The Profile Dossier: Becky Kennedy, The Parenting Guru Offering Practical Solutions
"We need to reflect back to our kids that they are good inside, even as they struggle on the outside.”
What do you say when your child yells, “I hate you?” What do you do when she lies to your face?
Rebecca Kennedy, better known as Dr. Becky, doesn’t just offer big-picture frameworks for these types of situations, but she arms parents with an exact script specifically formulated for these types of heated moments.
So a response to “I hate you,” would be, “Whoa, you must be really upset about something to say that to me. Let’s take a moment to figure out what’s really going on.” A response to a blatant lie would be to reframe it as a wish, “Sometimes I do things and then wish I hadn’t done them…”
As a clinical psychologist, Kennedy works with kids and adults. Her holistic approach takes into consideration parenting the children, and re-parenting the parents.
Kennedy’s core philosophy is that we’re all good inside. “The principle of internal goodness drives all of my work — I hold the belief that kids and parents are good inside, which allows me to be curious about the ‘why’ of their bad behaviors,” she writes in her book, Good Inside.
(Related: 10 Practical Pieces of Advice for First-Time Parents)
With 1.4 million Instagram followers, Kennedy has become something of a sensation in the parenting community. She uses her platform to share tools around common problems many parents face: tantrums, picky eating, sibling jealousy, and all sorts of other meltdowns.
She often conducts thought experiments in which she invites parents to put themselves in the position of their child and imagine how they might feel.
For instance, to get us to understand why siblings argue so much, she asks us to imagine how we would feel if our partner suddenly got a second spouse. All of our relatives would suddenly be so excited about this new spouse, showering them with gifts and hugs and affection. Meanwhile, we’d constantly get reprimanded for not sharing our possessions with them all the time. “I think we’d be beyond confused,” Kennedy writes. “We’d be filled with the rage that comes from feeling unseen. This is siblinghood.”
Many of the strategies that Kennedy offers don’t just apply to parenting. They apply to all areas of life. As she writes in her book, “Yes, this is a parenting book, but at its core, it’s a relationship book.”
Here’s what we can learn from Kennedy about how to hold boundaries, manage conflict, and cultivate mutual respect.
READ.
On being good inside: In her new book, Kennedy offers parenting principles and troubleshoots for specific scenarios — including sibling rivalry, separation anxiety, and tantrums. I’m reading it right now, and I’ve found that it really is a comprehensive resource for building kids’ confidence and setting them up for a lifetime of self-regulation, resilience, and mental fortitude.
On becoming the parent whisperer: Kennedy had never even posted on Instagram when Covid-19 first emerged, but in March 2020, she wrote a message to her 200 followers that changed her life. It read: “Most young kids will remember how their family home felt during the coronavirus panic more than anything specific about the virus. Our kids are watching us and learning about how to respond to stress and uncertainty. Let’s wire our kids for resilience, not panic. How? Scroll for some tips.” Here’s how she became the voice of reason for a new generation of parents.
On how kids act as mirrors: Kennedy’s emphasis on reparenting resonates with those who want to be their best selves while also raising resilient adults. Instead, we find ourselves yelling, threatening, cajoling, and bribing our kids. “Parenting brings you into contact so viscerally and so often with all of your own unresolved stuff, your own emotional reactivity,” she says.
WATCH.
On digging into the source of behavior: A child’s behavior, Kennedy says, is only the tip of the iceberg. What lies below is the reason the behavior is appearing in the first place. Many parents, however, only pay attention to the tip and try to remedy it with punishments and time-outs that may not be addressing the underlying causes. In this interview, Kennedy explains how we can challenge the fundamental assumptions we’ve been taught about punishing and rewarding behavior.
LISTEN.
On finding solutions to parenting crises: In her weekly podcast, Kennedy takes on tough parenting questions and delivers actionable guidance—all in short episodes. There are episodes on setting boundaries, navigating food challenges, overcoming mom rage, and treating kids with respect. If you’re a parent, this is a great one.
On changing the family culture: Just as any CEO will tell you, culture is driven from the top. To change the culture, you often have to change the style of the leadership because it trickles down. In this podcast, Kennedy explains how you can implement discipline while allowing your child the freedom to fully express themselves. Yes, it’s possible to do both.
POLINA’S TAKEAWAYS.
Approach every situation with ‘the MGI’: Kennedy says that the most powerful thing you can do as a parent is to find the good inside your child. She recommends one simple question that gets to the heart of the issue quickly: “What is my most generous interpretation of what just happened?” She refers to it as “the MGI.” If your child has an outburst and tells you she hates you, it’s worth finding the MGI: What is happening on the inside to cause this explosion on the outside? The hurtful words are often indicative of some sort of internal hurt or jealousy or pain. In other words, Kennedy says, your job as a parent is to show your kid that they’re not a bad kid doing bad things. Rather, they are a good kid having a hard time. “If we want our kids to have true self-confidence and to feel good about themselves, we need to reflect back to our kids that they are good inside, even as they struggle on the outside,” she writes.
Join your kid in their world: How do you get your child to listen? Kennedy says you should join them in their world. Imagine that they’re fully absorbed in putting together a puzzle, but you need them to have dinner. Before calling them over, make it a point to “join them in their world,” by helping them with the puzzle for a few minutes. "When you join a kid in their world, you make a bridge from yours to theirs,” she says. “Through validating what they're doing, and then making a request, you've already formed a connection that listening is already based on.”
Implement the ‘two things are true’ technique: One of Kennedy’s cornerstone philosophies is that two things can be true at the same time: As a parent, you can be both warm and keep your boundaries. For instance, if your child is upset that you’re not letting them stay out late with their friends, Kennedy would recommend this two-step process: 1) State your boundary and 2) Validate your child’s feelings. So it may look something like this: “I have decided that you cannot go out past 9 p.m, and that means you’re probably mad at me. I hear you, and I understand why.” In this way, you’ve set the boundary but also acknowledged your child’s feelings as valid. This approach de-escalates a situation from devolving into a screaming match or a power struggle.
Attack the problem, not each other: When there’s a problem, a power struggle ensues between the two participants. Each party wants their side to come out victorious. But what if you approached it a different way in that you remembered that you’re on the same team attacking the problem together. You can use a version of Chris Voss’s technique of “mirroring” and “labeling” to build rapport with your child. You “mirror” someone by repeating several key words they used in their last communication. (Ie: “I had a really hard day because of all the stress I’m under.” Response: “The stress you’re under?”) Labeling is used to give voice to the other person’s feelings. A good label would be responding with one of the following: “It seems like…, It looks like ... , You seem to be…” (Ie: “It seems like you’re in a stressful situation.”) “When children feel seen and sense their parent is a teammate and not an adversary, and when they’re asked to collaborate in problem-solving, good things happen,” Kennedy writes in her book.
Learn how to praise effectively: Being interested is far more rewarding and beneficial to a child than it would be to hear a generic, “Good job” every once in a while. That’s because, Kennedy says, when they grow up to be adults, kids need to be able to self-validate rather than look for external sources of praise. So when your child is excited to show you their drawing, respond by marveling at their creation and give them praise through interest. Kennedy says musing at the “how” is more powerful than praising the “what.” Ask questions about their process, help them understand how they feel about their own creation, and marvel at how much effort they put into it. Remember, curiosity is the highest form of flattery.
QUOTES TO REMEMBER.
“If I look for perfect, I’ll miss growth . . . and I’m a pretty big fan of growth.”
“The role of the parent is to coach a nervous system to cope with being human in the world.”