00:00I'm Dr. Becky Kennedy. I'm a clinical psychologist, author, and the founder of Good Inside.
00:04I'm here today to answer your questions from the internet. This is Parenting Support.
00:13Actual Emu 1251 is asking, do you write out a tantrum at the grocery store or give your
00:18toddler anything to make them stop? I think the best way to think about this question is what's
00:22going on when a kid is having a tantrum at the grocery store and what will be helpful in general
00:27for them in the long term? And can I give myself permission 20% of the time to just make
00:31the
00:32situation easier? So let me answer that first. Yes, if it makes sense in the moment because of
00:37your bandwidth, because you just have to get yogurt for the recipe you're making to say,
00:41you know what? Here's a candy bar. Stop having a tantrum. Yes, do that. No guilt. I would do that
00:46myself. The bigger question is, if I'm doing that every time, then my kid gets into a cycle that I
00:53don't think I want and it's not going to be good for them long term. We think the cycle is,
00:57well,
00:58then my kid just thinks they can get away with anything they want. That's actually the least
01:01generous version of the cycle and of your kid. That's not what the bad cycle is. The cycle actually
01:07is for a kid, I get overwhelmed by my feelings because I'm four. Now I'm seeing that the feelings
01:13that overwhelm me overwhelm my parent. That's actually really scary. That's like being scared
01:19of turbulence and then the pilot coming on saying, ah, turbulence. That is terrifying. So the reason
01:24we want to sometimes ride out the tantrum or say, you know what? I'm picking you up. We're going to
01:30leave the grocery store. You're having a hard time is because you're actually showing your kid
01:33something powerful. The feelings that overwhelm you don't overwhelm me. I am the sturdy pilot for
01:39you during your turbulence, which means you will now have a model of how to do that for yourself
01:44going forward. I'm going to pick my kid up to bring them into kind of a smaller contained
01:49environment for their kind of emotional fire to ride itself out. That's very different than the
01:55energy of my job is to calm them down, which ironically that energy is just going to add
01:59more fuel to the fire because all my focus is on making it stop. Now let's say the fire has
02:06kind
02:06of burned out, which means my kid is calm. In that moment exactly, it's still not a teaching moment.
02:12Say something simple like, oh, that was hard to be in the grocery store or we got through that
02:17together. That's it. The next day, I would hope you'd think, hmm, if I don't change the
02:23conditions, then I really shouldn't be surprised the fire just happens again. So what could I do
02:28differently next time? Well, maybe I'm not going to do my grocery store run right after soccer
02:33practice when my kid's exhausted. That's actually how you change the likelihood of a tantrum.
02:38This one is from Scry Me A River. How on earth do you raise a child to become confident and
02:43not a
02:44pushover? Let's start by thinking about what confidence is because we can't ever develop a
02:48trait in a kid or in ourselves if we don't actually understand what that trait is really
02:52about. We're told confidence is feeling good about yourself. No, I think confidence is self-trust and
02:57that's a big difference because if we're trying to build confidence by helping a kid feel good
03:02about themselves, we're always going to try to build them up and we're going to try to take them
03:06out of their uncomfortable emotions. That actually leads to a fairly fragile kid. There's lots of things we
03:11can do to build confidence in our kid, but I would start with two things on the daily. Number one,
03:16believe your kid's emotions when they have them. That's really important. You can't bypass that step.
03:20So when your kid says, oh, I can't believe you're going out to dinner or want you to put me
03:25to sleep
03:26tonight, we think our job is to take them out of the emotion. No, believe that emotion. Oh, you wish
03:31I
03:31was staying home. You wish it was me and not grandma. That doesn't mean you shouldn't go out. That just
03:36means you need to believe that they feel the way that they're showing you they feel. That is the
03:41foundation of confidence you can't miss. The second thing you can do on that daily is remind
03:46yourself confidence comes from learning how to get through hard moments, not from learning how
03:52to exit them as soon as possible. Let's say you have a three-year-old who's whining, I can't do
03:57the
03:57puzzle. Do it for me. Confidence doesn't come from your kid finishing the puzzle. Confidence comes from
04:02your kid learning that they can get through a time when they haven't yet finished the puzzle.
04:06So instead of saying, here, put the piece in this spot, you'd say, oh, you're right. This is really
04:12tricky. I'll sit right by you. And I'm not going to do it for you because I'm not going to
04:16take away
04:16the best feeling in the world, which is watching yourself make progress on something you didn't
04:20think you should do. Trace the beau is asking, two-year-old won't settle for bed and I'm truly at
04:25my wit's end. Please help. Sleep is separation. I want to say that again because it's mind-blowingly
04:30simple, but also not obvious until you hear it. Sleep is separation. Think about a two-year-old being
04:35dropped off for daycare for the first time. They're separating from me. Of course they're
04:39going to have a hard time. I have a little routine with them and I make sure they're settled with
04:42the
04:43teacher and then I pick them up however many hours later. Now think about night. I separate from my
04:48kid for longer, more hours. There's no teacher. There's no toys. There's no other kids. They're
04:53alone in their room in the dark. That separation is actually much harder and things you take for
04:59granted kids don't take for granted. You know you're going to be there when your kid wakes up. A two
05:03-year-old
05:04especially when they go in their room and you close the door. For all they know you travel to
05:07the moon and something could happen to you. You can say this. You know sometimes it's hard to go to
05:11sleep because you might be wondering where daddy is. First of all let me tell you. When you go to
05:17sleep and I close the door do you want to know what I do? I walk out. I sit on
05:21the couch. I actually
05:22take your kid. I go here. Then I go to my room and I go to sleep and then I
05:26wake up maybe before you.
05:28I come to the kitchen. I get my coffee and then I am there when you walk out. Every night
05:32that's what
05:33happens. That gives your kid a mental model. Then you can teach them a mantra. Do you know
05:37there's something you can say to yourself when you're going to sleep that helps your body feel
05:41a little calmer? I'm going to teach it to you. Let's say your kid's name is Bella. Bella is safe.
05:47Daddy is near. My bed is cozy. You can hear him saying it in a little bit of a sing
05:52-songy way.
05:52Anything with song tends to regulate the body. Now that you're singing it your kid is eventually
05:57going to be able to say it to themselves but they're going to hear your voice. They're going to hear
06:00your little sing-songy-ness so their mantra is in some ways internalizing your supportive
06:05presence. You can make this part of the routine. You can say it when you go out of the room.
06:09There's so many other things but that is one of the ways to get started.
06:13No More Landfills is asking, when did people get so neurotic about providing snacks for their
06:17children every six seconds? Was this a Gen X or millennial parent invention? We tend to think
06:22in extremes. There's a lot between hungry and starving. I am not advocating for starving
06:30children to get them to eat more. No. But some things happened culturally where we now try to
06:36bring kids' uncomfortable emotions to a zero. You're sad. Here's happy. You're frustrated.
06:42Here's a solution. You're left out. I'm throwing you at your own party. And I think this is what's
06:46happening with hunger. Where now I have to bring snacks all the time. God forbid my kid is hungry
06:5145 minutes before a meal. And all of a sudden I'm solving for hunger and bringing it to a zero.
06:57There's a lot between a zero and a hundred. Along these lines of snacks and food. It's powerful
07:04to say to your kids, you know what? We just had a great lunch. We're going to have dinner
07:07at this time. Just so you know, when we're out for these hours, I'm going to bring one snack
07:12and by the time it's, I'm making this up, four o'clock, there's nothing available. Because
07:18it's actually important to be a little hungry before dinner.
07:23Funny Yellow Bird is asking, how do I get out of the habit of bribing my three-year-old?
07:28A little bit of bribing here and there. It's fine. Okay? It's not harmful. And there are certain
07:34moments if something small gets your kid over the edge in a key moment. That's okay. What's
07:40problematic if I get into a dynamic with my kid where bribing becomes the foundation? And the reason
07:46that's problematic is because what's actually happening is your relationship is becoming
07:51transactional. And that has really big implications as your kid gets older. Because here's what
07:55I know no parent wants. I say to my 14-year-old, hey, can you pick your towel off the
08:00floor?
08:01And my son goes, what are you going to give me? That is cringeworthy. Right? And we should
08:05not be surprised when our teenagers say that if our predominant strategy for cooperation,
08:11which really means getting our kid to do something they don't want to do, is bribery.
08:15So that's the framework. So how can we get out of a situation where bribery is the primary
08:21mode or anything more than, you know, 5-10% of cooperation or transition moments? First
08:26of all is the concept of connection capital. Our relationship with our kid in some ways
08:30is a series of moments where we're depositing into the relationship through being there,
08:36through listening, through giving them our full attention, putting the phone over here,
08:40showing up, having fun, playing. Every time you ask someone in a relationship to do something
08:45you want them to do and they don't want to do, you're kind of having a withdrawal on the
08:49relationship. Now, to be clear, as parents, we withdraw a lot. And we have to. Our kids have
08:54to get dressed. They have to come to breakfast. They have to put in their shoes. They have to go
08:56to bed. They have to do a million things they don't want to do. But here's the secret, though. If
08:59we
08:59withdraw a lot from the relationship, we better be depositing in. Because if we don't deposit in
09:05through all the ways we connect to our kid, the only thing we're going to have is bribery.
09:09The first time you see your kid, when they come home from school and the last minutes before they
09:13go to bed are big connection capital opportunities. And then when the moment comes, when we have to
09:18go through a transition, which is what most cooperation moments are about, how can we be
09:23a little bit more in the same team so the bridge kind of doesn't feel so big?
09:29PB&S is asking,
09:30Gentle parenting turned my child into an a-hole. At Good Inside, we don't call it gentle parenting.
09:35And that's because the word gentle, it just doesn't resonate with me in terms of how I need
09:41to access something in myself in the hardest moments. Good Inside is sturdy parenting. There's
09:46something about someone who's sturdy, like the pilot in turbulence, where you can locate them. You
09:50think, okay, you're connected to me, but you're staying connected to yourself. You understand the
09:55limitations of my reactions. You're going to maybe listen to me, but you're not going to be taken
10:00over by me. I think many parents who tell me that gentle parenting has made their kid an a-hole
10:05what they're actually saying is I've done the part of parenting that's important, of believing
10:10my kid's feelings, but I've overcorrected. I've now gone from caring about and believing
10:17my kid's feelings to letting my kid's feelings dictate my parental decisions. That's a cultural
10:24kind of overcorrection we've had over the generations. We've gone from nobody cares about
10:29kids' feelings to kids' feelings now dictate parent decisions. Both extremes kind of produce
10:35a-holes. So we want to produce better, regulated, more resilient, more capable kids.
10:40So if this is the situation you're in, my guess is you've forgotten about boundaries, which don't
10:46come from exerting your power. A boundary is something you tell your kid you will do, and
10:52it requires your kid to do nothing. So when we say to our kid, stop jumping on the couch,
10:58Timmy, those are not boundaries. That's a request. A boundary would be this. Hey, Timmy,
11:02you're jumping on the couch so close to our glass table. Not safe. It looks like it's hard for you
11:07to get off. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to walk over to you, and if by
11:10the time I'm
11:10there, you're not off the couch, I'll pick you up, and I'll put you on the floor, and you can
11:14go jump
11:14on the carpet. That is a boundary. Timmy's not going to say, thank you. No. Timmy will have a tantrum.
11:20Timmy will protest, especially if Timmy's not used to this. That's actually a healthy sign. You want your kid
11:25to have an emotional reaction, because that's what's going to actually propel them to take the next step.
11:30And when they get upset about your boundary, you can do the second part of your job that we say
11:33is part of family jobs at Good & Side. You validate their feelings, but you do it while continuing to
11:39hold the boundary. From Kenzie Colombini, why are little kids so obsessed with iPads? Seriously,
11:44go read a book or play in some dirt. I think there's a broader question here. Why are we so
11:48obsessed
11:48with our little screens, right? I think about myself. I should go read a book. I should go play in
11:53some dirt. We all should. Our screens are designed for low effort, high gratification patterns.
12:02How do I realistically, as a practical, real human parent in 2026, manage this kind of duality?
12:12How easy it is to just give my kid an iPad so they're satisfied in the moment, so I can
12:18do things
12:19in the moment. That is easy. That is so real. And how do I balance that with all the things
12:25that they
12:26could be doing today that will come with whining and meltdowns and struggle, but that are actually
12:32going to make their life and my life easier going forward, but harder today? We're really talking
12:37about the balance of short-term gratification and long-term resilience and health. I don't want to
12:43pretend I have a perfect answer to this. And in every family, it's different. I am not rigid about this.
12:48I didn't have some totally screen-free existence. It just didn't make sense for our family. And
12:53sometimes I think struggling with it and just carving out times and even saying to your kid,
12:59screens are away for this period of time. And when they're away, they have to be visibly away. This is
13:05part of building a circuit that involves effort and risk-taking and vulnerability and learning how to
13:10generate ideas on your own. And that is harder. But if you think about it in chunks, that balance
13:16might be more possible. Cheeseburgers asks, how do you correct a three-year-old without screaming?
13:23I'm going to make up that the three-year-old's hitting, right? Maybe if it's not, you can film
13:27the blank with something else that you'd want to correct. What is my job when my kid is hitting?
13:33And if you're hearing me ask that and you're like, I have no idea, that's okay. I think parenting is
13:38the only job in the world that we're expected to do well without any training, right? So it's important
13:44to get support and education, but that's a question I promise you I can answer. When a three-year-old
13:49is
13:49out of control, hitting, screaming, we have two jobs. Number one, stop the out-of-control behavior.
13:54And that's the job we're often too slow to do. Here comes a play date and I'm like talking to
13:58another
13:58mom and then Arne starts hitting. This is where actually we begin to have the wrong cycle. Why am I
14:03talking to a friend when I know my son has a hitting problem? Like I'm setting him up for failure.
14:09I'm setting myself up for frustration and I'm setting myself up to scream at him.
14:14That's just an unfair setup for everyone, including you. So first my job is to get ahead
14:19of the behavior. As soon as his friend takes his favorite toy, he starts to hit. Like it's
14:23kind of clockwork. Oh, that means when Arne's on play dates, not forever, probably only for
14:28like a couple weeks. I'm going to sit next to him and I'm going to say, sweetie, when you
14:31have your friend over, I know it's hard to share some of these toys. I'm going to sit close
14:35to you. And if it seems like things are, Ooh, that's what I'd say to a three-year-old.
14:39I'm going to hold you, bring it to the side. We're going to take a deep breath and then go
14:43back to playing because my number one job is to keep you safe and hitting isn't safe. Now I'm
14:47going to sit there and I'm going to start to notice Arne gets this look in his eyes. You see
14:50it and you're like, and you're like, Oh, there's that look. I'm going to intervene then. Not because
14:54I don't believe in my kid, because I do believe in my kid and I don't want to let my
14:58kid
14:58become a bad kid. It's the worst feeling for a kid. I'm like, I've been hitting kids for six
15:04months and my mom's just kind of letting me do it again. Is there no adult here who's
15:08going to help me? So intervene earlier. By the time I'm screaming to some degree, a pattern
15:14is already played out. We want to try to get ahead of the pattern. Then I think there's
15:18a second part of this question. What do I do when I scream with my kid? What do I do
15:23next?
15:23We repair. I believe we're experts in imperfect parenting. Repair is the most important strategy.
15:28Ooh, sorry. I yelled. You know what? It's been hard to play next to your friends with certain
15:32toys. I'm going to get close to you next time and try to help before the hard moment
15:36comes. And then I do that the next time. You're a parent who's doing what the rest of us are
15:41doing. You're learning along the way. You're trying to show up in a way you're proud of
15:44next time. And you know, you always have repair when something goes awry.
15:49This is from strict print 4032. How to find the line between picking battles and setting boundaries.
15:56I think it comes back to understanding what boundaries are and what boundaries are for.
16:03Boundaries are generally to keep our kids safe and to prioritize our kids' long-term interests.
16:08It's not technically dangerous for my kid to stay up three hours too late every night in the short
16:14term, but that's not great for their development long-term. But that's why we set limits, right? Or
16:18sometimes we also just set limits around important family values we have. I'll take an example.
16:23One of my family values is not how my kid dresses to school every day. It's not. That's just not
16:30high
16:30on my value list. Now, I want my kid to have appropriate clothing for a setting, appropriate
16:36enough, and not be dressed in a tank top when it's negative three degrees, because that's a safety
16:41issue. But I'm not going to have a battle about matching clothes. I personally don't care. If that's
16:49something you care about, for whatever reason you know is really important, that's not a battle
16:53you're picking. That is a boundary you're going to choose to set, right? And then probably there's
16:59other things that we have to let go of. There's certain things that to me are just pure safety
17:04and are not even in the choosing your battles category. Bedtime. Screen time. I'm not letting
17:11my three-year-old run around with a pair of scissors. And then the small things, like areas where we
17:16can
17:16really give our kid more control, I think that's really important to think, what could I say yes
17:22to? What is a battle I'm not going to pick? Because it's not really safety. It's not really
17:28long-term best interest. And it's not really one of my core values. And then the irony is the more
17:35freedom you tend to give your kids on those things, the more consistent you can be about the things that
17:40really matter. And the more likely your kid is to cooperate because they feel like they have some
17:45agency in other areas. Independent Animator 4 asks, what to do with a child that constantly says,
17:52I don't want to? When a kid has a lot of resistance, what we tend to do in response
17:57is meet their resistance with our resistance. I don't want to go to soccer. Oh, you're going to
18:02soccer. I don't want to go to piano today. You love piano. It's your favorite. We like argue with
18:07their resistance. All that does is make resistance more intense. What we want to do when a kid shows
18:13resistance is actually approach it with a little bit of curiosity. I don't want to go to soccer. Oh,
18:18why not? Some part of us is afraid to be curious to try to understand it because somewhere along the
18:24way we've conflated understanding with agreement, understanding with permission. Those are very
18:31different things. We have to understand our kid's resistance before we can change it. And honestly,
18:35sometimes the best moment to try to understand it, if this is a habit, is outside the moment.
18:39Whenever we leave for school and you tell me, I don't want to go, and you're not in trouble,
18:44and let me just take a break, that sentence to a kid when you're having a hard conversation
18:47is really, really important. Our bodies need to hear it. What's going on? Because I know you end
18:51up having a good day at school and you're happy when you come home, but I'm not trying to prove
18:55anything. There's something about leaving this house in the morning that must be hard.
18:59What is it? Now, I have a feeling I know what you're thinking. You think my three-year-old's
19:02going to answer that question? No, I don't. I actually do not. And I'm urging you to ask it.
19:07The power of asking kids questions like that isn't to get answers. It's to help them start
19:12asking themselves the same questions. All of a sudden, we can brainstorm solutions because I'm
19:18willing to look at the resistance as a window into something going on for my kid, as opposed to a
19:25sign
19:25that my kid is a bad, defiant kid. Heart's Deep Core asks,
19:31How do you discipline without making the kid feel ashamed? Am I doing something wrong?
19:36Discipline, I think, is something that's been really misunderstood. The root of discipline
19:40is about teaching. And I think in so many of our childhoods, discipline was just shaming.
19:46My kid says, I hate you. You're the worst mom in the world. And I say, you can't say that
19:50to me.
19:51Go to your room and no dessert tonight and no playtime on the weekend and I'm taking away your stuffed
19:54animal.
19:55And then we call that discipline. All that teaches is shame. That's right. It just teaches a kid,
20:00I'm small, I'm tiny, I don't have a support, I also don't have a setup to learn. So I change
20:05the
20:05question. What is discipline actually about? True discipline is totally different from shame because
20:10it actually figures out what is the right moment for intervention, which is probably not in the heat
20:15of the moment. And then what do I actually want to teach my kids so they can actually be more
20:18effective and show up differently in the future? That has to be shame-free because none of us can learn
20:22when we have shame. We shut down and inherently I have to pick my moments to do that and work
20:27with
20:28my kid, not react to my kid. This question's from Cora. What is your opinion on parents asking
20:34their children for permission before doing something instead of just telling them what
20:38they are going to do? There's kind of three categories of decisions we make between parents
20:43and kids. One are decisions we make as parents. School decisions, bedtime decisions, screen time
20:49decisions, what food we have in our house decisions in general. Then there's decisions that fully belong
20:56to our kids. There's not many of those when our kids are very young, but as our kids get older,
21:01hopefully
21:01there's more. Like in my house, basically my kid can decide what clothes to wear, what water bottle they choose,
21:07their decision. And then there's decisions in the middle. How do we make together? Thinking my kid is seven and
21:12I'm like,
21:12ooh, I could sign my kid up for soccer, but if my kid's going to say to me I hate
21:16soccer, I don't want to do it, I'm not going to force that decision.
21:19Something has happened in modern parenting where we've kind of neglected that first bucket.
21:23There's a couple things I'd like to bring back, okay? Here's one of them. When you start that to
21:29your kids by saying, I want to tell you a decision I've made, you're not exerting your power on them.
21:35You're actually telling them you take your job as their parent very seriously. I think we have to think
21:40about those buckets and I think we have to ask ourselves, is the bucket of things that really are
21:43my decision, is that hard for me? Is it hard when my kids are mad at me? Do I almost
21:47look to them
21:48to do my job for me? I want them to kind of agree because it's hard for me to tolerate
21:52their tantrums
21:53or push back. And that's how I think about that question. Backwards. Extremely picky eater. Please
22:00help me fix my mistake. I love thinking about Ellen Satter's framework for feeding children. She says
22:07there's division of responsibility. We have a lane and kids have a lane. And kids tend to develop eating
22:13struggles when we take over their lane or they take over our lane. What is in our lane? Three
22:17things. What, when, where. My job as a parent is to decide what food is served, what time, and where
22:24it happens. I might say I serve chicken, broccoli, and pasta and butter at 6 p.m. at our kitchen
22:30table.
22:30My job is done. I mean it. I know. You're like, but what about... That is my lane. Now my
22:36kid has two jobs
22:37in their lane. Whether and how much. My job is whether I eat any of the three foods my parent
22:42chose and how much of each. What tends to happen with picky eating is we move lanes. I'm saying to
22:48my kid, you'd have to have four bites of broccoli in order to have the pasta. Wait, you can't have
22:52the pasta. You add too much. I have to have the chicken. Our kids have very few things in their
22:56life that are under their full control. When they're young, they have two things. What goes into their
23:01body and what comes out of their body. When we take over either lane, if we have a strong
23:06world kid, you better bet they're going to double down. Because when they're having
23:11picky eating, they're not even fully responding to the food. They're kind of saying, stay out
23:16of my lane. So a little bit of a reset is to say that to your kid. Hey, you know
23:20what I've
23:20realized? I've learned that my job is deciding what food is served, when it's served, and where.
23:25And that's it. And when I've done those three things, I've done a good job. And your job is
23:29whether you eat any of them and how much. Here's what that means. I'm not going to be telling
23:33you what to eat anymore. When I put out three options, and I'll always have at least one,
23:36that's kind of a safe food for you. You don't get to tell me the other thing you want, and
23:41I'm not going to go make it. So we both kind of get something we want, and we both have
23:44a little something to adjust to. This is everything for today. I hope you learned something. Thanks
23:49for watching Parenting Support.
23:50Parenting Support.
23:51o
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