Good Inside Quotes

“PNP Time only needs to last 10–15 minutes. The goal is to enter your child’s world—which is very different from the rest of a child’s day in which we, over and over, ask them to enter our world. During PNP Time, allow your child to direct the play and take time to witness and notice but not direct—your presence in their world is what matters most.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Next, let’s think about questions—what are we to do when our kids ask questions that makes us feel uncomfortable, that feel too “mature” for their age? Questions like, “Are you going to die one day?” and “Okay, but how does the baby get into the belly? Like actually get in there?” If you’re like most parents, you have the urge to skirt around the truth or think, “My child isn’t ready for this information!” Here’s how I see it: when kids start asking these questions, they are ready for answers.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“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. Now, to be clear, connection does not mean approval. Approval is usually about a specific behavior; connection is about our relationship with the person underneath the behavior.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Here’s an intervention that’s aimed at shame detection and reduction: “Hmm . . . it’s hard to find your ‘I’m sorry’ voice. I have times like that too. I’ll use it for you before you find it again.” Then you, the parent, go to your other child and say, “I’m sorry I took your lovie. I know that was upsetting. Is there anything I can do to make it better?” And then—and this is key—no dart eyes, no lecture, no “See, that was easy!” Just trust—yes, TRUST—that this sank in and move on. Maybe later in the day, when you see that shame is no longer present (you’ll notice because your child is back to her playful self), you can say something like, “Apologizing is hard. It’s even hard for me and I’m an adult!” Or you can use stuffed animals to act out a situation that didn’t feel good to one of the animals and model a struggle around apologizing. Then pause and see what your daughter says. But note that none of this reflection or learning or growth is possible when shame is present.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Whenever your child seems “stuck,” consider that she might be in a moment of shame, and when you see that shame pop up, when you detect it, the key is to take pause. When a child is overwhelmed with shame, we must be willing to put our original “goal”—to elicit an apology, to inspire gratitude, to prompt an honest answer—to the side and instead focus solely on reducing the shame.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“As a parent, I challenge myself to sit with my child in his feeling of distress so he knows he isn’t alone, as opposed to pulling my child out of this moment, which leaves him alone the next time he finds himself there. For example, when my child says, “Ugh, the block tower keeps falling! Help me!,” instead of saying, “Here, let me build you a sturdy base,” in order to help him out of the hard moment, I might say, “Ugh, how annoying!” Then I’ll take a few audible deep breaths and say, “Hmm . . . I wonder what we could do to make it sturdier . . . ,” and model a look of curiosity. All of this is designed to connect to my child within the distress. When my child says, “Everyone in my class lost a tooth, I’m the only one who didn’t!” I don’t say, “Sweetie, you will soon, and you’re one of the kids who can read chapter books!” in order to distract him from his disappointment. Instead, I might say, “Everyone else lost one already, huh? You wish you lost a tooth, I get that. I remember feeling something really similar in kindergarten . . .” The goal here is to help my child feel less alone in her distress. Reminding ourselves, “Connect! Connect!” encourages us to first be present in our child’s experience instead of leading our child out of his own experience.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“I will revisit the details of repair, including lengthier scripts for handling these tricky moments, in the next part of this book. But for now, I want to offer some baseline to-dos: Say you’re sorry, share your reflections with your child—restating your memory of what happened, so your kid knows it wasn’t all in his head—and then say what you wish you had done differently and what you plan to do differently now and in the future. It’s important to take ownership over your role (“Mommy was having big feelings that came out in a yelling voice. Those were my feelings and it’s my job to work on managing them better. It’s never your fault when I yell and it’s not your job to figure out how I can stay calmer. I love you”) instead of insinuating that your child “made you” react in a certain way. And remember: as a parent, you are your child’s role model. When your child sees you as a work in progress, he learns that he, too, can learn from his struggles and take responsibility when he acts in a way he isn’t proud of.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“When we return to a moment that felt bad and add connection and emotional safety, we actually change the memory in the body. The memory no longer has such overwhelming “I’m alone and bad inside” labels. It’s now more nuanced, as we layer on support after criticism, softness after yelling, understanding after misunderstanding.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Generally speaking, relationships with parents that include responsiveness, warmth, predictability, and repair when things feel bad set a child up to have a secure base. A child who sees a parent as his secure base feels a sense of safety in the world, a sense of “someone will be there for me and comfort me if things go wrong.” As such, he feels capable of exploring, trying new things, taking risks, suffering failures, and being vulnerable. There’s a deep and critical paradox here: The more we can rely on a parent, the more curious and explorative we can be.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“our jobs don’t stop at protecting our children’s physical safety—we are also their emotional caretakers. This is where two other important job duties come in: validation and empathy. Validation is the process of seeing someone else’s emotional experience as real and true, rather than seeing someone else’s emotional experience as something we want to convince them out of or logic them away from. Validation sounds like this: “You’re upset, that’s real, I see that.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“We cannot tell a child who is hitting someone to stop hitting, or a child who is running to stop running, or a child who is complaining about wanting more TV to stop complaining. Well, we can (I am someone who says all these things too!), but these pleas won’t be successful. Why? Because we cannot control someone else—we can only control ourselves.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Psychologist Philip Bromberg may have said it best: “Health is the ability to stand in the spaces between realities without losing any of them—the capacity to feel like one self while being many.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Let me say that another way: how we talk to ourselves when we are struggling inside—the self-talk of “Don’t be so sensitive” or “I’m overreacting” or “I’m so dumb,” or, alternatively, “I’m trying my best” or “I simply want to feel seen”—is based on how our parents spoke to or treated us in our times of struggle.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Here’s the thing I realized: these “evidence-based” approaches were built on principles of behaviorism, a theory of learning that focuses on observable actions rather than non-observable mental states like feelings and thoughts and urges. 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”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Solving would sound like, “Just let Jessie use it first, she’s two years old, geez!” or “Micah, you get it now and then, Jessie, you get it after.” But slowing down would sound like, “Let me take that fire truck for a second—okay, I have it. Now, I know I need a deep breath.” Take a few deep breaths to allow your children to “borrow” your regulation. “Hmm, two kids, one truck! That is so tricky. I wonder what we can do? I wonder if I have any problem-solvers here . . .” Then pause. Remind yourself, your job is to slow down the situation so your kids can regulate their bodies and have access to their own problem-solving skills; your job isn’t to solve this as quickly as possible. Here, you’re helping your children learn the process that leads to problem-solving; when we fix things for our kids, we just lock them into needing us to problem-solve, and this becomes frustrating to everyone.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Ok, let’s get practical and talk about how to implement PNP Time in your home: Give it a name to indicate that this time is special. I use the term PNP Time because I happen to love a good acronym and, also, there’s something a bit silly about the term that my kids really like. Feel free to name it something else, like Daddy-Marco Time or Mommy-Daughter time. Limit time to ten to fifteen minutes. No phones, no screens, no siblings, no distractions. Let your child pick the play. This is key. Allow your child to be in the spotlight; your job is only to notice, imitate, reflect, and describe what they’re doing.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“The following interventions are meant to be used in calmer moments, prime time for improving your relationship with your child, building new skills, and developing pathways for change. When things feel off in my own family, I begin with these strategies, which essentially result in connection capital deposits.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

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

“I took a breath. “First of all, I’m so glad you’re here,” I said. “Second of all, I am going to solve all of that. Every single thing.” They laughed. I smiled. I started again. “Okay, that’s not true. We aren’t going to solve any of it, at least not today. Here’s the thing: we can’t change behavior until we build connection, so our first interventions need to focus on that. The real problem here isn’t any of the specific issues you named—it’s not the tantrums or the back talk or the door slamming or drop-off crying. The real problem, it seems, is that your family system is out of balance. No one feels secure or safe.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Taking a breath and remembering that often the only way we get our needs met is by simultaneously tolerating others’ distress helps prevent us from losing ourselves.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Getting Your Needs Met and Tolerating Distress Time for an experiment! I want you to say the following sentence aloud, preferably in front of a mirror, and then observe how your body responds: “I am allowed to have things for myself even if they inconvenience others.” Now pause. Does your body want to accept or reject what you just said? What’s your natural reaction to that statement? Do any memories or images come to mind? The only goal here is to learn about yourself. One reaction isn’t better than another; all data is good data.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“I define shame as the feeling that “this part of me is not connectable—no one wants to know or be with this part.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“says, “I wasn’t invited to Anuj’s birthday party,” we convince him that the party had to be small and that Anuj does, in fact, really like him. We think we are helping, but what our child hears is, “I should not feel upset. When I feel uncomfortable, my job is to make my way into comfort as soon as possible.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“It’s important to take ownership over your role (“Mommy was having big feelings that came out in a yelling voice. Those were my feelings and it’s my job to work on managing them better. It’s never your fault when I yell and it’s not your job to figure out how I can stay calmer. I love you”)”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“When parents are willing to change, when they are willing to repair and reflect together, nondefensively, about moments in the past that felt bad to kids . . . the child’s brain can rewire.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Maybe we can all take a moment, right now, to acknowledge this incredible challenge. Place your hand on your heart and say these words: “I am both working on myself and working to take care of my family. I’m trying to rewire the patterns that do not benefit me and I’m trying to wire my kids, from the start, for resilience and feeling at home in themselves. Wow. I am doing so much.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Generally speaking, relationships with parents that include responsiveness, warmth, predictability, and repair when things feel bad set a child up to have a secure base. A child who sees a parent as his secure base feels a sense of safety in the world, a sense of “someone will be there for me and comfort me if things go wrong.” As such, he feels capable of exploring, trying new things, taking risks, suffering failures, and being vulnerable.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“Say hello to the guilt, and then remind yourself that you are a good parent working on yourself and your relationships, and this is, actually, the best any of us can do.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“In this two-story-house analogy, the parent is, basically, a staircase. Their primary function is to start linking a child’s downstairs brain (overwhelming feelings) to their upstairs brain (self-awareness, regulation, planning, decision-making). Knowing your job is fundamental to this goal. We want our kids to feel their wide range of feelings and have new experiences, and our job is to help them build resilience by teaching them to cope with whatever the world throws at them.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

“the wider the range of feelings we can name and tolerate in our kids (again, this doesn’t mean behaviors), the wider the range of feelings they will be able to manage safely, affording them an increased ability to feel at home with themselves.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be