The WorkWell Podcast™ is back and I am so excited about the inspiring guests we have lined up. Wellbeing at work is the issue of our time. This podcast is your lens into what the experts are seeing, thinking, and doing.
Hi, I am Jen Fisher, host, bestselling author and influential speaker in the corporate wellbeing movement and the first-ever Chief Wellbeing Officer in the professional services industry. On this show, I sit down with inspiring individuals for wide-ranging conversations on all things wellbeing at work. Wellbeing is the future of work. This podcast will help you as an individual, but also support you in being part of the movement for change in your own organizations and communities. Wellbeing can be the outcome of work well designed. And we all have a role to play in this critical transformation!
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Jen Fisher (Jen): Hi, WorkWell listeners. I’m really excited to share that my book Work Better Together is
officially out, conversations WorkWell guests and feedback from listeners like you inspired this book. It’s
all about how to create a more human-centered workplace, and as we return to the office for many of
us, this book can help you move forward into post pandemic life with strategies and tools to strengthen
your relationships and focus on your well-being. It’s available now from your favorite book retailer.
Parenting is one of the most rewarding, but also hardest jobs in life. All parents want to raise happy and
healthy children. But modern society, social pressure, and recent challenges like the global pandemic
can make it incredibly difficult. How can we shake off the ideal image of the perfect parent, so that we
can focus on nurturing and connecting with our kids in more meaningful ways?
This is the WorkWell podcast series. Hi, I’m Jen Fisher, chief well-being officer for Deloitte, and I’m so
pleased to be with you today to talk about all things well-being. I’m here with Dr. Becky Kennedy. She’s
a clinical psychologist, mom of three, and was named the Millennial Parenting Whisperer by Time
Magazine. She’s also the founder of Good Inside, an expert guided, community powered platform,
equipping parents with a new way of seeing and solving challenges at home. Dr. Becky, welcome to the
show.
Becky Kennedy (Becky): Thank you so much for having me, really excited to be here.
Jen: I’m so excited for this conversation. It is a new topic for the WorkWell podcast. So, tell us who you
are, tell us about yourself, and then how you became passionate about parenting and helping parents.
Becky: So, my name is Dr. Becky Kennedy. I am a clinical psychologist and I specialize in relationships,
child development, parenting, resilience. And I know I’m here kind of along the lines of the topics of
parenting. I think that what I always kind of like to share around that is, I look at parenting in really the
same way I look at adults relating to other adults. Or even the way I look at adults in psychotherapy in
terms of their relationship they have with themselves, really helping in some ways many adults see that
the principles that really will help me interact with my kid and help my kid develop into the adult I would
want them to be feeling competent and confident and all those things. Wow, those are actually really
the same principles as I relate to myself, or I relate to other people at work or I relate to my partner.
And so, there really is a universality to these things, and then the tweaks are a little bit different for a
two-year old versus a teenager versus a colleague. But there’s actually something really powerful to
seeing those network effected because then you realize, wow, working on one thing can actually help
me in all of those relationships. And that in my mind is really efficient. So, I love helping adults kind of
see those efficiencies, and I also am a mom to three kids, a 10-year old, a 7-year old, and a 5-year old.
Jen: So, you have lots of opportunities to practice what you preach.
Becky: I love that way of putting it. I have lots of opportunity. And just for everyone right from the start,
whatever I say here, especially the things that seem like really helpful, please don’t think I do those
things with my own kids all the time. I definitely do not. So, I will listen to this podcast at some point and
hear something and it’ll make me think, wow, I really need to do that with my own kid because I’ve been
doing totally the opposite. So, we are all in this together.
Jen: We are. And one of the things that I love about you, for those of you that do not follow Dr. Becky on
social media, you should, because she is very real and kind of talks about her parenting missteps quite a
bit, which makes us all feel just a little bit better about ourselves. So, thank you for that.
Becky: No problem. It’s always funny to me when people say like oh, do you have a camera inside my
home? Like, how did you know that something like that would happen? And I was like, well, isn’t the
easier interpretation like, wow, that must have just happened in Becky’s home? Like, that’s probably
why she’s speaking about it. So, for sure, I have three real kids and it’s just hard to be a parent for
everyone.
Jen: And I love that you talk about, you know, our relationship with ourselves and how that is in many
ways kind of the same approach that you take to parenting. So, can you dive more deeply into that just
because I personally also have found that like as an adult, which I think I am most days, relationships are
just like hard. I felt like they were so much easier when I was younger. So, can you unpack that for us?
Becky: And I think one of the ways to jump in there is if we all think about, let’s say, something with our
kid that we find really hard or we might even say, yeah, that’s triggering to me or it’s just hard for me to
show up even the way I’d want to show up or it gets under my skin. So maybe it’s your kid having a
tantrum when you say no more screen time or maybe it’s your kids arguing or maybe it’s your kid
clinging to you and you feel like, oh, they’re the only kid not joining the birthday party, whatever it is
that you’re like, oh, it gives me the heebie jeebies just to think about that situation. What I think is just
such an empowering shift is to move from some version of like, what’s wrong with my kid and how can I
fix them, which we all have those thoughts, so we’re all still good parents, don’t worry. To, huh, at the
end of the day, whatever I respond to in someone else is really based on the circuit in my own body. Like
if it’s hard for me to tolerate my kid’s tantrums. Sure, tantrums are hard for everyone, but also however,
I learn to respond to big displays of emotion that predated my kid’s existence or however I respond to
my kid clinging to me and seemingly presenting a shy and not ready to join the group. My reaction to
that trait in someone preexisted my child’s existence. So, they’re triggering something in me, but when
we learn to look in and ask questions like what does it bring up for me when my kid’s the only one who
doesn’t join? What beliefs do I have? What fears get evoke? Do I even see my kid as a four-year-old, or
do I see them as a 40-year-old never able to join a dinner party? Or one of my kids having a meltdown.
Do I really see them as a 7-year-old having a meltdown or again, do I have ideas like oh they’re so selfish
or they aren’t going to be able to cope with life? And the more we’re able to notice what comes up in
us. I just think it’s like the most empowering opportunity because I think some parents will say, oh, so
it’s my fault. I’m like, no, it’s like the opposite, of course it’s not your fault. It’s just really empowering as
a parent to go from, oh, I need my kid to change, to feel sturdier and better to something else, which is
well, if I get a better sense of what’s coming up for me and I learn to rework some of that. It’s not only
going to help me show up in the way I want, which also is going to be the thing that helps my kid. It’s
actually going to help me in so many other areas of my life. And so, like, how empowering and amazing
is that?
Jen: And I love that lens on it, because you’re right, we kind of tend to go to well, it’s my fault or I did
something wrong or instead of looking at it as okay if I dig in and try to understand this a little bit better,
it’s empowering, and I can actually do something about it as opposed to kind of feeling helpless.
Becky: Exactly. And I think again, this is true in parenting, in partnership, and at work. Anybody who’s
thinking, like I’m a senior manager and I have a really junior employee. Let’s say I have a first-year
person coming to work for me. No good manager I know would be like, I need my analyst to do these
five things for me to feel good at my work. I feel like if we heard that would be like what, you’re relying
on a 22-year-old to…okay, like that seems just really vulnerable to leave your own productivity. But if
you’re saying, here’s the things I know I can do to be the best manager and get the most out of this
person, and here’s what I’m in control of. Well, now I have a way to leave work, or I could feel good
about myself based on my lane. And that separation is really important for a junior employee. And it’s
the same thing with our kids. And I find over and over, and I hear stories about this in our membership
over and over, which to me is like such a cause for celebration where someone says, wow, this might
seem crazy, but we have a place where people report wins like parenting wins. And they say my win
actually came in a moment where I was in a grocery store and my kid had a meltdown and I knew what
to do. Like, I knew I had to leave the store. I knew how to carry them to the car. I knew what to say. And
it’s so odd that a situation that would have spiraled me. Now is actually the situation where I feel like I
have a win. But I always think that’s the best win there is, when you can show up as a sturdy leader in a
storm, you know you’re doing an awesome job.
Jen: That is true. Very true words there. When it comes to parenting, but I guess this is true in any
relationship, but you have said before that the goal of parenting shouldn’t be to make your kid happy. I
guess we can’t really make anybody happy, but can you talk more about that?
Becky: Thanks for asking that question. I love this topic. It could be its own podcast. I think we can all go
from one extreme to another because when I said that to someone about my own kids. Like, my goal
isn’t for them to be happy, they are like, oh, so you want your kids to be unhappy? No, you know, those
are not the only two buckets I promise that we have to choose from. So, what I noticed during my years
of working with so many adults in psychotherapy is there were like adult after adult after adult coming
to my office essentially saying, I kind of know therapy is a place you’re supposed to talk about your
parents and all the bad things that happened. They’re like, honestly, my parents were like supportive
and great and like, I feel like actually they spent like a lot of my early childhood, like doing so much for
me. And so, really Dr. Becky, what’s wrong with me? Because as an adult, I feel handicapped by my own
anxiety. I feel empty inside. I feel like something small goes wrong in a relationship or at work, and I like
have a really hard time recovering. And so, it just started to make me think even before I had kids like,
what is this? What is this, where it emphasis on happiness early on, seems to not lead to a finding of
happiness later on? And when I got to think about it and then of course, have my own kids and kind of
lived through it, you know, our kids’ early years are really all about learning to develop skills to manage
emotions in life. Period. It’s like years to practice emotion regulation skills, because we all know as
adults when you get to adulthood no adult ever says, I had the best parents ever. They got rid of all the
frustration and jealousy and anger in me, and I’ve never felt it after the age of 18. Like, that’s never
happened. So, either by the time you’re an adult, when you still have all the feelings in the world as you
did when you were a kid, you either have coping skills for those feelings or like you’re kind of
developmentally at a very similar place to a one and two year old where you have all the feelings, but
you don’t have any of the skills. And learning to respond to your frustration or your jealousy with a leap
into happiness with kind of an immediate fix is something that is relatively achievable in your early
years. Because a parent could say, oh, you weren’t invited at birthday party. I’m throwing you a different
party that same date and we’re going to invite the other kids. They can do this for you. But then what
your body actually learns is when I have even the little bit of frustration turned on my body starts
looking for the happy. Where’s the happy? How do I get happy? And we know in adulthood finding the
happy is just not an option. Sometimes our only option is tolerating the distress. And so, there’s this kind
of paradox that I really believe a childhood that’s focused on being happy actually leads to an adult hood
of a ton of anxiety because you don’t have any of the coping skills. You’ve kind of missed out on 18 years
of learning how to cope with all the hard parts of life.
Jen: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. And I’m, I think, reflecting on my own childhood in your words and
going okay, now that makes sense. I know why I behave that way. So, what is it that parents get wrong
about parenting? Like, you know, what are the mistakes that we’re making that we may not even know
about? And again, this is not to shame anybody, but to kind of raise our awareness around what we can
do differently.
Becky: It’s a good question. If it’s okay, I’ll probably shift it to a question I feel like I can answer. The
word mistakes, it’s just interesting, I am always like, I really do believe and it’s the essence of Good
Inside, that we’re all doing the best we can with the information and the resources we have available in
that moment. And so, I’ve actually challenged myself. I’m like Becky, if I really believe that’s true, do I
even believe in the word mistake? Because mistake kind of assumes I could have done something else.
So, it’s more than semantics. That doesn’t mean I think that every behavior is okay. Obviously, it’s not.
But, I think another version of that question is like what are a lot of our blind spots, me too. What are
our blind spots in parenting? And I think it’s like a really big question and it has to do with something
much larger than our individual family system. It has to do with the way like the media and society even
looks at parenting. I truly believe parenting is the hardest and most important job in the world. Hardest
and most important, and when I think about other jobs that would be classified as hard and important in
the world, I don’t know doctors, you know, I mean, a lot of jobs, they’re hard and important. Like being
a brain surgeon is a very important job and it’s very hard. Like, think about the education and the
training and the ongoing support that people in that job have. And anybody who gets that training and
ongoing support, they’re looked at as they should be, with admiration. Like, good for you and wow
you’re taking additional training and you’re getting additional mentorship. That’s amazing. Like you
must be the most amazing doctor in the world to be investing so much. And with parenting, it’s like you
have a child and everyone like, go do that parenting thing. It’s like you’re assumed to just know what to
do. And you’re given no resources, no support, and so what do you do? Well, without intervention, we
parent the way we were parented. And it’s like without intervention, we parent the way we’re parented,
not because we want to. Most adults I know are like, yeah… I don’t want to parent the exact same way I
was parented, but it lives in our body. It lives in our body as a set of patterns and knowledge and
expectation. And so, the biggest thing I would say to parents, it’s not about a mistake it’s almost just a
biological truth. Like, I will end up interacting with my kids the way the patterns of how I was interacted
with live in my body. That is my blueprint. And if I don’t get some training and education and knowledge
and support, the type that actually would feel right to me and is in line with my values. So, everyone has
to find something in line with their values, but if I don’t do that, I’m not a bad parent. It’s just like I’m
going to repeat patterns. Like it’s the only thing I have to rely on. And I just think it’s a really
empowering thing for parents to think of their job in the same way as a brain surgeon would. Like, I
deserve not like what’s wrong with me? Like, a surgeon, I can’t imagine like, I don’t know what’s wrong
with me. I need to go do a postdoc. Like I can’t imagine.
Jen: You wouldn’t want them to be your surgeon.
Becky: Exactly. Like you’d be like, yeah, no way. I don’t want your just like do what you think could be
right. The person with the most training you’d feel the most comfortable with. And so, for parents like
this is an important and a really hard job. The most important, the hardest. Like, I deserve resources and
support. I deserve both of those, so I can show up in a way that actually feels right to me.
Jen: During the pandemic or when the pandemic hit, your following skyrocketed. And so, why do you
think it took a pandemic to get parents to kind of seek out that help and those resources and that
training as to kind of why they didn’t do it before the pandemic. I guess because we just felt like we
needed to know everything as a parent?
Becky: It’s a really thoughtful question. So, for me personally, I can say, and this was just like odd, I
guess, timing is that I posted my very first and I’ve posted my very first social media post on February 28,
2020. So, it was two weeks before, and I live in New York City. It was two weeks before New York City
shut down. So, it wasn’t very long, you know. So, I wasn’t doing much before that. I think there was
something about the pandemic, I don’t think this is my novel thought or like the idea of parenting is
hard and important and actually more than that, like the idea that parenting is an essential service.
People who care for kids are essential workers. Like it just became so obvious. It just slapped us in the
face. We’re like, wow, literally nothing in my life functions the way I would want it to if my kids don’t
have care. They don’t. And so, the idea of educators and babysitters and daycare centers and stay and
work inside the home parents. I think during the pandemic everyone realized like wow, these people
make the world go round, and we also realized being with kids full time is really hard. So again,
importance and difficulty was just, you know, right in our faces, right inside the walls of our home 24/7.
Jen: And do you think that, you know, obviously we’re still in a pandemic, but life is, I guess,
‘normalizing’ somewhat and we’re going back to schools and daycares and things like that. Do you think
that it’s created an increased appreciation for parenting? Or do you think we’re going to kind of fall back
into our old ways?
Becky: I’m a hopeful person. I would say I work to be an optimistic person. And at the same time, there’s
nothing that’s brought me as much hope for the world as watching the Good Inside community. I’m like,
wow, there are millions of people out there who want to lean in and work on themselves and they’re
parenting their kids at the same time. So, I do think we’re in this moment and what I’d say is, I think, I
think we have to keep carrying it forward. I think the idea that parenting is the hardest and most
important job in the world. People have to share that more. People have to talk about that with their
friends. When someone says, oh, I couldn’t even fold the laundry today, like that person needs someone
to say to them or text them or saying in a forum like, hey, let’s actually think about all the things you did
today. Let’s actually think about what you did, what you carried in your mind, in your body, what you
took care of, to take care of children and probably also to make your whole family system operate. And
if you do have a parent who works outside the home and you’re inside the home, you know what you
are responsible for making that all go round. So, let’s put the laundry to the side for a second and check
in with all the things you’ve done and checking about everything you need. Because, I think, parents
who work solely inside the home. Historically, those have been women. Women historically also have a
tendency to take a struggle and internalize it as their fault instead of turn it into anger at what they
need. And so, I really think the bigger mission of Good Inside is helping overwhelmed parents go from
what is wrong with me to what resources and support do I deserve in this role. And if there’s like a
legacy, we leave, and if there’s, you know, that question of like, is this going to continue and if we’re at
the precipice, I hope everyone listening to the this takes that in mind. Like, we need to help parents, see
their role as essential and think not in terms of all the things they’re not doing or can’t do, but all the
resources and support they deserve.
Jen: I love that. That’s a great mission and one I’m certainly behind, so you can count on me to carry it
forward. So, let’s kind of dig into the workplace a little bit and kind of parenting in the workplace. But
what more can companies do, can good managers do, good leaders do?
Becky: Yeah, what I’m hopeful about and again, what I hope really continues and we need a wave of
people to keep speaking to the importance of this so it can continue. Is in understanding that people in
the workplace come as whole people. Like, let’s take a parent with a toddler. If your toddler hasn’t been
sleeping for three weeks for whatever reason. The idea that that’s not going to impact their work in
their workplace, whether they’re working at home and remote or in the office. Like, they carried that
sleep problem to work. If you have a parent who’s kid hysterically cries in protest at school drop off
before that parent comes to work. Like, the first many hours of work are probably carried with guilt,
with wonder, with worry, with my kid is reacting that way because I work, and I am not able to pick
them up. And if I only pick them up instead of my babysitter, whatever, the story is. Like I think it’s just
really important to see employees as whole people. That you can’t isolate how someone operates in
their home as a parent, from how someone operates in the workplace as a worker. And I think the
opposite is true as well, when I’ve, you know, now with everything at Good Inside and I do a lot of talks
at companies who are looking to support, you know, their parents, are honestly now one of the amazing
thing that’s happened is we have this really comprehensive membership that I couldn’t be prouder of,
and it’s really the result of hearing from tens of thousands of parents over and over that they need the
same thing. They need trusted resources, like a library of resources. They need a community of parents
to talk to, and they need access to experts they trust all in one place. So, we created that. Truly, the
amount of inbound we’ve had from companies asking us if we offer enterprise accounts. It’s been like
the most heartening thing, because I think people realize, like, oh, people actually need a place to go to
get that parenting help to help their kids sleep through the night in a way that feels good to them, not
locking them behind the door. People need, I need to help my employee feel good about drop off. As a
human I need to help them, and if I look at them as a whole person, everything that happens in their day
interrelates. And so, we need to offer people the type of support that helps them just be sturdier and
more confident and competent across the board. And given parenting is a huge percentage of parents
life, that has to be an area that we invest in our employees. Like, I just think that that’s that simple. In a
micro level, you know, I think even just like checking in with someone you manage. Like, hey, you know
what I’m thinking about, let’s even say they’re working remote. Like you’re on this Zoom, like my guess
is a minute before this you probably had to give your 2-year old hug goodbye, so you could come to your
office for this meeting with me. Like, how did that go? Like, how’s that going? I’m sure that feels hard.
Or even if you don’t want to ‘get that deep,’ hey, just want to let you know I know that. I know you
showing up to this meeting on time involved some type of separation or hard moment with your kids,
and just want to let you know I see that invisible moment, and I know that’s hard and I appreciate you
showing up.’ I do think those little things, people, I really believe are our greatest need. Of course,
there’s food, shelter, and water, I don’t want to put that aside, but our greatest psychological need is to
feel seen. Feeling seen is what helps us feel safe. And we want to feel seen in all of our parts, and the
more parts of us we feel seen in, the more devoted we are and the more we’re able to kind of work
efficiently. So, I’m in my work part, but actually, the more I feel at work that someone understands my
parent part, I’m going to be able to work better. Because that part actually doesn’t feel alone. So, I can
focus more on work. So, I always think these things are aligned, like just helping people from a
humanistic, it’s just nice to help people feel supported, but also the idea of, oh, I can actually help my
employee feel better at work and be the most productive. You don’t have to pick and choose, they’re
generally very aligned and how you can do all of them at once.
Jen: We talk about high performance and well-being aren’t mutually exclusive. Actually, they fuel one
another. So, I think this kind of fits in that. So, you’ve touched on this a couple of times, and I hear it so
much. But, you know, parents that have so many feelings of guilt, especially in the workplace, because
they couldn’t show up for this or they couldn’t do that, or they couldn’t, you know, just general feelings
of guilt. So, what advice do you have for parents that are, you know, trying to manage their guilt, in
particular when it comes to managing their own careers, as well as their family.
Becky: Amazing question. So, the first thing I will say about guilt is I think we spend way too much time
thinking about how to get rid of guilt or minimize guilt, or not feel guilt. And it’s so counterproductive
versus the goal of how do I tolerate guilt while doing something that’s aligned with my values. So, I’ll
give an example. Often people say this to me, like, especially working parents. Okay, I’m working, I’m
with my kids, I know I need let’s say it’s like a night with girlfriends. But I’m a work outside the home
parent. So, I already spend less time with my kids. And how do I go out with my girlfriends and not feel
guilty? And I always say, like, great question, and I’m going to change that for you. How do you go out
with your girlfriends and tolerate the guilt that goes along with that night? Now, we got something
going. Let’s go. How do you not feel a feeling that’s coming up in your body? If anyone has the answer
for that, let me know, I would find it disturbing to understand how we could un-feel feelings. We feel
before we think. Our feelings are the essence of like what happens first in our body. We just can’t beat
them. So, if you can’t beat them, join them. That’s what you’re supposed to do. So, learning that you can
do things that matter to you while tolerating guilt or while even being curious about what guilt is trying
to tell you. Now, first of all, we have so many more options. Oh, I guess I can go to dinner with my
friend, cool. I don’t have to wait for the night that I don’t feel guilty. Or I guess I can go on this business
trip because I think it’s going to be really exciting and really good for me, and I do feel guilty that I’m not
dropping off my kids. But it’s not like I have to choose between waiting till I don’t feel guilty and going
on the business trip or feeling guilty means I can’t go on the business trip. Like it’s just so limiting to be
in that what I call one thing is true mentality. So, a couple of more ideas about guilt once we move from
getting rid to tolerating. Guilt can mean many things, and I think one is guilt and I think another one is
the type of guilt that I call not guilt, just because I don’t have anything else sophisticated to call it. And I
think a lot of us feel something as guilt that’s really not guilt. And so, I’ll explain what I mean. Guilt, I
believe, it’s not an official definition it’s mine, is watching ourselves act in a way that was not in
accordance with our values. So, I’m really stressed out. I come home, my husband asked me an
innocuous question. I snap at him, and I yell at him. Later, I feel guilty. What is that trying to teach me?
It’s like, Becky, it’s not in line with your values to yell at your husband about an innocuous question.
Maybe, I’ll say oh, what is that trying to tell me if the pathway ended with yelling, where did it start? Oh,
like I feel really overwhelmed. I feel really stressed. I usually take a minute wait in my lobby before
coming up to my kids and husband to take some deep breaths. I didn’t do that. I can learn from it. That’s
guilt. That’s actually a really useful emotion. If we don’t feel guilt, we aren’t able to stay in check with
the things we value, the things that matter to us, and we can’t change accordingly. Like, I wouldn’t wish
the absence of guilt on anyone. Now, what I call not guilt is when we have a tendency of taking in other
peoples’ distress and disappointment as our own, and instead of seeing it as their disappointment we
magically turn it into guilt in the air between us and someone else and take it in as our guilt. That is not
guilt. It’s not even your feeling. It doesn’t even…you’re not even the owner. And especially women or
anyone who really thinks about themselves as like an empath, kind of really attuned to other people’s
feelings, for a lot of us who was actually really adaptive to do that early on. So, we maybe had a parent
who was like, oh, you’re going to sleep over with your friend, like you told me you would stay in with me
tonight. You know, I’m all alone or something. It’s like, oh, I’m such a bad daughter. Oh, what’s wrong
with me? I feel so guilty. That’s not your guilt. That wasn’t your feeling. Going out with your friends
actually seems to be in line with your values. That’s your, let’s say mom’s disappointment and instead of
your mom saying sure, you could go out your friends, I’m a little disappointed and I’ll learn to cope with
that. You do your thing; I’ll see you in the morning. She turned her disappointment into something in the
air and you took it in. And so, that’s something I still think we do a lot. And I actually think ironically, it
doesn’t help anybody when we do that, and it definitely doesn’t help a kid. Because when a kid then
says to us so you missed my drop off. It was Spirit Day and you didn’t see it because you are in this
business trip. And we’re like, “oh.” When we turn someone else’s disappointment into our guilt, literally
they become a pawn in our game. We don’t even respond to their feeling. We are like, oh, but I had to
go or oh, you’re making me feel bad. We’re just looking to manage our feeling. It’s like our kid doesn’t
even exist in their own right. When we’re able to say woah, woah, woah this is my child’s
disappointment. Not my feeling. I might have feelings coming up. Let me, Becky, let me save it for later. I
can actually see my child and then respond by saying something like, you really wish I was at drop off.
That felt really bad. You looked around. You saw all the other moms – I’m making this up – and you
didn’t see me, and that felt really bad to you. I believe you. I’m really glad you’re telling me this. Now,
I’m actually helping my child understand their disappointment. I’m validating their disappointment. I’m
learning to help them cope with disappointment, all because I was able to distinguish kind of what was
actually their feeling from what just turned in to my guilt.
Jen: How do you recommend people go about practicing that? That takes, you know, I mean,
mindfulness or in the moment, not reacting to your own emotions or where you want to go with that.
Becky: So, I’ll give you a little exercise. And I always like the caveat, like big things in our life, you know,
like they take time to change. I just want to like level set, like nobody in it, so on social media. I love to
put things out on social media, but the reason I do workshops, the reason we have our whole workshop
collection and membership it’s like, I’m just a straight shooter. I’m like, we really think we can rewire our
body and how we process something like guilt from a social media post. We just respect our body a little
bit more, like it’s not that malleable for good reason. So, like anyone here is like, wow, this resonates,
whether it’s our membership or it’s a book that someone recommended you. It’s your therapy. Like
there’s a lot of options. It doesn’t have to be our thing. It’s just something that like respect your own self
enough to be like I am going to invest in this, like we show ourselves that we value by how we spend
time. And like spending time on ourselves shows our body we really want to change something. And so
doesn’t mean anything wrong with you. It’s just how change actually takes place. So having said that,
here’s a little strategy. So, I always picture guilt and the usefulness of thinking about what’s guilt and
what someone else is feeling. I’m not even a tennis player, but I always picture myself on a tennis court.
So, I’m on one baseline, and then there’s the net. But instead of a net, I visualize like a glass wall. So, I
can see the other player. So maybe it’s like a, you know, it’s a squash type court. I don’t know, but it’s
like a glass wall where the net is, so I could see it. And on the other side, on the other baseline is the
other person. So maybe this is my partner, maybe it’s my seven-year-old who’s really upset that I missed
Spirit Day drop off. So, I see them there. And I picture my let’s say it’s my daughter and she’s on the
other side baseline, just she’s crying. Mom, you’re the only mama who wasn’t there and why do you
have to do this job? And why can’t you always do…you don’t love me, you know, they say the things like.
You don’t love me. If you love me, you are at…if you love me, you’d be at Spirit Day drop off. So, then I
literally like right now, picture your child on the baseline and picture those feelings kind of coming out of
their body, which they do when our kids say stuff to us, like I hate you or you don’t love me. It’s like
their feelings are so big that they’re exploding out. And now their feelings are like traveling toward us.
Maybe it even feels like a high velocity toward that net, which is actually a glass wall, toward us. And
really, I want you all to like, picture those feelings. They don’t have to aggressively back bounce off the
wall to like, knock your child down. But just like they stay on her side, like they stay on her side, and you
on your side, you see them, and you can definitely care about them. And there’s a boundary. Like, we
talk about this a lot in psychology. It seems like theoretical, but this is actually a good example, like what
is me and what is not me? Those feelings are not you. They’re not you. And if it already feels like, oh, it’s
funny, I’m listening to this like they’re already on my side. Like, they’re already on my side. I feel them in
my body. I feel guilty, I’m about to make all these rash decisions about my life. Just like, take a deep
breath and just say to them, like I care about these feelings and they’re not mine. I’m going to return
them to their owner and whether you have a tennis racket in the image or just your hands, push them
back. And I think that exercise of asking yourself, what’s mine, what’s on my side? Because what’s on my
side there is caring about my child, what’s on my side is maybe, you know, it could be all types of things.
But those feelings didn’t generate from my body, and to really show up in a way where I can care about
my child, I have to see her feelings as hers, not my own.
Jen: And so how does that relate to tantrums? Because that’s, you know, such a big issue with parents
and, I mean, we struggle to address them. So, I could see that image being the same or similar, but like
what’s the best way to address tantrums?
Becky: Well, I think one of the things that the most powerful question to ask yourself with any tricky
situation with your kid. So maybe it’s them complaining you on a drop off, it’s a tantrum, it’s sibling
rivalry, anything, is what is my job here? So, if we bring it back to the workplace. I don’t know anyone
who would walk into a job the first day without knowing their job description. Like nobody would ever
take a job in an organization. They’re like, I don’t know, I got a new job. I’m just going to…I don’t know
what it is to do. I don’t even know. You know you couldn’t feel good at that job because you’d be like,
you wouldn’t know what to do. And so, until you know what your job is, you can’t determine how well
you’re doing your job or what you want to do to even improve your job performance. So, tantrums, I
think everyone listening to this should ask themselves this question. What’s my job during a kid’s
tantrum? What is my job? What is not my kid’s job. What is my job? Most parents I’ve asked this to are
like first, I’ve never thought about it that way. And actually, I have no idea. They’re like, tell me. I don’t
know, but it’s a nice moment to be like, not your fault that you don’t know your job, but it does give
clarity to why it’s so overwhelming. You would feel very overwhelmed going to any workplace not
knowing what your job was? So, it’s not even that the workplace is bad. It’s not even that the tantrum is
bad. It’s that you don’t have a JD, you know, you need a JD to sign up for. So, here’s what I think a
parent’s job is during a tantrum. A parent’s job is to keep their body calm and to keep their child safe.
My job is to keep my child safe and my own body calm or maybe more realistically, my job is to keep my
child safe and to keep my body as calm as possible. That’s it. Now, what’s not part of that job
description because in any workplace too, if you’re sophisticated when you start a job, you would also
ask what’s not part of my job? Like the person sitting next to me, like I just want to know what they do
that I don’t have to do? That’s a really important question to in a big system. So, what is not your job?
What is not your job, is calming your child down, keeping your child safe is very different than keeping
your child calm. Most parents unconsciously somewhere think that their job during a tantrum is to get
their child to calm down. And then no wonder. It’s like a horrible system. Because then your child not
getting calm, you’re feeling like I’m not doing my job and not doing my job I need to do my job and then
you’re just off to the races. So not your job to think about a tantrum as like it’s a storm. Like, you can’t
stop a storm, you know, our job is to keep our kid safe, which is really the equivalent of like containing a
fire, so to even picture your child in tantrum state, they’re having an emotional fire. Literally, a tantrum
means the feelings in my body were bigger than my capacity to manage those feelings. Feelings bigger
than capacity to manage. That happens a lot when kids are young, because they’re born with all the
feelings and none of the capacity. It’s just terribly inconvenient. And over the course of hopefully, their
childhoods, we are the teachers, not through our lectures, but actually through our experiences with our
kid of how they learn to manage feelings. But there’s a mismatch for a long time. So, if the feelings are
bigger than the capacity to manage feelings, you have these emotional fires. Well in my fire metaphor,
there is no fire extinguisher, and we wouldn’t want to extinguish a fire. That’s an emotional fire, because
again, if we want to help our kids learn to manage feelings, you don’t ever manage feelings when you’re
an adult by bringing that feeling down to a 0. If you’re at a 10 out 10, you just try to get to 8 out of 10
and then do a 7 to 6, because once you’re at 6 it’s not great, but you can move on with your life. So,
we’re containing a fire. How? Well, first, really assessing for safety. There’s many different tantrums. If
my kids hitting me, not safe. My kid is throwing a glass vase, not safe. So how would I do safety through
my boundaries. That’s how I would make sure my kid is safe. I will not let you throw this vase. I’m
picking you up and I’m carrying you to your room and I’m going to sit with you there. You’re not in
trouble. You’re a good kid. We need to be in a smaller space while things feel so hard. I am literally
keeping my kid safe. If they’re crying and, you know, whatever else, and it doesn’t seem so disruptive to
everyone else, may be keeping them safe is just, well, they are safe, and then I focus on my other job try
to keep my body as calm as possible. And then you basically wait, and the biggest irony is the more you
focus on your job, and doing your job well the tantrum is going to end when it’s going to end. But I
promise you, you’re not going to be adding kind of kerosene to the fire. The more you try to stop it, the
more you’re adding your own frustration. You’re more unconscious judgment, which only makes the fire
bigger. So, your only job during a tantrum is that containment. I just want to say one more thing and
then we won’t be able to get into it. That’s not the only thing we need to do around tantrums. The thing
with tantrums is we want to actually teach our kids the skills, so that the next time they’re in a similar
situation, they have more skills to manage those feelings. That doesn’t happen during a fire. You don’t
fireproof your house if you have a fire, you just contain the fire. And when the fire is contained, you
would reflective like, oh, what led to that fire? Oh, maybe I need to clean the gas from my, I don’t know,
from my stove, whatever it is. We have to do the fire proofing with our kids. There’s so many things we
can do to help them actually build skills, none of those things are time outs and punishments, I should
add. That only add shame, not skills. But we don’t do those in the moment. So in the moment we know
our job is containment. Out of the moment our job is to have fireproof and teach our kids skills.
Jen: I think that probably brings a lot of parents listening some relief. I guess for the parents that are
really struggling with their child, like at what point should they seek help? What point do they, you
know, go beyond themselves or tuning into, you know, some self-help things, perhaps on the Internet,
etc. But are there red flags either in themselves or with their kids, that there’s something bigger going
on and that they really do need to seek additional help and feel no shame around that?
Becky: Yeah, I mean, there’s so many ways to think about help. Like, I’m thinking and feeling this as a
truth, so I’m just going to say it, I really believe every single parent who can needs to be part of our
membership. It is game changing. It is game changing to have resources you trust as opposed to random
articles that were just SEO optimized that you find on a search engine. Literally not meant to help you
but meant to sell ads. It’s game changing to have resources you trust. It’s game changing to have
parents around you who are nonjudgmental and actually offering you valuable ideas and information
whenever you have questions. And its game changing to have access to parenting coaches and to
relationship experts, and to occupational therapists, and to cross-cultural psychologists who give you
that extra little something when you need, you know, some expert support. And the way I see it, really,
is what I was talking about with you earlier. It’s like this is not a sign of a problem. This is a resource and
a type of support that parents deserve. You deserve. We tend not to think about self-care that way. We
think about it as like a pedicure. And I love a pedicure too, but a pedicure doesn’t help me feel
empowered. I deserve to feel empowered and equipped as a parent. I parent 24/7. So, that is too
important and too long term of a job to not feel good about myself. I do, I think I deserve that. Now,
having said that, there’s a lot of ways to get help. There’s books, there’s memberships, there’s courses,
there’s therapy. I think my number one thing I would tell parents, it’s really helpful to think about it not
as like what flags show me I need help, but just like at what point can I recognize in myself that like I
need more members of my team, I need more support. I don’t know what to do. I think if a parent
doesn’t have clarity, it’s the worst feeling. We always think that we will feel better when we see things
change. That obviously helps. We actually start to feel better as soon as we have clarity on our role and
clarity on what’s really happening in our kid. And when we’re really in a tough place with our kid, we’re
probably stuck in a framework of looking at things that’s unhelpful, but we just like can’t shift out of.
And so, step one is someone, a book, something that helps us shift framework and makes us say, wow,
I’ve never thought about it that way. Already, I actually start to feel better because I feel more hopeful
from this new framework, and now let’s get to work and turn that framework into strategies that would
actually help our whole family system. And that’s what I think therapy and so many other things really a
good parent coach, I think that’s what our membership does too. I think we are expert re-framers first.
And then we take frameworks and translate them into strategies that actually make parents think like,
oh, I can literally do that today. Like that is not complicated. I can do that. I think I can remember to do
that, and then I can accumulate a lot of wins. And there’s plenty of other places that do that too. And
I’m the biggest proponent of therapy. And honestly, a lot of times on our membership, people will say
like, well, when do I know I need that extra level? I think it’s just like when, you know, like I need more
support. Like I even as a parent, if I’m the leader of my family system, it’s not all me, how much is my kid
struggling. That’s obviously a factor, but it’s also like, how much am I struggling? Like, I just don’t need
to feel this way. And there’s a lot of therapists out there who are waiting to be a partner and really help
you in this journey. Parenting is a journey. It’s not a problem to solve. It’s a journey that we’re on, it’s
never ending.
Jen: Yeah, that’s for sure. So, one last question for you and this has come up in kind of a couple of
different ways. We’ve talked about social media and obviously you do a great job of putting out positive,
helpful information for parents. But there’s also kind of the downside. That social media can be toxic
when it comes to comparisons and all parts of our lives, but I think certainly in feeling like whether I’m a
good parent or not. And so, I guess, any tips do you have for parents to manage their relationship with
social media effectively?
Becky: So, I’ll start with this, which is I just don’t think anyone feels great about their social media or
screen use. They don’t feel good about their own. They don’t feel good about their kids. It’s an
unwinnable system. We have these devices that are designed to steal our attention. Like there’s nothing
more powerful than our attention. Everything comes after our attention. And they’re designed to steal it
from us. So how do you win? How do you feel good about that? You just do your best. So, everyone
listening like, I don’t feel good about it either. I have a plan every night. I leave my phone outside my
bedroom so I can go to sleep and read instead of being on my phone and staying up later than I want
and buying random things I don’t want to buy. And I do that sometimes. And like last night I didn’t do
that and I’m today I’m like, oh shoot, I didn’t do the thing I told myself I would do. Okay, still a good
person. I’m going to try again today. So, no one feels great about it. Step 2, is I really think we have to
ask ourselves some deep questions, and I think I kind of hit the nerve for myself and I think this is true
for a lot of people. I’m like, what is it? What is the feeling my phone gives me? Like, when it’s not even
near me and I walk toward it. What feeling do I think it’s going to give me that I’m so drawn to. Like,
what’s really driving this relationship or addiction? And I think what our phones really take from us is
like they take our feeling of enoughness. Like they get in our way of ever feeling like enough, because
there is an endless amount of information on our phone. Something to read, a text, something to buy.
There’s endless information, and in a world of endless information, the idea of pausing and saying well,
right now, me doing play dough with my kid. That’s enough. I am enough in this moment. There is
nothing else I need to know. There’s nothing else I need to do. There’s nothing on Amazon I need to
order. There’s no extra T-shirt I need to purchase. Like I am enough. And there’s something about the
word enough. I’ll be honest. Like when I say that to myself. It’s one of the only times I can actually resist
getting my phone. Like I’ll say to myself, Becky, like no, you don’t need to be in your phone. Nope,
doesn’t work, I still go get it. Becky, that message can wait, no, but when I tell myself deeply like Becky
right now you sitting on a couch, reading your book. You are doing enough. You are enough. Or
sometimes I get hyperbolic with myself, it helps like this is exactly what you need to be doing. There’s
nothing more important than what you’re doing right now. It’s the thing that can really help. So, I would
say I think we all need some type of mantra. And then the next thing is, I think there’s something to
limited of time where you’re not with your phone. And so, if you’re like, oh, I’m on my phone too much
and probably a lot of people are like, I know what distracts me with my kids. And I know even one of the
reasons probably some of their difficult behavior keeps popping up is like I’m not really present ever,
because there’s always a phone between my face and them. Don’t tell yourself like I’m going to be
better tomorrow. Tell yourself I’m going to spend 5 minutes tomorrow with my phone behind 2 doors. I
always have a 2-door policy. It has to be behind my bedroom door and my bathroom door, and both
have to be closed. I don’t trust myself with one. And so, 5 minutes, 5 minutes. So, no one feels great
about it. Come up with the mantra that speaks to like probably what feels anxiety producing without our
devices. And step three, come up with a really limited amount of time to start with, to start building
your own ability to kind of separate from these powerful devices that are calling our attention.
Jen: And I think that advice goes for anyone, whether you are a parent or not. So, Dr. Becky, thank you
so much. I’m sad to say that our time is coming to an end. There was so much in here. So much wisdom
for all of us to take away about parenting, but just about our relationship with ourselves and pretty
much with everybody in our lives. So, thank you for your time today.
Becky: Well, thank you for having me and really, you ask such amazing questions and I appreciate the
depth of this conversation and I’m excited to connect again, hopefully sometime soon.
Jen: I’m so grateful Dr. Becky could be with us today to talk about parenting.
Thank you to our producers, Rivet 360 and our listeners. You can find the WorkWell podcast series on
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