Becky Kennedy Quotes

As a result, many parents see behavior as the measure of who our kids are, rather than using behavior as a clue to what our kids might need.

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

Building resilience is about developing the capacity to tolerate distress, to stay in and with a tough, challenging moment, to find our footing and our goodness even when we don’t have confirmation of achievement or pending success.

many parents see behavior as the measure of who our kids are, rather than using behavior as a clue to what our kids might need.

Now you have your job description: keep your child safe, emotionally and physically, using boundaries, validation, and empathy.

Self-blame is another common coping mechanism for kids whose parents don’t attempt reconnection after tough moments.

A child’s job in a family system is to explore and learn, through experiencing and expressing their emotions and wants.

Psychiatrist Ronald Fairbairn may have said it best when he wrote, regarding children and child development, “It is better to be a sinner in a world ruled by God than to live in a world ruled by the Devil.

Multiplicity is what allows two people to get along and feel close—they each know that their experience will be accepted as true and explored as important, even if those experiences are different. Building strong connections relies on the assumption that no one is right in the absolute, because understanding, not convincing, is what makes people feel secure in a relationship.

Understanding that we’re all good inside is what allows you to distinguish a person (your child) from a behavior (rudeness, hitting, saying, “I hate you”). Differentiating who someone is from what they do is key to creating interventions that preserve your relationship while also leading to impactful change.

if 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. I think about the term “connection capital” a lot. It refers to the reserve of positive feelings we hopefully build up with our children, which we can pull from in times of struggle or when the relationship between us gets strained. If we don’t build this up during our children’s earlier years, well, we have nothing to draw on when our kids are adolescents and young adults

Parents are often told to “name the feeling” when our children are upset (“You are so mad!” or “You’re feeling sad, I know”). This can be useful when we are trying to connect with our kids in “regular” moments, but in moments of big tantrums, I find that validating the magnitude of the feeling is much more effective.

underneath perfectionism is always an emotion regulation struggle. Underneath “I am the worst artist in the world!” is a child who could envision the picture they wanted to paint and is disappointed in their final product; underneath “I stink at math” is a child who wants to feel capable and instead feels confused; underneath “I let down my team” is a child who can’t access all the moments they played well and is mired in their missed layup. In each case, that disappointment—or the mismatch between what a child wanted to happen and what actually happened—manifests as perfectionism. And, because perfectionism is a sign of an emotion regulation struggle, logic won’t help—we can’t convince a child that her art is great or that math concepts are hard for everyone or that one missed shot doesn’t define an athlete.

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.

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. So when our kids aren’t listening to us, it’s critical to frame the struggle not as a child problem but as a relationship problem.

Now, a quick praise caveat: commenting on what’s happening inside a child, or a child’s process and not product, orients a child to gaze back in instead of out. Comments like, “You’re working so hard on that project,” or “I notice you’re using different colors in this drawing, tell me about this,” or “How’d you think to make that?”—these support the development of confidence, because instead of teaching your child to crave positive words from others, we teach them to notice what they’re doing and learn more about themself.

I define shame as the feeling that “this part of me is not connectable—no one wants to know or be with this part.

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.

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

but because as adults we cannot tolerate the uncomfortable disempowered feelings in our own bodies, and so we assert ourselves through punishment to make ourselves feel better.

These four words—“I won’t let you”—are critical for every parent’s toolbox.

All good decisions start with feeling secure in ourselves and in our environment,

Circuitry for consent: “There’s something about the dark basement that feels scary to you. You know that. I believe you. I’m so glad you are sharing this with me.

acknowledge, validate, permit.

Someone else is allowed to be upset when I assert myself; this doesn’t make them a bad person and it doesn’t make me unable to uphold my decision.

behavior is never the problem; it’s only the symptom.

Allow your child to be in the spotlight; your job is only to notice, imitate, reflect, and describe what they’re doing.

In fact, the how of our talking—the pace, the tone, the pausing, the checking in with our child, the rub on the back, the “What an important question” or “I’m so glad we are talking about this

Our confidence that someone will understand us, not judge us, and support us, comfort us when things go wrong—this is what allows kids to develop into adults who are assertive, confident, and brave.

I can tell something important is happening for you. I care about that. I’m here,” or “I can see how upset you are. I believe you. I really do,” are powerful scripts for your toolbox in these moments.

are evolutionarily wired with a negativity bias, meaning we pay closer attention to what’s difficult with our kids (or with ourselves, our partners, even the world at large) than to what is working well.

solid relationships aren’t solid because they lack conflict, they’re solid because the people in them possess the ability to reconnect after disagreements and to feel understood again after feeling misunderstood.

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.

I often think that parenting is really an exercise in our own development and growth; when we have kids, we are confronted with so many truths about ourselves, our childhoods, and our relationships with our families of origin. And while we can use this information to learn and unlearn, break cycles, and heal, we have to do this work while also caring for our kids, managing tantrums, getting by on limited sleep, and feeling depleted. That’s a lot.

Your feelings can come out, but I will stop them from destroying the world around you. Getting the feelings out will help you, but acting out in fury will make you feel worse. So I will allow the first and prevent the second.

the most impactful thing we can do with our kids is to show up in a calm, regulated, non-rushed, non-blaming, non-outcome-focused way—both when they are performing difficult tasks and when they are witnessing us perform difficult tasks.

Here’s something I start saying to my kids early on: “Did you know that learning is hard? I mean it! Every single time any of us learns something—me, you, everyone—it feels frustrating!” If my child seems to be taking in what I’m saying, I’ll continue: “And also, listen to this, because this is weird . . . Frustration, that feeling of ‘Ugh, I can’t do it’ or ‘Ugh, I want to just be done already!’ . . . that’s a feeling that tries to trick our brain into telling us we’re doing something wrong, but actually, this feeling is a sign that we’re learning and doing something right! It’s such a tricky thing. Let’s be on the lookout for that feeling so we can remind ourselves we are learning and that learning is supposed to feel this way.

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.

When you make a decision you believe in but you know will upset your child, you might say as much to your kid: “Two things are true, sweetie. First, I have decided that you cannot watch that movie. Second, you’re upset and mad at me. Like, really mad. I hear that. I even understand it. You’re allowed to be mad.” You don’t have to choose between firm decisions and loving validation. There’s no trade-off between doing what feels right to you and acknowledging the very real experience of your child. Both can be true.

We Don’t Do Fair, We Do Individual Needs” I see so many families set a goal of being “fair” as a method of attempting to decrease conflict, but in fact, making things fair is one of the biggest propellants of conflict. The more we work for fairness, the more we create opportunities for competition. When we make things fair, we increase a child’s hypervigilance; we essentially say, “Continue to watch your sibling like a hawk. Make sure you keep track of everything your sibling has, because that’s how you can figure out what you need in this family.” 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. When my kids are adults, I don’t want them to think, “What do my friends have? What are their jobs, their homes, their cars? I need what they have.” Talk about a life of anxiety and emptiness. It leads to a life with no interiority—no sense of who you are on the inside, only a sense of how you stack up to other people on the outside.

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;

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

Imagine your child has an emotional bank account. The currency in this bank account is connection, and their behavior at any moment reflects the status of their account, how full or depleted it is. I mentioned earlier the idea of this “connection capital”—when we really connect with a child, see their experience, allow for their feelings, and make an effort to understand what’s going on for them, we build our capital. Having a healthy amount of connection capital leads kids to feel confident, capable, safe, and worthy. And these positive feelings on the inside lead to “good” behavior on the outside—behavior like cooperation, flexibility, and regulation. So in order to create positive change, we have to first build connection, which will lead kids to feel better, which will then lead them to behave better. But note, behavior comes last. We cannot start there. We must start with connection.

qualities children most need from their parents in order to develop resilience include: empathy, listening, accepting them for who they are, providing a safe and consistent presence, identifying their strengths, allowing for mistakes, helping them develop responsibility, and building problem-solving skills.

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.

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.

a child’s rudeness is met with a parent’s reactivity, which leads to the child’s feeling more misunderstood and alone, which exacerbates the intensity of the child’s feeling (remember: it’s not the feeling as much as it’s the aloneness in a feeling that feels so bad) and leads to more dysregulated behavior and words.

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.

It’s important to understand: Children don’t exaggerate their fears or make them up for attention. They experience panicky feelings inside their bodies and need adult help in order to feel safe again. Our goal as parents should be to recognize when our child is in a fear state and help them move from “I am in danger” to “I am safe.

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.

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.

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.

we don’t want to talk our kids out of their fears because we want them to trust their feelings of threat and discomfort. Down the line, we want our children to trust their feelings when they’re in truly threatening situations. We want them to follow their instincts when they think, “Hmm . . . something is off here. My body is telling me this isn’t right. I need to leave this situation.

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.

When children are rude or even downright defiant, parents have two choices: we can view the behavior through the lens of disrespect for us (“My child does not respect me!”) or through the lens of emotion dysregulation for them (“My child is having a hard time right now”). It’s tempting to default to that first lens—it’s the easier, often more ingrained route. But think about yourself—why are you rude to people sometimes? Why would you talk back to or disobey your boss? I come up with the same reason, every time: I feel misunderstood. I am looking to feel seen and don’t. I feel frustrated that someone else isn’t really hearing me, and my relationship with that person isn’t as strong as it could be in that moment. Knowing what would make me act out helps guide my approach to rudeness or defiance in kids.

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

he places his hand on his heart, takes a breath, and tells himself, ‘This feels hard because it is hard, not because I’m doing something wrong.’ And so, I started saying that to myself! If you want to try that too, that could be cool . . . it seems kinda silly, but it really helps. Here, I’ll show you . . .” For younger kids, a mantra might be “I can do it” or “I like to be challenged” or “I can do hard things” or “This is tricky and I can stay with it.

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.

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.

Now you have your job description: keep your child safe, emotionally and physically, using boundaries, validation, and empathy. So what’s your child’s job in a family system? The truth is, as parents it’s more important to focus on our own jobs, because this is what we can control. But it’s helpful to understand the other roles within our system—this is the “know your job” principle, after all. A child’s job in a family system is to explore and learn, through experiencing and expressing their emotions and wants.

It probably comes as no surprise that I’ve never been one for trade-offs. I believe you can be firm and warm, boundaried and validating, focused on connection while acting as a sturdy authority. And I believe that, in the end, this approach also “feels right” to parents—not just logically, but deep in their souls. Because we all want to see our children as good kids, see ourselves as good parents, and work toward a more peaceful home. And every one of those things is possible. We don’t have to choose. We can have it all.

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.

For perfectionists, behavior is an indicator of identity because they’re unable to separate the two; this is true when perfectionists feel good about themselves and when they feel bad about themselves. For example, reading a page of a book perfectly (behavior) means “I am smart” (identity), while mispronouncing a word (behavior) means “I am stupid” (identity); trying to tie your shoe and succeeding the first time (behavior) means “I am great” (identity) while messing up the loops (behavior) means “I am awful” (identity). To help kids with perfectionistic tendencies, then, we want to show them how to separate what they are doing from who they are. This is what gives kids the freedom to feel good in the gray—to feel capable inside after their first attempt at tying shoes doesn’t work or when they’re struggling to read. Perfectionism steals a child’s (and adult’s) ability to feel good in the process of learning because it dictates that goodness only comes from successful outcomes. We need to show perfectionist kids how they can find their good-enough-ness and their worth outside success.

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.

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

The best match for a child’s whining is an adult’s playfulness. When we respond to a whine with silliness or humor, we offer what a child needs the most: connection and hopefulness, both of which are present in lighthearted moments. (Though, it’s important to remember that playfulness is not mockery. The first is intended to connect and add levity, the second is distancing and adds shame.) The next time your child says, “I need you to get me my pajamaaaaaas!” take a deep breath, remind your body you are safe, and then try something like, “Oh no oh no oh no . . . the whines again! How the heck did they”—walk over to the window, look around outside—“get in here again?” Continue with your monologue, and watch your child loosen up. “Okay, I don’t know how they got in, but let’s get some of those out. Throw them onto some other kids!” Walk over to your child and pretend to “take” the whines out of their body, then throw those whines out the window or door or something else. Then return to your child and say something like, “Okay, sorry, what? Oh, you want your pajamas?” You can get them for your child at this point. You aren’t “reinforcing” the whine, you are just adding playfulness and connection.

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.

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.

Parents often interpret whining as a lack of gratitude—when our kids whine that they don’t like the dinner we cooked or that they really want a new toy, it can feel like they aren’t recognizing all the efforts we’ve made to give them so much. And yet . . . I think this interpretation often misses what’s going on for kids in these moments. Here’s how I see it: children whine when they feel helpless. I often use the formula whining = strong desire + powerlessness. When a child wants to get dressed but the task feels insurmountable, or when a child wants a playdate but you’ve said no, these are times when the whines come out.

There’s a second element to the not-listening problem too. My oldest son made this point once: “Parents are always asking kids to stop doing something fun to do something less fun. That’s why kids don’t listen.” I think he’s right. Maybe our child is playing with blocks and we want her to transition to the bath, or she’s eating chocolate chip pancakes and we want her to put on her shoes to leave the house, or she’s watching TV and we want her to turn it off. We ask our kids to do something they “have to do” but don’t want to do—something that is a priority for us but not for them. It’s reasonable to struggle with cooperation in

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. This is powerful research, because it suggests that a child’s behavior—which is an expression of a child’s emotion regulation patterns—develops in relation to a parent’s emotional maturity. There are two ways to interpret this data. The first is, “Oh no, I’m messing up my kid because I’m messed up. I’m the worst!” But there’s another, more optimistic and encouraging interpretation: “Wow, this is amazing. If I can work on some of my own emotion regulation abilities—which will feel good for me anyway!—my

Here’s a deep paradox about learning: the more we embrace not-knowing and mistakes and struggles, the more we set the stage for growth, success, and achievement. This is true for adults and kids alike, and it’s a critical reminder about the importance of normalizing difficulties, embracing mistakes as an opportunity to learn, and building frustration tolerance. After all, the more a child can tolerate frustration, the longer they can stick with a hard puzzle, work on a tough math problem, or stay engaged while writing an essay. And, of course, these skills translate outside of academics as well, because tolerating frustration is key to managing disappointments, communicating effectively with people with different opinions, and sticking with personal goals.

Circuitry for self-confidence depends on a child’s ability to locate identity over observable behavior; this comes from growing up in a family that focuses more on what’s “inside” a child (enduring qualities, feelings, ideas) than what is “outside” (accomplishments, outcomes, labels). In regard to your child’s sports team, for example, inside stuff might be her effort in practice, her attitude when winning and losing, and her willingness to try new things; outside stuff might be her number of goals or home runs, or labels like “most valuable player.” When it comes to academics, inside stuff might be willingness to try a bonus math problem, spending time on studying, and showing enthusiasm about a subject; outside stuff might be a grade, a test score, or a label like “smartest kid in class.

To help our kids become good learners (which I’d argue is more important than being “smart” or “getting things right”), we have to help them sit in the not-knowing-and-yet-still-working-at-it space. And this comes from how we respond to our children’s frustration. I often remind myself that my job as a parent is not to help my kids get out of the learning space and into knowing . . . but rather to help my kids learn to stay in that learning space and tolerate not being in knowing! So rather than solving children’s problems for them, belittling their struggles, or losing patience with their efforts to understand that which might seem simple to an adult, we have to allow our kids to do the work on their own. The longer children can stay in that in-between space, the more they can be curious and creative, tolerate hard work, and pursue a wide variety of ideas.

Here’s what it looks like: “I am going to close my eyes”—then place your hands over your eyes—“and all I’m saying is that if there is a child with his shoes on when I open my eyes . . . oh my goodness, if there is a child all Velcroed up . . . I just don’t know what I am going to do! I am going to be so confused! I may even—oh no oh no—have to do a silly jumpy dance and wiggle all around and I may even fall on the floor!” Then pause. Wait. The chances of your child’s running to put his shoes on just skyrocketed. Why? Because now your child is in charge. He feels in control rather than like he’s being controlled. Your child feels you trust him because you’re not watching (even though you may be peering through your fingers), and you’re adding in silliness and the promise of doing something absurd—what kid doesn’t love to watch a parent dance and fall down and look ridiculous?

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.

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.

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.

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.

In a calm moment, introduce the idea of you and your child both having a “Perfect Kid” or “Perfect Girl” or “Perfect Boy” inside. It might sound like this: “Do you know that I have a Perfect Girl in me? Yes! She often tells me things have to be perfect or else they’re not worth doing! I think you have one too! I think she popped up when you were doing your math homework. Anyway, there’s no problem with having a Perfect Voice. A lot of people have them! But sometimes Perfect Girl, for me, she just gets so loud and she makes it hard for me to focus. I’ve found that talking to her nicely can help . . .” Now pause. See how your child responds. Often a child will take to this immediately and say, “What do you mean?” Continue: “Well, Perfect Girl isn’t a problem unless she’s so loud that I can’t hear the other voices in me. So when she’s getting loud, I just say to her, ‘Oh, hi, Perfect Girl. You again! I know, you always say, “Perfect, perfect, must be perfect, if it’s not perfect I have to stop.” I hear you! And also, I’m going to ask you to step back. I am going to take a deep breath and find my “I can do hard things” voice because I know that’s in there too.’ Then I can hear a quieter voice telling me it’s okay that things are hard and I can do hard things.

if I look for perfect, I’ll miss growth . . . and I’m a pretty big fan of growth.

You might even think of parents as a container—they establish the outer edges, but within the container, children are free to explore and express themselves.

The more children feel they can depend on a parent, the more independent they can be.

What is this really about, what is my child telling me he’s struggling with or needs?”), we have the foundation for other interventions.

Parents have the job of establishing safety through boundaries, validation, and empathy. Children have the job of exploring and learning, through experiencing and expressing their emotions.

If safety is our primary destination, boundaries are the pathway we use to get there. Boundaries, when created with intention, serve to protect and contain. We set boundaries out of love for our children, because we want to protect them when they’re unable to make good decisions for themselves.

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.

It turns out, switching our parenting mindset from “consequences” to “connection” does not have to mean ceding family control to our children. While I resist time-outs, punishments, consequences, and ignoring, there’s nothing about my parenting style that’s permissive or fragile. My approach promotes firm boundaries, parental authority, and sturdy leadership, all while maintaining positive relationships, trust, and respect.

many parents see behavior as the measure of who our kids are, rather than using behavior as a clue to what our kids might need. What if we saw behavior as an expression of needs, not identity?

when parents chronically shut down a behavior harshly without recognizing the good kid underneath, a child internalizes that they are bad.

Finding the MGI teaches parents to attend to what is going on inside of their child (big feelings, big worries, big urges, big sensations) rather than what is going on outside of their child (big words, or sometimes big actions).

Here’s another reason I like thinking in terms of MGI: at all times, but especially when our kids are dysregulated—meaning their emotions overwhelm their current coping skills—they look to their parents to understand, “Who am I right now? Am I a bad kid doing bad things . . . or am I a good kid having a hard time?

No, but if I look for perfect, I’ll miss growth . . . and I’m a pretty big fan of growth.

All good decisions start with feeling secure in ourselves and in our environment, and nothing feels more secure than being recognized for the good people we truly are.

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

This idea of multiplicity—the ability to accept multiple realities at once—is critical to healthy relationships. When there are two people in a room, there are also two sets of feelings, thoughts, needs, and perspectives. Our ability to hold on to multiple truths at once—ours and someone else’s—allows two people in a relationship to feel seen and feel real, even if they are in conflict. Multiplicity is what allows two people to get along and feel close—

Building strong connections relies on the assumption that no one is right in the absolute, because understanding, not convincing, is what makes people feel secure in a relationship.

When we approach someone with the goal of understanding, we accept that there isn’t one correct interpretation of a set of facts, but rather multiple experiences and viewpoints. Understanding has one goal: connection. And because connecting to our kids is how they learn to regulate their emotions and feel good inside, understanding will come up over and over again as a goal of communication.

When you’re in “one thing is true” mode, you’re judgmental of and reactive to someone else’s experience, because it feels like an assault on your own truth. As a result, you will seek to prove your own point of view, which in turn makes the other person defensive, because they need to uphold the realness of their experience. In “one thing is true” mode, exchanges escalate quickly—each person thinks they’re arguing about the content of the conversation, when in fact they’re trying to defend that they are a real, worthy person with a real, truthful experience.

We also do better, as individuals, when we approach our own internal monologue with a “two things are true” perspective. Multiplicity is what allows a person to recognize that I can love my kids and crave alone time;