The Daily Stoic - Dr. Becky Kennedy on the Stoic Art of Emotional Regulation (and Raising Great Kids)

Episode Date: December 16, 2023

On this weekend episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan talks with clinical psychologist Dr. Becky Kennedy on how we emotionally vaccinate, the ability to cope through stress, educating our kids on emotions and her new book Good InsideDr. Becky Kennedy is an American clinical psychologist who is founder and chief executive officer of the Good Inside company, an online parenting advice service.  She has been called the "millennial parent whisperer" by Time Magazine and is a number one New York Times bestseller for her book Good Inside. As a mom of three, when she was first starting out, she practiced a popular behavior-first, reward-and-punishment model of parent coaching. But, after a while, something struck her: those methods feel awful–for kids and parents.  She put together everything she knew about attachment, mindfulness, emotion regulation, and internal family systems theory, and translated those ideas into a new method for working with parents. www.GoodInside.comIG: (drbeckyatgoodinside)Podcast: Good Inside with Dr. Becky✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Download the Coho app today or visit www.coho.ca for more details. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the

challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Sometimes you read a book and it's just exactly what you need at the moment that you need it. Sometimes I read these books like I've talked about my reading methodology before where I read and then I take notes as I'm reading and then I process the book and then obviously my process has the added thing which is then I use those notes or those ideas for daily stoic emails, for daily daddy emails, for stuff from my own book. So there's this type of book that I read and when it's so great, I'm almost, I'm not mad. I'm just dreading the amount of work that's going to be on the other side of it. And Rose Book on Pontius Pilate was one of those books for me recently.

Usually when I read a big biography, it's that way of like someone I'm really excited to learn about. But when I read Dr. Becky's book Good Inside, a guide to becoming the parent you want, it was one of those books just filled in those. And the best kind of books where it's about one topic, but it's actually about a bunch of other topics. So you should listen to today's interview even if you're not a parent, even if you have no desire to be a parent,

because really, I think this is a very stoke idea that we talk about in the interview, you can't control your kids' emotions, you can't control your kids, but you can control how you respond to your kids' emotions. You can control how you respond to your kids. You can control the example you set for your kids. Right?

So it's really about fixing yourself first. And the real theme of the book is emotional regulation, dealing with frustration, dealing with adversity. It's just awesome. I've loved the book. I've been raving about it, talking about it a lot. You can pick it up in the painted porch. I'm sure the audiobook is great.

You can grab that also. But I was really excited to have Dr. Becky Kennedy on the podcast. I was looking forward to this. We weren't able to do it in person, but we had a great remote interview. She's an American clinical psychologist and she's been called the millennial parent whisperer,

her book at number one on the New York Times list. She's got a great Instagram account. I know so many people that follow it. That's actually how I heard about it. My wife heard about it on Instagram. She read the book and then I read the book. You can follow her at Dr. Becky at Good Inside. You can listen to her podcast Good Inside

with Dr. Becky, you're gonna goodinside.com and I'll link to Good inside in today's show notes which you absolutely should read. Pick up a copy from the Pain of Porch. Well, I'm very excited to do this because I absolutely loved your book. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me.

I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Well, you know, obviously it's a parenting book, but I gotta say something that affected me the most in it and my wife, and I noticed that we need it perhaps more than our kids. And it's very stoic concept also. You talk about this idea of emotional vaccination, which is essentially, if I can summarize it, it's

the idea that you're going to have big feelings or strong emotions about something. You know this. So instead of letting that catch you by surprise, letting yourself be defenseless against it, you sort of think about it in advance, you anticipate it, you prepare yourself for how you're going to feel. And then when it happens, it's less. Senika says he who has anticipated the blow takes some of its pain away when it lands.

And I've just been, I don't know, just hearing you talk about that in terms of parenting has been great, but I feel like it's just a life skill. Well, I appreciate you drawing that connection because I do think that so many the things I talk about good inside, yes, the immediate application is for parenting, but our kids need what we need,

what other adults need, what our colleagues need. We all tend to need the same things. The words might change a little bit on the surface, but concepts are really universal and that's amazing because as you know, as a parent, you don't have a lot of free time. So if we're going to learn a system, it should be a system that applies many areas of your life for efficiency, right?

Yeah. And when it comes to emotional vaccination, yeah, I think we all on some level feel like our feelings are our problems. But our feelings are so rarely our problems. And in what we're talking about right now, being surprised by our feelings, that often is one of our problems. Because not only do we have the feelings to deal with, we have the surprise to deal with,

and humans don't like feeling out of control. And so when you do prepare yourself, even if it's, hey, I'm back to going to my house, and let's be honest, one of my kids is probably going to freak out. Okay, that's probably going to happen. I'm probably going to feel frustrated. We're going to get through it. You know, I can cope with it. When that moment comes, I actually think something amazing happens.

We're instead of feeling startled and overwhelmed. You actually feel a little like a magician. You're like, well, I did kind of predict this was going to happen. And the same thing in marriage and so many other areas of life. Yeah, the Latin phrase is premeditashomalorum, a premeditation of evils. Obviously, evils is a strong word here, but I was thinking about it. Like, I have a crazy travel date tomorrow. I'm leaving at nine.

I'm doing something in the afternoon. And then I have like an hour to get to the airport to fly home. So if all goes as planned, I miss no time away from the family really, but a lot has to go as planned. And we're entering fall slash winter, so there's weather delays, the holidays, so travel delayed, like the chances of this going right.

Maybe it's better than even, but there's also a high probability that it won't go right. And then there's just the probability that getting it to go right is stressful and I have to run. And you know, there's just all this stuff, like I'm going to have feelings about this as it's happening. And I'm just trying to go, okay, what does it look like if it goes poorly, right? What's the worst case scenario?

What's my backup plan? And then also, you know, reminding myself, hey, getting upset about it while I'm stuck on the runway doesn't make the plane go any faster, you know, being rude to the person behind the counter doesn't unlock, you know, the secret backup plane, you know, some people seem to think it does. And so you just, you think about it a little bit and you're vaccinating yourself. I think that's a really important word if you understand what vaccines do.

You're vaccinating yourself, so your emotional immune system is prepared for it when that enters your body, which it inevitably will. Yeah, and I think one of the ways I think about anxiety is, you know, it's some amount of uncertainty coupled with our underestimation of our ability to cope. And I think most of us, me included, we try to reduce anxiety from the uncertainty side of the equation. We try to make things more certain or we try to problem solve right away or right, but that actually doesn't work. And reminding ourselves of our coping ability is one of the most powerful things we can

do to actually cope with feelings. And so when you do kind of emotionally vaccinate yourself, okay, it might be on the runway. And then I'm going to end up being late to this meeting or I'm going to miss dinner. And even if you say nothing to yourself, besides that might happen, and I can cope with it. I'm not going to like it. Definitely not going to like it. And I can cope with it. You're not only vaccinating the situation, you're putting yourself in touch in advance with your ability to cope. And then when the moment comes, it's almost like we've prewired coping into the moment before it even happens.

Well, you know, that's a good point because I have noticed that although I get anxious or stressed out when I'm inconvenienced at a minor level or things are not really in my control, I get stressed and I have trouble handling it and maybe I freak out or whatever. But I tend to, I don't think I'm patting myself on the back too much here, but I handle really big situations quite well, right? Like, it's like you freak out over a paper cut, but if your arm got cut off, your body would just, you would go into such a state of life or death

that you would figure it out. And so it's this weird paradox where we don't handle the minor inconveniences and the minor stress is pretty well because as you said, we underestimate our ability to handle that. And then we actually don't worry that much about the catastrophic stuff because we know we're pretty good at those kinds of situations. Yeah, probably in those situations, we have less of an, we're aware that we're not in control.

So our body is in anxious. We probably just go into problem solving mode, right? But you're right. In the smaller moments, we forget. And this is one of my, my most helpful things I say to myself when I remember is just Becky wait, like I've done her things before. I can do this hard thing again. There will be a moment.

I don't know when it is where this thing will feel easier. And even if I don't know exactly what to do, I do feel like I just go from like a nine and a half to like a seven and at least at a seven out of 10, many more things are possible than at a nine and a half. That's something that Mark's really sprites to himself in meditations. He goes, how will you meet the problems of tomorrow? He says, with the same weapons you met them with today. The idea being that, yeah, you've gone through a lot of hard things. I mean, we just lived through a global pandemic. Like, I've thought about this.

It's like, we would ask our grandparents, like, what was the depression like or World War II? Like, what was it like to live through history? Well, we just did that. And most of us did pretty good, right? And we were struck. If you would ask us in February of 2020, how could you handle even like one tenth of what transpired over the next three years, you would

have been like, no way, I'm out. I can possibly do it. And then what did most of us do? We did it because we didn't have a choice. And parenting does that to you too, right? If you were like, okay, you're not going to sleep for the next two years. You'd be like, well, obviously that, that's physically impossible, so I should just die right now. But you handle it, you handle it pretty well. You muddle through it and you figure out a way to survive. And then somehow still though, the uncertainty of the future feels still though the uncertainty of the future feels very intimidated as if you didn't just get through a trial by fire. Yes, and I think that's one of the things I really like kind of equipping parents with

early on, kind of what I was saying earlier, that I think we're fed this idea of kind of aging in our kids, like we have to learn something new every year. And we're, I think we're fed it starting, at least for me in pregnancy, like what happens at this week? And what happens at this week? And what do I need to know in my kids four months, versus four and a half months and five months? But to me, a very kind of different system

is what are the things that matter? Okay, and they're always the same. They're actually always the same for kids. Kids need the same thing when they're infants and when they're teens. Now, the language looks different for sure the situations looks different for sure. The situations are different, but when you can kind of learn that like system, okay, how

do I feel connected to my kid? How do I set boundaries? Do I even know what really boundaries are? Okay. How do I validate someone's feelings, even when I set a boundary? Okay. How do I repair? Like if you learn some basic, I call them like pillars or like you call them like good

inside essentials, and actually every year we're not saying saying how am I going to get through this year? Because I, okay, what do I know? What do I already know? I probably already know so many things. And what needs a tweak or an application to my six year old, but actually the things I've learned and what I know is already inside of me. That feels, you know, way less anxiety producing to me. And that's what I want parents to be equipped with.

Well, isn't that kind of the sort of meta-skill, or the most important skill of them all, is emotional regulation. Like, to be able to regulate your emotions, whether it's a three-year-old throwing tantrum or a 13-year-old, you know, screaming that they hate you, it's still fundamentally the same. Don't take the bait, you know, empathize with what the person is going through your child, in this case. But the idea, the metascale of just being able to deal with your emotions and to not be overwhelmed by somebody else's emotions is kind of the metascale of them all. Yeah, I think that's the metascale of life. I think it's actually the foundational skill in any area of our life. It's why what I love to do is help

parents learn to regulate their own emotions, because that's always the first step to then what I think is the most important thing of parenting is teaching our kids to learn how to regulate the widest range of emotions as possible. To me, that's the biggest emotional privilege at least. You can go into a toe-hid-web. Yeah, I mean, going back thousands of years, Epictetus says, the chief task in life is to separate things into two categories, things that are up to us and things that are not up to us. Obviously, this is also expressed in the serenity prayer,

you know, which remarkably isn't invented until until the middle of the 20th century. It seems like a timeless idea, but that exact wording is new. But the idea of some stuff is up to you. Some stuff is not. You don't control what happens. You control how you respond to what happens. It's both a very rudimentary and simple and then also extraordinarily complex and difficult to do in practice. Yeah, well, it comes back to our earliest wiring and how we were raised and we were probably raised with people who were doing the best they could

with the resources they had available, but probably also maybe weren't given the best models of emotion regulation by the people they were raised from, right? And then there's this intergenerational transmission of all of the feelings that feel impossible to manage. And I think right now, I think something so hopeful is there's just millions of parents everywhere who are saying, wait, I actually, I want to be a cycle breaker in that way. I want to learn how to manage my emotions. That's the best way to show up, you know, to my kids. Yeah, I think about that a lot. I go, what would my, it's actually been very healing for me as a person to think about how my parents would have treated me if I was doing something that my kid

was doing. And I go, oh, this is why I have this problem, is because this four-year-old is freaking out and they're getting hit upside the head or they're getting berated or they're getting made to feel like they're weird. Any of the ways that we were responded to, you sometimes don't, because you were a kid when it was happening,

you didn't understand that there was an appropriate or a healthy or a more regulated way to deal with it. And it's not so you get a second crack at it that you go, oh, I could actually teach this skill to them and to myself at the same time. Yes, that's right. There's so much bang for your buck. And for everyone who's thinking, I don't remember. I don't remember how my parents responded to my tantrums, or I don't know what happened when I was rude to my parents,

or when I was sad that I didn't make the soccer team. But I go back to this couple I used to see in my private practice. And it was the husband who'd say, I don't remember how am I supposed to know. And I think our sense of memory is very, very limited. And that one version of memory, for sure, are things that we have an image of or a story of and then we can put towards, like, oh, I remember my parents did this.

I have an image of it, and I can explain it. That's only one form of memory, and it's actually not even the most common. You know, and what I said to this dad in my practice, and we had a nice jovial relationship, I said, oh, come on, you've described to me exactly how you respond when your son has a tantrum. I can say with almost 100% certainty, I know how you were responded to, because your body remembers, your body remembers so many of the things

that were never put towards for us. And then we respond with our reactivity, right? We respond how long is my circuit for my kids tantrum? Tells me a lot about how my parents, who again were probably doing the best they could without a doubt with the resources they had responded to my tantrum. And when you start to look at memory as your body's reactions and triggers, then all of a sudden you can be curious about so many more things that we confront in parenthood. Yeah, I traumatizing is probably the wrong word, but that it has been a weird part of having young kids for me is that I don't have a strong memory of my childhood, which is probably

in and of itself, a bit revealing that I don't remember that much about. It's kind of, I remember myself being like some version of me now, like I remember a teenage me or a middle school me, but before that, I don't have a strong sense of like who I was or how I felt about things. And then as I've had kids, like now, you know, now I've a four year old, a five year old, six year old, seven year old, I go, a lot of that stuff came flooding back, right? Or to see my parents interact with a four year old or a seven year old. You go, oh, this is how you, this is, this is the limitations of your toolkit being bumped up against.

And so it's this kind of, it's this wonderful experience because you're getting to experience having a kid, but it's also a sort of a reliving of your own childhood, which isn't always, wasn't always the best. I think that's exactly it, you know, I think when you have a partner and yourself, right, you kind of watch your partner's childhood come alive as they parent. You're like, oh, I'm learning so much about one on in your home. And I think we do the same thing for ourselves. That, and I think there's a way if we look at that critically, we feel very defensive and shut

down. Like, oh, you know, do I have a messed up childhood? Is it saying I'm a bad parent? No, like not at all. Every parent, if they're open to it, can learn more about themselves while they parent their own kids, then probably any other part of their life journey, because you do your body comes in contact with things when your kid has that tantrum or has a sleep issue or gets left out, your body kind of scans itself. And it's like, well, what do I know about these types of situations? And you have encoded memories. They happen not to be your childs. They were your own. And if you can differentiate those, okay, well, wait, this isn't my kid. But this is knowledge. This actually is useful information for me to reflect on. Then yes, you can show up with increased

regulation, sturdiness, and intentionality in how you want to show up to your kids today. This idea of being able to regulate your emotions, which is different than suppressing your emotions, obviously, and the ability to deal with frustration as the sort of most important skill, strikes me as a reframing from how most people think about most things, right? You say this in the book, like, people want their kids to be happy. I would say most of us want to be happy. That's what we sort of think we're aiming at. But then you sort of say, well, actually maybe resiliency or dealing with frustration or

being having flexibility, having a sort of self-aware, that there are these other skills that actually allow happiness to happen and in fact if you are aiming at happiness, you're probably not going to get it. I can flesh that out a little bit more because you know so many ideas around parenting right to give some background actually came from all the work I was doing in private practice with adults, young adults, older adults, and start to see these patterns. It's like, okay, kind of the things I knew about their early years, the struggles they had in adulthood, and allowed me to wonder, like,

well, what happened here? And what kinds of things might have led to different outcomes? And what will help these adults kind of rewire in a way that helps them live in a way that's more in line with their values. And what if we reverse engineer that information to parents today so you can just start out? And I think this was a big part of it. This like what is resilience versus happiness? And you know, a lot of these ideas, you know, came from working with this set, honestly, for a period of my private practice, I was seeing like all these late 20-year-olds, let's say,

who look all of them in New York City. So there was a little bit of homogeneity to their stories. Like they went to some, they went to Harvard, they went to Yale, they went to whatever college, the college. Then they graduated top of their class. Then they got a job as, I don't know, an investment banker. Like they kind of like checked these boxes of these things that are external markers of success, supposedly maybe make thing, make people happy, right?

And then they were like all 28 and they came to me in my private practice. None of them knew each other. It's just this collection of, you know, people feeling completely empty, completely unable to function in like really adult life. They didn't find relationships that were meaningful. And they were really, really lost. And even when say to me, like, they felt very fragile, right? And I was like, well, there's a huge gap. What is this? And when I started to do some like data collection, okay, well, where did this come from? Let's figure this out. I really did hear her remarkably similar stories

about their childhood. And they'd say to me, like, I know I'm supposed to say in therapy, like my parents mess me up, they're really uninvolved. That's not my story. Like, my parents are always there. I felt so loved by them. I felt so supported by them. And then I kept doing some digging. And a lot of the things I heard

was that happiness was a real goal for their parents in raising them. Like, happiness as a goal in childhood. And I know people here that they're like, okay, sorry, what's the problem? Like we want our kids to be happy. What's wrong with that? But if I give some examples, right? Like, okay, didn't make the soccer team in my town.

Okay, like my, and I remember this, this guy was a my dad worked a million hours. He came home early that day. He found another soccer team. He drove me two days later to the tryout. We were then he was coming home from work early, he was driving me 45 minutes to be in a different soccer team, right? Or I was crying that I didn't get the thing I wanted at the toy store. And yes, then my parents found it immediately online somewhere else. And it was at my house two days later, right? And like they always wanted me to be happy. And then I kind of had this aha moment

like, okay, wait. So what happens in childhood when we kind of really orient toward our kids happiness? Is any moment where our kid has intense distress, we believe we have to exit them out of distress and enter them into happiness. And so what's happening in their body is I feel frustrated or sad or let down or less than all feelings we all feel throughout our lives. There's no way out of those feelings. And what their body is learning is when I have that feeling turned on, I then have next to that the expectation of that feeling turning off and happiness turning on.

And if I fast forward to adulthood, I just think that's like, it's a really, that's a really hard expectation. I think it was to us no one adulthood when you get fired from a job, which can happen to anyone, like usually the next day, you don't, you don't turn that feeling off and, you know, turn the happiness of a new job on, right? Or when you, I don't know anything even small, like I'm in traffic. Well, guess what? The best thing to do when you're in traffic is cope with traffic.

Like there's no immediate exit, right, to not traffic. And so what I saw was a real inability to cope with anything distressing, and almost an expectation that happiness should be around the corner, which leads people feeling very paralyzed, and actually, what we were saying earlier, Ryan, totally unable to feel capable in a time of stress because they were never taught to tolerate stress. Hi, it's me, the Grand Poova of Bahambad,

the OG Green Grump, the Grinch. From Wandery, tears the Grinch holiday talk show is a pathetic attempt by the people of O'Vill to use my situation as a teachable moment. So, join me, the Grinch, along with Cindy Luhu, and of course my dog Max every week for this complete waste of time. Listen as I launch a campaign against Christmas cheer, grilling celebrity guests, like chestnuts on an open fire. Now try to get my heart to grow a few sizes, but it's not gonna work, honey.

Your family will love the show. As you know, I'm famously great with kids. Follow Tiz the Grinch Holiday Talk Show on the Wondery app, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Tiz the Grinch Holiday Talk Show early and add free right now by joining Wondery Plus. [♪ Music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background We can't see tomorrow, but we can hear it. And it sounds like a wind farm powering homes across the country. We're bridging to a sustainable energy future, working today to ensure tomorrow is on.

And bridge, life takes energy. What's like if your definition of happiness is everything going the way that you want it to go, you will be happy if you are lucky enough to live in a world where more often than not, everything goes the way that you want it to go. And sometimes you're lucky enough to be that person or you're lucky enough to be that person for a long time, but everything regresses towards the mean, you know. And so a better definition of happiness, I think, is the ability to adjust and adapt

and accommodate, you know, the fact that the vast majority of things are outside of your control. So that word acceptance, which is not a popular word these days, or has an almost immediate, you know, negative connotation for people, is probably one of the more important characteristics of a happy person, but we train people to fight against that idea. Yeah. And I think as parents, it can be very relieving. To say, I don't need to be the architect

of my kids happiness when they're young. In fact, I often think with my own kids, of course, I'm always gonna be in their lives and wanna be very involved, but at the same time, I think to some degree, I'm working myself out of a job. I will be very proud if my kid calls me from college and says, this not so great thing happened. It really is stunk and like, okay, here's what I did and here's what I am now. Like wow, look at that, right? And so if we want our kids to feel capable when they're frustrated and learn that, yeah,

sometimes things in life don't go well. Well, we have to help them build that circuitry, which is basically the complete opposite of having an immediate exit into ease or contentment. Yes. Yeah, the ability to figure stuff out is another meta skill, right? So you get fired. Somebody says something. Me and you. Your teacher doesn't like you.

You don't make the soccer team. These are all things that are going to happen in the ability to figure out what to do about them. That's actually the more sustainable path to happiness, not, well, let's go undo that or let's go find a different way. Let's go, you know, not undo it. But as you said, like, well, I'll get you on a different soccer team or whatever. That is a way of just deferring or avoiding feeling the feeling of, I didn't get the thing that I wanted. Yeah. And just to be clear, is there a role at some point to say, hey, you didn't make the soccer

team? There's a soccer team, a couple towns away. Yeah, I'm not trying to say I don't want anyone listening. I'm like, oh, no, I messed up my kid forever. That's not what I'm saying. But our kids can't learn to tolerate feelings that we don't tolerate in them. Yes.

Hard stop. They are learning that in their childhood. Like what is tolerable? And it's interesting. I think so much of confidence actually isn't even learning to figure things out. It's learning that it's okay to be you when you haven't yet figured things out.

I think like confidence isn't feeling like the best at things. It's learning it's okay to be you when you haven't yet figured things out. I think like confidence isn't feeling like the best at things. It's learning it's okay to be you when you're not the best at something. And so that moment, let's say kids like I kind of make soccer. Like you can make it really concrete. You could be like, okay, I know there's another soccer team. I'm just gonna wait 48 hours.

48 hours, okay, I could do anything for 48 hours, okay. So for the next 48 hours instead of being like, look at this and by the way, we're gonna get you this private tutor and by the way, let's go practice. And right, okay, no. I can just say very simple things to my kid. Like you really wanted to make that team. Oh, you thought you were going to make that team.

And you didn't, you didn't want that to happen. That's one of my favorite lines. You didn't want that to happen. Oh, I can see you're really upset. Oh, your two best friends made it. And you didn't. Yeah, I get, I get like going to school tomorrow. It's not going to feel so great.

And what I'm doing is I'm basically saying to my kid, I still like you when this happens to you because I'm willing to talk to you and engage with you. I don't need to exit you from this road. And so let's like allow ourselves to feel this way for a little bit, that's actually building resilience. And then sure, if I have the random rule of 36 hours, 48 hours later, I might say, hey, you know what I'm thinking about?

There's this other team. Is that something you wanna, we can make that happen? But it's not the number one for strategy. Well, there's this profound misconception, I think of stoicism, that stoicism is the suppression of emotions with the elimination of it. But actually, it's like, hey, I am angry about this, but I am not going to do something out of anger, right?

Or I am feeling this, but I don't have to act on that feeling. I can think about it, talk about it, channel it. I can just wait. You know, the stokes talk about taking the emotions and kind of putting them up to the test, thinking about them questioning them. So, you know, why do you feel so bad not making this awkward team or somebody saying something mean to you or being dumped? You feel bad because your first view is that it says something about you as a person or it says something about your future

which is now you're gonna die alone, now you'll end up as a loser. But so much of that's not true. So if you're instant as a parent or as a person is just to magically make the situation go away, what you're not developing is the ability to question your own emotions or sideline the emotions in the sense that I'm feeling really pissed off, but I don't have to throw a punch or write a mean email that dumps those feelings on to someone else.

Yeah, reminds me of this image I think a lot about, and I'm very influenced by internal family systems, and it's a big IFS idea that our feelings are any thought is a part of us, and not all of us, and kind of what you're saying about feeling anger versus doing something out of anger. Our feelings don't give us problems as long as they're passengers in our car. Our feelings give us problems when they take over the driver's seat, same with any thought or urge.

And if you think about that visual, what a lot of us do, me too, is we look at the in a passenger in the back seat, it's maybe it's like anger and we're like, we just try to throw it out of the car. We do, we're just like, get out of here, I don't like having you here, which only adds more energy to it. And then it feels like the only way it can get our attention is

by taking over the driver's seat. It's like, you know, and if you think about it as our kid, if while our kids are young, we make it a habit of taking all of their passengers, the feelings that are hard, frustration, sadness, and throwing it out of their car. Well, we're actually only setting them up when they're older for those passengers to take over the driver's seat because we can't forever make sure that our kid never feels those feelings. Or to go to your metaphor of vaccination, you're basically sending them out with a suppressed or weakened immune system that doesn't have the ability to deal with anger, frustration, sadness, depression,

jealousy, inadequacy, all those emotions, you've never really felt them before. And so when you feel them in a professional context or God forbid, you feel them, I don't know, a reporter writes a negative article about you. Like now you're doing it with at some stage where other people are looking or, you know, it really does matter. You're just going to be totally ill-equipped to handle that. And it said like in my private practice when adults came to me for therapy, I never met an adult who said, Becky, I have to tell you right away, my parents did an amazing

job. They just got the frustration and the sadness and the jealousy out of me. They just got it out. You know, that's never happened. But what I think every adult almost says, even, they just got it out. You know, that's never happened. But what I think every adult almost says, even though they don't say it with their words, but with their experiences and stories is I really don't feel any more prepared to deal with jealousy and frustration and sadness in my adulthood than I did when I was a toddler.

But like you said, Ryan, the stakes are higher. They're a lot higher. Isn't it weird though, like putting aside whether parents sufficiently prepare their kids for those things? There really is no mechanism in society or culture to deal with those things. I mean, yes, some religions say this is a sin,

don't do that. Even beyond that, you know, I think this is what philosophy was designed to do in the angel world. And maybe you could say psychology in therapy is one of the only tools that we have for doing. But it's not like we have a process or a culture that teaches people how to do that or that those are skills. We sort of just expect you're going to figure it out.

And if you're a kid who didn't play sports or didn't have a really strong mentor in your life, I mean, you're just going out in the world dealing with these things for the first time when a lot is right about it. Yes. I mean, I think it's something I feel so passionately about changing, right? Where I think the reason there's no mechanism, I mean, there's a lot of reasons. One thing is emotion regulation can't be taught

didactically, it can't be learned in a book, it can't be learned intellectually. It's absorbed through relationships. And that doesn't mean if you didn't get it in your earliest relationship, you can't get it. That's why, you know, over time people go to therapy or people have mindfulness, right? But it's absorbed in the context of a relational experience. And so like we're saying, well, we have generations of people who were never taught how to regulate their emotions.

They are now parenting the next generation, right? And so it's hard to absorb regulation from an adult. If that adult was never taught that to them in the first place, right? And that's why I think, guess, the beauty of saying, wait, maybe this is the biggest gift I can give my kid. And by the way, it's the biggest gift I can give myself. Being an adult who's more able to regulate your emotions than you used to be, the whole world is your oyster now. You're like, wait a second, so many things are possible.

And it's really, concretely helpful. And to do that, at the same time, I think is the most rewarding part of being a parent and the hardest part. And it's really concretely helpful. And to do that at the same time, I think is like the most rewarding part of being a parent and the hardest part. Well, it's a process, just like you don't go to therapy one time and then you're fixed,

just like you don't read one book and then you know what to do. It's this process of getting the information and then applying it and then seeing where it helped and where you didn't go far enough, seeing the results. It's this sort of process that you really engage in

in your whole life, and to think of philosophy and therapy and parenting as this sort of ongoing thing that you're doing, where you're learning and improving and you're evaluating. I think this is why journaling is so important because you get to kind of turn it into a conversation with yourself for a progress report that you're dealing, that you're writing to yourself.

It's not this transformational epiphonist thing. It's a process. It yes, it's a process, it's a practice, like you said. Exactly, right? Like, I'm not like so big into yoga, but people I know who are really into it, they're not like, I did it. I did it. I'm done. You know, because actually, I think when it's a happening, actually, this is really true with how I think about parenting and hopefully want to inspire other people too, with yoga or working out, like, people start with an outcome in mind, but I think the

people who really get into practice can kind of more addicted to the practice than any outcome, right? And then they just love having that as a part of their life. Well, this is this is almost the problem with books and obviously as someone who loves books, I feel weird saying this, but the problem with a book is that a book has a beginning and an end and then you say to yourself, I read that, right? As opposed to, I am reading that, right? It's not a thing that you finish. It's a thing that you do. So, you know, it's this idea, this dog's talk about lingering on the works of the master of fingers that it's this, you're reading and rereading because when you come back to it, you are different even though the

words are the same. And so fundamentally, I think even in parenting books and in a lot of self-improvement stuff, the problem is you go, oh, I bought it and I read it. I did the thing. As you're reading about things that you haven't experienced yet. And it's not so you experience them that you can fully learn the lesson. And so I think this is why I tried to do, I did the Daily Dad, which is a page a day and the Daily Stoke, which is a page a day. The idea of this is an ongoing thing that you're reading and learning about is probably the better way to think about it. Yes, yes to that. And, you know, we have members of our, you know,

in our membership who said, I've watched certain videos 10 times. Yes. And they say, I really get something different every time. And I said, yeah, well, you're evolving, you're changing. And if you think about, sometimes I think about good inside, like a language, right? Like most of us, the language of parenting we know

is the language we were parented in. And I think a lot of people think, okay, either I want to change lots of things about that language or at least I want to change a few things. Well, guess what? Like if you, I only speak English from, right, that's all I speak. But if I wanted to talk to my kids in Mandarin, I think I'd say that's totally possible, Becky, and like, I'm sure I have to practice Mandarin and probably in high-stress moments. I'm probably going to go back to English, but that doesn't mean I am not actually making progress.

It means, okay, I take a deep breath, and then I go back to my Mandarin work. As I get further in Mandarin, I'm sure I'm going to learn something. I learned the first year that's going to seem so much more useful. And I think thinking about it in a language in that way, really de-shames kind of the learning process. Yes, and there's this idea that we don't step in the same river twice, right? Because, you know, and I think learning is like that. You can't learn things until you're ready to learn them.

So you can have the vague, you can have a familiarity with something, but it doesn't fully get unlocked until you have the experience that allows you to see where that applies. And then, and, but that's why it is important to have read and it, because then you go, Oh, I know exactly where that, she has a chapter about this, right? I'm going to go back to that thing. I had that book on the shelf where I'm gonna pull up a video about it, or I'm gonna, the ability to find the information that you know is out there. That itself is a form of knowledge. You said something in the book that also struck me as a sort of a life philosophy way beyond parenting,

but you said sort of on the surface, you see a behavior, and beneath the surface there you see a behavior. And beneath the surface, there is a person, right? And having kids and learning that, you know, 90% of the time, they're hungry or tired, or the routine was disrupted. And that's the way they're acting. Because you know your kids are good inside, as you say in the book, you know your kids are good inside as you say in the book. You know your kids are good. So you you quickly look for a reason that they're behaving the way that they are, right? Because you know that they're good. So you're not going, they're doing a bad thing. They are bad. You know that they're good and you're seeing the behavior as something different than the individual or you see the be you see that there's an explanation for the behavior,

and if you address that, the behavior goes away. If we could go through the world this way as people, and understand that even the person who's driving poorly in front of you is going through X, or your boss is going through Y, or the political party that you disagree with is getting this information instead of that information. The ability to separate the behavior from the person is, you want to talk about ways to happiness or surviving in the world. Understanding that is

such a powerful thing. Huge. And I think that's, that was one of the core things that led me to kind of put all these ideas down, right? Is that I was really trained in the parenting world from a very different perspective. Right at the time, I want more parenting, kind of guidance, you know, training. And so I went to the institution that all my colleagues talked about.

And it was all about time-outs and punishments and sticker charts. And no one ever really voiced the assumptions in which that was based. But I do think in a lot of those more behavioral approaches, there is a collapse between the behavior you see on the surface and the identity you assume underneath. Like the only reason I'd punish my kid is in some ways like, I thought, okay, well, they are rude to me and they know better. They know better and they could have done better and they purposely chose not to do better.

And so I'm going to, I still don't know why punished thing, I'm going to change. But I know when I get in that mode, punishment makes sense. Right. Because we see our kid as the antagonist as the enemy. And I think I'm a pretty first principles thinker. And I was like, wait, none of this makes sense. It kind of came to me in this moment, you know, my braggt is I was like, wait, I'm sharing advice with parents. And I actually said to them, I was like, I have none of this makes sense. It kind of came to me in this moment. You know, my braggdows. I was like, wait, I'm sharing advice with parents. And I actually said to them, I was like, had this huge sensation in my chest.

I was like, no, no, no, timeout system doesn't even make sense. And I said to them, I was just like, I don't even believe what I'm telling you. I'm really sorry. Like, don't do what I'm telling you. Like, what? And I was like, I just know there's another way.

Come back to me in a few weeks and they didn't come back. Which I don't blame them for. But I just really like stripped things down in my head and I think what I was left with, the singular thought I was left with was kids are good inside adults, I believe are two. Kids are good inside. And then I started to build up a building there

and I said, wow, there's a gap. There's a literal gap. And for anyone listening, I encourage you to actually assuming you're not driving. But if you're not driving to like separate your hands and to like really look at one of your hands and say, okay, this is my kid, this is who they are, this is their identity, right? One hand. This is who someone is, identity. My kid is good inside. They're inherently good. So that's their identity. And then you look at your other hand and put it very far

apart and just like, this is what my kid just did. They just hit. They just said, I hate you. They just looked at me when I said stop jumping on the couch and double jumped on the couch right while making eye-tongue. Whatever it is. That's their behavior. That was not so good. Okay. So there's a gap between good identity and bad behavior.

And in all of our most frustrated moments with our kids and our spouses and our colleagues and ourselves, there's no space between those hands. I'm going to clap them together. It's just that between those hands. Like, I'm going to clap them together. It's just, that's what happens. And when you're able to separate your hands and say, wait, I have a, to me, this is a key phrase. I have a good kid who's having a hard time. Then we start to see their behavior as a sign

of their struggle and as a sign of their needs and as a sign of the skills they need to build instead of as a sign of who they are. And that framework shift leads to 180 degree different interventions. What a life these celebrities lead. Imagine walking the red carpet, the cameras in your face, the design clothes, the worst dress list, the big house, the world constantly peering in, the bursting bank clone, the worst dress list, Big House, the world constantly peering in, the bursting bank account, the people trying to get the grubby mitts on it.

What's he all about? I'm just saying, being really, really famous, it's not always easy. I'm Emily Lloyd-Saini and I'm Anna Leongrofi and we're the hosts of Terribly Famous from Wondery, the podcast which tells the stories of our favourite celebrities from their perspective. Each season we show you what it's really like being famous by taking you inside the life of a British icon. We walk you through their glittering highs and eyebrow raising lows and ask, is fame and fortune really worth it? Follow terribly famous now wherever you get your podcasts or listen early and ad free on Wondry Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondry app.

Choose the perfect holiday gifts at CF's holiday market at CF Sherway Gardens. Shop from 15 local merchants offering a variety of gifts including personalized ornaments, flowers, apparel, and more. Enjoy live musical performances, take advantage of our gift wrap service, and stop by the letters to Santa Station with your kids. Open until December 23rd, Thursday through Saturday from 11-7 in Sunday 11-6. is it today? Yeah, someone told me your kids are giving you a hard time,

your kids are having a hard time. Yes. Right. And the understanding that your kids are having feelings and most people are having feelings and they don't, they don't even understand that they're having those feelings.

Like think about depression, right? How long it's taken us as a society and then just think of you, anyone individual to go, oh, you know, I realized I had depressive tendencies in my 20s or 30s or 40s, right? And then you're expecting this 11 year olds to know something about what they're, they don't have the, they don't know their depressed, they don't know their angry, they don't know they're scared. They don't know they're depressed, they don't know they're angry, they don't know they're scared. When did you learn about the concept of stress? Stress as a thing that is making you feel an act a certain way, being caused by the outside? That's a concept that you learned much later

in development than your child currently is at this moment, or than this person who's bothering you is in their own development. And so they can't even articulate to you what they're going through because all they know is that they don't feel good or maybe they don't. They don't even know. They just think this is what life is, which would be weird and disoriented.

Yeah, another visual gap I find very helpful over and over is like putting one of my hands high and saying kids are born with all the feelings and the other hand is low and none of the skills. Yeah. That's actually just a truth. I think they're born with all the feelings. They've every feeling I have and they have zero skills. If you think about that, what a terrifying existence, right? Because unlike physical ailments, not all of which, but a lot of which for kids have visible markers. Like when they skin their knee, they see a bruise or they see blood and they're like,

oh, that's the thing that's happening to me. Not feelings. I mean, all of us know, when you feel intense feelings, it takes over your body. Like it is so intense and there's no visible markers. So kids are just overcome with this thing that they don't understand, that they don't have visible markers for it. They have no skills.

And so really, yes, their behaviors can be explained in that way. And I think there's, there's something I wanna get ahead of because I'm such a pragmatist myself. And I hear the parent is like, oh, so then it's okay. So it's just okay that my kids hitting. Like it's not okay.

To me, it's like, if I had a glass on the side of the table and it fell because I knocked it over back and it shattered, and I didn't punish myself. I don't know if someone would be like, oh, Becky, so it's just okay that you dropped your glass. I'm like, I don't know if it's okay, but it is. It happens. You're not gonna put a glass there anymore.

You're gonna learn a lesson, not put a glass. If I can take a deep breath and say, wait, Becky, I'm a good person who is having a hard time. I totally didn't mean, if I'm blaming myself, I can do no reflection. I'm such an idiot. I'm such an idiot who drops a glass. All that's going to happen to them and I'm going to put in the same place next time. Yeah.

Because I'm frozen with shame. But if I'm able to say, Becky, I'm a good person who had a bad accident. Okay, wait. And I could be curious, which doesn't mean people mistake curiosity for approval. They're completely different things, but we mistake them with our kids. If I can be curious about my kids hitting, that doesn't mean I approve of it. It means I can say, I wonder where my kid keeps hitting her brother. Why does she keep doing all?

Well, she is adjusting to having a sibling. There might be some insecurity. She hasn't learned how to feel angry without turning anger into behavior. Okay, now that I'm curious, maybe I'd say, you know what? I'm going to work with her. I'm going to actually practice with her when he's sleeping. Hey, what would happen if I'm going to work with her. I'm going to actually practice with her when he's sleeping. Hey, what would happen if I had your favorite toy?

How could you tell me you want it with, oh, stay, stay a little further apart because I'm not going to let you hit sweetie. Those interventions, which can again help close the gap between feeling and skills, not by getting rid of feelings, but by building skills, happen because I'm curious because I'm able to see my kids identity as separate from their behavior. My four year old was telling me that he could teleport.

And so I was like, what do you mean? And he was telling me he thought he could teleport because sometimes he is in the car and then he wakes up in his bed. And I realized that he didn't understand that he was falling asleep in his car seat. And then we were picking him up and putting him in his bed.

So this is the the the child, the mind of a child trying to make sense of a thing that it's too big for it to understand. And so this is what they're doing all the time. They're feeling things and trying to come up with explanations or strategies for dealing with them. I mean, they're not that bright. Like, you know, you said they don't have the skills. I mean, they have the mind of a four year old, but they are dealing with adult problems,

right? They are dealing with the same problems and frustrations that we're dealing with with adults without any of the information or the toolkit or the skills. And so you can be sympathetic without making an excuse or without approving it, as you said. And we can do the same for other people, understanding that they have different information, they have different experiences, they are under different stresses than us.

It doesn't mean that you go, oh, yeah, it's okay to do X, Y, and Z. This is why we have a justice system. This is why we have laws. This is why, you know, you can understand. I just went through this with someone. It was very clear to me that they had a lot of emotional issues that made it not a good fit for them to work at my company, right? This doesn't mean they're a bad person. It doesn't mean that they're somehow fundamentally broken.

They're just not a fit here. So I can understand and empathize and appreciate and still not approve of it in the sense that I just allow them to continue to do, to get paid for something that they're not capable of doing. So, you can very easily make that distinction, but it requires some empathy and the ability to put yourself in the rudimentary world of that other person and see why they do what they do. And I think it also depends on something I read a lot about in the book. This kind of two things are true mindset, which again is definitely a life idea, not just a parenting idea, it just comes up and up. It comes up over and over and parenting. So over and over, I think we do have to hold our decisions as parents. Decisions we make because we think they're

good, or they keep our kids safe. That's one thing that is true. And at the same time hold us true, our kids feelings that are a reaction to those decisions. And we have a hard time doing that. Time to do that. Do we have a hard time doing that often, which leads to a lot of power struggles with our kids or a lot of resentment? So let's say I'm ending screen time. Okay, and I tell my kid they can watch a show.

I do the whole thing. I emotionally vaccinate, hey, you might might wanna watch another one when we're done, when we're done, you could tell me the one you wanna watch tomorrow. I'm like, oh, I crushed that parenting moment. Still though, my kid has meltdown, right? In a two things are true perspective. Like we'd actually, you can even say it out loud, just to remember like, hey, sweetie, two things are true.

Screen time is over, and you're allowed to be upset, right? My decisions, the ones that even I feel good about, don't mean my kid can't have feelings. My kid's feelings also don't mean I have to change my decision. We can just actually hold both of them as true. And I think that is, again, one of the principles that whether your kid is a toddler or a teen, over and over and over.

The more you work, that two things are true muscle. I'm in charge of boundaries. My kids in charge of the feelings that they have. One is not more right than the other. They're just both equally true. That is so fundamental to staying connected to our kid. And honestly, making good decisions as a parent. Yeah, and I think in past generations,

they said something like this, probably not from the same place. But you know, they would go, you don't have to like it. Your kids don't have to like the decisions that you're making. And when you're making decisions that are less fun than they want to do or less accommodating to what they want to, of course, they're not going to like it. And you can accept that it was the right thing and upset that they're not going to like it. I mean, I don't, if I, if I'm on a diet, I don't like the things that I,

you know what I mean? Like I like other things better, but I know to get the outcome, you sometimes have to do things that you don't like. And I think this relates to emotion regulation, right? Because sometimes we don't realize as a parent, a lot of times, we are using our kids reaction as a barometer to either feel like a good parent or feel

like we're making a decision. And we want them to feel calm because it's the quickest and almost cheapest way that we can say to ourselves, I made a good decision here. You know, the other day I was talking to a friend who had to cancel her son's birthday party on the day of the party because he woke up with a fever. Right? No one, that stinks for everyone. She's like, what do I say?

What do I say? You know, and I just, you know, we talked and I reminded her, first of all, like your job, and I talk about family jobs a lot in my platform, too, because I think it's a way, we all want to feel good at our job, but most of us can't define our job. So I don't think in any company, you can't be good at your job if you don't know what your job is. And parents, it's like, we have to know what our job is. So our job, part of our job, is making key decisions that we believe are good for the family and for our kids. Right?

I think the other part of our job is that, yeah, society, right? Our kids' job is actually to feel their feelings because related to what we were saying, Ryan, if they don't feel their feelings when they're young, there's no hope of having coping skills for those feelings when they're older. And so what we talked about, she ended up saying essentially, and using that language, my job is actually really helpful in key decisions.

And she said to him, look, one of my main jobs as your parent is to make decisions in moments where I actually know you're not going to be happy. And yet I think that's best for you and for the people around us. And part of your job is that you have reactions. So actually, even though this is completely unpleasant, we're canceling your party, I get that you're upset. We're actually both doing our jobs. It's not easy.

It's not fun, just like some days, a company. They're not fun, but you do your job well. When if you think your job as a parent is to make your kids life wonderful and fun and happy, then you can't make the hard, but right decision for their health and then also the health of all the people that you're inviting over to your house. Remember, we just went through a pandemic. You can't make that right decision. So life and leadership is a series of conflicting or overlapping obligations and priorities,

and you have to be able to make that. And yeah, understand that their job is not necessarily to appreciate or understand or like all of those decisions, but it doesn't exempt you from having to make them. And in fact, to give them what they want in that situation is actually to deprive them of what they want and need over the actually to deprive them of what they want and need over the long term, which is to be given skills and to live in the house of a responsible adult and yada yada yada.

Yeah, and I talk about pilots a lot because I think there's so many metaphors that really bring this idea of what I call sturdy leadership to life, which are the same principles that make a CEO really sturdy and definitely make a parent one. Right, so imagine being on a turbulent flight. Right, imagine being on a really turbulent flight and you know, do you mind if we make an emergency landing?

Okay. And all the passengers are screaming because they're nervous and let's say also they're like, why are we, it's not that bad. We should just continue to go to Los Angeles and not have to wherever land in Missouri. Okay, fine, let's say that's happening. So picture one pilot, right?

Who essentially is saying, oh, okay. I mean, I guess we don't, I guess we don't have to make the emergency landing. Okay, we'll keep flying everyone. Like, even if on the surface I'm protesting for that, I think I'm pretty disturbed internally that my protest is enough to make the pilot change their decisions.

Like, right, and yet if the pilot says, hey, I know everyone's scared. I also know this is gonna be terribly inconvenient. And my job is to make safe decisions for this plane and even if no one likes it, I know we have to land safely in Missouri. It's okay if you cry in Missouri. It's okay if you cry and scream. It's okay if you write an angry review about our airline company.

I'm going to do what I really believe is best. I want that person as my pilot. I really do. I mean, this is the problem we're in as a society where we have elected leaders that seem to think their job is to do whatever their base yells at them to do, not what is actually right. It's funny you're talking about the screen time thing. What really hit me with that is the other day, my kids were asleep. My wife and I were watching TV and then I was thinking in my head, okay, it's late, it's time for us to go to bed. And I just turned it off. And my wife was like, hey, hey, what are you doing? And she was like, I need you, you gotta give me a heads up. And I was like, you're totally right.

And I was like, if we feel, and because I felt the same way, right? You know, when she's done it, it's like, if I'm feeling it as an adult, and I know that the TV's gonna come back on some other time, you know, I know that it didn't disappear forever, what does a three yearold think about this? So of course, they freaked out when the iPad disappeared from view.

I mean, they don't even have object permanence yet. The iPad could be gone forever. They don't understand. And so when you understand that, it allows you to, one, respect or appreciate the freak out a little bit, but also prepare them in such a way that maybe you lessen it in advance. That's right. And this is what I love helping parents with so much, like whether I'm talking to parents

or kids, I always think that gets more powerful to teach people how to think than what to think, right? So even the screen time example is a great one. And I always find coming back to my own adult life is useful, right? Because we forget we're not that different from our kids and what they need. If I always find coming back to my own adult life is useful, right? Because we forget we're not that different from our kids and what they need. If I was sitting watching a show,

let's even say it was by myself, because often our kids watch screen time without us, because we're like, I'm gonna use this time to see whether or things. Exactly. So my kids watching something, and me too, I'm not at my best in that. I'm obviously like,

because I end up feeling guilty in one moment, I feel like my kid has too much screen time, and then I react with such intensity, my screen time is over now, because I'm just like guilty in one moment. I feel like my kid has too much screen time and then I react with such intensity. My screen time is over now, you know, because I'm just like trying to manage my own guilt through my, you know, sudden decision making. And I like take the iPad away, my, right. Well, if I think about how to think about this, okay.

So I'm watching something. I'm immersed in the show, right? I'm really involved in all of a sudden, the world I'm immersed in is yanked from me. Forget just the screen. That's a pretty upsetting experience. And when I've thought through this to my own kids, I'm like, first of all, I should probably tell them

this is coming and not just manage it based on my own guilt. But I've actually started with screen time based on this idea of like, right, they're just immersed in a world. I was like, what would happen if I forced myself 30 seconds before I end my kid's screen time to sit next to them, put my hand on their back and like kind of join whatever screen time world they're in.

So I can almost form a bridge that once I take away that world, then at least they're connected to me to kind of, this is what we say, rejoin the real world, which is like a crash. And it's been, I don't even know if that's some like proven strategy, but I'm like, right, they're immersed in a world, then they're alone. Okay, well, I know for me, if I was immersed in any world before it was young for me, it would be great if there was like a human helping me, you know, bridge that gap. And it, and it, it's not like they never have a meltdown, but it's been a huge difference.

Well, also if you can't read or write and you're two thirds of the way through a video that you randomly found, when your parents take that video away, it does disappear forever because you have no way to get back to that. And so one of the things we found is we go, hey, look, I'm gonna pause where you are, I'm gonna take a picture of it. You know, they've never once asked to go back to it,

but the fear that it is gone forever in that moment, which is clearly motivating a good chunk of the reaction. That has gone away. It's the same like when you're in stores, right? Like they have no idea how you got there. They have no idea that you might come back to Target on another time and date. And so they see this thing that they like and want

and they have no, it's not like they can write it down in their journal or write it down in the notes app of their phone, right? So they're just worried that it's gonna be gone forever and you're gonna forget and you can just empathize with that and adjust for it. I think that also relates to your same feelings and how there's no visible marker.

To some degree, I think kids are always asking parents without asking it concretely. Like, am I real? The things I feel, the things I want, the things I'm curious about, are they real? And when you say to a kid, you really, oh, that toy looks fun. I'm going to take a picture of it so we can remember it for your next birthday. Meanwhile, the next birthday is like 11 and a half months away. But still, it's not just an easy way to get out of a tantrum. What you're really saying is that things you want are real and I'm gonna show you they're real. And I take care of them.

By taking a picture and exactly and I care about them and the reason often kids don't ask about the game. That again, isn't cause they just forget. It's cause all they really wanted in that moment is to feel real. And when you give them the thing they really are looking for, guess what, their needs are satisfied. So the most powerful thing in the book to me as we wrap up is, you know, maybe you're

doing the opposite of these things or you've screwed up, you haven't been the way you want to. You say to yourself, it's too late, right? And you have a great passage in the book where you basically know it's never too late. And what struck me about it is, the reason I know it's never too late is like there are still things that I would like my parents to fix or to talk about. That would make a huge difference to me if they could just bring up in one fucking conversation, like if they could just address it one time, it would be this huge weight for me. It was a huge healing process. And those things were 30 plus years ago.

So the idea that you can't fix something that happened three days ago with your kid or 30 days ago or three years ago with your kid, you have a really good proof that it's not too late because it's not too late for you and your own childhood issues. That's right. And that's, I ended, I was just amazing. I did a TED Talk this year and did it on the topic of repair and ended with a kind of experiential moment in the audience. And it's online too. Going through kind of imagining your parents calling you or opening up a letter and exactly what you're saying, Ryan, having

a repair, right? And it actually, you know, makes me think what we were just talking about, Ryan, like if our parents said, which I think we all want, if one of them called us, or again, if they're both deceased and you happen to read a letter or they said, hey, you know, even just in general, there were so many different moments in your childhood that probably felt bad to you. And they weren't your fault. And I want you to know that. And if you ever want to talk to me about those moments, I'll listen, right? I think it goes back to realness. The reason we still want that repair is it's like the things I felt and noticed, please just tell me that they were real. Because if it's like a shared experience of that reality, it feels so much less painful than if I'm the only one

continuing to hold that. And whether I'm 10 or 40 or 60, the things that we have stored in a loneliness, they are so painful. We just want the aloneness removed. We know they can't be fixed, but we can always remove the aloneness. And if you think, I say it's my dead dog, no matter how old any of us are, what's always mathematically true is our

kids are younger than we were. Okay, that is definitely true for everyone. Okay, I can say of a certainty. And so if it would still make a difference in our life for our parents to have some version of that recognition and repair with us, it is to me the only proof we need that is never to late with our kids. And so whether you're right, it was three days ago, three years ago, a pattern of things for the last 20 years to go to your kid. And in my book and definitely in the TED Talk, there's the scripts, I think having words like,

oh, here's how I could start that conversation. Here's how I can open that door. It is never, ever too late. And I do think our body is always seeking connection for the moments that were stored with a lack of connection. I really, I don't know if I'm like an optimist, I just, I believe that, I think that's always true. When repair is such a powerful word, I think,

because in and of itself, it implies something was broken or not done right. You know what I mean? Like repair reconciliation reconciliation, or whatever. It doesn't necessarily imply a break or an error. And repair implies I didn't do something right or I didn't do enough. And I'm acknowledging that, which in and of itself is meaningful and it allows someone to feel seen. Yeah, and I think also what's really important is to me fault is like, it doesn't matter

who's fault it was. To me, the thing that was kind of broken, if you think about broken, it's a lack of connection. That's really what broken is. That's the visual. And a lack of connection can happen for so many reasons. Often, it happens from two people who had good intentions, where does something was off, where a moment was missed. That's fine.

And so just to acknowledge that something was held in that brokenness, to me means that aloneness. It's aloneness. When you're repairing something, it was a moment that was stored in your kid's body in aloneness. They were never talked to about it, right? That's what I always want so many parents to know. Events aren't what, like what like quote traumatized kids. Ever. Events don't bring trauma. Events that are

stored in a loneliness are what stay with kids in a state of trauma because the trauma is the a loneliness in an overwhelming distressing event, not the event itself. And I think so many times parents feel so guilty about the event that they don't talk to our kid, the kid about the event, but the event wasn't the thing. It's actually the thing that stops us from connecting with our kid. That is the thing our kids want to avoid. Well, and the source of so much, I think, ongoing tension or conflict inside families is a disagreement over what happened. Yes. But I've come to understand it's been a struggle for me,

but it's like people aren't wrong about their feelings. Like they feel that. So even if they're understanding their interpretation, what they made up about intentions or what happened, even if all of that is wrong, it doesn't change the fact that they feel hurt under pre, like they feel what they feel. And so in that sense, it's, it's real, you know? And so you have to repair that, not what you think. And so, so this, this, I think, very boomer tendency of like,

that didn't happen. What are you talking about? You know, it doesn't make it go away because even if you are right and they're think they are, they have an imagined memory or they were fed incorrect information. You're not going to be able to argue them out of their feelings. They still feel like you have to deal with the feeling. I can't unfe deal with the feeling either the feeling becomes understood by someone or it's alone. That those only two options. And I think I think this again, there's so many full circles. And this is what I hope feels obvious to people listening. It's like, it's the same stuff over and over, which is good because again, we don't have to learn a million systems. When we won't repair for something because we think we're right, right? It's two things out of collapsed. It's a one thing is true

mentality instead of a two things are true mentality. Right? It's like, okay, well, I can actually think that that whole experience went down very differently. And if I say to myself, Becky, I really believe that's true for me. Okay. Okay. And oh, wait, and the two things that are true. The second is, oh, my daughter feels very hurt. Okay, can I remind myself, I have my story, and that feels true to me, and can I open myself up to the possibility? That felt very different for her, right? And I think the other thing that's collapsed again is behavior and identity.

We're often the reason we don't repair with other people is because we fear that if we listen and understand the thing that feels true for them, it means I'm a bad person. It like, versus wait, I'm a good person who never intended to hurt my son. I'm a good person who believed I was doing the best I could do and and my son has a bunch of moments. He would like me to listen to and understand, not prove against, just better understand. And that again does not mean I was a bad mom. Right? And the more I can validate my own good

identity to myself, the more open I am to hearing about a whole range of behaviors that felt bad to other people. Yeah. And yeah, full circle. If you can accept that your kids are good inside, even when their behavior demonstrates otherwise, you also deserve the same treatment slash gift, which is you are not always the parent you wanted to be or the person that you would like to be. But inside you are good, you just didn't always do good things. And addressing or apologizing for or acknowledging Yes. Addressing or apologizing for or acknowledging those behaviors and not only doesn't change

the fact that you're good inside, it's the only way to get closer to bringing the inside stuff on the outside. It's a way to become more consistently that thing. That's right. And I always think especially for anyone listening to his older kids, and it's true for younger kids too, but when older kids and Ryan, even kids like R-H, right, where older kids, right, kind of have things that we're like, we'd love acknowledged or at least listen to when considered by our parents, to me who are saying to an adult and is, I like to form

another way of connecting with you. I'd like to like open a door and like actually bond with you around that. I'd like to be connected. I'd like that not to exist outside of our relationship. It's actually an invitation to get to know someone better. And like if you think about all of the parents who have kids who are older who say, wait, so if I go to my kid and say, hey, there are probably where things that didn't feel good to you and I'd like to listen to understand and just to learn more. What I'm really saying to my kid is,

I want to get to know you better. I want to get to know more of you. It's such a beautiful act of relationship building. It's lovely and I love the book so much. You can see I took quite a few notes. Those are all the pages full. So I love the book and thank you so much for writing it and it's really wonderful to talk. Thank you so much Ryan. Thank you for all the work you do. It's so nice to have this conversation. Thank you so much Ryan, thank you for all the work you do. It's so nice to have this conversation. Thank you. Likewise. Thank you so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to

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