Good Inside with Dr. Becky - Your Kid's Non-Negotiable Needs

Episode Date: April 11, 2023

Your kid tells you that they absolutely NEED the newest version of Fortnite, or an iPad, or a puppy but what do they really need?...to feel safe and secure and loved. This week, Dr. Becky sits down with physician and author Gabor Maté to talk about the four non-negotiable needs of every child, as well as the relationship between resilience and empathy.Join Good Inside Membership: http://bit.ly/3ZNjlWUFollow 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. You know, I have three adult kids and when I was a parent, I didn't know what their needs were. I had my own issues that I hadn't worked out, you know, from my own trauma and childhood. And then my children showed issues. I naturally assumed there was something along with them. Rather than asking myself, what is it in the parenting environment that is not meeting their needs? And what can I do to bring myself into a more grounded and understanding place? So I could actually meet their needs rather than demand that they need my expectations. It's a totally different way of planting.

We'll be right back. Quick note, paid partnerships keep the good inside podcast free for our audience. I want you to know that I take partnerships seriously because I take my relationship with you seriously. So I only partner with brands that I trust and feel great about using in my own home. So, if you're like me, when you hear the word vitamin, you say to yourself, yeah, I probably need some of those. Well, when I was on my book tour, I met the founders of parallel, the first and only vitamin company founded by OBGYN and team of women's health doctors.

And when I was telling them why I've never started a vitamin routine, they looked at each other with a knowing smile and said, we got it. We know women want to take care of their bodies. We want it to make that easier by taking care of the details, the ingredients you trust, all of it. Their 30-day supply comes in daily packets, you just pop in your bag, so you never forget to take it. No matter what stage of parenting you're at, from trying to conceive, to postpartum, to

having toddlers or elementary schoolers, they have the right vitamin pack for all of us. Best part for me, no guesswork, no stress. And their vitamins are super easy on my stomach, which for me is a big difference from others I've tried. The parallel founders are good inside podcast listeners, and they wanted to give the pod community 15% off their first three months. So use code goodinside15 at parallel.co. That's p-e-r-e-l-e-l.co. So I recently sat down to talk with Dr. Gabor Matei, someone whose work has had a profound impact on so many of you, and I'm excited to share this conversation with you. Dr. Matei has had a highly varied career.

He started out as an English teacher, then he returned to medical school to work in family practice, and then he spent 20 years working in harm reduction clinics in Vancouver's downtown Eastside. We're going to touch on many important topics today, such as sleep training and the relationship between resilience and empathy. But first, let's jump right into a conversation about so-called oppositional defiance disorder. That goboran I started having in the booth before we realized we had even started recording. I feel like my passion project or kids I call deeply feeling kids who are often labeled with oppositional defiant disorder or some other awful set of terms, which just even forces a parent to look at their kid more

as a bad kid. And obviously, as you know, just further identify that way. And yeah, when those parents hear, like, I like your kid, you have a great kid. They're struggling, they're really struggling. And we're gonna figure it out. But I like your kid. They're like, wow, like nobody has said or insinuated

anything like that. And it is relieving. Like, wait, maybe I don't have a budding sociopath. I just, if I can make some changes, everything can get a little bit better, right? Now, we haven't started the interview yet, have we? Oh, no, now we should start. Hi.

Now, I was only going to say because it's so then concerned, opposition-defined sort of doesn't even exist, you know? Well, we're recording. So let's, let's, this is like music to my ear. My words when people say that is like, I fucking hate those words So you have a you have a nicer way of saying it. Tell me about oppositional defined disorder. So

When we define or when we diagnose a child with opposition defined disorder We're assuming that the child does a disorder some kind of a quasi disease or dysfunction of the brain or the mind Not only doesn't unexist in real life. ODD, it can't even theoretically exist. And here's why, if my foot was broken, would make any difference to the brokenness of my foot, whether or not I was talking to you, whether or not I even knew you, if I had a flu, would make any difference whether or not I was talking to you, or whether I even knew you. No, because those are

disorders within my own body. But could I to you, or whether you even knew you. No, because those are disorders within my own body. But could I oppose you if I didn't know you? Could I oppose you if we weren't in a relationship of some kind? No, there's nothing there. You can't. So opposition is, by definition, happens in a relationship. So that's the first point.

If that is the case, why we diagnose in the child and sort of diagnose in a relationship, that's the first point. The second point is, who are these kids who are oppositional? They're kids who've lost their healthy, trusting contact with adults, and therefore they don't trust adults. It's very natural not to obey somebody that you don't trust, but the lack of trust, the lack of relationship,

it wasn't a child's fault. It happened, it wasn't the parents' fault either, actually. It happens in a culture where kids' are parents are increasingly alienated from each other for all kinds of reasons. If I were to push on you right now, either emotionally or physically, you would oppose me, you'd resist me.

So this resistance on the part of children has to do with the degree of pushing they receive on the part of adults. And so the adults shift to behavior, the kids change almost immediately. I couldn't agree more. And I always think when people tell me my kids been diagnosed this way,

almost just very practically, the way I'm thinking about my kid, the way I'm describing my kid, does it make me wanna be close with my kid, feel on the same team, or does my framework make me just thinking about my kid, the way I'm describing my kid, does it make me wanna be close with my kid, feel on the same team, or does my framework make me just not like my kid? And I try to tell myself with my own kids, like, until I'm in the first framework,

I shouldn't do anything, because nothing good comes from the second framework. And I just don't know anyone who's like, my kid is oppositional, defiant. Like, what, oh, how amazing are they? Like, inherently, it reinforces the dynamic that got things there in the first place. And then also, a kid is growing up with, you know, being looked at as a bad kid. That's the image reflected back to them. And I mean, I know what it's like even as an adult,

when I've been struggling in any relationship to be looked at as a bad person. And it's, it's eviscerating. Of somebody's pushing on you, and we use this interesting phase, this kid is acting out. What do you do with the kid when you're acting out? Why don't we think about it first? What does it mean to act out? Like when I say acting out, most people think the kid is oppositional or obstructive or

rude or aggressive or something's wrong with the kid. But if you look at the actual word acting out, it actually means something. When do we act out? We act out when we don't have the language to say it in words. And what they're acting out are the emotional needs and the emotional frustrations. So our job is parents' educators.

So the college is not the giant, fixed-to-charge behavior, but to understand the message that's being acting on. I love the way you described acting out. I've never heard it described that way, and it's so true with thinking about not having the language. I've always thought about kind of quote acting out as I don't know, the feelings or urges

or sensations inside my body that I haven't yet developed skills to contain, not like suppress in my body, but just allow them to live inside my body. They're so overpowering those skills that they literally explode out of me as a hit, as a scream, as a f you or whatever, however it comes out. But I think we come together here and see these behaviors are a sign of what our kids are struggling with or need, not a sign of who they are.

No, generally they're acting out their own needs. I mean, they're acting out their frustrations and we get frustrated when our needs aren't met. So in this culture, parents are not educated about children's needs for healthy development. They're educated about how to get the kid to behave about how they want them to behave, which runs contrary to the child's needs.

And if you're a cardiner or a series of animals, you have to begin with understanding, what are the organisms' needs for development? You're not going to go a healthy garden. If you don't know what your plants need, and it's the same with parenting, children are born with certain non-negotiable needs when I say non-negotiable needs. I mean, needs that nature evolutionarily programmed into them. You meet those needs, those children will grow up beautifully. If you don't meet the needs, they don't have problems, and then we're going to diagnose the kid with the problem, instead of recognizing how like with my children, you know, I have three adult kids, and when I was a parent, I didn't know what the needs were.

I had my own issues that I hadn't worked out, you know, from my own trauma and childhood. And then my children showed issues. I naturally assumed there was something wrong with them, rather than asking myself, as I was finally guided to looking at, what is it in the parenting environment that is not meeting their needs, that is causing them to be even certain ways. And what can I do to bring myself into a more grounded and understanding place so I could actually meet their needs rather than demand that they need my expectations? It's a totally different way of parenting. Yeah. And so I want to double-click on that for a second, non-negotiable needs. I'm sure listeners are saying like, oh, can he, like, what I want to write them down, right? Like, what are children's non-negotiable needs. I'm sure listeners are saying like, oh, can he, like, what I want to write them down, right? Like, what are children's non-negotiable

needs? There are four basic ones. The first one is for an attachment relationship, image to feel, image to the child, he's absolutely secure. Attachment is a very powerful dynamic in human life because attachment means the desire to be close to somebody for the sake of being taken care of or for the sake taken care of the other, and human beings need each other. So our brains are wired with a powerful attachment circuit. Now, the more immature you are, the more helpless and dependent you are, the greater your attachment needs. So infants have absolutely infinite attachment needs. And that attachment needs is not just

for physical nurturing, but for emotionally being held and seen and accepted. The second need is that inside that relationship, the child should have rest and rest means the child shouldn't have to work to make their relationship work. It's not that I'll accept you and love you, unlike you if you behave such and such, if you cute, if you're smart, if you're compliant, no. There's nothing that you have to do to make this relationship work. The third need is the child has an absolute need to be able to experience all their emotions.

Our brains are wired by evolution, for joy, for play, for love, for grief, for fear, for panic, for anger. These are all essential emotions for survival. When parents are told that angry children should be punished for being angry, what you tell the parent is that the child is not allowed to experience their emotions. One of the things I think that I know parents find so illuminating because it's not explained to them is there's a difference between behavior and feelings?

So I think it, you know, I remember a parents sitting, I was kind of saying something similar one day in my private practice in parents like, oh, so it's okay, my son just hits people. I was like, no, well, first of all, I don't even know if it's okay or not okay, it just happened. Like when my coffee's billed, it wasn't okay or not okay,

it just happened, but sure our kid needs our protection then to stop themselves from hurting someone and stop someone else from being hurt. That is separate from the emotion of anger that they haven't learned the skills yet to regularly. Absolutely, and I completely agree with you and it's two things I would say in response. One is if a child, for example, is habitually hitting other kids, we have to ask why, because that is a very frustrated child. And why is that why, because that is the very first rated child.

And why is that child first rated? Because then needs aren't being met. Of course you don't allow kids to hit each other. You know, so you work with them. You're very angry right now. No hitting, but you're very angry right now. So you don't punish somebody. You don't allow the behavior,

but you don't hold the same motion against them. And just differentiating these things again, is not taught to us when we take a baby home from the hospital. Not only is a kid not bad for having a tantrum, but here's something else important. When my kid is a tantrum, that doesn't mean I have to change my rule, right? My boundaries, I would say, if I were to say, don't dictate my kid's

feelings, they're allowed to be upset when I make a decision and their feelings don't dictate my boundaries. Nobody's bad. It's inconvenient. It's not pleasant. I don't like that moment with my kids. I'm not like, oh, how amazing is this? No, it's like, oh, okay, I gotta get through this.

But nobody's in the wrong. Nobody's bad. No, that's right. The whole label bad already reflects a certain way of looking at something. Yes. And there really are no bad kids. Now the fourth need of children,

so the the attachment really shaped the rest, and the fourth one is free spontaneous play, art and nature, and free spontaneous play that emerges from the child, is not programmed for them by some external institution or toy. It's a more essential than intellectual stimulation, because the emotional scaffolding of our brains provides the template for healthy intellectual development. And so in our kindergarten, in our schools,

and in our homes, there should be farm emphasis on spontaneous creative play than on the teaching of facts or the teaching of technology. Why do they play? Because this is how they develop into adults. And we've taken that away from our kids. So those four needs in our society are frustrated in so many ways. And then we wonder why so many kids are diagnosed with this or that, so-called disorder.

And then we're trying to treat the kid and medicate the kid instead of looking at the environment in the context, which creates the problem in the first place. Yeah, people ask me a lot, I'm sure they ask you too, like, is it harder to parent these days? Like, is it harder? We see all these statistics of kids and the things they're struggling with and suicide rates and, you know, in teenagers. And one of the things related to your last point about play, and also just related to attachment,

and what kids want more than anything else is to feel connected to their parents. And I know you're open about parts of your parenting too, but one of the things I think about a lot is what percentage of the time when I looked at my parents did they have a device between me and them, like literally, it was zero. There weren't devices you could carry around.

What percentage of the time that one of my kids looks at me? Do they not even see my face, but might they see literally something blocking their attachment with me? Not only their screens, my screens, right? Yes. Apparently, it's a much more difficult than it should have been or it is done by nature. If we understand human evolution, then for hundreds of thousands of years, human beings and our precursors lived in small bandhunts together, groups, where children were always around their parents.

And even on species, homostapiens, no. In the United States today, 25% of mothers have to go back to work within two weeks or giving birth. The mother doesn't intend it that way. It's economic constraints that foreshort of go back to work, but it means that the children loses the relationship, the constant contact with the parent, that his, her, their system naturally demands for a much longer period of time. And even parents who are able to stay home, they're very stressed, they don't have the support of the community, the clan, the extended family, they're isolated. Hey, so I want to let you in on something

that's kind of counterintuitive about parenting. The most impactful way we can change our parenting actually doesn't involve learning any new parenting strategies. The most impactful way we can change our parenting is by giving ourselves more resources so we can show up as sturdier so we can show up as calm amidst the inevitable chaos. It's what our kids need from us more than anything else. This is why I'm doing my mom rage

workshop again. I'm doing it again because it is one of my most popular ones to date. It's coming up July 19th but no worries if you can't make it live. It'll be available as a recording for whenever you have the time. I promise it's really the best investment we can make, not only in ourselves, but also in our kids. Can't wait to see you there at GoodInside.com. So we have a good inside community,

there's so many parents, and I ask them to share questions for you. Let's hear from Megan. Hi, my name is Megan and I'm a mom to a three and a half year old and a two year old. My question is for Dr. Gabor Matee as it relates to sleep training, specifically the fervor method or other forms that are more or less that. My understanding is that he used to advocate for it

and promote sleep training as a physician. And now he believes that it's harmful to an infant's development and their long-term emotional health. So my question is, does he believe that sleep training is detrimental to development in an environment that otherwise promotes a secure attachment with primary caregivers? And what would he say to all the parents

who have practiced sleep training no children? I personally have sleep trains one of my children and not the other. I'm curious to know what he says about the long-term impact of sleep training on the one child I did sleep train. Yes, first of all, we have to say that sleep training would desire it to practice it

as very understandable on our society. When we were printing in its communities and its groups and extended families, parents did other adults to hold the kid while they're rested. So how evolved is there was no need for sleep training. A bear doesn't have to sleep training the bear cups. Cat mother doesn't have to sleep training the little kittens.

Kids don't need to be trained how to sleep. They know how to sleep. It's just that they have needs. And one of their needs is that attached in relationship. And that attached in relationship is not timed by the hour. So when they're lonely, they cry. That cry is designed to bring the parent to pick them up and to hold them. So Dr. Spock, who for decades was the parenting maven to millions of parents, talked about the chronic resistance to sleep of the infant. The infant doesn't have resistance to sleep. If you just sleep when they want to sleep and they want to be awake when they're awake, and as they go older they learn to sleep to the night. The Spock's advice was that how you resist the

tyranny of the infant, that's what he called it, is you put them in a bed, you walk out of their room and you shut the door and you don't go back. In other words, you ignore the child's desperate cries for attachment and who I'm being held. So, what are we teaching children, why are kids crying, either because they're physically uncomfortable or hungry or because emotionally they need you? When you don't meet that need, what message does the child get that the needs don't matter? That they don't matter. That the emotions will not be responded to.

On the from the physiological level, the kid is stressed. That's why they're crying. When the kid is stressed, cortisol, the stress hormone is coursing through their body. When you pick up the child, the stress hormone, is coursing through their body. When you pick up the child, the cortisol level will go down. When you don't pick up the child, the stress gets worse, until the child gives up, becomes apathetic and goes back to sleep to escape from the distress. Now you've trained them to sleep. You've also taught them that their emotions, their very existence, doesn't matter to you.

No, this is in a very, this is a very stark way of putting it. However, it's not the only factor. So if parents absolutely have to sleep to their kids because their life is impossible otherwise, I'm not here to blame them for that. It's not the way it ought to be. Our culture really lets parents down by putting that kind of pressure on them. What, for example, if there was decent child support so that parents didn't have to go back to work, then they wouldn't have to sleep all night, then they could look after their kids. So this is a not personal parenting failures. We're looking at a whole culture that just doesn't value

the importance of connected parenting. But if but but but if you are in that situation, at least recognize that you are whether you like it or not, hurting your kid and compensate for doing the day, hold them a lot, really respond to them, attach with them, connect with them, attune with them, then you're mitigating the harm. So this is such a thoughtful question from Megan. And Gabor, one of the things that you talk about a lot, which I appreciate, his parents are not equipped or set up for any type of kind of success

in the world we live in, right? The demands on adults and on families versus the lack of, you know, support of any type always would mean. If you're not set up for success, everybody in any situation would have to be making decisions that are less than ideal. Exactly.

So I know for me, as a pragmatist, what I would say to parents, also listening, is we do the best we can with the resources we have. And what I know from a lot of parents who have decided to sleep train is the version of a human being they could be while they weren't sleeping was really, really low. And if that's you listening, what I want to say is putting any one decision aside, making a decision that you feel like I have to do this, even though it doesn't feel good, to show up for the other hours.

Like, I understand that. And those are hard decisions to make and decisions that you probably had to make. And I do think whatever research shows to me about sleep training, I have a hard time imagining that it's that versus things that are not able to be measured, attuning to your kid during the day. Like you said, picking them up, even saying, that it's that versus things that are not able to be measured, attuning to your kid during the day.

Like you said, picking them up, even saying, hey, last night you cried a lot, you wanted me and I didn't come and I know that felt bad. And yes, for someone's thinking, I should say that to my six month old, yes, yes, you should, do they understand they do? Do they understand the same way a 16 year old would? No, but yes, they understand and they get it.

And that matters. And you did not, I'm just gonna say this, you did not mess up your kid forever if you let them cry when you needed sleep. And if it feels right, Megan, to say to your kid even though they might look at you like, what are you talking about? You know, when you were a baby and you, you know, you cried sometimes at night and I didn't come

and I know at least the part of your memory that's with words doesn't remember it, but I remember it and it felt bad and I wanted to let you know that I know that felt bad and I love you. Like that, I always think about repair. I think that matters. What do you think about that? Well, I totally give it to you. And that's what I was trying to say to a previous question, is if you have to do it because the circumstances just constrain you to do it, at least realize what's

being lost and compensate for it as best you can. So sometimes we have to give up things that nature would have us do. And most parents, when you sleep in their babies, if you ask them, how did you feel while you're doing it? Their heart was breaking because their parents' instinct was screaming for them to pick up that child. So if you really decide that you have to, just as you say them, Becky, at least a tune with the child and empathize with them.

And I want to move to another question that's also about childhood. So this is a question I'm going to play. Let's listen it together. I have a question for Gabor around building resilience and empathy in our kids. I love the way you teach resilience as the ability to tolerate discomfort. But for so many of us, resilience was taught as being tough, not letting things get you down, pushing through, and often shutting down feelings. I've also noticed people that don't seem to cope well with discomfort, feel everything very deeply

and have great empathy, but often as a result of codependency. So I'm curious to hear Gababor's thoughts on how to foster resilience and empathy in our kids simultaneously. Is validating feelings the key and is this enough? Well, there's no contradiction between resilience and empathy. In fact, the more resilient the person is the more likely they're going to be able to be empathetic to others. So resilience is not pushing through. You know, in the book, I give the example of a very famous politician, Hillary Clinton, who the night she was nominated for the Democratic presidency in 2016, they had a video of her

life shown on public television in front of the thousands assembled at the Democratic Convention. And she was talking about her mother helped to become resilient and tough. And the example she gave was that she's four years old. She's being bullied by neighborhood kids. And she went into the house to seek protection from the mom mom and the mom says, there's no room for courage in the house. Now you get out there and deal with those kids. And this was given as an example of resilience building. And many of the people watching it, the commentators, the journalists, nobody realized that what was being celebrated is the traumatization of a child.

Because a four-year-old child who runs for protection from mother is not a coward. She's a child. That's the natural thing to do. The real message to the child is that there's no room for your vulnerability. You have to suck it up. Sixty years later, the candidate becomes ill with pneumonia. Do you remember what she did with that? She got feverish and dehydrated, and she collapsed in the street. Her sacred

serviceman had took the lift her into the van because she was sucking it up for the sake of continuum. That's not resilience. That's ignoring your own needs is what it is. Resilience says, when you squeeze her rubber ball and it gets de and smaller, we let it go, it bones back to its original size and capacities. Resurances in human terms is the capacity to grow from negative experience, not to become more constricted. That's what resilience is. Now, how you teach resilience is you teach faith in the person's capacity to heal and to understand themselves.

And how you do that is by fully accepting and loving and supporting the child. And when you do that, they will also naturally develop empathy. Yeah, like I mean, going back to attachment and connection and aloneness, right? When a kid is really upset about something, they were bullied, they were left out,

they didn't make the soccer team. Their body's gonna remember whether that feeling was encoded in a loneliness or encoded in attachment. And we all know this power in numbers, right? So your kid's body remembers your parental presence around that tough emotion, which inherently makes it a little easier to cope with over time. And so, yeah, the idea of resilience is not as toughening up, but I love what you said, too,

of kind of expanding from an experience or growing or not being alone. You know, it is a big difference. Just like I think empathy, there's a big difference, too, right? Empathy to me, it's not feeling other people's feelings for them, right. Actually, empathy requires really firm boundaries between what is mine and what is yours. So, people who are empathic don't take on the feelings of others at all. Maybe that's more co-dependency if we had to name it as something. But empathy actually requires seeing, oh, that is that person's feelings, not mine. I care about that person. I care about those feelings, but I don't have to take them into my body and process them

as if they're my own. Exactly, and a lot of what people call compassion fatigue, I often say that nobody gets tired of being compassionate. Compassion is part of our nature. What they get tired of is taking on other people's problems because they lack compassion for themselves. You know, so that empathy is both fellow feeling with boundaries. It's not fellow feeling without boundaries. So knowing that there's a lot of parents listening to this, knowing that also it's easy when we hear new information to go into, oh, I'm the worst, I messed up my kid forever mode.

I know I can do that too. Any last kind of words for, you know, for the parents here? Yeah, well, I often talk to groups of parents or groups, image there's a lot of parents and I say, if you're worried about having screwed up your kids, don't worry about it. Of course, you did. We all do, you know, we can't help it in this particular culture. I certainly passed on my traumas to my kids. First of all, look at yourself. The fact is you did your best. We all do our best. Our best is constrained by what we know,

what we don't know about ourselves, when we become parent. When I became a parent, as a whole, I didn't know about myself. And to the extent that I didn't, I passed on some measures to my kids. But they're also resilient, they were loved. It's not a question of, are they without problems?

Is do they have the capacity to work out those problems? So, drop the guilt is what I say at parents. You did your best in a very difficult culture in what I would say is a toxic environment for parenting in many ways. And stay open to your kids at whatever age. If you have to own what you missed or what you did that you shouldn't have done, own it. Your guilt doesn't help your kids. In fact, your kids don't want to be seen through the eyes of your guilt. Nobody wants to be seen as somebody else's mistake or somebody else's failure. Your kids

don't deserve that, they don't need it, and it's not good for them. Yeah, realize that you probably did missed some things that you ought to have done. You perhaps did some things that you shouldn't have done, but you did do your best and continue to do your best. It's a never too late to develop a great relationship with your kids, never. I love that. 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 and Kristen Muller. I would also like to thank Eric Kabelski, Mary Panneco, Ashley Valensweila

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.