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

by Becky Kennedy

we move from a place of “What’s wrong with my child and can you fix them?” to “What is my child struggling with and what’s my role in helping them?” And hopefully also, “What’s coming up for ME about this situation?”

Behaviorism privileges shaping behavior above understanding behavior. It sees behavior as the whole picture rather than an expression of underlying unmet needs. This is why, I realized, these “evidence-based” approaches felt so bad to me—they confused the signal (what was really going on for a child) with the noise (behavior). After all, our goal is not to shape behavior. Our goal is to raise humans.

Finding the good inside can often come from asking ourselves one simple question: “What is my most generous interpretation of what just happened?”

Choosing the most generous interpretation of your child’s behavior does not mean you are “being easy” on them, but rather you are framing their behavior in a way that will help them build critical emotion regulation skills for their future—and you’re preserving your connection and close relationship along the way.

Our kids should not dictate our boundaries and we should not dictate their feelings.

When kids are upset, it’s as if they are plopped down on the bench of that feeling. It may be an Angry Bench or Disappointed Bench or even a Nobody-Likes-Me Bench. And what kids (and also adults) want when they’re on a bench, especially the dark uncomfortable ones, is someone to sit with them.