house, you know. I guess another thing why I are on the side of sharing is I think about everything pretty long term, I think, you know, like in terms of the patterns we set with our kids today, really impact the types of kids they become when they're adults, not from single things, but patterns. And something I think about a lot is kids are brought into this world as like extremely perceptive people.

They really, they notice everything. They notice more than we do because their evolution really depends on it. And if I want my kids to continue noticing things in the world, noticing things that aren't right, noticing things they want to stand up for, noticing things that they say, hey, what is that?

That's not typical when they're 18, when they're in college, when they're adults. I can't when they're young, kind of like invalidate their perceptions just because they're inconvenient and uncomfortable. I actually think in large scale, we actually teach generation after generation of kid to stop noticing things around them because when they notice that we don't explain it to them, we don't name it or we say things like you're too young to know about that, which really kids learn

like, oh, I guess I was wrong to notice things around me. That really disturbs me. So I hear everyone saying this. I guess, you know, I also think it's important to understand the word trauma. Most people really don't understand it, right? Trauma doesn't refer to an event in and of itself. It refers to the way an event gets processed in a kid's body, it really refers to an event that's stored in a loneliness. So to me, sharing this news with your son, that's for sure, that's just one moment. But the way then, we follow up with our kid and check in, not all the time, we're not going to flood them with this, but the way we validate their emotions, the way we honor

the uncertainty and we can get into more specifics, that's really important because I wouldn't think so much do I tell my kid or not tell my kid. I don't think that's the binary that's going to mess up a kid. It's more okay. If I feel it's right to tell my kid, how am I going to handle that? Am I going to handle that first conversation? How am I going to handle their reactions? How am I going to handle their questions? So when someone says don't tell them telling my kid, you know, rob them of their childhood, I have a little skepticism that it was the telling versus I just think they're such a longer arc. Like we don't take away our kids childhood by like single moments.

So I think if you're going to tell your son, which again, like, I'm not going to lie, I bet I probably would, but I err on that side. And I also just have a hard time imagining my kid wouldn't notice such like a major thing. Like you said, you're like, I'm crying a lot, or this is emotional, right? I think my kid would notice that. The way I would say it is, first of all,

just always using real words. We often avoid using real words with kids, which makes things so much scarier. So words like multiple myeloma are like chemotherapy. To me, are much better to use than something like sick and going to the doctor. Because then, you know, years later, so many happen, your kid's sick and you're like, you're sick, you've got to go to the doctor and he's having images of like his dad losing his hair from chemotherapy. And all of a sudden, you're like, why is my kid so resistant to go to the doctor? You're like, well're sick, you've got to go to the doctor. And he's having images of like his dad losing his hair from chemotherapy. And all of a sudden, you're like, why is my kid

so resistant to going to the doctor? You're like, well, they're probably making associations. But your son doesn't have multiple myeloma. And he's not getting chemotherapy. So when you say you're sick, you're going to the doctor. He doesn't think it's in the same category, right? He understands it's different. So I know we're approaching that back to school time and I get it, I get it. We all want to stay in summer mode.

I just want to let you know that one of my favorite things to do is help parents get ahead of tough transitions. So instead of feeling overwhelmed or guilty, you end up feeling like you crushed a really important moment in your and your kids life. And back to school is exactly one of these moments. So I wanted to make sure you knew about our back to school bundle. With that bundle, you get a live workshop that gives you everything you need to know. And if you're too busy for a workshop, I totally get it, which is why you get a 10-day checklist and a mobile first approach to support.

In fact, you can text us after a hard drop-off so you don't spiral or feel like a bad parent. This is one of the most popular times to jump into membership, so check it out at goodinside.com or via the link in show notes. So to me the way to start with a kid with any uncomfortable situation is giving a little framework is just saying hey, I want to talk to you about something. You may have a lot of questions, you may have different feelings. I do too.

Just want to get you ready for that kind of conversation. To me, that's very different than your kids like about to watch TV, they think. And you're like, hey, your dad is multiple myeloma and they're a little bit like, whoa, what? I can totally take off guard. So I encapsulate it a little bit. And then I'd use real words and be simple and direct. Your dad has a type of illness,

or maybe he's delivering it, maybe he's saying, I do, right? I have a type of illness, your dad is a type of illness, called multiple myloma. That's a type of sickness that he has, kids of our egocentric, I don't have it and you don't have it. And we can't get it from being near him. It's not like a cold, we don't have it and you don't have it. And we can't get it from being near him. It's not like a cold, we can't get it. So it's a type of sickness he has.

And he's getting a treatment for that sickness and that treatment is called chemotherapy. And I'm gonna keep going, you're gonna tell me, I don't wanna say something inaccurate. So feel free to jump in, be like, that's not really how it works because I'm definitely not an expert in these things. Right, and I just wanna let you know,

the treatment chemotherapy that helps with the multiple myeloma, that's good, also makes him tired, might make him lose his hair, might make him really sleepy. So you might notice in the next couple of weeks that dad, I'm just making this up, isn't able to take you to daycare on Friday like he usually does because he's getting the chemo therapy. So I'm going to do that. That's where he's going.

And you might notice that dad's mapping a little bit more. Do you know why? And I wouldn't be surprised because he's tired from the chemo therapy. Exactly. That's exactly right. And you also might have already noticed me crying more than usual. I'm crying because the multiple my Loma is something your dad's going through and we have to like figure out a lot of things for him. And so it's on my mind. It's hard, but you should know, even when I cry, I'm still your mom who can take care of you. Crying's just something we do when tricky things happen.

Right, now you don't have to give this all at once, but all of this in a way is language that's like, it's very simple, it's very not fear-monger-y. I'm not like explaining all the details of multiple myeloma to my four-year-old, if he asks, you're good, but like my guess is he probably won't. And I'm really focused on the way this is impacting him and his work. So things he might notice. And I'm giving him a story to understand. Instead of kind of like crossing my fingers,

and like I don't even know what I'm hoping, am I hoping he doesn't notice? People would say he's not asking questions, well just because someone is not asking questions, doesn't mean they don't notice. And now they're just noticing and feeling confused and alone, I don't think anybody wants that. So I'm trying to a little bit proactively fill in,

you know, the blanks, or thread some pieces that quilt together. And then I think you can say something like, you're probably gonna have questions at some point. And you can always come to me with your questions and something I promise you, as I'll always tell you the truth. And then he's probably going to look at you. And the next thing he's going to say is,

can I have my pretzels now? And you're going to be like, are you serious? Like, I just literally practiced that for like five days. And that's what you have to say. And it's easy to think, oh, they don't get it. Like did that totally go over their head? No, it does not mean that. It's just a lot to digest.

And like us, when we hear something that's tricky to digest, we're often like, yeah, yeah, I gotta like process this like give me time. So I was kids, you know, and I would just say if he says that like, oh yeah, make it totally up pretzels. Now because life goes on in our house as usual. We can apprezzles and make you dinner. And yeah, I'm sure we'll end up talking

about it here and there again. All right, pretzel time. If he asks questions, I'm happy to, you know, model how I'd go about that too. He might, but I think the key point is set up the conversation. Use real words when it comes to illness, naming out loud that you don't have it, your kid doesn't have it, and nobody's getting it, is super important.

Because we take that for granted, but as kids are always assessing their safety, that's actually off in what we think, and if we don't name that, they wonder about it. And then thinking about where in my kid's life is this really relevant. So if you're thinking, oh, like my partner always coaches my kid's soccer games, and he won't be able to, that's really relevant for your kid to know. So really focusing on their world,

and then just like allowing it to sit and seeing where it goes from there. Tell me your thoughts. Yeah, I love that. That's very useful. I advise to use real words. I never, I never, never thought about it that he might get sick and he might, of course,

he would make a connotation. What do you think about, because you said use the word multiple myeloma, what about using word cancer? Because I think I have a lot of anxiety around that. Some, you know, someone told me that the kids, one of the kids at school, they had their grandma died, and they were like, did your dad die yet? You know, so I think I just don't, yeah.

I think the thing with the word cancer, interestingly enough, is the reason it can feel extra scary to kids is because of, again, the lack of specificity. So we all know cancer is like a huge range, right? There's some cancers that people live with. There's some cancers that unfortunately people die of very quickly, right? There's some cancers that people live with. There's some cancers that, unfortunately, people die very quickly, right? And so the problem with, they're no problem with say-the-word cancer. But when you say to a kid what I would say is you might, again, I'm trying to get to a kid's mind, like what may happen, you might hear the word cancer and something you should know

is your dad has one type of cancer called multiple myeloma or might someone else be like has you know lung cancer whatever it is. And you might hear that word. There's a lot of types of cancer. Some people live with cancer for a very long time. Some people die of cancer. And because it's not as specific as multiple myeloma, to me it actually can lead to scarier things with kids, not because there's anything problematic about the word, just because it can get generalized to so many other people's stories and experiences that actually aren't the same as yours.

So that's why I actually think multiple myeloma is super helpful, not because I'm trying to avoid the word cancer at all, but just because I can be a little bit more targeted in my kid having the word for what their father actually has. And yet, the real words, like they matter so much, like the other ones always backfire. You know, I remember a family coming to me for, you know, I think it was like their six-year-old time, massive sea issues. So many sea issues are like a kind of happen out of nowhere.

We totally worked through it, but one of the things that really gave me insight, because again, it's not like every family needs the same thing, was like probably six months before the grandfather had died, but they told their kids grandfather went to sleep for a very long time. Well, they now haven't seen their grandfather in six months. And like, do I think that contributed to their kids' intense fear at night? Yeah, I really do. If you could go to sleep and never come back again, like that makes sleep. So we think we avoid something. Because kids are trying to make sense of the world, we always end up creating much bigger problems.

You know, so, die, death, multiple myeloma, chemotherapy. To me, it's, first of all, it's empowering. You don't feel like you're lying. And it's actually clarifying. And therefore, very holding to a kid. Yeah, it's interesting. My son is very interested in death too. He's asking about death a lot.

So I guess that's, that was also additional burden on me and kind of you know, was adding to my anxiety. How do I manage his anxiety of losing his dad? Yeah. Great question. So let's go there. I remember having this conversation. My son wasn't even three and there was no cancer that I had, but I remember him looking at me and saying, you could die at any time, right? Like you could, like at any moment, you could not come home like you could just die. And I was like, wow, like I can't believe

we're having this conversation, you're not even three. But they don't realize for young kids, birth and death, if I they're interested in their private parts they are, they're interested in how to make a baby and dying. I mean, if you think about it as kids start to really wake up to the world and try to understand themselves in the world, you can't understand yourself in the world without understanding birth and death. So they're like very focused on the bookends of life. And it makes sense as they're

trying to figure out what's going on around them. So do you feel like he might just look at you and be like, his dad going to die of multiple myeloma? Like, is he the kind of kid? He might just say it just like that? Or is he going to die? Oh myeloma. Like, is he the kind of kid? He might just like, say it just like that. Or is he going to die? Oh, yeah, for sure. I just told him your grandma is turning 77 and he said, is she going to die? Yeah. So we can focus first on your husband's, but then we could also talk about that question

with grandma because I definitely have thoughts about how to answer that. What is the kind of medical truth of it? You said it's incurable, is it incurable? People live within anachronic way, is it incurable? Is in your wrestling with a very sad reality of like, yeah, he will die of this in some amount of years? Yeah, I'm definitely, yeah, well, nobody really knows. So the doctor, my alma specialist told us that three years ago, when he was diagnosed, that the survival rate is 5-10 years. You know, Google says it's 5-3-5 years, but I know I actually met a few people that

were cured for Multumiloma, and I know there's plenty of people on the group, the Facebook group that I mentioned. I know that people live for 20, 30 years, even more. There's constantly new drugs coming out. So it's interesting. My husband is actually a doctor, and he works at the cancer center. And he, since the cancer center and he

since the beginning he was like that's a good cancer to have. That's his attitude. Yeah. So, personal thank you for sharing, calls me. I know it brings up so hard things to talk about. So, you says, it was Dad gonna die of this. I think based on what you just told me, because I haven't been like, the answer usually is tell the truth. Like, you know, like, there's something simple about coming to that.

Like, it's Dad gonna die of this. I want to tell you the truth, sweetie. Like, we don't know. We don't know. And something I've said to my kids about different things from an early age is something you can count on in this family is I will always tell you the truth, even when it's uncomfortable. Always. And the truth is we don't know. We know he's seeing good doctors.

And if this is true, I'd say, we know he's not dying now. As doctors aren't worried about his dying now. I don't know if that's true if it is, it's say that. We know that there's a lot of doctors doing something called research, trying to find more medicines to help multiple myeloma. And I know that when we know more reacting to chemo very well. That was also the reason why we weren't really bringing it up

to my son. But so then I think you could also say, if that's true, you could say is dad dying of this? No, he's responding really well to chemotherapy. He's not dying. Right, like I just, I get that's totally true too, right? So no, he's not. Right, I mean, me and you know, we all die of something, right?

So, like, but the answer for right now is no. You can see you could say that. Another way of kind of speaking back to that question about his dad, about his grandma, which I think is really helpful for kids who I used to always say to my son, like, you're a kid with a busy brain, and it can be hard to be a kid with a busy brain.

Like always, just like thinking about these deep things. And you know, oh, so grandma's 70 something, she's gonna die soon. She'd be like, wow, death is really on your mind. You're really thinking about dying and how long people live. Like you're thinking about grandma and how many years she's gonna still be here, huh? Like in some ways, you're thinking about grandma and how many years she's going to still be here, huh?

Like in some ways, you're just like helping them encapsulate and understand their own thinking process. Right. And sometimes validating that is actually what a kid's looking for. You know, and they're like, yeah. And then sometimes kids like, yes, so will she? So will she? You know what I mean? And then they're like, okay, like now they're they're clearly want something else for me. But sometimes I would say that to my kids often. Like you're really thinking about death. Like you're really thinking about it. It's really on your mind. Seems hard to think, cut anything else right now.

You're really worried about that. You're really worried about that right now. I can tell you. And so instead of almost just taking their question at face value, I'm almost doing more. I'm like looking into their mind and noticing the thing, they're a little bit consumed by, and that can feel really holding.

Right, I imagine you, I don't know, let's pretend you wanted to move and you're like, what about this place and what about this place and what about this place of your partner just answered each question. That would be different than like, wow, you're really thinking about moving, huh? Like in some ways it's like more representative

of what's happening than each individual question. And look, with this conversation, I mean it, like do I think it's wrong to not tell your kid, I don't, like I get that. And that's why I think families have to take information and values they have and combine it with like the information only they know about what's happening in front of them and what feels right. And even after this, if you're like, you know what, I just still don't think it's right

to tell him. I would tell you, then you shouldn't tell him. I don't know what's right. I do think sometimes when we think about talking to kids about tricky topics, we feel it'll loss for words. So I feel very invested in giving parents words to be able to explain things in straightforward ways. But that's not a way of saying, I think they always should. It's just nice to have options to say, if I'm going to say it, I think this resonates, or I'm going to change it a little bit. But also that I still very much have the option of saying, you know what, I'm just going to wait a couple more months and see how it plays out. Like that's, again, like you're the expert in your family.

It's just nice to feel equipped, you know, with different pathways. Totally, no, I know that I wanted to tell him, he saw my husband feeling really weak yesterday and he woke up like five times at night, it was very upset. So yeah, I definitely, I wanted to tell him, I definitely wanted to tell him. I'm committed to telling him.

I just didn't have the words. I just didn't have the specific script. So, thank you so much for that. And look, I also just want to say before we end, having a sick partner, thinking about a community with our kid, give another kid you take care of too. Like, I mean this and I'd be probably not I'm like a champion for this.

Like you get lost in the mix, like our can easily get lost in the mix of like the different people we're all caring for. So being the partner of someone, you know, with a chronic condition and helping care give for them and care give for your kids and manage these conversations, like it's taxing and just want to like name that and remind you to put those things in your calendar or to speak to yourself in the way. It's also like nourishing and honoring for you.

Thanks for listening. To share a story or ask me a question, go to goodinside.com slash podcast. You could also write me at podcast at goodinside.com. Parenting is the hardest and most important job in the world. And parents deserve resources and support so they feel empowered, confident, and connected. I'm so excited to share good inside membership. The first platform that brings together content and experts you trust with a global community of like valued parents. It's totally game-changing.

Good inside with Dr. Becky is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Newsom at Magnificent Noise. Our production staff includes Sabrina Farhi, Julia Nat, produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Newsom at Magnificent Noise. Our production staff includes Sabrina Farhi, Julia Nat and Kristen Muller. I would also like to thank Eric Obelsky, Mary Panico, and the rest of the Good Inside team. And one last thing before I let you go.

Let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves, even as I struggle, and even as I have a hard time on the outside, I remain good inside. you