Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

by Becky Kennedy

when we focus too much on judging and changing a specific behavior, we get in the way of that behavior actually changing, because we miss the core struggle that motivated it in the first place.

Prioritizing control over relationship building is a dangerous trade-off.

we don’t build a sturdy foundation with our kids—one based in trust, understanding, and curiosity—then we have nothing keeping them

attached to us.

It’s a powerful feeling that tells us we should not want to be seen as we are in the moment. Shame encourages us to avoid contact with others—to hide, to distance ourselves, to move away rather than toward others.

And shame activates the ultimate fear for a child, the idea “I am bad inside, I am unworthy, I am unlovable, I am unattachable . . . I will be all alone.” Given that children’s survival is dependent on attachment, their bodies read shame as: “Ultimate danger! Ultimate danger!” There is nothing as dysregulating to a child as a set of emotions or sensations or actions that leads to the threat of abandonment; it truly is an existential danger to survival.

We have to shift from a goal of correcting behavior to a goal of helping our child feel good inside, showing our child her lovability and worth, affirming our connection.

This stuck with me: connection first. Connection is the opposite of shame. It is the antidote to shame. Shame is a warning sign of aloneness, danger, and badness; connection is a sign of presence, safety, and goodness.

Connection is opening; it allows for movement. Connection is when we show our kids, “It’s okay to be you right now. Even when you’re struggling, it’s okay to be you. I am here with you, as you are.”

Our supportive, honest, caring presence is what feels safe to our children—when kids have this, even difficult truthful information is manageable.

The thing is, kids don’t need reassurance about the future. They need to feel supported in the current moment. They don’t need answers, they need to not feel alone in their feelings.

you won’t always have answers, but you can always work on feeling safe and competent in the present moment.

“My mom showed me that parenthood doesn’t mean losing yourself. Parenthood means helping your child develop and grow while you yourself are developing and growing at the same time.”

and that idea is terrifying to a child. Kids don’t want to feel that their leader is someone who cannot be located, who is easily overrun by others, who is . . . lost.

The quality of our relationships with others is only as good as the quality of the relationship we have with ourselves.

we accept that we cannot avoid someone else’s inconvenience or distress; it’s not our job to make sure someone else is happy, and it’s not someone else’s job to cheerlead us as we assert ourselves. We need cooperation from others, but not approval.

I regularly remind myself that in order to get what I need, someone else might have to be inconvenienced or annoyed, and this is okay. Someone else’s distress shouldn’t be a reason why I can’t meet my own needs.

Many of us were raised to take in another person’s distress as our responsibility, so when we see our partners or friends or kids get upset when we assert ourselves or say no, we backtrack.

often the only way we get our needs met is by simultaneously tolerating others’ distress

As I explained to my clients, when parents struggle with their kids, it almost always boils down to one of two problems: children don’t feel as connected to their parents as they want to, or children have some struggle or unmet need they feel alone with.

This means that parents need to be even bigger connection-builders.

Here’s the kicker when it comes to connection-building: we get the biggest bang for our buck when we’re calm. Trying to connect in the heat of the moment is not

especially effective, because our bodies don’t learn well when they’re in fight-or-flight mode. During calmer moments, we can slow down, connect with our kids, see their goodness, and develop stronger relationships.

Remember, kids’ most dysregulated moments occur when they feel emotions intensely and in a state of aloneness; emotional vaccination also gives us an opportunity to infuse connection into these moments before they even occur. This helps to interrupt the meltdown cycle.

car. The gap between a child’s world of struggle and a parent’s world of capability is intimidating for kids, and it can be (unintentionally) shame inducing.

A rupture moment occurs because both people are in their own experience, and they are unable to temporarily put that experience to the side to understand and connect to the other person.

when we’re brave enough to express curiosity about someone else’s experience during our tough moments, we forge closeness, because in acknowledging that our apology doesn’t undo their pain, we are signaling that we care more about their feelings and their reality than our pride or comfort. We also learn more about the other person, thereby deepening our relationship because we are willing to hear their truth.

The more connected we feel to someone, the more we want to comply with their requests. Listening is essentially a barometer for the strength of a relationship in any given moment.

remind myself that connection always increases cooperation, because we all like to help the people we feel close to.

The single most important strategy in regard to listening is to connect to your child in their world before you ask them to do something in your world.

the moment of a tantrum, a child is experiencing a feeling, urge, or sensation that overwhelms his capacity to regulate that feeling, urge, or sensation. That’s an important thing to remember: tantrums are biological states of dysregulation, not willful acts of disobedience.

We want our kids to want for themselves.

But we cannot encourage subservience and compliance in our kids when they’re young

and expect confidence and assertiveness when they’re older.

we want our kids to be able to recognize their wants and needs as adults, then we need to start seeing tantrums as an essential part of their development.

Helping our kids through tantrums relies on our ability to see through the event that set off the “meltdown” and recognize the real, painful feelings underneath. Learning to recognize a tantrum for what it is on the inside rather than reacting to what is happening on the outside is a vital parenting skill.

Our kids cannot learn to regulate a feeling that we, the adults, try to avoid or shut down. Our goal during a tantrum should be to keep ourselves calm and keep our children safe.

“Nothing is wrong with me. Nothing is wrong with my child. I can cope with this.”

having a hard time, not giving her a hard time.

remember, the pathway that ends in regulation (i.e., fewer tantrums!) starts with understanding and connection, and telling the story does exactly this. Now, you might sense a softening or an opening to say, “Hmm, it feels so bad to not be included. I wonder what you could do if that happens again when Dante has a friend over . . .” This is fine, it will do no harm. But remember that the key element is the connection and storytelling, not the solution.

Remember: it’s not our feelings that are the problem, it’s the regulation of the feelings. And kids’ ability to regulate feelings depends on our willingness to acknowledge, validate, and permit those feelings (and put up boundaries when the feelings spill into dangerous actions).

And there’s a longer-term reason why we don’t want to aim for “fairness” in our families: we want to help our kids orient inward to figure out their needs, not orient outward.

meeting their rudeness with empathy and kindness will make them feel seen and help inspire kindness in return.

whining = strong desire + powerlessness.

the more you focus on those feelings underneath the surface and give them the connection they need, the less your children will whine.

When kids are whining, they are asking for some combination of more attention, more connection, more warmth, more empathy, and more validation.

environment where truth-telling becomes more possible. We cannot change a behavior we don’t understand, and punishment, threats, and rage are never components in environments that foster understanding or change.

A parent’s job, then, is not to change the feeling itself but to be curious about their children’s anxiety and to help them feel at home with themselves when that anxiety emerges.

It’s about seeing our kids for who they are and what they

need as separate from who we are and what we need.