Good Inside Quotes

“When a child is stuck in a lie, I find it effective to walk through how I would respond if she shared the truth. Let’s say you get a call from your daughter’s school notifying you that she didn’t do her writing homework for the past week. You get home and ask her about it, and she says over and over, “I did do it! I did! I don’t want to talk about it!” After an initial pause, when you feel you have a tiny opening, you might say: “Oh . . . okay . . . well, all I’m saying is that if a kid in this family did have a few days of not doing homework, I would really try to understand. Because every kid in this family, if they didn’t do homework, would have some reason for this. It makes me think about when I was seven and didn’t do writing homework for a bunch of days. Something about writing felt so tricky and it was so hard for me to work on it. Anyway, if it did happen, I’d sit with you and talk it out. You wouldn’t be in trouble . . .” Then play it cool. Don’t look at your child and say, “So you didn’t do it, right?” Just move on.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Seeing a lie as a wish allows us to continue seeing our kid as a good kid—and this is critical in responding to lies. Using the language of wishing in response to a child’s falsehoods changes the direction of the conversation, as it allows for more options than just “telling the truth” and “lying.” Now there’s an in-between place, and your ability to see and vocalize that gray area can soften the intensity of the moment and create a way to connect with your child. When your child says, “I’ve been on a trip to Florida too!” you might say, “Hmm . . . I bet you wish we vacationed in Florida. It sounds so sunny and warm there. I wonder what we’d do if we went?”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Now, here’s an amazing thing about cycles, even “negative” ones: once we recognize the components of a cycle, we have enough information to change it. Changing the parental control/child lying cycle often starts with (no surprise here!) connecting with our kids about this very pattern. Approach your child in a calm moment, and share something like: “Hey, I want to give you more independence. I know it feels awful, when you’re a kid, to be in charge of so little. Where can we start? Where’s an area you’d like to have more control?” See what your child says and go from there.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Finally, it’s worth noting that a third big reason kids lie is to assert their independence. All of us—kids and adults—have a basic human need to feel like we can locate ourselves, that we know who we are, and that we exist in our own right. This is why we hate feeling controlled, because it feels like someone isn’t acknowledging our separate personhood.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Kids also lie if they believe that telling the truth will threaten their attachment with their parents. Attachment is a system of proximity. It’s literally about staying close to your caregivers and feeling that your caregivers want to stay close to you. Kids are constantly monitoring their relationships with their parents with this in mind. They’ll wonder, “Is what I’m about to tell my parent going to push me away from them or help me stay close and connected?”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Kids lie for a few main reasons. First, the line between fantasy and reality is murkier for them than it is for adults. Kids frequently engage in pretend play, where they aren’t constrained by the laws of reality and they enter into different worlds and take on traits of different characters. I’m a big fan of pretend play. It’s where children can express and explore the issues they struggle with, because it’s a safe world within their control. But when you ask your child if she broke the lamp, knowing full well that she was the one who tipped it over, and she says, “No, I was playing in my room,” your child may be coping with her guilt, or her fear of disappointing or enraging you in that moment, by entering into fantasy. We can look at this in two ways: that a child is “avoiding telling the truth” or that telling the truth feels so hard and scary that she slips into a world of pretend where she has control and can dictate an ending that feels better to her.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“The reality is that lying is almost never about being defiant or sneaky or sociopathic (even when you’re only saying that in jest). Like so many of the behaviors addressed in this book, lying is much more about a child’s basic desires and their focus on attachment than it is about being manipulative or “pulling a fast one.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Rather than demanding a restated request, I find that modeling it myself and moving on is both more humane and more effective. What would this look like? When your child says, “Dad, I need my boooooook!” . . . instead of “I need you to say that again in a stronger voice,” try “Dad, can you please grab me that book? Thank you so much.” Then “switch” and reply, “Oh sure, sweetie, no problem.” Deliver the book, take a deep breath, skip the lecture, trust your child to hear the difference and incorporate the change.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Tantrums—those moments when children seem to “lose it”—are a sign of one thing and one thing only: that a child cannot manage the emotional demands of a situation. In 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.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“have to listen to you now” game. Introduce this by saying, “I know being a kid is tough. There are so many things that parents ask of you! So let’s play a game. For the next five minutes, you’re the adult and I’m the kid. I have to do what you say, assuming it’s safe.” Explain to your child that the game does not involve food or gifts (your child cannot tell you to go buy them a hundred new Pokémon packs or give them thirty bags of Skittles)—it’s really about the routine of your day.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“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.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“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.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“we can’t change behavior until we build connection,”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Let’s walk through four different ways you might tell the truth: confirming your child’s perceptions, honoring your child’s questions, labeling what you don’t know, and focusing on the how instead of the exact what.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Our attention communicates that they are safe, important, valuable, loved.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“But for me, more powerful than knowing exactly what to say to my kids in a difficult moment is coming back to a general goal or principle. So if our general goal is to support and not solve, or tolerate and not escape, then to build resilience in our kids, we should be guided by one question: am I helping my kid tolerate and work through this distress, or am I encouraging my child to avoid and beeline out of the distress? We want the first, not the second.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Children who are left alone with intense distress often rely on one of two coping mechanisms: self-doubt and self-blame.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Research has established that, oftentimes, when kids are struggling, it is not therapy for the child himself but coaching or therapy for the parent that leads to the most significant changes in the child.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“So when your child says, “I hate my baby brother, send him back to the hospital!” and you yell, “Don’t say that about your brother, you love him!” the lesson they learn isn’t that their words were inappropriate. The lesson they learn is that jealousy and anger are dangerous emotions, ones they shouldn’t have at all. This is why it’s so critical to separate what a child does (which may be “bad”) from who a child is (good inside); of course we don’t want our kids to hit (behavior), but we do want our kids to have the right to feel angry (feeling).”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“true! The more children feel they can depend on a parent, the more independent they can be.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“As we investigate behaviors, we get to know the child better, we learn about what this child needs and what skills they’re missing, we uncover a parent’s triggers and areas for growth, and 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?”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“From their first days of life, our kids learn what leads to closeness and what leads to distance and then adjust their behavior accordingly,”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Children need to sense a parent’s boundary—our “I won’t let you” and our stopping them from dangerous action—in order to feel, deep in their bodies, this message: “This feeling might seem as if it will take over and destroy the world, it might seem too much, and yet I am sensing in my parent’s boundary that there is a way to contain it. This feeling feels scary and overwhelming to me, but I can see it’s not scary or overwhelming to my parent.” Over time, children absorb this containment and can access it on their own.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“The more you allow your kids to feel jealousy, the more you can problem-solve around the moments the feeling comes up; the less you allow jealousy (“Don’t say that about your sister!”), and the fewer skills a child develops for dealing with it when it arises, the more likely it is that jealousy will come out as insults (“Maxie is the worst gymnast here, she sucks!”) or behavior (making loud noises while spectators are supposed to be quiet, running away from you and screaming loudly).”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Birth order deserves its own book, but let me say a few things about it here. First kids get accustomed to being alone; they are wired with their parents’ full attention, so having a new sibling completely rocks the foundation of their world.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“When my own kids are in a particularly challenging sibling stage, I remind myself: “They feel untethered and insecure. They each need more connection with me to feel anchored in this family. Okay, let’s schedule some PNP!”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Second and third (and fourth, etc.) kids have the opposite wiring: their circuitry is shaped by the presence of someone else constantly in their space, constantly able to do things they cannot (yet) do, constantly competing for time and attention. It’s frustrating to be a second kid. You can’t build a block tower without seeing an older sibling do it more easily, you can’t run in the backyard without seeing a sibling run faster, you can’t work on early reading without seeing your older sibling read effortlessly.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“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). The more we connect with our kids about how they feel—in this case maybe jealous or angry toward a sibling—the less likely they are to explode in the form of behavior: insults, hitting, mockery, put-downs.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“In the “more manageable” category: parents need to accept that their kids have a range of feelings about their siblings. Many parents hold on to a common but unrealistic narrative: “Siblings should be best friends!” or “My kids should always be nice to each other!” or “I gave my child the gift of a sibling, they should be so happy!” Am I suggesting that having more than one kid is a bad idea, that siblings are usually enemies, that siblings should be awful to each other? No, not at all. Those ideas are just as extreme as the first set. I’m saying that sibling relationships are complex, and the more we appreciate this complexity, the better we can prepare our kids to tolerate all the feelings that arise, so they’re better able to regulate them. When that happens, their feelings won’t come out as often in behavior, and this is our goal.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Let’s say your child had an aggressive tantrum when his brother said he couldn’t join his playdate. Hours, or even a day, later, you might say: “Let me see if I got this right . . . you wanted to play with Dante and Kaito . . . and Dante said no . . . and you said, ‘Please please,’ and Dante said no again . . . that felt so bad, so hard, and then you were kicking and screaming . . . Daddy picked you up and brought you to your room and sat with you . . . and then we waited together and your body calmed down . . .” This is when many parents ask, “And then what? What do I do next? Do I tell them how to handle it differently next time?” Nope! The simple act of adding your presence, coherence, and a narrative will change how the experience is stored in a child’s body; remember, the pathway that ends in regulation (i.e., fewer tantrums!) starts with understanding and connection, and telling the story does exactly this.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be