Dr. Becky Kennedy on the Stoic Art of Emotional Regulation (and Raising Great Kids)
Dec 16, 2023
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In this discussion, Dr. Becky Kennedy, a clinical psychologist and bestselling author, shares her insights on emotional regulation in parenting. She introduces the concept of emotional vaccination, helping parents prepare for emotional challenges. Dr. Kennedy emphasizes the importance of fostering resilience in children and moving away from traditional punishment-based approaches. She also highlights the need for open communication and validation of kids' feelings, ensuring they feel understood while promoting healthier parent-child dynamics.
Separate a child's behavior from their identity and recognize that they are inherently good inside, even when their behaviors are challenging.
Building resilience in children and adults involves allowing them to experience and tolerate distressing feelings, providing support, validating their emotions, and teaching them to handle challenging situations.
Emotional regulation is a foundational skill that transcends parenting and applies to all aspects of life, involving coping with emotions, questioning them, and responding in a healthier and intentional way.
Deep dives
Separating Behavior from Identity
It is important to separate a child's behavior from their identity. Behaviors may not be good, but that doesn't mean the child is inherently bad. By recognizing and understanding that a child is good inside, even when their behaviors are challenging, we can address their struggles and needs, and help them develop the necessary skills to regulate their emotions and cope with difficulties.
Building Resilience and Emotional Vaccination
Resilience is a vital skill for both children and adults. In order to build resilience, it is important to allow children to experience and tolerate distressing feelings. Instead of immediately trying to make them happy in difficult situations, we can provide support, validate their emotions, and teach them that it's okay to feel frustrated, sad, or disappointed. By doing so, children learn that they are capable of handling challenging emotions and situations, which sets them up for greater resilience throughout their lives.
The Meta Skill of Emotional Regulation
Emotional regulation is a foundational skill that transcends parenting and applies to all aspects of life. It involves being able to cope with a wide range of emotions, not suppressing them, but also not acting impulsively on them. By focusing on emotional regulation, we learn to separate ourselves from our emotions, question them, and respond to them in a healthier and more intentional way. This meta skill allows us to handle frustrations, adapt to different situations, and ultimately find happiness by adjusting and accommodating to the fact that not everything is within our control.
Understanding the Person Beneath the Behavior
It is crucial to recognize that beneath someone's behavior, there is a person with their own struggles, needs, and emotions. This applies not only to children, but to all individuals. By separating the behavior from the person and empathetically addressing their underlying emotions and needs, we can foster understanding, connection, and healthier interactions. Developing the ability to separate behavior from identity allows us to navigate relationships and conflicts with compassion, leading to a more harmonious and fulfilling life.
Understanding Children's Behavior
Children's behavior should be seen with curiosity rather than approval or disapproval. By being curious about their actions, parents can gain insight into the underlying reasons for their behavior. For example, if a child hits their sibling, instead of reacting with disapproval, parents can be curious about why the child is behaving that way. This curiosity allows parents to address the underlying issues and work with their child to develop appropriate coping skills.
Recognizing Feelings and Setting Boundaries
Parents should recognize and validate their child's feelings while also setting firm boundaries. Children's feelings are real and should not be dismissed or invalidated. However, their feelings do not necessarily dictate a change in parental decisions or boundaries. Parents can acknowledge both their child's feelings and the boundaries set, helping children understand that their feelings are valid while still respecting the established rules.
On this weekend episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan talks with clinical psychologist Dr. Becky Kennedy on how we emotionally vaccinate, the ability to cope through stress, educating our kids on emotions and her new book Good Inside
Dr. Becky Kennedy is an American clinical psychologist who is founder and chief executive officer of the Good Inside company, an online parenting advice service. She has been called the "millennial parent whisperer" by Time Magazine and is a number one New York Times bestseller for her book Good Inside. As a mom of three, when she was first starting out, she practiced a popular behavior-first, reward-and-punishment model of parent coaching. But, after a while, something struck her: those methods feel awful–for kids and parents. She put together everything she knew about attachment, mindfulness, emotion regulation, and internal family systems theory, and translated those ideas into a new method for working with parents.
