Dr. Becky: You’re Not a Bad Parent, You’re Overwhelmed

Speaker 0:00 An advisory from the surgeon general found nearly half of parents say most days their stress is completely overwhelming, and when parents are stressed out, it affects their kids.

Trevor Noah 0:08 Parenting sh- is a full-time job. Yeah. You know, we all work, but parenting is hard. 'Cause parenting is not easy. Never has been- Yeah ... never will be.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 0:15 At Good Inside, we believe parenting isn't something you're supposed to just know. It's something you can learn.

Trevor Noah 0:22 That's the one and only Becky Kennedy, AKA Dr. Becky, as she's known, also known as the Millennial Parent Whisperer. Many parents love the clinical psychologist's videos and podcasts on everything from tantrums to mom rage. She's got more than four million followers across social media platforms.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 0:36 And she believes that parents and children are good inside.

Trevor Noah 0:43 [upbeat music]

Trevor Noah 0:45 This is What Now? with Trevor Noah. This episode is presented by Whole Foods Market. Eat well for less. [upbeat music] Dr. Becky, thank you for joining us.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:02 Thanks for having me.

Trevor Noah 1:03 I, I, I told you right before we started recording, but I'll tell you again, I don't think there's a topic that excites me more than parenting. Genuinely, genuinely, genuinely. Like, like, I, I followed your, your work. Um, I think I first became aware of you, like most people, during the pandemic, you know, when everyone was forced to be at home with their actual kids, and then they started realizing that they don't like them. And your- [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:29 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:29 And then your videos became the salve. Your videos became the reprieve that parents

Trevor Noah 1:35 needed in this time. Um, and then your book has been amazing, and I, I, I think, you know, like where, where I really wanted to get into this conversation from was behind the book, behind the titles, behind the social media is your purpose. And like what do you think you're trying to change? When you, when you actually get out there and you go, "Good Inside, parenting, this is the relationship you should be having with your kids so that your kids can have this relationship with you,"

Trevor Noah 2:01 what do you think your end goal is?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:02 Uh, I think there's probably nothing like your relationship with your kid to allow this duality to happen at once, which is we can put better humans into the world, and we can heal so many of the unresolved parts of ourselves so we can grow-

Trevor Noah 2:18 Hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:18 ... at the same time. And so someone else said this to me, and, and it's resonated more than anything I could come up with myself. She said to me, "Good Inside helps, you know, kind of my kid grow, and it helps me return."

Trevor Noah 2:31 Oh, wow.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:31 And I think, I think that's kind of my and, uh, Good Inside's purpose.

Trevor Noah 2:36 Oh, wow, I love that. Yeah, because oftentimes we, we think of parenting as a one-sided thing.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:42 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 2:43 You know, we think of people being parents, and that's it. We don't often think about them parenting themselves in the parenting that they're doling out.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:53 Yeah. I mean, I started, you know, early on in my career working with kids in child therapy. I'm a big believer in child therapy, play therapy, all of it. I just found myself thinking that, "Well, you're with me 45 minutes a week, and then you're with your parents all the other minutes-

Trevor Noah 3:10 Hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 3:10 ... of the week."

Trevor Noah 3:10 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 3:11 Right? And so whatever I do with you, if there's, if your parents aren't along for the ride, if they're still triggered and yelling at you, then this is a little bit of a drop in the bucket. And so yeah, if a parent wants

Dr. Becky Kennedy 3:23 to help their kid, or on the surface we always say we just wanna change our kid's behavior-

Trevor Noah 3:27 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 3:27 ... or make them stop whining or have fewer tantrums, whatever it is, it brings up so much in us, right? I mean, that's really what happens, that parenting is kind of our best opportunity, I think, in adulthood for growth-

Trevor Noah 3:36 Hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 3:36 ... 'cause you're just confronted by everything that you didn't yet figure out from your own childhood, and it just plays out before your eyes.

Trevor Noah 3:43 As a, as a parent, how many times do you experience a tantrum from your kids where you forget all of the things that you've taught people?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 3:52 I, I mean, innumerable.

Trevor Noah 3:53 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 3:53 You know? I mean, I don't know. I haven't been, uh, than, too many times to tally, you know? Um, yeah, I mean, I, I, I, I really, I've said this before. I'll, I'll say it again, and I mean it with such honesty, that my kids don't have some Dr. Becky person as a mom.

Trevor Noah 4:08 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 4:08 Right? And, and I, and I also mean equally that I wouldn't wish that upon anyone. I mean, we learn the most in our relationships when people take responsibility for their behavior, when people repair. Um, I wouldn't wanna deprive my kids of that opportunity, and that's such a part of healthy relationships.

Trevor Noah 4:24 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 4:24 So certainly I have my moments. I can stay calm. A lot of it has to do with have I been taking care of myself, you know? Am I, you know, doing my own personal work? Certainly all of that contributes to my ability to stay calm when they're not.

Trevor Noah 4:36 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 4:36 And there's other days and weeks like anyone else when I've run myself into the ground or, you know, I said yes to too many people when inside I really wanted to say no. And then all it takes is my kid whining about dinner for me to completely lose it, and I lose it on my kid. But, but everything that happened leading up to that point-

Trevor Noah 4:53 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 4:53 ... is really where the story is.

Trevor Noah 4:55 Yeah, I love

Trevor Noah 4:56 that. I was talking to Eugene about this, like, before we came in. We were chatting about trying to find the balance between who you think you are versus who you wish to be and how complicated that is, and how oftentimes the story has been told to you by somebody else, oftentimes your parents. Like, that's like the first person in life who tells you-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 5:16 Yes

Trevor Noah 5:16 ... who you are. Like they go, "You are a bad kid. You're a naughty kid." Like, when I was reading through your book, I was thinking, "Man, many of the labels I even hold of myself were donated to me-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 5:27 Hmm

Trevor Noah 5:27 ... and I just kept them." I, I wasn't even told there was an option to not have them. So if you said, "Trevor, who are you?" I'd be like, "Oh, I was a naughty kid, and I was mischievous, and I was..." But that's not necessarily how I saw myself.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 5:39 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 5:39 It's how I was told I was by the adults in my life.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 5:43 Yeah. I mean, I, I often tell parents this. We're our kids' mirror. So I think you're talking about words. Sometimes we tell our kids who they are through words.

Trevor Noah 5:51 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 5:51 But if you're a mirror for your kid, you're showing them who they are, and then kids form their identity by taking that reflection in. And so it's one of the things that's really powerful for parents to know, 'cause let's even say there's two kids in the family, and so easily with two kids there can be a binary, right? Oh, this kid is really flexible and generous, and this can be really selfish, and why can't you just be more generous like

Dr. Becky Kennedy 6:15 your brother? Whatever it is.

Trevor Noah 6:16 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 6:17 And if you think about what I'm really doing is I'm saying to my kid, "You are selfish. That's the generous one. And so I'm showing you in this mirror you're selfish," but I'm acting like you're going to become more generous. The math doesn't even work, right?

Trevor Noah 6:31 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 6:31 And so if we want to bring out the good inside our kids, we have to see that version. Which people then confuse with permissiveness. Oh, so everything goes? No, that's definitely not what it means.

Trevor Noah 6:44 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 6:44 But if I can't see the good inside my kid, they, they truly, you know, are gonna have a much harder time accessing it themselves.

Trevor Noah 6:51 Which, that's actually a good point, which brings me to this point, actually, I've been thinking about a lot. In what you're saying, if parents are the mirrors to their children, which part does personality of the child play in the role of them growing up as an individual, as a human being who's gonna interact

Trevor Noah 7:08 with society meaningfully?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 7:10 Uh, so personality, temperament, right, definitely very related, but definitely our kids come into the world with certain predetermined characteristics. I mean, I have three kids. I saw that right away. I, if I think about my middle kid, that child would not take a bottle from me if she was looking at me. Not joking. I had to face her away.

Trevor Noah 7:32 Wow.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 7:33 As soon as she saw the bottle was for me, breastfeeding was very difficult too-

Trevor Noah 7:38 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 7:38 ... she would vomit her food. Like, and I can't even tell you how much this still represents so much of her. She likes to do things on her, on her own. She doesn't like to depend on people.

Trevor Noah 7:47 Hm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 7:47 She actually has such deep need for people, I think, that it really scares her, so she almost pushes them away.

Trevor Noah 7:52 Hm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 7:52 It w- it was there from the start. This is a kid who wouldn't eat any, um, kind of pureed foods because the only way to get that is to be given.

Trevor Noah 8:01 Wow.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 8:01 Until, with a finger, she could eat it by herself, she wouldn't even eat anything besides from a bottle, that again, she'd only consume facing away. This is a kid also who had huge, big feelings from the start. The separation anxiety started way earlier. The stranger danger, so intense. That was with her right away. Now, then there's a match between that temperament and the environment you're in.

Trevor Noah 8:27 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 8:27 Right? And I think if I think about my three kids, you know, the m- the match that happens, what is my kids' temperament? What do they come into the world with? How able am I to be the type of environment, you know, for this child to help them thrive? We're, we're better matches, or easier, more convenient matches

Dr. Becky Kennedy 8:47 for some of our kids than others. And then it's kind of that temperament times environment match that ends up forming a lot of personality.

Trevor Noah 8:56 You-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 8:56 Hm

Trevor Noah 8:57 ... you speak about good inside, and obviously that's, that's the, you know, the thesis behind your work and the book.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 9:02 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 9:02 And there's a, um, there's an anecdote that you share in the, in the book about being in Target, seeing this kid melt down. Like, just a kid throwing a mega tantrum. We've all seen it, you know, like the throw yourself on the ground-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 9:12 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 9:12 ... start slamming the ground, drag yourself along. Like, you paint a vivid, vivid picture.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 9:19 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 9:19 And as I'm reading the story, I'm already judging. I'm like, "Ah, oh, I know this kid. I know this type of spoiled kid, rotten kid, bad kid," all of these things. And then you, you, you have this moment where, you know, the, the kid is being told, "You're so bad. You're so bad. You're a bad kid." And you break it down differently. You know, this is one of the first moments where you talk about-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 9:42 Yeah

Trevor Noah 9:42 ... like, the instruction of trying to highlight the good inside a child.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 9:46 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 9:46 You go, I, I wrote it down. You're like, you go, "You're having such a hard time leaving Target. I get it. We still have to go. I'm with you."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 9:56 Hm.

Trevor Noah 9:57 Now, when I was reading that, I was like, all right, I mean, I, I sort of see what you're saying. But if a parent said to a kid, "Hey, we gotta go, we gotta leave Target," versus, "Hey, you're having a tough time. Uh, I'm with you, but we've still gotta leave," what is the difference? Like, what does that actually change for the child?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 10:12 Yeah. And just for anyone listening, none of us are gonna quote, say the right thing all the time.

Trevor Noah 10:15 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 10:15 We all have our moments. There's certainly a time and a place for, you know, whatever we have to say to move things along quickly. But this phrase that's become in some way such an embodiment of, I guess, my philosophy, "You're a good kid having a hard time"-

Trevor Noah 10:28 Hm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 10:29 ... is such a foundational and such a healing phrase because it does something very profound. It separates identity and behavior, and I think that's really what we're talking about, which is as applicable of an idea to a baby, to a toddler, to a teen, to an adult, right? We all have behavior we're not proud of at every age, and what feels awful in a relationship actually is, especially for a kid because they're dependent on us for survival-

Trevor Noah 10:55 Mm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 10:55 ... is being seen as that behavior.

Trevor Noah 10:57 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 10:57 Everything collapses in that moment. My kid is the tantrum. My kid is the selfishness. My kid is the entitlement. And then what happens emotionally for us is our kid becomes our enemy. That's just what happens. It's me against you. You are the enemy. You are the problem. I'm on one side. You're on the other side. You are the problem, and I then interact with you like that's true versus, hold on a second, I have a good kid. It's just always true. I think that is always true.

Trevor Noah 11:25 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 11:25 I have a good kid, meaning their identity, what's inside is good, and that's kind of over here, and I like using my hands to make a visual, and over here can be a whole range of bad behavior.

Trevor Noah 11:36 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 11:36 A tantrum, you know, lying to your face, um, saying, "I hate you," saying, "You're the worst mom ever. You do nothing for me," after getting back from, you know, I don't know, an amusement park where you took your kid-

Trevor Noah 11:46 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 11:46 ... where you didn't even wanna go in the first place. Right? This is what happens. So seeing your kid as a good kid having a hard time-

Trevor Noah 11:53 Mm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 11:53 ... leads, leads to a profoundly different pathway than looking at them like they're a bad kid doing bad things.

Trevor Noah 12:00 You know, the, what you've just tapped into is the reason I was so excited to have this conversation, is if you read this book- And you think to yourself, "Oh no, I don't have kids," or, "It's not about me," or, I think you're missing th- the core idea. It's sort of going to the very root of who we all are as human beings. 'Cause when I read through this story, I went, how many times have each of us or any of us been in a relationship where someone says, "This is who you are."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 12:25 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 12:26 You know? "You're an inconsiderate person. You're a terrible partner."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 12:31 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 12:31 You know what I mean? Like, these are the things that people say to each other, and I don't know, you know, about everyone, but I, I don't think most people feel like this is the moment where they wanna show up. They wanna spend more time defending

Trevor Noah 12:42 themselves, and they feel like they're not on the same team.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 12:44 Well, now we're talking about something really big. We're talking about the collapse of curiosity. That's what we're-

Trevor Noah 12:48 The collapse of curiosity

Dr. Becky Kennedy 12:49 ... the collapse of curiosity. As soon as, I've never, I, I said that phrase as if it's, like, something I have philosophy about. I haven't really thought about it before.

Trevor Noah 12:56 Oh, no, I love that.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 12:56 But that's what I think, that's what you're talking about. Because when you see someone in a workplace who's late five days in a row, "Hey, I need you to be on time tomorrow, we have a big meeting," and they're late. What's the narrative in our head? "Oh, my goodness, this person is so rude. They're so inconsiderate."

Trevor Noah 13:10 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 13:10 Or whatever we say. We're no longer curious. We have no curiosity. Curiosity would say, "I wonder what's going on."

Trevor Noah 13:18 Huh.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 13:18 I, I do have history with Trevor. He doesn't tend to be late to his own podcast five days in a row. [laughs] I wonder what's happening for him. And, and then what happens, and this happens more now than ever, is we confuse curiosity with allowing or approval. No. Uh, those are totally different concepts. But if we don't allow ourselves to be curious about behavior, we can't understand it. And if we can't understand it, we actually can't improve it. So if we get to this tantrum in a grocery store, right? Because my goal with parents, too, it's not like, "Oh, you have a good kid. Having a tantrum, that's so beautiful." No. I, I don't want, like-

Trevor Noah 13:53 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 13:53 ... a million tantrums in Target. It's not, like, a convenient situation.

Trevor Noah 13:57 Embrace the tantrum.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 13:58 No, let your anger out, so beautiful.

Trevor Noah 14:00 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 14:00 Obviously not. I'm, like, a normal person, okay? But it's actually just more efficient to be curious, okay? Because if I can be curious-

Trevor Noah 14:07 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 14:07 ... in the moment, first of all, I'm not gonna let my kid just have this disaster situation. I might have to say to myself, "This stinks. I'm not gonna be able to check out. My car, I'm gonna have to leave and come back." That's just inconvenient.

Trevor Noah 14:17 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 14:18 And parenting is full of inconveniences.

Trevor Noah 14:19 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 14:19 It just is. So I'm gonna say to my kid, after trying, let's say, to calm them down, "Look, you're a good kid, having a hard time. Something's going on. I'm picking you up. I'm carrying you to the car. We'll come back and get, you know, whatever we were gonna get another day."

Trevor Noah 14:32 Right.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 14:32 My kid's gonna protest. They're not gonna say, "Thank you for your sturdy leadership. Really appreciate this." They're definitely not gonna say that. I'm gonna continue doing my job and get my kid to the car. And then maybe after my kid's sleeping, again, curiosity would allow me to say, "Okay, well, what's going on for my kid? Okay, well, I guess we're walking down the aisle and they see a million toys that they want, and I told them we're here for one. I guess it's really hard for them to see a lot of things

Dr. Becky Kennedy 14:57 they want and not have them."

Trevor Noah 14:58 Oh, wow.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 14:59 Well, you know, I don't even know that many adults that are great at seeing a lot of things that they want [laughs] and not having them.

Trevor Noah 15:06 Wow.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 15:06 What skills might my kid need to be able to see things, want them, and not have them? Because wanting things isn't wrong. I would actually say I always want my kid to want things for themselves.

Trevor Noah 15:18 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 15:18 I just want them to develop the ability to want, not have, and cope with that, right? But that, that's a skill that takes time. Now let's keep going, right? Maybe one day I have a little time on my hands, I say, "Yeah, that's hard. Well, how do I get better at hard things? Practice." That's how we get better at swimming. No kids learn to swim by just crossing our fingers.

Trevor Noah 15:37 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 15:37 Right? We bring them to lessons. And so maybe say, "That's hard. Look, we're gonna do something kind of weird today. We're gonna be in our playroom and you're gonna see those red blocks, and I'm gonna play with them first, and we're gonna take a deep breath and say, 'Oh, waiting is hard and I can do it.'" Like, I don't know, a little mantra, right? And, and I know it's so easy to think, "That takes so much time." I promise you, managing tantrums without developing skills is gonna take way more time.

Trevor Noah 16:03 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 16:03 But that whole process, or even just thinking about it differently, comes from being able to have a gap between having a good kid and seeing their bad behavior, identity and behavior being separate. And that gap is what

Dr. Becky Kennedy 16:18 allows for curiosity at any age.

Trevor Noah 16:20 Hm. It's interesting that you just brought up the putting the time in now versus putting the time in later, because my, my first thought when I think of what I've heard most parents say-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 16:28 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 16:28 ... when they hear anything like this-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 16:30 Yeah

Trevor Noah 16:30 ... a lot of them, they'll go, "I don't have the time for this. That's easy for you to say. Oh, I, you know what I mean? I, you know, I, every time I ca-", but what you just said was so key, though. We don't calculate the time that each of those tantrums is taking.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 16:43 That's right.

Trevor Noah 16:44 And so we negate the investment that we would be putting into a child-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 16:49 Mm

Trevor Noah 16:50 ... by trying to deal with it and build up the skills and the tools.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 16:52 That's exactly right. And I, I don't have a lot of time either, I wanna be honest. Like, I don't have, like, 30 minutes a day that I'm, like, teaching my kid skills. That's not how long it takes. But in life, for anything, you tend, you tend to spend time kind of preparing-

Trevor Noah 17:06 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 17:06 ... or reacting. And whatever way you spend time, you don't mentally account for it as time. If you spend a lot of time reacting, you don't think of it as time.

Trevor Noah 17:15 No.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 17:15 Although also, you go to bed probably feeling awful about yourself. You wake up at 2:00 AM being like, "Oh, this stinks." You're just up for an hour in the middle of the night.

Trevor Noah 17:22 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 17:22 It's actually a lot of time. Where you're gonna spend a couple minutes with your kid before they go to bed, a lot of these things can take 90 to 120 seconds, right? It's not like I do this with my kid, we have some profound conversation. [laughs] You know?

Trevor Noah 17:35 But what would those, what would those 90 seconds be?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 17:37 Okay.

Trevor Noah 17:37 Like, give me an example. Like, so let's say you've had the Target meltdown.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 17:40 Right.

Trevor Noah 17:40 Your kid was in a store. They lost, they lost it. I mean, they just-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 17:42 Right

Trevor Noah 17:42 ... went crazy. They were rolling around. They were doing things. You had to carry them out while they were screaming like you were kidnapping them. You get them home.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 17:50 Yep.

Trevor Noah 17:51 You know, your day has been

Trevor Noah 17:52 rough. What are those 90 seconds looking like?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 17:53 So the first thing I would say that day is, "You're done for the day." Like, there, there's no learning, lecturing that should happen. You're activated. You're probably resentful of your kid.

Trevor Noah 18:00 Oh, okay.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 18:01 Your job is just to manage that. Let's say it's now the next day. Again, you have to start from a place of curiosity. What's going on for my kid? I actually think if we think of it like swimming, what skill is my kid missing? That's a really helpful question.

Trevor Noah 18:13 Hm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 18:13 It's probably the skill of, again, maybe it's wanting and not having, something like that.

Trevor Noah 18:17 'Cause they were drowning, essentially, in this moment.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 18:18 They were drowning.

Trevor Noah 18:19 Okay.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 18:19 But also they didn't, they've never learned how to cope with that moment.

Trevor Noah 18:22 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 18:23 They don't just get gifted it at age seven, or age 27, frankly

Eugene 18:27 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 18:27 You don't get gifted those skills either. [laughs] So one, a story. Immediately when you make something a story that you struggled with, you're going to make the moment less explosive for your kid the next time. Because as soon as your kid feels less alone in a struggle-

Eugene 18:42 Mm-hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 18:42 ... you reduce shame, and when you reduce shame, you make things less explosive. Seriously. The next day over breakfast, I might say, "I don't know if I ever told you this. I remember going to a grocery store with my dad, and he told me I could get a Milky Way, and I really wanted a Milky Way, and a Twix, and Reese's, and a Hershey bar, and a 100 Grand. How do you think I handled that?" And this is the best moment if you have a kid who's verbal, 'cause I'd be like, "You probably just got one thing and, like, went on," and he'll say, " [sighs] No, no. I had a little bit of a situation." You know, something

Dr. Becky Kennedy 19:19 like that.

Eugene 19:19 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 19:19 Right? "Oh, you did?" "Yeah. I mean, it's, it's really hard to see things you want and not have them."

Eugene 19:26 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 19:28 I would say that's, uh, you're done for the day. Now, in that moment when you're telling a story, do not look at your kid after and saying, "Just like it is for you."

Eugene 19:35 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 19:36 You kind of, you ruin... [laughs] Like, whenever I hear a parent do that, I'm like, just-

Eugene 19:39 Where were you two months ago? [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 19:41 Uh, no. Just-

Eugene 19:42 That's... I'm not gonna lie. I thought that's how the story ends.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 19:46 No.

Eugene 19:46 No, I thought that-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 19:47 [laughs]

Eugene 19:47 I thought it was gonna be that thing. I thought you'd turn and be like-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 19:49 Yeah

Eugene 19:49 ... "And you see, Eugene"

Dr. Becky Kennedy 19:50 [laughs] Right. [laughs]

Eugene 19:51 "Remember when you did that?"

Dr. Becky Kennedy 19:52 Exactly. No.

Eugene 19:53 No.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 19:53 You take it out of- No ... like, the reverie. Just, like, allow it. Trust that it helps. Mm. Another thing, let's say that day you have to take your kid grocery storing. S- going to the grocery store. You could say to your kid, this is such a powerful one, so simple, "I wonder what it's gonna be like to be at Target today. I wonder if you're gonna see something you want and I'm gonna say no. Oh, what would that be like?" And again, if you have a kid like most kids, they're gonna roll your eyes and say nothing. Fine. Don't take the bait. I don't know about for you. That might feel annoying. I don't know. Let's just get ourselves a little bit ready for that. This is true for adults, too. So much of how we feel hard moments is the feeling and the surprise of the feeling, and if you remove the surprise, you're left with just the feeling, and that actually makes the feeling a lot easier to cope with because you're no longer feeling disappointed or jealous and feeling surprised. It doesn't feel kind of like an attack to you. Same thing is true with adults. "Hey, we're gonna have dinner with friends. Look, I'm making this up, but we're having a hard time getting pregnant. I'm just gonna tell you in advance.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 20:55 I know our friends are, I don't know, seven months pregnant. It might be a little hard. And, like, let's just both get ready. We're happy for them. We're kind of having a hard time. Totally makes sense that it's gonna be a little of a tricky dinner." People handle that a lot better than if they show up and they're- Yeah ... s- surprised by a situation. Yeah. So removing the surprise is one thing you could do. That, again, takes, I don't know, 90 seconds in advance and makes the situation more manageable.

Eugene 21:20 So here's, here's my thing that I struggle with as a parent. How much of me parenting is just me giving out advice and modeling the behavior that I want to see, and how much of it is conditioning? 'Cause I'll give you an example. When I was growing up, I had four siblings. I was number three of four. My f- my older brother was what was deemed the naughty one, but it's not like he slept without food. He had a bedroom to go to. So his behavior was almost set as if it was part of him.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 21:48 Mm.

Eugene 21:48 But my mom always

Eugene 21:49 said one thing to me when I was growing up. She's like, "If there's one thing that I know about you, is I never have to worry about you. Not at the store."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 21:57 Mm.

Eugene 21:57 "Not when we go visit other people. You, I ne- But you, I never."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 22:05 [laughs]

Eugene 22:06 "But you, I, I never have to worry about." And I, as I grew up and I realized, I try to be less of a problem to people than I need to be.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 22:15 Yep.

Eugene 22:15 Right?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 22:16 Mm-hmm.

Eugene 22:16 So I'm thinking to myself, was I parented that way, or was I conditioned to be that way?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 22:20 Well, it, now we're talking about birth order, which is such a fun topic, and, uh, I'm gonna answer your question by probably answering neither of your questions, but tell me if it's useful anyway, 'cause I think it's-

Eugene 22:31 Yes

Dr. Becky Kennedy 22:31 ... getting to the core. I think about this as you're in a system. You're in a system of siblings. Siblings are systems. Marriages are systems. Workplaces are systems. Whole families are systems. I think it's helpful to think about in any system, there's only 100% of a quality to go around. And-

Eugene 22:49 So there's an infinite number.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 22:51 Well, let's say there's only 100.

Eugene 22:52 A finite number.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 22:52 Oh, there's a finite, finite number. A finite number.

Eugene 22:54 Okay.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 22:54 So there's 100% of acting out-

Eugene 22:57 Right

Dr. Becky Kennedy 22:57 ... and naughtiness to go around, which by the way, is often a kid's way of just learning how to feel their feelings, and they don't yet have skills to manage those feelings, so it's all coming out. So it seems like in your family system, the message was your brother [laughs] owns 100% of that.

Eugene 23:12 He has timeshare to the-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 23:14 [laughs]

Eugene 23:14 ... to the tantrum holiday home.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 23:15 [laughs] Literally. So there is 0% left for you to pick up, right? [laughs] Now, one of the struggles with that is usually it's helpful as we become older in life to not have a lot of rigidity. Like, no one wants to have 100% of any quality. You don't wanna have 100% of acting out, but you also don't wanna have zero. Because if you have 0% of that, one of the things you tend to learn over time is, my job is to scan every room [laughs] and figure out what everyone needs from me, and keep things very, very peaceful. And often the cost of doing that to such an extreme can be some self-abandonment. Like, I don't really know what I want, or sometimes I feel like I want something, even if it'll rock the boat a little bit, or maybe I have to distance myself from my anger because it would come out in a big way, and that's kind of my brother's role. And so I think what, what you're saying is so much of your childhood was shaped by these sibling dynamic roles that were kind of part of birth order.

Eugene 24:16 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 24:16 And

Dr. Becky Kennedy 24:17 probably part of our adulthood, I think, is realizing, and you were kind of saying this too, the lessons we learned in our early years-

Eugene 24:23 Mm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 24:24 ... and the ways we had to adapt to keep us safe Were really protective back then, and just really impressive and adaptive-

Eugene 24:33 Hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 24:33 ... but can in many different ways work a little bit against us sometimes in adulthood.

Eugene 24:39 How many of our romantic partners-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 24:41 Mm

Eugene 24:42 ... are we finding ourself, ourselves as the other person parenting?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 24:47 How many of our romantic partners?

Eugene 24:49 Yes.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 24:49 Like, are we parenting our romantic partners?

Eugene 24:51 Do we find ourselves parenting more, or do we find ourselves enjoying the fruits of how they were parented? Does it make sense?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 24:59 Um-

Eugene 25:00 So if someone is really great to me-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 25:01 Mm-hmm

Eugene 25:02 ... am I reaping the rewards of how great they were raised and how well-rounded they are as an individual? But-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 25:08 Mm-hmm

Eugene 25:08 ... if let's say, for example, I'm dealing with their tantrums, they're trying to take this, they're trying to give that, they're trying to do that-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 25:14 Right

Eugene 25:15 ... am I now fulfilling the role of a parent 'cause they didn't have 100% timeshare of the tantrum-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 25:20 [laughs] Maybe

Eugene 25:21 ... holiday home?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 25:21 But I think, I think we're, I think we're talking about, well, how do we end up with the people we end up with? Which, to me, who we end up being attracted to in our kind of adult life is in some ways just an activation of our earliest attachment patterns. It's what feels like home.

Eugene 25:40 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 25:40 And so if what feels like home, based on your childhood, is, okay, I've become really expert at keeping things peaceful, never getting in trouble, being really, really stable, because again, my brother had 100% of all the other things, well, if that's my puzzle piece, what other puzzle piece would be a really, really good match with mine? Probably someone where there's a lot of stuff going on.

Trevor Noah 26:06 Oh, wow.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 26:07 Right?

Eugene 26:07 100% chaos.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 26:08 100% chaos because-

Eugene 26:09 Oh, no

Dr. Becky Kennedy 26:10 ... that actually feels like home to you.

Eugene 26:13 Oh.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 26:13 And you know how to be in a relationship. It's-

Trevor Noah 26:16 You know how to be the counterbalance to that chaos.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 26:18 Yeah. It's, our, uh, uh, attraction is more about familiarity than it's about anything else, and if you're privileged enough to have an early attachment style that is actually in line with the adult relationship you would want-

Trevor Noah 26:33 Mm.

Eugene 26:33 Yeah. Mm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 26:34 ... like I used to always say to my clients in private practice, that's like an amazing privilege, 'cause then when you have that first couple dates and you're like, "Oh, I just feel like there's this magic," that can be an amazing sign. I can tell you with a lot of the adults I worked with, they would say, "I'm actually learning [laughs] that who I'm initially attracted to is-

Trevor Noah 26:50 Is not

Dr. Becky Kennedy 26:50 ... almost my best warning sign. Like, I can't go on a second date with that guy. I just almost know

Dr. Becky Kennedy 26:57 how it's gonna end."

Trevor Noah 26:58 Right.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 26:58 That that becomes almost the reason to say no. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 27:02 That is, it's so interesting when you, when you break it down, you know, to the child level-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 27:05 Hmm

Trevor Noah 27:05 ... and then bring it back, because it, it feels like all of it is a slingshot. It feels like our childhood is a slingshot into adulthood, and then it becomes exponentially larger because of the effect that we have on the world and the, the agency we have over our own lives.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 27:19 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 27:19 And like you, you have this line where you say, "A tantrum is just a nervous system that is short-circuiting." And when I, when I thought of that with a child, it sort of made more sense.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 27:30 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 27:32 But then with adults, you see it, and it has

Trevor Noah 27:35 so much more of an effect on people. 'Cause if you're a child throwing a tantrum, maybe it's you flailing in a supermarket. If you're an adult having a tantrum, you might walk into a supermarket and shoot everybody. Do, do you know what I mean? So when you, when you look at it through the lens of, like, a parent and a child in that moment, what is the nervous system that we're trying to repair in that moment, and what are we trying to allow, and how do you even find that balance? Like, how much do you let and how much do you not? Because I've seen people who are really repressed, or they've, they've... They'll tell you, "I was in the strictest household, and I never threw a tantrum, and I never this," and I... But then they have like a secret life.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 28:10 Yep. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 28:11 You know? So, so how do you, how do you as a parent then know what the balance is? Do you ever know?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 28:17 So, look, in any given moment, I don't know if we ever, you know, have complete clarity of, like, you know, this is a perfect intervention, but w- I think we're really talking about, like, what a parent's job is, right?

Trevor Noah 28:28 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 28:28 And I think this is, like, a very core idea that can be applied in a bunch of different scenarios. We're not making it up each time, right? Because most parents I know, they wanna do their job well. It's the job they care the most about. But parenting in general has been like having a job without a job description, because when I ask parents, "Okay, well, what is your job when your kid's having a tantrum?"

Trevor Noah 28:47 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 28:47 They'll say, "I have no idea." Well, how can you

Dr. Becky Kennedy 28:50 do your job well in any specific scenario-

Trevor Noah 28:52 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 28:52 ... if at baseline you don't even know what your job is? So I think a parent has two main jobs all the time, and it's boundaries and validation. Boundaries are limits we set. There are limits we set. There are decisions we make, often for a kid's long-term benefit. Uh, it's kind of like the structure a kid grows up with around things can only go so far. Not because I'm not gonna let you win-

Trevor Noah 29:17 Hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 29:17 ... but actually related to the fact that, and this is very important, my number one job is to keep you safe.

Trevor Noah 29:22 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 29:22 Now, that's been, I think something shifted in the last decade or two-

Trevor Noah 29:26 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 29:26 ... where we've confused safety with comfort.

Trevor Noah 29:28 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 29:29 Safety does not mean comfortable and happy and optimized all the time. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 29:33 Oh, okay.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 29:33 But safe. It's not safe for you to run around Target taking things from the wall and, I don't know, throwing them to the ground. It's not safe for you to throw sand in the sandbox at kids. It's not safe for you to watch endless hours of TV or be on your iPad. Those things just aren't safe, so we have to set boundaries. There are limits. And a kid always has the same reaction to a boundary. They're upset. They have a tantrum, you know? Throw a tantrum tends to be a phrase I don't love, 'cause it almost seems like that's this active, like, yeah, like mischievous kid being like-

Trevor Noah 30:03 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 30:04 ... "I'm going to throw a tantrum."

Trevor Noah 30:05 Little, little boomerang that they're gonna throw. [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 30:07 Yeah, it's just like this, you know, it's... I think tantrums are when, or any bad behavior, are just when feelings are greater than skills.

Trevor Noah 30:13 Oof.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 30:14 That's all.

Trevor Noah 30:14 Oh, I like that.

Eugene 30:15 That's a good one.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 30:16 That's all.

Trevor Noah 30:16 Any bad behavior is when feelings are greater than skills.

Eugene 30:18 Greater than your skills.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 30:18 At any age. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 30:20 Oh, I really like that.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 30:21 Right? And for decades we've kind of punished feelings, or punished behaviors-

Trevor Noah 30:25 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 30:25 ... but the answer is to level up skills, which never happens when you're punished.

Trevor Noah 30:29 So when you're in that situation-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 30:30 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 30:31 ... l- let, let's, let's go deeper into-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 30:33 Yeah

Trevor Noah 30:33 ... into this world. You have this child, and you're having this experience with them. How do you then... 'Cause I, I love-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 30:41 Yeah

Trevor Noah 30:41 ... that you brought up safety, 'cause the first thing I thought of was, like, especially, like, Black parents particularly, o- o- th- th, almost everywhere in the world, I can show you a Black parent who has said to their child at some point a version of, "If I don't kill you, the cops are gonna kill you"

Dr. Becky Kennedy 30:56 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 30:56 ... or, "If I don't beat you, the world is gonna beat you" or if I-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 30:59 Yeah

Trevor Noah 30:59 ... like, they're going, "I need to keep you safe"

Eugene 31:02 Rather me.

Trevor Noah 31:03 Yeah, rather me.

Eugene 31:03 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 31:03 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 31:03 They always say that, "Rather me. If, if I don't do this, it's gonna be way worse when you get out there."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 31:07 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 31:09 How do you then, how do you imbue your child with that knowledge when they're at an age where they maybe don't understand it? Because y- you know, on the one hand, you're saying you're good inside.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 31:19 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 31:20 But I'm assuming you also wanna let the child know that this is not how society deems-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 31:24 Not everyone will see you that way

Trevor Noah 31:25 ... yeah, like, how do you, how do you, how do you do that without telling them that they're bad? How do you say to them, "Hey, this is... You'd be considered a criminal, man," is, like, the best way to put it, but without-

Eugene 31:34 But in Japan-

Trevor Noah 31:35 Yeah

Eugene 31:35 ... you can roam free.

Trevor Noah 31:36 Exa- [laughs]

Eugene 31:37 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 31:37 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 31:38 With-

Eugene 31:38 But it's like-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 31:38 Wisconsin?

Trevor Noah 31:39 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 31:39 No.

Trevor Noah 31:39 Yeah.

Eugene 31:40 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 31:40 But it's like, how do you say, like, "I don't think you're a criminal, but this is criminal behavior" is, is

Trevor Noah 31:44 a good way to put it. How do you, how do you do that?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 31:45 Well, l- let's, I don't know. Let's have some example. Let's say my kid is hitting another kid on a play date.

Trevor Noah 31:51 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 31:51 Something like that, right, or on the playground, maybe even more public, right?

Trevor Noah 31:55 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 31:55 Let's start with the job, and then we'll talk about the nuance.

Trevor Noah 31:57 Okay, cool.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 31:57 'Cause the nuance you're talking about is very real and very important, right? And not, not all kids are seen the same way.

Trevor Noah 32:03 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 32:03 Right? And so I think you're also asking if you have awareness as a family, my kid won't be seen in a positive light in the world.

Trevor Noah 32:09 Right.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 32:09 Do I mimic that behavior in my home, or do, or does my home have to offer something different to that child?

Trevor Noah 32:16 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 32:16 Okay, so let's just say my kid is hitting. If I think about boundaries and validation just as foundational, boundaries would be saying to a kid, "I won't let you hit your sister. I'm not gonna let you hit your friend." And let's say I'm on the playground. I would literally take my kid and pull them away. This is probably the number one thing I've seen done very differently by parents.

Trevor Noah 32:36 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 32:36 And I urge them to realize a boundary is not saying, "Stop hitting. We don't hit." Those are requests.

Trevor Noah 32:45 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 32:45 Right? And again, if you're not hitting your kid, they know we don't hit.

Trevor Noah 32:48 Right.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 32:48 So, um, but it's kind of like we're saying to a kid, "I'm watching you unable to control yourself and make a good decision, so my best intervention is going to ask you to make a good decision." Like, it confuses kids. They act out more-

Trevor Noah 32:58 Hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 32:58 ... because they don't have an adult. They don't actually have anyone keeping them safe. And so a boundary often is physical, which doesn't mean it comes from a place of harm.

Trevor Noah 33:05 Okay.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 33:05 It actually comes from a place of protection.

Trevor Noah 33:07 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 33:07 It's something I do to protect my kid because they're not being safe. Going back to being a mirror, I don't want my kid to experience themselves as the kid who hits everyone on the playground. That's not good for them to build their identity, so I'm gonna stop them and pull them to the park bench, not like, "You're embarrassing me. What's wrong with you?" But, "Hey, you're a good kid having a hard time, and no, I'm not gonna let you go back to the sandbox. I still see that you're so activated." Now I'm on the bench with my kid. And again, this is a made-up scenario. Who knows if I'd actually have the presence of mind.

Trevor Noah 33:35 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 33:35 But then... So it's a good day in the studio-

Trevor Noah 33:37 This is a good day

Dr. Becky Kennedy 33:37 ... without my

Dr. Becky Kennedy 33:38 children.

Trevor Noah 33:38 Good day. Good day.

Eugene 33:38 And in Japan.

Trevor Noah 33:39 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 33:39 And in Japan.

Trevor Noah 33:41 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 33:41 It al- it al- I guess it always happens there. I have to learn more. Gotta learn, gotta drink what they're drinking.

Trevor Noah 33:45 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 33:45 Um, so let's say I'm sitting with my kid. I've done this job. I've set a boundary, right? Now I can do the other part of my job, which is some version of, "Ugh, there was only one red shovel. Ugh, it was so hard to wait for that red shovel."

Trevor Noah 33:57 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 33:57 Um, validating the struggle that was underlying the behavior. I'm validating the feelings. "Yeah, it makes sense you're mad. He was playing with your red shovel. I'm not gonna let you hit. That's why we're taking a break here."

Trevor Noah 34:11 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 34:11 But kids can't learn to manage feelings they don't think they're allowed to have.

Trevor Noah 34:16 Okay.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 34:18 If you think about what it means to manage a feeling, it means I'm allowed to have this feeling inside my body.

Eugene 34:22 You must have it first.

Trevor Noah 34:23 Oh, wow.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 34:24 Yeah, it's allowed to live in my body. And if you don't feel like a feeling is allowed to live in your body, there's two options. You try to-

Eugene 34:31 Suppress

Dr. Becky Kennedy 34:32 ... suppress, or it comes out in behavior.

Trevor Noah 34:34 Oh, wow.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 34:34 And then coming out in behavior actually is like, "Well, you told me I'm not supposed to feel angry, so I'm just trying to get it out"

Trevor Noah 34:41 Huh

Dr. Becky Kennedy 34:41 ... right, through a hit, through your extremities, through I hate you. Okay, so now let's say I'm back home with my kid, and I'm thinking, unlike me, I have white children, like, "Like, this is bad news in a different way"

Trevor Noah 34:52 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 34:52 ... right? And I'm more fearful, right, about what this need means for my, I don't know, Black child.

Trevor Noah 34:57 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 34:58 I think, and again, this is probably not happening with, like, a two-year-old. I don't know about the nuance of the conversation, but these are conversations,

Dr. Becky Kennedy 35:05 you know, that I think are important. "Look, I'm always gonna be on your team. My job is to help keep you safe, and not everyone is going to give you the benefit of the doubt."

Trevor Noah 35:17 Hmm.

Eugene 35:17 Oh.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 35:18 "This is, this is something we're gon- this is not, like, a one and done conversation." But yeah, and so in our home, probably, you know what, we're gonna have to, like, practice certain, in my mind, skills even more. We're gonna have to manage certain realities. You're gonna have a lot of feelings about the fact that you're looked at when you're walk down the st- when you're walking down the street very differently than some of your friends, right? And I'm going to be someone you can come to, to talk to about that, right?

Trevor Noah 35:45 It's acknowledging the unfairness of the world and basically saying to them, "Hey, I know that your world will not treat you fairly"

Dr. Becky Kennedy 35:51 Hmm

Trevor Noah 35:51 ... "but I want you to know that I'm always gonna treat you fairly"

Dr. Becky Kennedy 35:54 Hmm.

Eugene 35:55 Yeah

Trevor Noah 35:55 ... and I think that's sl- that's a slight difference 'cause speaking from personal experience, I don't think my mom necessarily said that to me, but I think that might have been her intention. But she was going, "I can't let you..." She's like, "I, I have to keep you safe by doing this before they do it to you because they won't know when to stop" And that's often what she says. She's like, "You'll get killed," you know?

Eugene 36:16 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 36:16 But it's interesting to think of it this way, is to say, "The world's not gonna be fair to you. I will always be fair to you, so you have to trust me-

Eugene 36:24 Sure

Trevor Noah 36:25 ... in this" But, but-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 36:26 And I don't, I don't just, I've, like, I, I don't wanna claim to be some, like, expert in parenting Black children. Like, that is the, like, the, you know, like, that is not-

Eugene 36:34 True

Dr. Becky Kennedy 36:34 ... my lived experience I mean that

Trevor Noah 36:37 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 36:37 Like, I really do. You know?

Trevor Noah 36:39 I do too.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 36:39 And I feel like along those lines-

Trevor Noah 36:41 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 36:42 ... you know, I think about friends of mine, colleagues, like within the Good Inside community. There's this amazing woman, Myleik Teele, who, you know, we talk a lot about these. She leads like our Black parents room.

Trevor Noah 36:51 Right

Dr. Becky Kennedy 36:51 And like, what is this line? And these ideas make sense, and they feel very different from how I was brought up. And I feel like my son, in some ways, like needs these skills-

Trevor Noah 36:58 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 36:58 ... and needs to understand how to regulate his emotions. The stakes are even higher.

Trevor Noah 37:02 Huh.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 37:02 And Becky, like you don't walk around with the same fears as I do, and that plays out in my responses. And so, yes, uh, so I think, but this is, that is I guess just a different framework.

Trevor Noah 37:12 Right.

Eugene 37:12 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 37:12 But every parent is raising their kids from the... Because depending on where you are, like you come to South Africa, now your child, Black is the majority. You know?

Eugene 37:19 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 37:19 You'll be... So it's, it's, you're always raising your child within the system that they exist within-

Eugene 37:25 Yeah

Trevor Noah 37:25 ... whether you like it or not. [upbeat music] Don't go anywhere, 'cause we got more What Now after this. Whole Foods Market makes holiday hosting simple with delicious prepared dishes, must-have ingredients,

Trevor Noah 37:40 and gifts that are just as thoughtful as the food. And look, I'll be honest with you. Every holiday season, I tell myself, "This year, Trevor, this year you're gonna cook something." And every year I absolutely do not. Because the holidays sneak up on you. One minute you're still finishing the Halloween candy, and the next, someone's asking you, "So are you gonna bring a signature dish?" Signature? Guys, I don't even sign my emails. So I've developed a system, a Trevor holiday system. I go to Whole Foods Market, I buy everything, and then I behave like I made it myself. I walk in with confidence. That's the key. Chest out, confidence, and a nice bowl. You see, if you put something in a bowl, people assume you cooked it. It's science. And Whole Foods makes it too easy. The heat and eat dishes, ooh, guys, creamy mashed potatoes, green beans, stuffing, all the classics. All you have to do is warm it up, transfer it into your own dish, and suddenly you're getting compliments like, "Wow, Trevor, you really brought this this year?" Yes, I did bring it. And that's technically true. And the desserts, wow. Guys, let me tell you something. The holiday rum cake, oh. [laughs] Oh, my goodness, the tres leches. Those desserts look like they require childhood trauma, a French grandmother, and 12 hours of your life. Nope, I bought it all at Whole Foods, carried it in, put it on the table, and I let the lies flow. Someone said, "Trevor, this is incredible. What's your recipe?" And I said, [laughs] "You know a chef never tells," because in this case the chef doesn't know, because the real chef was Whole Foods. And if you're responsible for the main course, I mean, they've got spiral cut ham, bone-in rib roast, the heavy hitters. One year I showed up with king crab legs. People were silent. They were stunned. They weren't really impressed. They were confused, because nobody expects king crab at Thanksgiving. But it tasted good, so they got over it. And to round everything out, I grab 365 by Whole Foods Market staples, green beans, stuffing, dinner rolls, the fundamentals. The 365 brand is basically how I fill the table without filling my stress levels. And here's the part people don't think about, the gifts. Whole Foods Market has cookie gift boxes, beauty gift sets, candles, flowers. I even built a cheese board as a present. Yeah. Not the board, the cheese on top of it. It's one of those gifts that looks thoughtful, but it's really just cheese that's put in the shape of something. People love it. So yeah, my holiday hack is really simple. Whole

Trevor Noah 40:00 Foods Market does the work. I take the credit. Everybody wins. And honestly, that's what the holidays are about. Good food, happy people, and lies told with love. Shop for everything you need at Whole Foods Markets, your holiday headquarters. [upbeat music]

Eugene 40:26 When I heard you were coming, I was particularly excited, because, one, I wanted to ask you, do you have a visa? I know you don't need a visa. Passport to come to South Africa.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 40:33 [laughs]

Eugene 40:33 So you can live at our house for a little bit, because I think we need you.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 40:37 [laughs] I'm, I'm in. [laughs]

Eugene 40:39 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 40:40 Give me some dates.

Eugene 40:41 Well, my question is, and I've, I've often had to struggle with this, as a male single parent raising a daughter, I sometimes feel insecure about what I might be missing out in imparting to her. Is there a study that's conducted to show what the difference is between kids that grow up being raised by a single parent who's the same gender as them versus the opposite gender?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 41:06 Ugh, I wish I was given this question as a little bit of prep, because I wish I could-

Eugene 41:10 You know-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 41:10 ... have some-

Eugene 41:11 ... 16 years ago-

Trevor Noah 41:12 [laughs]

Eugene 41:12 ... that's what I would have loved.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 41:16 Um, but, but the thing I wanna latch onto that you said-

Eugene 41:19 Uh-huh

Dr. Becky Kennedy 41:19 ... I, I don't know. I, I'm sure there is some study. I can't recite it right now.

Eugene 41:24 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 41:24 But to me, what you said is so poignant as, as an amazing initial conversation with your daughter.

Eugene 41:30 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 41:31 This is something I think about. You are a girl being raised by a single father. That allows us some amazing special moments that would never happen if our family system was different, and I'm sure it also means not having other moments because of that exact same configuration. And if you ever feel like there's things you're missing, and if you ever feel angry rationally or-

Eugene 41:56 Mm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 41:56 ... irrationally about it-

Eugene 41:58 Mm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 41:58 ... like I'll always listen, not to prove, not to disprove, just to listen. And I can hear that from you, right? I mean, to me, sometimes that's, you know, an opening for a conversation that could be more powerful than something we learn from a research study.

Eugene 42:15 I've often found that whenever we have, uh, we've had actually that conversation, what I found is it made her open up more to me, and she is now aware that not all her friends see their fathers the same way. Their fathers are the enforcers.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 42:31 Right.

Eugene 42:31 They're the ones who get things done.

Trevor Noah 42:33 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eugene 42:33 They're the ones-

Trevor Noah 42:33 Yeah

Eugene 42:33 ... that, you know, if, if, "Hey, if that guy comes back and this is not done, ugh, ugh."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 42:38 Mm-hmm.

Eugene 42:39 And then-

Trevor Noah 42:39 You know what? It's funny, it's funny you say that. Sorry to, to jump in.

Eugene 42:41 No, no, no. Go ahead, go ahead.

Trevor Noah 42:41 But it's funny you say that.

Eugene 42:42 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 42:43 Because I, I've actually come to realize, and we, we, we sort of had a conversation around this You know, in some of the other episodes

Dr. Becky Kennedy 42:49 Mm

Trevor Noah 42:49 ... is oftentimes it's easiest to spot the gaps in the situation that we live within

Dr. Becky Kennedy 42:55 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 42:56 And then it makes us feel like there are no gaps in other situations.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 42:58 Yes.

Trevor Noah 42:59 But to your point, I can relate to that as well, where I grew up in a world thinking like, "Ah, man, you know, I didn't live with my father, and so what did this mean?" And it would've been better until I met people who went, "My father terrified me, and, and you know, I, I don't even know what a hug feels like, and I didn't grow up in a soft household, and I don't know how to express my emotions-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 43:20 Mm

Trevor Noah 43:20 ... and I don't know..." And then I realized, oh, wow, you, you always, unless you like super kids, and even then, by the way, I met [laughs] I've met someone, I've met a few people, but there's one that really sticks out to me, someone who complained saying they resent the fact that their parents were so perfect because they feel like it didn't prepare them for an imperfect world.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 43:42 Hm.

Trevor Noah 43:42 Hm. And I remember going, "Wait, what did you just say?" And they're like, "Yeah, I, I'm not street wise. I don't know how to handle like chaos."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 43:49 Hm.

Trevor Noah 43:49 "I, because everything was just,

Trevor Noah 43:52 everyone in the world doesn't match up with, with what I grew up with." So it's, it's, it's interesting-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 43:56 Hm

Trevor Noah 43:56 ... that you say that as like a, as a realization.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 43:58 Well, I feel like I saw a lot of those kids-

Trevor Noah 44:01 Hm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 44:01 ... who were in their 20s in my practice, who I, to me, the word perfect for that is an interesting word choice anyway. But parents who swooped in at every second, always optimizing for happy and ease.

Trevor Noah 44:13 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 44:13 Um, and not surprisingly, those kids not only are not prepared for a difficult world, are remarkably fragile and anxious-

Trevor Noah 44:20 Hm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 44:20 ... because the range of experiences they learned to cope with was this.

Trevor Noah 44:23 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 44:24 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 44:24 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 44:24 Versus the range of experiences you need to learn to cope with in childhood to be resilient and functioning as an adult is this. Now, I'm not trying to say it's this, maybe wider is trauma and abuse, right?

Trevor Noah 44:36 Yeah. Right, right, right.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 44:36 But certainly there's a lot between that-

Trevor Noah 44:37 Mm-hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 44:37 ... and always happy, always perfect.

Trevor Noah 44:41 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 44:41 That, that's, that's really dangerous for kids in a different way.

Trevor Noah 44:44 So how do you, how do you find that balance? Like, let's, let's use the sandbox example.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 44:47 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 44:48 You know, 'cause I love that you brought that up. We, we had, um, we had Jonathan Haidt on the podcast.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 44:52 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 44:52 And you know, he was talking about his book, The Anxious Generation, and we, we were talking about the complexities of society overprotecting kids-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 45:00 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 45:00 ... and underprotecting kids.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 45:01 Yes.

Trevor Noah 45:01 You know? So now we live in a world where children are overprotected in real life-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 45:05 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 45:05 ... and underprotected on- online.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 45:08 Yes.

Trevor Noah 45:08 You know?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 45:08 Yes.

Trevor Noah 45:09 And-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 45:09 It's one of his best lines.

Trevor Noah 45:10 It really is.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 45:11 Just so good.

Trevor Noah 45:11 It's perfect.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 45:12 So good.

Trevor Noah 45:12 It nails it.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 45:14 Yeah. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 45:14 And in the conversation, even as we're having it now-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 45:16 Yeah

Trevor Noah 45:17 ... you go, there are so many complexities. Like, I, I, for instance, will walk past playgrounds in New York or wherever, and I'll see how the parents are looming over their kids.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 45:27 Yes.

Trevor Noah 45:28 Every conflict is interrupted. Every, e- I mean, even the idea of a skirmish, before it even happens-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 45:34 Yep

Trevor Noah 45:34 ... is intercepted by the parent to go, "Hey, there's only one shovel. You, now you will each play with it like this." And I, and I always say for me, it, it, it always feels like a, like a prison yard more than a playground.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 45:44 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 45:45 Because it doesn't feel like the kids are solving their own issues. It doesn't feel like they're developing their own traits. It doesn't feel like... So I'd love to know how you-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 45:51 Yeah

Trevor Noah 45:51 ... how you think of that balance, because you're, you're a parent, you're seeing your kids punch someone, or your kid is being punched. How many punches before you step in?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 45:59 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 45:59 Like, do you go like, "My kid takes four shots, and then I'm in"?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 46:02 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 46:02 Or is it one? Or is it like... No, I'm serious. Like, how do you know how many shots your kid gets to take before?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 46:08 Like four shots before I come in. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 46:09 Yeah. Like how do you figure that out?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 46:11 Well, first of all, all of this starts so far before the sandbox. That just is the public representation of so much that is or isn't happening in a kid's home.

Trevor Noah 46:21 Oh.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 46:21 Right? I mean, how a kid acts on a playground, but by the way, I'm not saying it's representative of everything a kid is, but in general, the themes are much bigger than a playground. What is a kid expected to do for themselves, right? How m- how much in the home, if there's, let's say two siblings, is it, "Well, we have two of every item, so kids are never arguing about things." That would be a horrible policy, right? I mean, you want your kid's early life to prepare them for adulthood. Like, that's what-

Trevor Noah 46:49 Hm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 46:49 ... I always tell parents, like, to be very long-term greedy about parenting, right? We want-

Trevor Noah 46:53 Long-term greedy

Dr. Becky Kennedy 46:54 ... long-term greedy, right? And so there's a dance though, and to me, safety is usually the line. Physical, you know, kind of physicality.

Trevor Noah 47:03 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 47:03 Someone hitting another kid on the playground, I'm not gonna wait for that to happen four times. I just think I'm probably, again, if I have a kid who can get physical, I might even say, "We're gonna do certain things at home to get ready. Let's practice. Let's even..." I might be closer to my kid on the playground in that situation-

Trevor Noah 47:19 Oh

Dr. Becky Kennedy 47:19 ... just so they don't experience themselves as out of control.

Trevor Noah 47:22 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 47:22 But I actually don't think that's what's happening the majority of the time. The majority of the time, I think these days we're seeing parents just remove any friction-

Trevor Noah 47:30 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 47:31 ... or discomfort.

Trevor Noah 47:31 Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 47:32 That to me is really the problem. So let's say there's three kids. Again, there's always three red shovels because Bobby doesn't like blue anymore, and so everyone has to have red.

Trevor Noah 47:42 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 47:42 Again, if there's a parent listening who's like, "Should I not have three red shovels?"

Trevor Noah 47:45 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 47:45 That's one example. But that just shouldn't be like the representation of, you know, your whole parenting approach. We want kids, it sounds bad, you want kids to be frustrated. You want kids to be disappointed. You want kids to be jealous. Unless forever as a parent you're going to remove those feelings from their existence-

Trevor Noah 48:05 Oh, wow

Dr. Becky Kennedy 48:06 ... for the rest-

Trevor Noah 48:06 Mm-hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 48:06 ... of their life, again, you can't develop coping skills for feelings you've never experienced.

Trevor Noah 48:13 Experienced.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 48:14 Like, it doesn't happen.

Trevor Noah 48:15 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 48:15 Right? And so the playground might be a bad example because if that's the first place you're letting your kid develop coping skills, it, it, they're probably gonna get overactivated. But let's even say, you know, it's a smaller environment, not as overstimulating, let's say, as your house, right? Maybe your kid has a friend over for a play date, and they're hoarding every single item. Now it's not gonna be fun, okay? But let's say before this kid has a play date, might say, "Look, it's hard to share toys. It's true. And when we have friends over, we allow everyone to use toys. Let me tell you, no one will take a toy after. You'll get all the toys back, and part of my job is to help you figure this out."

Trevor Noah 48:55 Hm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 48:55 Maybe I'll say something like, "I know you have that really special Lego set. Let's put that away. I understand you're working on it."

Trevor Noah 49:01 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 49:01 "You don't want someone to touch it. After that..." Part of my job on this play date is going to be to help you share. Which means if you're playing with a firetruck and Bobby starts playing with the police car, that by the way you've never played with for four years and only care about when Bobby touches it-

Trevor Noah 49:18 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 49:18 ... I am actually gonna step in to help Bobby keep playing with that.

Trevor Noah 49:23 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 49:23 Now, a parent hears that. What that means, and this is gonna be awful if this is the first time, I'm gonna spend the play date with my kid in another room managing their tantrum while Bobby randomly is at my house playing with a police car with nobody-

Trevor Noah 49:33 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 49:33 ... because his friend is freaking out. Like, and, and to be clear, parents are like, "Do you enjoy that?" No, of course it's a completely unenjoyable situation for Bobby, my kid, and for me.

Trevor Noah 49:43 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 49:43 But if I'm not laying the groundwork for my kid, if I can't be less afraid of my kid's feelings than he is, then he is not gonna be able to learn how to manage his feelings.

Trevor Noah 49:57 Wow.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 49:57 'Cause again, if we think about feelings and skills-

Trevor Noah 49:59 Wow

Dr. Becky Kennedy 49:59 ... kids are born with all the feelings and none of the skills.

Trevor Noah 50:02 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 50:02 So if by the time they're five they've never had to, like, share or-

Trevor Noah 50:06 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 50:06 ... wait, waiting, that's the thing with my kids, I'm like, "Waiting is a thing. It's a thing. We're gonna learn it. We're gonna practice it." Even in 2025, he has to wait for the police car. Well, guess what happens when you wait? You're frustrated, you're maybe focused on the other thing, and if you have all those feelings without any of the experience or skills, the feelings are gonna come out as, "I need that truck," and I'm gonna whine. Well, if I can't tolerate my kid's frustration, how can they learn to tolerate it? 'Cause they'll wire their frustration next to my frustration, which it should be obvious to everyone, then the next time they're frustrated, they're gonna have double the frustration.

Trevor Noah 50:47 Right.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 50:47 So I have to, and this is called co-regulation, I have to be able to regulate my own feelings in the face of my kid's distress.

Trevor Noah 50:57 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 50:57 And they truly do take in kind of that calm, and over time they learn, "Oh, I can manage this situation, too." Right? And so I think when we're talking about the playground, if that's not happening in the home, you better bet my kid's not sharing a red shovel, right? And so yes, I think a lot of this really has to do with as parents not just over-protection, because I know John Haidt, like, it's all about also the way we don't let our kids be independent.

Trevor Noah 51:26 Yeah. Right.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 51:27 Right? That's, I agree with that. But I actually think it starts internally. We, we kind of are overprotective of their emotional life. We try to always optimize for comfort, for happy.

Trevor Noah 51:38 Right.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 51:38 When actually what's really, really helpful for them is to learn to manage the entire range of uncomfortable emotions.

Trevor Noah 51:46 Mm. You know, when you started the answer-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 51:48 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 51:49 ... I found myself, the, the first question I had was, what about parents who only have one child?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 51:54 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 51:54 Mm-hmm. Because you sort of have less exposure, less training, less- It's experience ... right? You, you know what I mean? I was thinking- Battlefield experience.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 51:59 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 51:59 Yeah, I was like, oh, no, at least, 'cause now you have, like, a little Petri dish that you can test all of this within- Well, uh- ... before you go outside. [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 52:06 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 52:06 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 52:06 But you can do it with one child, too.

Trevor Noah 52:08 No, no, no. No, and, and then, no. Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 52:09 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 52:09 By the end of your answer-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 52:10 Yeah

Trevor Noah 52:10 ... do you know what I found myself thinking? Yeah. I went, if I'm hearing you correctly, it's almost like you're saying we forget that the first child our child will meet is us. Mm-hmm. Do, do you know what I mean? 100%. Like, I, like, as you were saying it, I was going, parents take for granted, like, I- Themselves ... I know from my life- Absolutely ... like, I was the firstborn. I was a single- You still are. Yeah. I was. And then I was the only child until I was nine years old. But what I took for granted was-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 52:39 Two things are true. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 52:40 At the same time. But in Japan- [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 52:43 Only one thing is true. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 52:45 [laughs] The thing that I took for granted was the first time I learned play technically was from my mom. Oh. The way I learned play was with my mom.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 52:54 Mm.

Trevor Noah 52:54 The way she responded to me taking a toy or not taking a toy was developing how I saw the toys. You, you get what I'm saying?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 53:01 Mm.

Trevor Noah 53:02 And so, like, when you were saying that, I was going, oh, how much of that should parents be considerate of? Because oftentimes we o- we think of it in a, in a very linear and rigid structure.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 53:10 Mm.

Trevor Noah 53:11 Parent, child.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 53:12 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 53:13 Parent, child. But when Bobby's f- not there-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 53:17 Yeah

Trevor Noah 53:17 ... and you're there with your kid with the police toy that you bought them, you're the first kid that they meet.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 53:22 Yeah. I mean, you're, you're interacting with them. Sometimes when parents talk to me and they have an only child, I think one of the things you're also pointing out is sibling-hood is inherently full of frustration.

Trevor Noah 53:33 Yes. Right.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 53:33 And it, sometimes that feels like too much frustration-

Trevor Noah 53:36 Mm-hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 53:36 ... but sometimes that feels helpful in terms of mimicking-

Trevor Noah 53:39 Yes

Dr. Becky Kennedy 53:39 ... what someone will go through in the world.

Trevor Noah 53:40 Yes, yes.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 53:41 So when you have an only child, it's easy to say, "Okay, fine. You go first at Candy Land. You pick the game." You don't really care.

Trevor Noah 53:47 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 53:47 When you have siblings, they're always arguing. Who goes first?

Trevor Noah 53:50 Exactly.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 53:50 Who has that chair, right? So sometimes, and this could also just be when you're one-on-one with the child who's struggling with their behavior, I think it's important, and I've had these situations where I'm alone with the kid, and they, I say, "I wanna go first," like almost purposefully to mimic a situation.

Trevor Noah 54:04 Mm-hmm. Right. Right, right.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 54:05 Right? I mean, I'm not gonna do that all the time, but if you have an only child and you notice it only matters if in the outside world you're noticing they're having a hard time dealing with sharing, dealing, being in line, because they actually don't have as much experience.

Trevor Noah 54:19 Yes.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 54:19 You can have situations in your own home that a little bit mimic some of, you know, some of those real-life scenarios.

Trevor Noah 54:25 Yeah. I, I call it, in my life I call it artificial adversity. [laughs] That's how I think of it all the time. Yeah. Is I go, your goal as a person is to try and create as much artificial adversity-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 54:36 Mm

Trevor Noah 54:36 ... as you can in your life- Mm ... so that you are primed for the adversity that you may encounter. Like, going to the gym is artificial adversity. Yeah. The weight does not need to be lifted, nor does it need to be put down. Mm. You're just gonna do this repeatedly. The real reason you're doing this is so that your body is strong enough to handle the weights that life may throw your way.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 54:54 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 54:55 Do you know what I mean? It's like- Waiting is adversity. But you can-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 54:57 Yes

Trevor Noah 54:57 ... you can artificially wait for a thing yourself. You can go, "You know what? I'm not going to eat the ice cream now."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 55:03 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 55:03 "I'm going to wait three hours."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 55:05 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 55:05 No one's forcing you to do that. How many? Three.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 55:08 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 55:09 For what? To just, like, make it happen. Oh. What's the longest you've waited?

Eugene 55:14 Hey, I don't wait, eh? [laughs]

Trevor Noah 55:16 [laughs]

Eugene 55:18 Dr. Becky, I, sorry, I wa- I wanted to ask questions-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 55:21 Mm-hmm

Eugene 55:21 ... that I know that I've been struggling with, and I know some people have been struggling with.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 55:25 Yeah.

Eugene 55:25 When you're talking about introducing change-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 55:27 Mm-hmm

Eugene 55:28 ... um, in a child's life or in a family, or them learning to share, does not start at the playground or sandpit. It starts at home. I've often found that many people struggle to introduce a new family member-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 55:41 Mm

Eugene 55:42 ... in their lives, in their children's lives, or in their family. You have a two-year-old, and all of a sudden, Mommy's pregnant.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 55:47 Yeah.

Eugene 55:47 There's someone else who's coming. The dad feels abandoned. The new child can sort of anticipate abandonment by seeing the energy from the other parent. How do people deal with that scenario, and how do people make those kind of introductions so that we don't end up fighting for red and blue shovels at five years old?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 56:04 [laughs] So I actually think these things are connected because so often, without realizing, our unconscious assumption is that our job as parents is to make or keep our kid happy.

Eugene 56:15 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 56:15 And so I'm pregnant, I'm kind of worried, how's my kid gonna adjust? And so I just, like, don't talk to my kid, or I flat out lie about things, right? Kids notice everything. They notice everything. They are actually evolutionarily primed to notice more in their environment than we are because their survival depends on it.

Eugene 56:33 Phew.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 56:33 Right?

Eugene 56:34 Yes.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 56:34 And, and depends on noticing things, 'cause they're more helpless-

Eugene 56:37 Yes

Dr. Becky Kennedy 56:37 ... and it depends on us. And plus, I always think literally for a toddler, their eyesight is at a mom's belly. So they're like, "No, I know you're pregnant. Like, I look at your belly [laughs] every day." And I hear people say things like, "Oh, they're so young," or, "I don't wanna make them upset," or we just say things like, "You're gonna love every second." Nobody loves every second of having a baby.

Eugene 56:55 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 56:55 Not a mom, not a dad-

Eugene 56:56 Yes

Dr. Becky Kennedy 56:56 ... not a, definitely not a two-year-old.

Eugene 56:58 Yes.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 56:58 There's, like, nothing enjoyable for a two-year-old. And so I think there's... And this to me, a new baby or a new family member-

Eugene 57:05 Mm-hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 57:05 ... is very similar with the advice I give around, you know, Aunt Sally has cancer, and my kid hears me saying cancer all the time, or we're moving, right? Kids actually can handle the truth. They really can. What's more overwhelming them- what's more overwhelming to kids than change is noticing change and not having anyone talk to them honestly about it. That's really scary.

Eugene 57:31 Wow.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 57:31 Just like it is for adults.

Eugene 57:33 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 57:33 Like, if you're in an office and you hear, "Layoff, 20%," and then you go to all hands, and someone kind of asks about it, and they're like, "Everything's good."

Eugene 57:42 Like, boxes are being packed.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 57:43 You're freaking, you're freaking out.

Eugene 57:43 Computers are being, passwords are being changed.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 57:45 That's exactly, and you're gonna act out. And you're gonna act out. So kids act out when their parents are pregnant, all the time. And then going back to the other idea we were talking about, you can only learn to manage feelings you think you're allowed to have. Well, if you're always told, "You're gonna love every second. You're gonna love being a big brother," and you're jealous or angry, well-

Eugene 58:05 Oh

Dr. Becky Kennedy 58:05 ... no one told me I'm gonna feel jealous or angry, so what do I do with feelings I'm not supposed to have? I get them out of my body, and then one day I steal my baby brother's toy, and everyone's like, "Why did you do that?" [laughs] You know, and you're like, "Well, he kinda stole my whole life, you know?"

Eugene 58:20 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 58:20 So it's like a small-

Eugene 58:20 He stole you. [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 58:21 Literally. So talk to kids-

Eugene 58:24 Mm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 58:24 ... right? Tell them the truth. Doesn't mean you have to say everything, but start. Their questions will help you guide. So, "Hey, you might have noticed my belly's getting bigger. Let me tell you what's happening. There's gonna be a new baby in this family. When I make, when it starts to snow and it's cold," some sense of time. "The baby is growing in my belly, and then it's coming out, and it's going to stay." I learned from my kids you actually have to say that. They're not-

Eugene 58:52 Oh, yeah, that's a-

Trevor Noah 58:53 Wait, what?

Eugene 58:53 You forget that part.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 58:54 You have to say.

Trevor Noah 58:54 You have to tell them the fucking-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 58:55 We had a visitor for a while, okay, in our house. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 58:58 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 58:58 And, you know, I don't know if it was a question or a wish-

Trevor Noah 59:00 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 59:01 ... that one of my kids is like, "Is the baby going with her?"

Eugene 59:04 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 59:04 And I was like, "Oh, no, actually."

Trevor Noah 59:07 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 59:07 "But she has been here since the baby's been here."

Eugene 59:10 Oh, they're not going. [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 59:10 So, you know, um-

Trevor Noah 59:12 Oh, wow, they're gonna stay.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 59:13 Are they gonna stay?

Eugene 59:14 They-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 59:14 And you can say, "And look, we'll talk about a lot of different things. It's okay to have a lot of different feelings at the same time." And to make this concrete for a kid, you might say, "A part of you, like, almost this part of you might feel happy and excited. This part of you might feel, like, mad. This part of you might feel sad."

Eugene 59:34 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 59:34 And I remember saying to my kids, "Honestly, I have all those feelings, too, because me and Daddy love our family with just you, and we're sad that it's gonna change. And we're so excited that there's gonna be a new baby, and that our family's getting bigger." You know, along these lines-

Eugene 59:51 Mm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 59:51 ... it's so funny, one, my oldest kid-

Eugene 59:53 Mm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 59:53 ... when I had my third, was being really difficult when we wanted our first family picture.

Eugene 59:58 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 59:59 Right? Like, we tried to get a family picture, maybe my youngest at that point was, like, I don't know, eight days old. He refused to come.

Eugene 1:00:06 Hm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:00:06 And this is the kid who, sibling roles again, was, like, actually my easier kid, right? And I kind of again, curiosity, okay, I have a good kid. He's having a hard time. What's going on? And I said to him, he was probably almost six at the time, so it was helpful he could talk. I said, "What's going on? You know, something's upsetting." I didn't really know what it was. And he goes, "Can we first have a picture of the original three?"

Trevor Noah 1:00:26 Damn.

Eugene 1:00:28 Never lied.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:00:28 The original three.

Trevor Noah 1:00:29 The original three.

Eugene 1:00:31 The original three.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:00:31 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:00:32 Ha.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:00:32 [laughs]

Eugene 1:00:32 That's how he's always seen his family.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:00:34 But I, I-

Eugene 1:00:35 Hm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:00:35 ... absolutely.

Eugene 1:00:36 Ah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:00:36 And you know what? We did it. And this is where, like, it's so important to, you know, that we can be effective or, like, be right.

Eugene 1:00:43 Yes.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:00:44 Being right would have been like, "Well, you've been difficult, so we're not doing that," you know?

Eugene 1:00:47 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:00:47 I was like, okay, let me just, like, roll with this, and we did. Um, and then he suggested bringing in his sister for the-

Trevor Noah 1:00:53 Oh, wow

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:00:53 ... original four.

Eugene 1:00:54 Okay, okay.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:00:54 There was, like, a sequence. And then welcoming in, you know, the baby. He didn't care. He was, like, seven days old. It's not like he was protesting the order of the pictures.

Trevor Noah 1:01:03 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:01:03 But again, there was, it seems so simple, but-

Eugene 1:01:06 Mm-hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:01:06 ... there's a reason. There's always some reason. And it doesn't make the behavior okay, but when we understand the reason for behavior, we can intervene in a, in not only in a way that's more effective, but in a way that feels better for us. Like, it was, I was like, oh, I get it. This is a concrete representation of our family. Our family's changing.

Eugene 1:01:24 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:01:24 It was a second boy, which is a little bit more of an injury than a second kid who's a girl. It was like, okay, well, now there's two boys.

Eugene 1:01:30 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:01:31 And, and if that was the thing he was kind of looking for, and his protest was a way of saying that, well, it was being a little bit curious that allowed it to come out and not just-

Eugene 1:01:40 Hm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:01:40 ... continue in the form kind of a tantrum.

Trevor Noah 1:01:43 It's so fascinating hearing you say this at such a, at such a small level.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:01:49 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:01:49 Because when you expand it, you see this happening-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:01:51 Oh

Trevor Noah 1:01:51 ... in societies, in relationships-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:01:54 Yes

Trevor Noah 1:01:54 ... in, in, in workplaces and everything. You know, when, when you said that, it, it reminded me of something I think I read in one of Esther Perel's books. She was talking about how infidelity is dealt with in a relationship, and she said one of the common misconceptions that people have in, in, in and around infidelity is forget it and move on.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:02:11 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:02:11 And they found, like oftentimes in studies they found that you acknowledging and apologizing for a thing that you've done, even though you do it repeatedly, makes the other person feel like they no longer have to bring it up because you acknowledged that you've done it. And in that moment, I'm hearing an acknowledgement. You- he's going, "Can you acknowledge-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:02:31 Yes

Trevor Noah 1:02:32 ... that we used to be three?"

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:02:33 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:02:33 And you're going, "Yes, I can acknowledge that."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:02:36 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:02:36 And then he's like, "Okay, then I'm willing to accept, can we acknowledge there were four?" "Yes." "Okay, now we acknowledge that there are five." And just that-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:02:43 Mm. Mm

Trevor Noah 1:02:43 ... allows him-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:02:44 Yes

Trevor Noah 1:02:45 ... to sort of create a concrete reality. And you see this even in countries in the world. There are some countries who've acknowledged their pasts, right?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:02:53 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:02:53 Just acknowledged. And there's some countries that have gone, "No, what are you talking about?" It's, it's like, no, no, no. You'll be shocked to find that most people in most nations are just saying, "Can we just acknowledge that this is how it used to be and now it isn't-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:03:08 Yes

Trevor Noah 1:03:08 ... and it's changed?" And if you can do that, you find a lot of people will go, "All right, I'm not saying it will go back, but at least you've acknowledged it."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:03:15 I, I mean, I think you're getting to something, like at the core I think as humans, whether you're talking about a toddler or someone running a country or a group of people, like we're just looking to be believed.

Trevor Noah 1:03:25 Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:03:26 That's all. Having something that feels true to you and not having someone believe you-

Trevor Noah 1:03:32 Mm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:03:33 ... is a horrible human experience, and you will fight to the death to be believed. And if you're not believed, you will escalate your expression and get more and more intense in your behavior in an attempt to be believed, which usually makes the other party more pissed off and more defensive.

Trevor Noah 1:03:52 Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:03:52 And so then of course you have to escalate it further.

Trevor Noah 1:03:55 Escalate.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:03:55 You see this, right, that the picture's a good example. "Oh, I don't wanna go to school today." "Oh, you're going to school." "Oh, I can't. Oh, my knee hurts. Oh, my stomach hurts." Well, it, it just, right?

Trevor Noah 1:04:04 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:04:04 And then on the other side is, you know, "You're making a big deal out of nothing. You're so dramatic."

Trevor Noah 1:04:09 Right.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:04:09 Right? And so, and this is also true on, on a politics level.

Trevor Noah 1:04:14 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:04:14 Right? I mean, you have to do something in such a s- extreme way because you're actually just looking for the other side to believe you, which a- actually it's funny, we talked about boundaries, but validation people totally misunderstand. Validation of someone else's experience is just saying, "I believe that's true for you." It's not saying it's true for me. It's not saying I believe what you're gonna do next as a result.

Trevor Noah 1:04:35 Right.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:04:36 It's just saying how you're feeling is true for you, and given the feelings in your body, you're the only one-

Trevor Noah 1:04:42 Hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:04:42 ... who could know, right? I actually th- that's what confidence is.

Trevor Noah 1:04:46 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:04:46 That's what self-confidence is, and that's, you know, what the confidence we wanna give kids is just self-trust. I am the owner of my feelings. I'm the only one who knows how I feel, right? And so many times, starting when kids are young, kids kind of tell us how they feel, and we say, "No, you don't."

Trevor Noah 1:05:02 Oh, wow.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:05:03 "No, you don't. I know how you should feel. You shouldn't be that upset. You shouldn't be that mad. You should feel happy. It's not such a big situation," which means more behavioral ex- escalation and lower and lower self-confidence.

Trevor Noah 1:05:15 Yeah, that's, that's the opposite of curiosity.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:05:18 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:05:18 "I'm scared there's something under the bed." "You're not scared. You're a big boy."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:05:21 Exactly.

Trevor Noah 1:05:21 And the kid's like, "Okay, I see what you've just said to me-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:05:25 But-

Trevor Noah 1:05:25 ... but that hasn't changed"

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:05:26 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:05:26 ... as opposed to, so how, how do we deal with the inconsistencies then? You know-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:05:31 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:05:31 ... as I was, as I was reading through your work, I was thinking to myself about any challenge I experienced as a child, and then I tried to think of it empathetically through my, through my mom's lens. And the, the fights I'll always have with my mom, now we laugh about them, but it's fun to go, I'll say to her, "Do you ever acknowledge how inconsistent you were?"

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:05:47 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:05:47 You know? And she'll be like, "What do you mean?" I'm like, "One day this would be the rule."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:05:50 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:05:51 "Then you would change the rule." And now as an adult I understand that rules are malleable. As an adult, I understand that an ice cream rule on this day after the day we've had is different to an ice cream rule on another day when the day was different.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:06:05 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:06:06 But how do you, how do you solve for those inconsistencies-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:06:09 Well-

Trevor Noah 1:06:09 ... as a parent? Because I, I'm, I'm assuming, I could be wrong, I'm assuming that it's not militaristic. I'm assuming that not everything is everything all the time, all the time. Sometimes you might buy them a second toy-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:06:18 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:06:19 ... and sometimes you won't.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:06:20 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:06:20 Sometimes you won't buy them a toy at all. How do you-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:06:22 But I-

Trevor Noah 1:06:22 How do you create consistency in an inconsistent world as a parent?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:06:26 First of all, dealing with the inconsistencies I think almost you just shift the focus. It's not the inconsistencies from our childhood-

Trevor Noah 1:06:33 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:06:33 ... that usually bother us.

Trevor Noah 1:06:33 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:06:33 It's actually not having our reality recognized-

Trevor Noah 1:06:37 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:06:37 ... when there was an inconsistency.

Trevor Noah 1:06:39 Oh, I like that.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:06:40 Like you're right, we usually go for ice cream on Fridays, and today I'm in a rush, and that stinks for you. You're probably at school thinking about ice cream. "Does that mean we can go for ice cream?" "No, sweetie." Like, and this is, I kinda said this to you, like two things are true. We can't go to ice cream today, and I get that that's really disappointing for you. So I think sometimes we encode from our past, like, oh, yeah, I was so inconsistent. I have to be consistent. No one's perfectly consistent. Real life happens. But when something's different from what we planned or expected, what actually feels bad to us is that nobody believed us and acknowledged that.

Trevor Noah 1:07:11 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:07:12 So I think, and encourage parents, yeah, we can't do anything all the time, but when something is different or kind of inconsistent and your kid probably will have a feeling about that, just acknow- acknow- acknowledge that reality.

Trevor Noah 1:07:25 Yeah. And sometimes I think some of those parenting inconsistencies are caused by situations.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:07:30 Of course.

Trevor Noah 1:07:30 Uh, my mom said to us when we were older that all the time that she had said no to us at the store was because she didn't have the money for it. There was no better reason. There was no, "This thing is not good for you."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:07:42 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:07:43 "This is not what people..."

Speaker 1:07:43 Yeah, yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:07:43 She was like, "I just didn't want to say to you-" There's no money for it.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:07:47 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:07:47 But as we got older, she was able to say, "There's no money for it."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:07:49 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:07:50 And then we understood better. And when I was older, I was like, "That was very inconsistent of you. One minute it's fine to have Ninja Turtles, the next minute we can't."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:07:57 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:07:57 And she goes, "At the time, I didn't have."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:07:59 I think kids right know, I don't picture a six-year-old saying, "It's not the inconsistency, it's that you're not-"

Trevor Noah 1:08:04 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:08:04 ... validating my feelings. Like, that's a very sophisticated understanding. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:08:08 You've never met kids in Japan. [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:08:10 Right. I've really-

Trevor Noah 1:08:11 Those kids are, actually. I remember watching them go to school by themselves, on the train by themselves, and I was like, "Wow, this is a whole different level."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:08:18 I'm operating in the wrong country.

Trevor Noah 1:08:19 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:08:19 That is the only thing, the only thing I'm taking from this podcast is I have got to go to Japan.

Trevor Noah 1:08:24 And that's the only true fact about Japan-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:08:26 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:08:26 ... throughout the whole entire podcast.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:08:28 Seriously. Um, but that usually is the core, because then we focus on the inconsistency.

Trevor Noah 1:08:34 Right.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:08:34 But actually it's the same thing in a, you know, a partnership. You always alternate whose family you're going to for the holidays.

Trevor Noah 1:08:40 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:08:41 And second year in a row, actually, for some reason you've got to still go to your partner's, and all you want to hear from them is not just-

Trevor Noah 1:08:48 Oh

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:08:48 ... it's not just about the inconsistency, it's, "Yeah, this, this is the year we were supposed to go to your family and it didn't work out, and I hear you. That stinks, and it makes sense you're disappointed."

Trevor Noah 1:08:58 Mm-hmm. Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:08:58 And, right? And I think a phrase I love is just, "You're right to notice that." I try to say that to my kids as much as possible, you know?

Trevor Noah 1:09:05 "Yeah, you're right. I don't text you as much as I did when we first met. You are right. But that's because I know you now, and I live with you. Eugene."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:09:15 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:09:15 Did that heal you?

Speaker 1:09:16 Apology accepted.

Trevor Noah 1:09:17 Thank you.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:09:17 I can just, I can just walk away.

Trevor Noah 1:09:20 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:09:20 You guys have some things to figure out. [laughs]

Speaker 1:09:22 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:09:23 That's, that's, that's a perfect moment to talk about, like, re- repair.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:09:26 Uh-huh. Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:09:27 You know, one, one of the things you really, really, uh, talk about in, in your work-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:09:31 Yes

Trevor Noah 1:09:32 ... is repair, and I, I can't tell you how much I felt healed and seen by your work. Because I think parents take this, I think people take this for granted, is the wound being less important-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:09:47 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:09:47 ... than the way we heal the wound.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:09:48 Yes.

Speaker 1:09:49 Oh.

Trevor Noah 1:09:49 You know? Let, let's talk a little bit about, about, uh, repair. Like, you, you know, the anecdote you share i- is, um, one way, you were screaming at your child. You had lost it.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:09:57 Yep.

Trevor Noah 1:09:57 You know, it's like, ah, you know, and, and you, you'd gone and you'd, you'd said these things and, and then afterwards you realized you had made a mistake, you'd done something wrong. You then went and you returned and you said, "That wasn't fair. I shouldn't have yelled. You're

Trevor Noah 1:10:11 good. I love you." And you ex- you, you literally talk about seeing your child's shoulders drop-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:10:17 Yes

Trevor Noah 1:10:18 ... and their body language change. And I, I'd, I'd love to know why repair's important, and how you would encourage parents to seek some sort of repair with their child.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:10:30 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:10:30 And what the ramifications of not doing that would be.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:10:33 Yeah, I mean, I, I do think this is my favorite topic, and I think it's the ultimate relationship strategy, not just parenting strategy. I think you want to get close to anyone closer than you are. I- it's something paradoxical, but repair with them.

Trevor Noah 1:10:46 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:10:46 And it's true adult to adult too. Call up a friend today, "Hey, you know, I'm thinking, I haven't texted you as much recently, and I'm sure that felt bad. And I've been busy, and still, I just want to let you know I see that, too. I love you. I'll try to be more in touch, you know, over the next month." So every, every single human, definitely parent, does things they're not proud of. It goes back to-

Trevor Noah 1:11:07 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:11:07 ... like everyone is a good person who's having a hard time. We all have behavior that doesn't represent our values, that's not in line with how we wish we would've behaved. And I think going back to our childhoods, so many of us encoded struggle and mistake next to shame, blame, and fear-

Trevor Noah 1:11:26 Yeah. Hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:11:26 ... that even now with our own kids, we yell and, and we freeze, and we spiral, and we tell ourselves the story that comes from the collapse of behavior and identity.

Trevor Noah 1:11:36 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:11:36 "I'm a monster. I messed up my kid forever. It's too late. If anyone else saw me, they wouldn't even believe that I have a kid or I'm a parent," right? These awful stories. And so one of the things I remember learning in grad school, and I remember hearing this and I, it just stopped me in my tracks, was that one of the markers of a secure attachment, which is basically the, the attachment we all want to have with our kids-

Trevor Noah 1:12:00 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:12:00 ... the kind that brings confidence and lower rates of mental health struggles, all the things. But one of the things that differentiated a secure attachment from insecure or disorganized attachment was repair.

Trevor Noah 1:12:12 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:12:12 And I remember the professor talking, and I remember being like, "What?" Because it wasn't being perfect. It wasn't getting it right all the time. It's just the fact that after you basically yell at your kid or make a mistake, you went back to your kid and you took ownership of your behavior-

Trevor Noah 1:12:28 Hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:12:29 ... and you offered reconnection.

Trevor Noah 1:12:31 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:12:32 And so if we think about this in a scenario, which I always like to do, because it just makes it more real. So I think what I said in my TED Talk, right, even though it's one of many examples, is it's one of those days, I was at the end of my rope for a million different reasons. My kid whines about dinner, so classic. Like, "Oh, chicken again." And like, I had made dinner, and like how lucky my kid is in this whole story to have homemade dinner. And I yell, right, "You're spoiled, you're this," and raise my voice. And it wasn't even a decision I made. It just happened, right? Classic situation. Then my son went into his room. I'm alone in the kitchen. And now that's already happened. So first, every parent does that. There's not one parent-

Trevor Noah 1:13:09 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:13:09 ... who has not been in that situation.

Trevor Noah 1:13:11 Yep.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:13:11 If they say they haven't, they're a liar.

Trevor Noah 1:13:12 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:13:12 We don't have to be friends with them. So there's that. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:13:16 [laughs]

Speaker 1:13:16 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:13:16 Let's put that over here. Um-

Trevor Noah 1:13:19 Oh, that's great.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:13:19 Okay. So, yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:13:20 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:13:22 There's that. Okay, so number two, what happens for a kid after a moment like this?

Trevor Noah 1:13:28 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:13:28 Well, our relationship with our kid is very complicated, because our kid needs us to survive.

Trevor Noah 1:13:33 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:13:33 Like, I have a very good relationship with my husband, but as an adult, I, I actually don't need another adult the way a kid needs us, right?

Trevor Noah 1:13:40 Right.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:13:40 So it's a very different relationship of total dependency.

Trevor Noah 1:13:44 Oh, dynamic.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:13:44 Right?

Trevor Noah 1:13:45 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:13:45 And so what happens for a kid when the person they dep- ... depend on for safety becomes the person who scares them.

Trevor Noah 1:13:54 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:13:54 That's a very frenetic experience for a kid.

Trevor Noah 1:13:57 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:13:57 And they get very overwhelmed in their body. Again, happens to every kid. There's no guilt here. It's just something to understand. And then my son, essentially, in his room, has to figure out, "How do I get back to feeling safe?"

Trevor Noah 1:14:08 Oh.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:14:08 "I have to. I have to go on with my life."

Trevor Noah 1:14:10 Yes.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:14:10 "I have to keep going. How do I get back to feeling safe?" The best way that that happens is through repair, which I'll get to.

Trevor Noah 1:14:17 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:14:17 But to me, one of the motivators of repair is understanding what a kid does to cope if they don't have repair in that situation.

Trevor Noah 1:14:24 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:14:25 'Cause we so often think it's yelling at our kid that messes them up. I don't like the term messes them up, because it just feels so final, but just for colloquial terms, what messes up a kid isn't being yelled at, it's being yelled at and then having a parent not repair. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:14:39 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:14:39 It's not the being yelled at. 'Cause when they don't repair, you can picture my son. He's like, "Okay, like, my mom basically just became scary mom, and I'm overwhelmed, but I need my mom. She's my leader. She's my pilot of my plane [laughs] essentially."

Trevor Noah 1:14:51 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:14:51 "Where'd she go?" And so kids-

Trevor Noah 1:14:52 Hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:14:52 ... basically have two coping mechanisms on their own: self-doubt and self-blame. And these will sound familiar as I talk about them [laughs] because they're the same coping mechanisms we practice so much as child- ch- in our childhood to feel safe, and still activate for us in a very unhelpful way in adulthood. So self-doubt sounds like, "That probably didn't happen."

Trevor Noah 1:15:13 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:15:13 "No, I, I don't think I can trust myself. That must not have happened. Yep, nope, my mom definitely didn't yell at me. All good. Put on a smile-"

Trevor Noah 1:15:22 Wow

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:15:22 ... go out, and continue." So where does this have a legacy in adulthood? I think about so many people who say, "Hey, well, I'm just someone I, who makes a big deal out of something. Let me call five of my friends. Would-- Do you think this is a big deal that this guy didn't text me back?"

Trevor Noah 1:15:36 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:15:36 "Would you go out with him again?" Like, you can't trust your own data-

Trevor Noah 1:15:40 Hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:15:40 ... in your body, and so you have to essentially rely on lots of external sources because

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:15:48 you've engaged in so much self-doubt. That was actually a very adaptive coping mechanism early on.

Trevor Noah 1:15:54 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:15:54 Because if your internal scary experiences and overwhelming experiences weren't spoken to as real, then self-doubt at least helped you get back to zero and move on. The other is self-blame. "I did this. If I was only a better kid, if I was only more on top of my game, I wouldn't have gotten yelled at." And there's a Fairburn quote that I always love, and you know, it, to me, is very poignant. It says, "For a kid, it's better to be a sinner in a world ruled by God than to live in a world ruled by the Devil."

Trevor Noah 1:16:24 Damn.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:16:25 Right? So in the binary of good and bad, you'd rather, as a kid, have the bad inside and the good as your parents than to-

Trevor Noah 1:16:34 In the bad

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:16:34 ... feel like a good kid who has this-

Trevor Noah 1:16:37 In a bad world

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:16:37 ... scary parent who could just-

Trevor Noah 1:16:39 Wow

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:16:39 ... scare you at any time, so you take on the bad. Right? Again, works against you in adulthood, which we see in a lot of adults.

Trevor Noah 1:16:46 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:16:47 Anything that happens around them, even in, you think about really unhealthy, toxic partnerships-

Trevor Noah 1:16:53 Hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:16:53 ... where sometimes the abused partner, so much self-blame.

Trevor Noah 1:16:57 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:16:57 "I did this. I set my partner off."

Trevor Noah 1:16:59 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:16:59 "If I had only remembered the toilet paper-

Trevor Noah 1:17:01 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:17:01 ... I wouldn't have gotten screamed at."

Trevor Noah 1:17:03 Couldn't be here.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:17:03 That's a legacy of self-blame from scary moments that went unrepaired over and over and over when you had to rely on the only coping mechanism you had. So what happens when we repair? When you repair with your kid, I always when I think about it, I'm a visual person, it, it's like you're a magician. Like, you get to go back to this moment that felt bad in your kid's body. You get to kind of snatch out any self-doubt [laughs] and self-blame.

Trevor Noah 1:17:32 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:17:33 And instead of that chapter of their life ending with, "And then nice mommy turned into scary mommy," period, you have a new ending. "Okay, sometimes moments happen with people I love that didn't feel good."

Trevor Noah 1:17:47 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:17:48 "And when those moments happen, I can expect that person to come back to me, to take responsibility for what they did-

Trevor Noah 1:17:56 Hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:17:58 ... and to reconnect together." So it usually sounds like, "Sorry I yelled," and this line really matters, I think [laughs] . "It's never your fault when I yell. I'm working on staying calmer, even when I'm frustrated. I love you." And just to get to the naysayers, right? "But isn't... Like, he did complain about dinner [laughs] like but, like, he didn't put on his shoes," right? That situation leads to my frustration.

Trevor Noah 1:18:27 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:18:28 But my ability to manage my frustration, that predated my child's existence.

Trevor Noah 1:18:34 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:18:34 [laughs] That's not something... We're, we're, we're actually talking about the difference between a feeling and how that feeling gets managed or is kind of as dysregulated as probably I still see in my young children.

Trevor Noah 1:18:48 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:18:48 Right? [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:18:49 Hmm. When, when you put it that way, I realize there's such a fine nuance, like most things in therapy or in the way we heal ourselves.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:18:58 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:18:58 There's such a fine nuance in real repair-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:19:02 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 1:19:03 ... versus the facade of repair.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:19:05 Ugh.

Trevor Noah 1:19:05 Because what you just said, I think of now as parents or even as partners-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:19:09 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:19:09 ... where some people, a parent might go to somebody, "I'm sorry I yelled, but whenever you do that, you make me so angry."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:19:18 Yep.

Trevor Noah 1:19:19 "And it means that Mommy can't c- and Daddy, you know, Daddy was really, he had a long day, and when you did that..." And then it, it, it seems like the repair is less them coming to repair the, what they've wronged you with.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:19:32 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:19:33 They're basically the cop that's going, "I'm sorry I slammed your head on the hood of the car, but you gotta understand, when you walk like that, and when you wear that hoodie-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:19:42 Hmm

Trevor Noah 1:19:42 ... it just makes me feel like you might have committed a cri-" And then it's like, oh, it, it's not a repair anymore. Now it's-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:19:48 No

Trevor Noah 1:19:48 ... it's just a calmer way of chastising the child.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:19:52 Uh, uh, you're, you're teeing me up, so thank you. Um, that's exactly right, and I think what you're actually talking about from the, let's start with the parent's perspective, is a misstep often ... is actually self-repair, okay?

Trevor Noah 1:20:05 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:20:05 Meaning if I don't repair with myself for yelling at my kid-

Trevor Noah 1:20:10 Mm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:20:11 ... I'm not gonna be able to repair with my kid because even if I go to them, I'm actually basically just asking them to take the blame or I'm asking them to take care of my guilty feelings, right? Because I think in that situation we either say, "I'm sorry I yelled. It's okay, right? You still love me, right?" And I picture a kid being like, "What in the heck just happened?"

Trevor Noah 1:20:32 Damn.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:20:32 "Now I was overwhelmed 'cause I'm a young kid who got yelled at, and now I have to take care of your-

Trevor Noah 1:20:36 Hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:20:36 ... adult feelings?" And all of that happened 'cause actually we haven't been taught to take a moment, and this would be something I would have to do before I go to my son's room, probably sit in my bathroom alone, take a deep breath, and kind of, again, separate for myself identity from behavior. I'm a good parent who yelled.

Trevor Noah 1:20:57 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:20:57 I'm a good parent who is having a hard time. That moment didn't define me. I am not my latest behavior.

Trevor Noah 1:21:04 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:21:05 I can move on. And if I can't do that for myself in a way, and I really do feel like when I do this for myself, I have to wait until I feel like something shift in my body. Something has to release a little bit because if not, when I go to my kid, I'm just asking them to forgive me.

Trevor Noah 1:21:22 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:21:22 Right?

Trevor Noah 1:21:23 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:21:23 Or I'm saying something like, "Look, I'm sorry I yelled, but if you whined, if, if you didn't whine about dinner, it would've never happened." And that is definitely not-

Trevor Noah 1:21:31 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:21:31 ... a repair.

Trevor Noah 1:21:31 Yeah.

Eugene 1:21:32 I think it's a difference-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:21:32 [laughs]

Eugene 1:21:32 ... between asking for forgiveness or taking forgiveness.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:21:36 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:21:36 Oh.

Eugene 1:21:37 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:21:37 Damn.

Eugene 1:21:37 Yeah. It's a, it's a... Hoo, I feel like I'm learning so much. I, I s- I put it like this, 'cause I know you're a visual person. From what I understand, correct me if I'm wrong, as a parent, you're almost like NATO. There's a few of you with a lot-

Trevor Noah 1:21:50 NATO like the, the treaty?

Eugene 1:21:51 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:21:52 Okay. Cool.

Eugene 1:21:52 There's a few NATO nations. There's a few of you with lots of power-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:21:56 Yeah

Eugene 1:21:56 ... managing states that don't have as much power. You get to decide. You can either be good to them or you can burn them down.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:22:04 [laughs]

Eugene 1:22:04 Sometimes as a parent you get to be like the UN. You say you stand for peace and understanding, but sometimes you step in when your nations have been pulverized and you give aid once in a while. So you say forgive or it will happen again, or if you don't forgive, well, we'll be here giving you more grain.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:22:21 Mm-hmm.

Eugene 1:22:22 Sometimes you find yourself in those tricky positions and you want to move on, but sometimes when you have, want to repair, this is how I see it in my mind-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:22:31 Yeah

Eugene 1:22:31 ... you're almost like you're the US and there's the Ukraine. Zelenskyy [laughs] is sitting at the White House, and you go, "Without me? Hmm? Hmm? Hmm?"

Trevor Noah 1:22:39 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eugene 1:22:40 Yes. And then he goes, "But, but, but..." And then you have a chance to repair by calling him back, and he reciprocates by wearing a suit.

Trevor Noah 1:22:47 [laughs]

Eugene 1:22:47 You guys shake hands and you make amends and things. You've asked, you've, you've made ame- you've made repair.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:22:53 Yeah.

Eugene 1:22:53 So that's how I look at all those dynamics.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:22:55 Yeah.

Eugene 1:22:55 I'm like, in the real world, that's how they apply to me. And when you say basically adults and world leaders and nation leaders are also just children who have learned tools or did not learn the tools to cope with-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:23:06 Or not. That's right. And look, I'm a pragmatist.

Eugene 1:23:08 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:23:08 So in the dinner situation or in the my kid isn't putting on shoes situation, I do think there are ways to tell your parent you don't like dinner without complaining the way my son did, and it is helpful to have a kid who puts on their shoes the first time and not the 22nd time.

Eugene 1:23:22 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:23:22 But okay, but I always tell parents, just 'cause I like a blanket rule-

Eugene 1:23:25 I like the 22nd time. [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:23:25 Right? It's true. Right?

Eugene 1:23:26 In your heart you're like-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:23:27 22nd.

Eugene 1:23:27 22nd. [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:23:28 I'm like, come on. Um, I say wait 24 hours.

Trevor Noah 1:23:31 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:23:31 I don't know why. Like a repair is an offering. An offering isn't an offering if you're asking-

Trevor Noah 1:23:35 Mm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:23:35 ... something from someone.

Trevor Noah 1:23:37 Oh.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:23:37 And it won't, and, and they won't feel it that way. So I'd say wait 24 hours after I say, "I'm sorry. I've been yelling a lot in the mornings. They've been really hectic."

Trevor Noah 1:23:44 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:23:45 "I know they haven't felt good. I'm really working on staying calmer." Now, for some parents, it's gonna take every ounce of them-

Trevor Noah 1:23:51 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:23:51 ... not to say, "But you have to put on your shoes." Wait 24 hours.

Trevor Noah 1:23:54 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:23:54 And then you could say to your kid, not as related to yelling, but just more as teammates, "Hey, mornings have been stressful. We have to get our shoes on at a certain time. Do you have any ideas for, you know, how to make that easier?" Or, "Hey, do you think if we had a chart, do you think if we played a song?"

Trevor Noah 1:24:11 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:24:11 I know for me, often it relates to this. I feel like I've been on my phone in the mornings even though I say it's gonna be in my-

Trevor Noah 1:24:16 Hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:24:16 ... bathroom. I'm gonna really try to keep it in the bathroom for the 20 minutes we have. I'm gonna be more present, and what I'd ask for you is that, you know, you put your shoes right by the door in the morning, and that will make it easier.

Trevor Noah 1:24:29 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:24:30 Usually when you approach kids in that way-

Trevor Noah 1:24:31 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:24:31 ... you know, versus, "If you don't put on your shoes," some random threat that I'm not keeping anyway, they're, they're more likely to cooperate.

Eugene 1:24:37 I've also noticed that as my child got older, I, it was good for me to ask her for help.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:24:44 Yes. Yes.

Eugene 1:24:46 Right?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:24:46 Yes.

Eugene 1:24:47 Yeah. So sometimes we confuse asking kids for help with responsibility, while you know your job is to wash the dishes and that and that and that. But for me, it was, "Do you know where my charger is? Can you just ... Car keys, do you know where I put them?"

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:24:59 Yeah.

Eugene 1:24:59 And they're like, "Wait, without me?" And then they get to do their responsibilities quicker because they know that at some point they're gonna have to perform a duty that only they can perform in my life, and it has nothing to do with them being a good kid or a bad kid.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:25:12 Yeah. Well, I think this even connects to overprotection and-

Eugene 1:25:14 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:25:15 ... kids like to feel capable.

Eugene 1:25:16 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:25:16 They, they do. We all like to feel capable.

Eugene 1:25:19 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:25:19 We all like to feel like we have impact in the world, right? And in this world of doing so much for our kids and making their lives so easy and kind of therefore making them more fragile, in the meantime, we also get in their way of feeling capable. So even, yeah, "Where's my charger?" Or, "Do you have any ideas for how we can make the morning smoother?" Kids like to share ideas. They don't like being dictated to-

Eugene 1:25:40 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:25:40 ... and bossed around, but they do like sharing ideas if we kind of tee them up for it. [upbeat music]

Trevor Noah 1:25:46 We'll be right back after this short break. [upbeat music] Let me ask you what you would say to parents who are very good at repairing but not replacing their behavior.

Eugene 1:26:01 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:26:02 'Cause I think a lot of people can relate to that. They've had parents where- The parent would be very good at repairing, "I'm sorry I yelled at you."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:26:09 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:26:09 "I'm, I'm working on it." And then they would yell again, and then they would, "I'm sorry I yelled at you."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:26:13 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:26:13 And then they would yell again. What would you say to those parents they're creating in their child that they may not realize?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:26:18 So I think there's probably just a couple missing ingredients. So I, I, I think repair is a really helpful first step. And again, [laughs] repairing is always

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:26:27 better than leaving the moment not talked about.

Trevor Noah 1:26:29 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:26:29 Just like it's, right, we, we don't wanna do that with being yelled at, we don't wanna do that with Aunt Sally who has cancer. It's better to talk about the things that are happening-

Trevor Noah 1:26:36 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:26:37 ... for kids. But I think the next ingredient is something that probably does require a little bit more time and reflection, and then resources. Okay, why am I yelling? I'm yelling most days at, I'm making this up, 6:00 PM. What's going on for me then?

Trevor Noah 1:26:51 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:26:51 Okay, I don't feel like I have support. I don't know, am I a single parent? Is my partner not home? Is my partner home and on the couch and I feel very resentful, but maybe I've never learned how to speak up for my needs, so I have this whole hint and hope dance that's like-

Trevor Noah 1:27:03 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:27:03 ... my favorite thing I notice, you know?

Trevor Noah 1:27:05 I like that. [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:27:05 It'll be, it'll be great if you were home for bath time, and-

Trevor Noah 1:27:08 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:27:08 ... you kind of hint and you hope, and then your partner doesn't even know when bath time is. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:27:12 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:27:12 And then they come home late, and then you yell at them, and then you end up apologizing, right? And so what is my pattern? Okay, it's generally at 6:00. I feel overwhelmed. I always think I ask my partner for help, but my partner never gives me the help.

Trevor Noah 1:27:24 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:27:24 Okay.

Trevor Noah 1:27:24 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:27:25 What's going on there, right? Or it's something totally different. I always yell when there's whining. Well-

Trevor Noah 1:27:30 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:27:31 ... why is that? Nobody likes whining, but I don't know, to me, as an example, whining often represents helplessness, so what's my relationship with helplessness? What did I learn as a child? And now we're talking about our triggers, and to me, this is my favorite part of Good Inside, is all the re-parenting stuff.

Trevor Noah 1:27:46 Yes.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:27:46 Right? All the ways our stuff gets acted out.

Trevor Noah 1:27:49 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:27:49 So repair is a starting point, but then I think when we say to our kid, "I'm working on staying calmer-

Trevor Noah 1:27:56 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:27:56 ... even when I'm frustrated."

Trevor Noah 1:27:57 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:27:58 Well, we do have to have a little bit of a mirror to ourselves and say, "Am I?" Like, is it just am I hin- am I hoping, or-

Trevor Noah 1:28:04 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:28:04 ... am I, yeah, am I learning something? And I think this is also, when you asked me at the beginning what Good Inside stands for, I mean, parenting is the hardest job in the world. It is the most important job in the world. It's the one that has the biggest impact on our life and the world.

Trevor Noah 1:28:18 Right.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:28:18 Mm-hmm. And nobody has given us education. I mean, you have a baby and you leave the hospital, I remember for me, and this is so much to the mission of Good Inside, I looked around. Like, like I thought someone was gonna stop me or, like, hand me something helpful, and I remember-

Trevor Noah 1:28:34 Come home with you.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:28:35 Something.

Trevor Noah 1:28:35 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:28:35 And I remember asking the nurse-

Trevor Noah 1:28:37 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:28:37 ... "Do I need anything?" [laughs] And she'd been so well-meaning. She goes, "A car seat." I was like, "Okay. Well, I have a car seat."

Trevor Noah 1:28:43 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:28:43 "Car seat's not raising my child, unless you have some new fancy AI car seat that always knows what to say," you know?

Trevor Noah 1:28:50 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:28:50 And so I think this whole idea, especially for women, of maternal instinct-

Trevor Noah 1:28:55 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:28:55 ... right, I mean, we don't do that to anyone else. We don't even, we don't do that to CEOs. We don't say there's a CEO instinct. We love, CEOs now have executive coaches, and athletes-

Trevor Noah 1:29:03 Yeah. Yeah, yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:29:04 ... have trainers, and they have sports psychologists, and we look at those people and think, "You're doing a great job-

Trevor Noah 1:29:10 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:29:10 ... because you've surrounded yourself by support." I don't know one investor who'd ever invest in a CEO who says, "I've just, I just do this naturally."

Trevor Noah 1:29:18 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:29:19 That'd be the quickest way to end a meeting. But if you think about parenting, well, the only thing that comes naturally in parenting is how you were parented. That's all instinct is. Instinct is what you've learned until that point. And so if we don't help parents see education and resources and ongoing support as a positive thing, just like we do in every other job, then i- it's a really hard thing for a parent to change cycles. What, what are they doing?

Trevor Noah 1:29:46 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:29:46 So I think at Good Inside, that's really what we stand for. There's moments that come naturally. There's a lot of moments that don't. And just like in other areas, when things don't come naturally, you learn and you practice and you get support and education. I, that's really what I think parents should have access to as well.

Trevor Noah 1:30:00 Yeah, I can't help thinking about how this ties into what we've spoken about so many times here is community, and how it affects-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:30:06 Yes

Trevor Noah 1:30:06 ... every single aspect of our lives. You know, you think about how finances are affected by your community. You think about how your lessons are. This is a perfect example-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:30:13 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:30:13 ... because as we've become more and more of the nuclear family, as people have become more and more isolated, they have fewer people to lean on. There's fewer, like, m- other mothers who are just hanging around you.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:30:25 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:30:25 Now it's just, like, a bunch of strangers, and you don't know how much you can reveal or not reveal. And it, it, funny enough, it ties into one of the elements that you, you really, really talk about i- in your work, and that is shame.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:30:37 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:30:38 Because what you just said, if I hear you correctly, sort of goes to the shame that many people will feel-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:30:43 [sighs]

Trevor Noah 1:30:43 ... in not feeling like they know how to parent.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:30:46 True.

Trevor Noah 1:30:46 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:30:46 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:30:46 They're ashamed of what they did. "I'm ashamed of how I acted towards my kid."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:30:50 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:30:50 "I'm ashamed of how they feel about me. I'm ashamed of how they turned out. They, they take drugs. I'm ashamed of this," you know?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:30:57 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:30:57 And that shame we can tie back to childhoods.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:31:00 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:31:01 You really, really, really hone in on shame and, and you try to illuminate the reader's mind-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:31:08 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:31:08 ... as to why that is one of the things we should fight the most against. Talk us through why. Like, what is shame doing in a child's mind that we, we definitely want to prevent from getting into a society?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:31:22 So

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:31:23 children are driven by attachment. That is the primary evolutionary impact on a child, meaning that, yes, we need food, shelter, water, but the only way kids get food, shelter, water is through attachment with parents, right?

Trevor Noah 1:31:38 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:31:38 They can't get it on their own.

Trevor Noah 1:31:39 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:31:39 They can't survive on their own, right? And so they have to figure out how to stay close to a parent. And so we think about attachment as a relationship, which is, it is, but attachment is actually, it's a system of proximity.

Trevor Noah 1:31:53 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:31:53 It's actually a system of proximity, 'cause if you think about attachment way, way, way, way back in the day, if you think about a lot of kids who are helpless, and there was some animal in the forest, okay, which kids were to survive? The ones that were closest-

Trevor Noah 1:32:07 Hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:32:07 ... to their parent.

Trevor Noah 1:32:08 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:32:08 Pick up my kid, right? And help them survive. And so kids are always paying attention to what keeps them close to a parent-

Eugene 1:32:17 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:32:17 ... and what kind of leads to distance. And the way we think about this now in 2025 certainly isn't just about an animal in the forest.

Eugene 1:32:25 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:32:26 But what feelings, what parts of me do I get the message, "This is allowed. I can stay with you. I still like you when you're feeling this way"?

Eugene 1:32:37 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:32:37 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:32:38 In what feelings and experiences do I get the message through being hit, through harsh punishment, through the silent treatment to just go to your room,

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:32:46 right? Um, and never talking about something again. Essentially, the survival related, the evolutionary related message to a kid's body is that feeling, that part of you is dangerous. It's actually dangerous. Okay? So how does this relate to shame? Shame is actually, it starts as a very protective feeling because shame is fear of disconnection. If somebody saw this part of me, I would be unknowable, unlovable, unattachable.

Trevor Noah 1:33:17 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:33:18 And so if you think about shame in a child, how adaptive. For a kid, let's say, who learns, you know, whenever I get really mad, now I get mad and I don't have skills, so it's unfortunately coming out as hit or I hate you.

Trevor Noah 1:33:32 Yeah.

Eugene 1:33:32 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:33:33 But that leads to bad things in my family. Okay? Like, I get punished or sent away or, you know, left on the street corner, whatever it is. My body will feel shame when I have anger in an attempt to not allow-

Trevor Noah 1:33:48 Disappear

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:33:48 ... yes, to not allow the feeling.

Trevor Noah 1:33:50 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:33:51 Now, fast-forward many years, shame ironically tends to then make a lot of those feelings more explosive, right? That's what shame really does. There's nothing in adulthood that makes you either as shut down or as triggered and explosive as shame because it's kind of your body's way of remembering this is danger. This is 10 out of 10 threat state. You go into fight or flight because you're no longer facing, you know, a bear in the woods that would endanger you.

Trevor Noah 1:34:20 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:34:20 You're facing an intense feeling in your body that you learned was kind of met with aloneness.

Trevor Noah 1:34:26 Yeah.

Eugene 1:34:26 Wow. Without an external visible threat to everybody.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:34:29 That's exact-

Eugene 1:34:30 Then people think you're overreacting, yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:34:32 That's exa-

Eugene 1:34:32 And you're like, "I, I, I feel it. It's..." Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:34:34 That's exactly right. The threat now is, it's, like, inside your own body, which, which is terrifying. You, you literally can't run away from something-

Trevor Noah 1:34:41 Yeah, you can't get away from it

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:34:42 ... inside your body, right? [laughs] And so shame, when you start to-

Trevor Noah 1:34:45 Hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:34:46 ... it's interesting. You can start to see it in kids, and some kids, I, I call them deeply feeling kids, I find to be especially shame prone.

Trevor Noah 1:34:53 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:34:53 Right? They really are. They have big feelings. They have such a fear that their big feelings will also overwhelm others.

Trevor Noah 1:35:03 Others, mm-hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:35:03 And so they are so, they're so desperately in need of a parent because of their big feelings-

Trevor Noah 1:35:09 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:35:09 ... but they're also so fearful that they're gonna overwhelm a parent, so that shame is so present.

Trevor Noah 1:35:15 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:35:15 Which is why you'll see these truly animalistic meltdowns. These kids will scratch, they will growl, they will hiss during meltdowns. So common. I know there are listeners-

Trevor Noah 1:35:25 Hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:35:25 ... thinking they're the only ones. They are not.

Trevor Noah 1:35:27 Wow.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:35:28 These are the kids who when they trip in front of their friends, they blame other people. They blame their parents. Any adult either. Also, who blames people-

Trevor Noah 1:35:39 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:35:40 ... for things that those people clearly didn't do, that's a sign of shame. They're kind of saying, "This feeling I'm feeling can't be mine."

Trevor Noah 1:35:47 Oof.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:35:47 "And so you had to have done it to me because it's so overwhelming and so scary in my own body that, like, I can't kind of accept its reality."

Trevor Noah 1:35:59 It almost sounds like a manifestation of isolation.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:36:02 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:36:02 You know? It's-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:36:03 That's what it is.

Trevor Noah 1:36:03 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:36:03 Aloneness is the enemy, right?

Trevor Noah 1:36:05 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:36:05 It's not so much a feeling, it's feeling plus aloneness that overwhelms us-

Trevor Noah 1:36:10 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:36:10 ... going back to childhood, because we couldn't survive alone.

Trevor Noah 1:36:14 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:36:14 And so aloneness, yes, or the fear of aloneness is what evokes shame.

Eugene 1:36:18 I find that what helped with me, uh, in the early stages of being alone with my daughter was reassurance. It was always important for me to tell her I'm not going anywhere.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:36:27 Ugh.

Eugene 1:36:28 And, and when she was young, I would tell her when I'm coming back if I'm going somewhere.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:36:32 Yes, yes.

Eugene 1:36:32 Then I'd find that she would be more relaxed and more independent.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:36:35 Yes.

Eugene 1:36:35 It, it helped so much. It, it opened-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:36:37 Yes

Eugene 1:36:37 ... her up. Yeah. And other people would be like, "But aren't you scared?" She'd be like, "No, he told me."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:36:41 That's right.

Eugene 1:36:41 "He is definitely coming back."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:36:43 Yes.

Eugene 1:36:43 'Cause that abandonment is a huge thing.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:36:44 Absolutely.

Eugene 1:36:44 And without it being acknowledged and the reassurance, and you must never get tired to reassure.

Trevor Noah 1:36:50 But then you had to come back.

Eugene 1:36:52 Yeah, yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:36:52 No, but that's what I mean is, like, I think-

Eugene 1:36:53 No, absolutely, yes

Trevor Noah 1:36:54 ... I think that's where some people-

Eugene 1:36:55 Yes

Trevor Noah 1:36:55 ... don't realize the only thing worse than not reassuring is false reassurance.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:37:01 Yes.

Eugene 1:37:01 Shoot.

Trevor Noah 1:37:01 "I'll be back," and then they don't come back. Then you're like, "Well, I guess I don't trust the world."

Eugene 1:37:07 Yes.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:37:07 That's right. I literally don't trust the world because you coming back is my world-

Trevor Noah 1:37:11 Right

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:37:11 ... as a kid. And, and it's why, like, kids have such visceral memories of being the last kid picked up-

Trevor Noah 1:37:17 At school

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:37:18 ... at school.

Trevor Noah 1:37:18 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:37:19 Because it's such a true existential threat. It, it really is, right?

Trevor Noah 1:37:23 You know what was funny for me was when I wasn't picked up from school, my shame wasn't that I wasn't picked up funny enough. I felt ashamed about how the people perceived my parents.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:37:35 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:37:35 But then I still carried that shame. It's amazing how shame-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:37:39 How old were you that you remember that?

Trevor Noah 1:37:40 No, this was when I was, I don't know, 10, 12, somewhere there.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:37:44 Mm. Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:37:44 But, but it's an interesting one where it's like, you know, that's how-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:37:46 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:37:46 ... powerful shame can be.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:37:47 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:37:47 'Cause sometimes shame isn't only about yourself directly. You can carry the shame on behalf of the parent that-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:37:54 Proxy

Trevor Noah 1:37:54 ... yeah, because I went, "Oh, I, I don't want, I don't want to them to think that my mom doesn't care about me," you know what I mean?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:38:02 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:38:02 Between me and my mom, it was just like, all right, my mom didn't come. Genuinely between me and my mom.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:38:07 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:38:08 But then the shame actually came from the other thing. It was them going Did your mom l- leave you? Did your mom forget you? And you're like, "No, no, no, no, no. No, that, that would nev- no, that..." You know what I mean? And it's interesting how kids-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:38:19 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:38:19 ... can even hold that level of shame-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:38:21 But that's a-

Trevor Noah 1:38:21 ... on your behalf

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:38:22 ... that's like a different level of aloneness, 'cause you're saying, "I don't wanna be seen as the only one-"

Trevor Noah 1:38:27 Only one. Exactly

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:38:27 ... who had a parent, when all these other," I don't know what it was, "hyper-present parents."

Trevor Noah 1:38:33 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:38:33 "Oh, is your mom not here?" And then again, it's a form of aloneness.

Trevor Noah 1:38:36 Yes.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:38:37 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:38:38 Just that community, just that it, it, it, it branches into, um, the world of lying that you were talking about.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:38:44 Mm.

Eugene 1:38:44 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:38:44 And that's, that's something I think-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:38:45 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:38:45 ... a lot of parents would, would love clarity on.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:38:48 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:38:48 How do you deal with lying? Because, you know, there's, there's like a wide gamut. There's, there's some parents who just go like, "You lied to me, and it is the end of our journey as parents and children."

Eugene 1:39:00 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:39:00 You know, there's like that element. I've seen some parents who are like-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:39:02 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:39:02 ... "Don't you ever lie to me. You lied to me, and now j-" And then I've seen some parents who go like, "Oh, you lied to me? Well, I, uh, good luck."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:39:11 Mm.

Eugene 1:39:11 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:39:12 Yeah. And they almost, they retreat in a different way.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:39:14 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:39:15 You know? And then there's, then there's parents who go like, "You are a liar."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:39:17 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:39:18 "You don't have a true bone in your body, you lying liar of liar-ness."

Eugene 1:39:22 As you can see, Trevor was raised by New York City detectives.

Trevor Noah 1:39:24 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:39:26 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:39:27 No, but I, I, you know why I love-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:39:29 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:39:29 ... I love, I love observing this, because I, I, I, I-

Eugene 1:39:33 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:39:33 ... I often observe how the child is responding to these things.

Eugene 1:39:37 To that.

Trevor Noah 1:39:37 You know? So one of, one of my best friends, I remember saying this to her, 'cause she was saying, like, her child never lied to her, then like one day did. And she was like, "I can't believe you lied to me." It

Trevor Noah 1:39:45 was this whole thing. And I, I said something to her based on my experience as a child.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:39:49 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:39:49 I said, "I'm, look, I'm not a therapist. I have no professional expertise."

Eugene 1:39:53 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:39:54 But I said, "As a, as a child-"

Eugene 1:39:55 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 1:39:56 ... as a professional child, I lived my whole young life-

Eugene 1:39:58 The former

Trevor Noah 1:39:58 ... as a child

Eugene 1:39:58 ... professional. [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:39:59 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:39:59 As a child. I have many years of being a child. I said, "Do yourself a favor. Next time you're gonna ask your kid something that they're gonna get into trouble for-"

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:40:09 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:40:09 I said, "Give them time to answer you." So I said-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:40:11 Yes

Trevor Noah 1:40:12 ... "Ask her, go like, 'Hey, did you eat the thing that I said you weren't supposed to eat? Don't answer me now. Go away-"

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:40:19 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:40:20 ... "and think about your answer, but come back when you're ready to answer me." And she was like, "Why?" And I said to her, "Because I know for me as Trevor, sometimes-

Eugene 1:40:28 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:40:28 ... the answer I was giving was just the answer in the moment because I was just like-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:40:30 Of course

Trevor Noah 1:40:31 ... "There's the right answer."

Eugene 1:40:31 It's the vibe.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:40:32 You're scared.

Trevor Noah 1:40:32 "Do you eat the thing?" "No."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:40:33 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:40:33 And it's like, "No?" And I'm like, "Oh, geez. Well, now I can't, I don't wanna be a liar, so I can't go back.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:40:37 Yep.

Trevor Noah 1:40:37 Now I've gotta lie more to get out of the lie."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:40:39 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:40:39 So let, let's talk a little bit about lying.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:40:41 Oh.

Trevor Noah 1:40:41 Right?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:40:41 I love this topic, and I actually just put up something on Instagram, which, which I mean, like why I want my kid to lie to me when they're young, right? I think so many-

Trevor Noah 1:40:48 You want your kid to lie to you?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:40:49 Yes, definitely, when they're young. I, I wanna figure this out with them when they're seven and eight, not when they're-

Trevor Noah 1:40:56 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:40:56 ... I don't know, 16, 17, and 18-

Eugene 1:40:57 Makes so much sense

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:40:58 ... when the stakes are a lot higher.

Eugene 1:40:59 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:40:59 Right? And so a couple things. All the examples of the responses, all of them were different versions of collapse of curiosity, right? It's just really interesting that what the hardest thing to do is, is to say why. Sometimes we say why as an accusation. "Why would you lie to me?" That's not a question. It's just an accusation with a question mark. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:41:18 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:41:18 But why, truly?

Eugene 1:41:19 Inquisitive-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:41:20 Why-

Eugene 1:41:21 ... versus accusatory.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:41:22 Yeah. Why would a kid lie?

Trevor Noah 1:41:23 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:41:24 And, and I actually find-

Trevor Noah 1:41:25 Mm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:41:25 ... for parenting, some of my best ways of understanding my kid before talking to them-

Trevor Noah 1:41:30 Mm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:41:30 ... is just to ask myself that question. Well, why would I lie to someone I love and respect?

Trevor Noah 1:41:35 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:41:35 'Cause parents often think it's because they don't respect me. It's like the most selfish interpretation. Like the, I don't know, if my husband said, "Did you pick up my prescription for me?" And, and I forgot, the idea that I would lie because I don't respect my husband is, like, so absurd.

Eugene 1:41:49 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:41:49 Like, look at this loser.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:41:50 Like, dude, this is-

Trevor Noah 1:41:51 Look at this easy, what a dumbass.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:41:53 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:41:53 What a dumbass.

Eugene 1:41:54 I love-

Trevor Noah 1:41:54 I'ma lie to him, this dumbass.

Eugene 1:41:57 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:41:58 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:41:58 I-

Eugene 1:41:58 I love your plausible deniability character that you put on.

Trevor Noah 1:42:00 I wouldn't, brr.

Eugene 1:42:01 Then you come back.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:42:02 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:42:02 You know what I was saying, dude?

Eugene 1:42:03 Oh, man.

Trevor Noah 1:42:04 I wouldn't... Did you get my prescription? Man, watch what I'm gonna do to this dumbass.

Eugene 1:42:09 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:42:09 Ah, the pharmacy was closed, you stupid ass.

Eugene 1:42:12 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:42:12 Dookie dumbass.

Eugene 1:42:15 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:42:17 [laughs] I'm dying.

Eugene 1:42:19 I love your alter ego. It's so cool.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:42:21 It's really a good one.

Eugene 1:42:22 I could play that out with her for an hour.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:42:24 [laughs]

Eugene 1:42:24 You think I want you dead for not picking up your prescription?

Trevor Noah 1:42:27 [laughs] Oh, man.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:42:29 But, but how many times do you hear parents interpret their kid's bad behavior through the lens of disrespect?

Trevor Noah 1:42:34 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:42:34 It's actually-

Eugene 1:42:35 Oh, 100%.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:42:35 It's absurd.

Eugene 1:42:35 Contempt.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:42:36 It's never true.

Trevor Noah 1:42:37 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:42:37 Right?

Trevor Noah 1:42:38 I wonder how much of that comes from, like, colonialism and empirical struct-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:42:41 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:42:41 Like, not like-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:42:42 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:42:42 ... not like Black, white, anything. I'm just saying structures where they were told-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:42:45 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 1:42:45 ... like the king wanted respect.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:42:47 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:42:47 And then we all as the people and the peasants throughout time have gone, "The respect is the thing that we all want."

Eugene 1:42:53 Yeah, but I think it's, it's contempt, right? It's people going, "Who do you think I am-

Trevor Noah 1:42:57 Yeah

Eugene 1:42:57 ... to, to do that to me?" Or, yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:42:58 Well, I, I, yeah, I think it is just passed on. That's what we were told.

Eugene 1:43:01 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:43:01 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:43:01 We acted out.

Eugene 1:43:02 Right.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:43:02 You know, these are not our words originally.

Trevor Noah 1:43:03 100%.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:43:03 No baby's like, "I think I'm lied to because look at this."

Trevor Noah 1:43:06 There, there she is. There she is.

Eugene 1:43:08 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:43:08 There she is. I found her again. [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:43:10 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:43:10 My alter ego. Okay, so why do kids lie? Why would I lie to my husband in that situation?

Trevor Noah 1:43:15 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:43:15 Well, most of all I would lie ironically because I felt bad-

Trevor Noah 1:43:18 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:43:18 ... and I don't even wanna face the reality myself.

Eugene 1:43:22 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:43:22 That's why most of us lie.

Eugene 1:43:23 Yourself.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:43:24 We don't want to see the truth of the thing we did-

Eugene 1:43:28 Mm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:43:28 ... because then we'd have to feel all the feelings again, and we don't really wanna do that.

Trevor Noah 1:43:32 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:43:32 Right? So number one, kids lie because they don't wanna face the truth and all the messy feelings around it.

Trevor Noah 1:43:40 Right.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:43:40 Number two, and this is really important, especially for young kids, for young kids the line between wish and reality is much murkier than it is for adults, right? It, like, oh, I hear my kids-

Eugene 1:43:52 They hear adults

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:43:52 ... right? I hear my kids say, "I went to Disneyland."

Eugene 1:43:55 The lying.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:43:55 "I went to Disneyland." And you're like, "My kid's lying. They've never..."

Trevor Noah 1:43:58 There she is. [laughs]

Eugene 1:44:01 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:44:01 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:44:01 I love it.

Eugene 1:44:02 Eugene's like-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:44:04 I can't even play pretend anymore.

Eugene 1:44:04 "I never, I never went to Dis- what?"

Trevor Noah 1:44:06 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:44:06 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:44:06 That's so funny.

Eugene 1:44:07 I'm gonna use my inside voice. Don't worry. You can feel the character again.

Trevor Noah 1:44:10 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:44:11 Oh, my God. I don't know if it's safe here anymore.

Eugene 1:44:14 You're safe.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:44:14 I'm safe.

Eugene 1:44:15 I'm here guarding you.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:44:16 Um, but- My kid is talking to friends and wishes they went to Disneyland. Of course, they do because they wish they still had a grandma who was alive.

Eugene 1:44:25 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:44:25 And-

Eugene 1:44:25 Mm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:44:26 ... and that wish is something they're playing out, or all their friends went to Disneyland, and it's not, it- it's not to say it's not a lie. It almost doesn't matter. It's a wish.

Eugene 1:44:33 It's imagination.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:44:34 It's a wish.

Eugene 1:44:35 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:44:35 Right?

Eugene 1:44:35 Lying is so-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:44:36 It's so-

Eugene 1:44:36 ... fuzzy.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:44:37 Yeah.

Eugene 1:44:37 Thin.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:44:38 And so-

Eugene 1:44:39 Mm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:44:39 ... and then the other thing that's really important, going back to attachment, attachment drives kids, primary evolutionary force. So if I'm looking at my dad or my mom and they're like, "Did you take money from my drawer?" And they have, like, a Nest Cam that, like, shows them that this happened.

Eugene 1:44:57 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:44:57 So it's another thing I say to parents is beyond give them time, never ask a kid or an adult a question you know the answer to.

Eugene 1:45:04 Oh.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:45:05 If you wanna know it's disrespectful-

Eugene 1:45:07 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:45:07 ... why would you want to catch your kid being bad?

Eugene 1:45:10 I like that.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:45:10 It's just such a bad-

Eugene 1:45:11 Phew

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:45:11 ... setup, right?

Eugene 1:45:12 I like that.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:45:12 So-

Eugene 1:45:12 Bad setup.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:45:13 It's a bad... But let's say I didn't have a Nest Cam, and I, I caught my kid, right? 'Cause if I did, I should just say, "I saw you take money from my drawer. Let's talk about it." But let's say I didn't. Back to attachment. Kids are wired to try to preserve attachment with us, and so if in a moment they know intuitively, "If I tell the truth, my attachment, even temporarily, is gonna be threatened," th- they will lie to you every time, ironically, to preserve the attachment for as long as possible. You can't beat evolution. So they are gonna say, "No." And you're gonna say, "Well, I have a video." "It, it wasn't me." And then it's like, "Disrespect."

Eugene 1:45:56 Wow.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:45:56 "And do they think I'm stupid?" It, it's, it's actually, it hits me in the heart every time. Like, they're actually trying to stay close to you.

Eugene 1:46:02 Hm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:46:03 Right? Which makes think, well, what do we do when a kid lies to us, right? We have to first manage our emotions. But to me, the question, even though it's a harder question, is, well, what's getting in my, what's getting in my kid's way of telling me the truth?

Eugene 1:46:15 Hm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:46:16 What are they so scared of? [laughs] What have they already learned? Maybe it's how narrow of a version does my kid think they have to be, right? Oh, I have one kid, maybe it's not your brother-

Eugene 1:46:27 Mm-hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:46:27 ... who's the smart kid, who's the A+ student. "Oh, I don't have to worry about you. You're the valedictorian, and I just failed my math test."

Eugene 1:46:34 Hm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:46:34 "Well, you better bet I'm gonna, I'm gonna lie to my parents to try to preserve this very narrow identity-

Eugene 1:46:39 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:46:40 ... of who I have to be." Or if I think telling my parents about taking money from their drawer is going to lead to a four-week punishment-

Eugene 1:46:48 Wow

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:46:49 ... yeah, I'm, I'm gonna be too scared, right? And so I think those are the reasons why kids lie. We can get more into, you know, what is the line between, or what is between punishing and permissiveness when kids do lie.

Eugene 1:47:01 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:47:02 Um, but I think the understanding of lying gets us, you know, on a better track.

Eugene 1:47:05 You know what I'm realizing now is I think for the most part, as parents, we've got it all wrong.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:47:12 [laughs]

Eugene 1:47:12 The, the, the children are doing most of the emotional lifting of keeping us physically-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:47:19 Mm

Eugene 1:47:19 ... close together. They depend on it. Evolution-wise, they need you to understand even that lie is an attempt-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:47:27 Yes

Eugene 1:47:27 ... to keep you here.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:47:29 Yes. I think that's so beautiful.

Eugene 1:47:30 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:47:31 Yes. They, they have to keep you close. They have to keep us close. They are-

Eugene 1:47:34 By any means

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:47:34 ... trying by any means. That's why they cling to you at night, even though you're like-

Eugene 1:47:38 Mm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:47:38 ... [laughs] "I have to go to sleep," because they're scared. They separate from you for 12 hours at night-

Eugene 1:47:43 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:47:43 ... longer than they do when they go to school with the lights on with friends and teachers, right?

Eugene 1:47:48 Right.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:47:48 So they're always oriented, right, by attachment. And so my kids now are, right, 8, 10, and 13, right? And so why, why are those g- good ages kind of to go through lying? Which first of all, it's obviously already happened, but I'll tell you this story. So my youngest is my least people-pleasing child. Good for him later in life, challenging early on. Um, and so a couple years ago, we were doing a puzzle

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:48:15 on a weekend, and he's a kid who likes to feel very capable. And so he was trying to help us with the puzzle. He was probably, like, four or five at the time, and it was just, it was very hard, okay? And he was kind of playing it a little bit independently when we were working on it for a bit. We all had lunch. I come back. Like, a quarter of the puzzle is destroyed, and the pieces are gone. There was nobody else in our apartment, okay? And I, I knew it was him. I didn't have a video, but I just knew it, and I know him well enough. He probably went, he saw it, it brought up all of these, "Ugh, I'm not as much part of the family. I'm not capable. I hate this. Well, what can I do? I can kind of temporarily get rid of my feelings by just destroying the situation-

Eugene 1:48:54 Mm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:48:54 ... that's delivering them." Okay, so I asked him, right, 'cause I really didn't know, "Hey, is there any way you know where those puzzle pieces are?" "Nope. Nope. I have no idea." I knew it, right, but I, I couldn't prove it. I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything, and it's funny 'cause my husband, I know he'd be okay with me saying this, definitely grew up in a different way than I did, and he's like, "Well, what punish- what, what? How are we punishing him? What's the punishment? How severe? [laughs] He can't do this," right? "So disrespectful. This is such a normal reaction." And I just kind of knew, just let's wait. Okay, so put him to bed that night. I said, "I wanna tell you something. I don't think I've ever told you this before. When I was seven, my sister had some stickers. She had some stickers, and I really, really wanted them, and my mom wouldn't get me my own, and I wanted them. And do you know what I did?" He's like, "You probably asked for them nicely or something like that." [laughs] And I said, "No. I took them. And not only did I take them, I hid them. I took them, and I hid them. And the next day, my mom said to me, 'Becky, did you take your sister's stickers?'" I said, "Do you know what I told her?" And he goes, "I don't know."

Eugene 1:50:16 What?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:50:17 I said, "I said, 'Nope. Nope. Didn't take them. Mm-mm.'" And then I just kind of voiced over, "I really wanted them. I kind of wanted to be a part of it. I, then I just took them, and then I actually felt so bad. And so she asked me, but I felt too bad to tell her the truth. And then felt like I couldn't tell her the truth because I didn't tell her the truth, and it was just so, so bad. And [sighs] anyway, what book do you wanna read?" And I just moved on. Again, I didn't ruin the moment [laughs] by saying-

Trevor Noah 1:50:51 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:50:53 I told my husband this, and I just like, I can't explain it. I felt in the moment like there was something happening, but he didn't give me any real sign. And I was like, "Just we're not going to punishment mode yet. Let's just wait." I, I swear on my life, a couple days later, he just brings me a bag of puzzle pieces. Just brought them to me.

Trevor Noah 1:51:13 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:51:15 Crying. And I don't think a punishment was needed. [laughs] We ended up talking about what it's like to be the third kid in the family, seeing something that you wanna be part of and that you can't be part of.

Trevor Noah 1:51:29 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:51:30 How most people, when they see that, have lots of thoughts that aren't so nice. [laughs] And actually having those thoughts and what you wanna do is kind of called urges. [laughs] And we all have urges, and urges aren't problems, but we can learn to kind of talk to our urges, and frankly, there was gonna be a lot of times being the youngest in the family that he was gonna wanna do things with us that he couldn't do, and we were gonna figure out those things together. And so I'm not trying to say I hear myself saying, uh, this is not, there's definitely times when I'm like, "You lied to me," you know? That, that happens, too.

Trevor Noah 1:52:02 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:52:02 But [sighs] our kids are, they're, they're good inside. They're good kids who are having a hard time.

Trevor Noah 1:52:09 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:52:09 And we've had such a long legacy of seeing their struggles as a sign of who they are-

Trevor Noah 1:52:17 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:52:17 ... instead of a sign of what they might need, that it feels so counter-cultural.

Trevor Noah 1:52:23 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:52:23 And then we've word so permissive, so soft. It, it's actually a much more resilient, gritty way of interacting with a kid because you can actually teach them and help them better understand-

Trevor Noah 1:52:38 Hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:52:38 ... the very situations that are happening when they're young so that they actually don't engage in that [laughs] exact same behavior when they're older.

Trevor Noah 1:52:46 When, when you tell that story, I can't help think back to how many moments I felt relief and connection when I discovered that my parent was as imperfect as I was-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:52:59 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 1:52:59 ... in that moment.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:53:00 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:53:01 And going back to lying, going back to shame, going back to discipline, all of these ideas, it feels like there's, there's an undercurrent and there's a thread here where one of the main things you're advocating for in being a good parent is making sure that your child doesn't feel like they are alone in their existence. I mean, you even do this for parents. You're saying, "Hey, you might be listening. You might have a kid like this."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:53:24 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:53:24 In those moments, you then feel less ashamed, less alone,

Trevor Noah 1:53:28 less out of control because you are now part of something. And so-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:53:32 Hmm

Trevor Noah 1:53:32 ... I think parents make that mistake oftentimes. They'll, they will tell their kids who they wish their kids to be-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:53:40 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 1:53:40 ... because of who they wish they were-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:53:43 Hmm

Trevor Noah 1:53:43 ... or who they wish they are, but they will oftentimes neglect to tell their child-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:53:47 Oh

Trevor Noah 1:53:48 ... how much they say the, share the similarity of being imperfect. And they don't understand what that does to them. You know what I mean? It just, it just opens your world up. I remember when I was young, my, um, my, my mom was, she was just, like, really angry with me one day because my report card came, and I'd done terribly in math. I'd failed, failed in math. She was so angry, and we were with my grandmother this day, and my mom's busy, and she's, like, angry. She's like, "You know this child. Uh, he didn't study. He didn't do this," da, da. And then my gran was like, she's like, "Hi, what, what, what happened? What happened?" She's like, "Oh, he failed his math." And, and then, and then my gran said, she's like, "Ooh, like mother, like son."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:54:21 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:54:22 And then my mom was like, "What? W- which mother?"

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:54:25 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:54:25 "What are you talking about?" And then my gran said, she's like, "Oh, you did terribly in s-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:54:29 Oh

Trevor Noah 1:54:30 ... you were always failing subjects in school."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:54:32 Hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:54:32 Then my mom was like, "Me?" Mom was like, "I'm an A student. I'm..." And yes, later on-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:54:37 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:54:37 ... in tertiary education and courses-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:54:40 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:54:40 ... she's, I mean, you can't beat... But in that sh- and she had completely, and no joke, she had forgotten that. And she's like, "What are you talk-" And my gran then turned to me, and she's like, "Your mother, ha ha ha ha, never wanted to do homework. Always failing her math. Always..."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:54:54 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:54:54 And I remember, like, turning, looking at my mom, and I was just like-

Eugene 1:54:57 Et tu, Brutas

Trevor Noah 1:54:58 ... it, I was like, yeah. [laughs] I literally, I was like-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:54:59 Oh, exactly. Exactly

Trevor Noah 1:55:01 ... "Ha. Well, well, well."

Eugene 1:55:02 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:55:03 We- and, but you know what was wonderful? Look, my mom, to her credit, in that moment, she laughed.

Eugene 1:55:06 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:55:06 She didn't know. She-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:55:07 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:55:07 But what, what connected us there-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:55:09 Yes

Trevor Noah 1:55:09 ... and, and for, for, forevermore, by the way.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:55:12 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:55:12 She never judged me in the same way. She'd ask me, like, "What can you improve? What can you not?"

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:55:15 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:55:15 But I realized how it made me feel. I used to be ashamed of failing.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:55:19 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:55:19 And now I wore it as like a badge of honor, and I know it sounds crazy.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:55:22 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:55:22 But, like, people were like, "Ah, your math mark." I'd be like, "Yeah, my family, we're not so good at math." [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:55:27 [laughs] Not good at the math.

Trevor Noah 1:55:28 Yeah, we're like, "We don't know how to count, me and my mom," you know?

Eugene 1:55:30 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:55:30 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 1:55:30 "We just do the thing." And then I would even try, like, when I'd come home, I'd even go, "Hey, look, I got better than you've ever gotten. I got..." Now it, like, motivates me.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:55:39 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:55:39 And I think in your story-

Eugene 1:55:40 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:55:40 ... what's beautiful there is like-

Eugene 1:55:41 Yeah, yeah

Trevor Noah 1:55:42 ... he beat you in that story.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:55:44 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:55:44 He got to do the thing that you never did.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:55:46 That's ex- that's ex- and what you said, I used to be ashamed, that's what it... Alone, that's what it meant.

Trevor Noah 1:55:51 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:55:52 I used to feel like I was the only one. Feeling like the only one who is shame. And, and I think from an animal defense response perspective, we know what, we talk a lot about fight or flight, right?

Trevor Noah 1:56:04 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:56:04 Fight or flight.

Trevor Noah 1:56:05 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:56:05 But those are the animal defenses that make us activate, right? Freeze, submit, and play dead are also three animal defense states.

Trevor Noah 1:56:12 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:56:13 And shame brings a freeze state. You can't change if you're frozen. It's literally the opposite.

Trevor Noah 1:56:20 Yeah. Huh.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:56:20 And so as long as you feel like the only one, you are frozen. You can only, if you wanted to- Get help in math or work on math if you feel like you're not the only one who.

Eugene 1:56:31 Right.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:56:31 Right? And so telling your kids stories, and I, I, I, I saw a dad o- o- on my last book tour, and he said, "You know, I heard you in my head this morning. My son would not put on his shoes," classic, "to go to school, and I tried all the things," right? And he said, "And I heard my own dad in my head, the yelling, the threatening," and he's like, "I even said to my son, 'I'm gonna get fired from my job.'"

Eugene 1:56:52 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:56:52 "It wasn't true. We're like never gonna go on vacation."

Eugene 1:56:54 Wow.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:56:54 Right? You're just, you're t- And then he's like, "I heard your voice, and this is, I took a deep breath, and this is what I said to my son. 'You know, when I was your age, there were mornings I didn't wanna go to school.'" And he said, "I kid you not, my son just looked at me," 'cause now there's a connection. And he said, "There were?" And he just wanted to hear more. And as I kept telling him more of this story, which obviously mirrored his struggle-

Eugene 1:57:19 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:57:20 ... he was fine with me putting on his shoes. We got the shoes on. I kept telling the story all the way until the drive to school.

Eugene 1:57:28 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:57:29 Right? It's like our kids are almost screaming in their behavior, "Just tell me I'm not the only one." And once that happens, it might not get you 100% of the way, but it's like the door that has to open-

Eugene 1:57:40 Yeah. Yeah, yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:57:40 ... for the room of all the other good things.

Eugene 1:57:42 And I guess from what you say, I'm kind of picking up that sometimes all the skills that we lack and all the tools that we don't have will manifest themselves in different ways in our parenting. For example, guilt and overcompensating. If you don't want to apologize, you'll overcompensate as a way-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:57:58 Yes

Eugene 1:57:59 ... of showing how sorry you are, but you're actually making the situation worse because you're not imparting tools to your child that they can later, as emotions, use to deal with situations.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:58:08 Absolutely.

Trevor Noah 1:58:10 You know, when, when we, when we talk about this, there's, there's some core tenets I'm-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:58:13 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:58:13 ... I'm realizing in, in good inside and what you're, what you're getting to.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:58:16 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:58:16 One is community.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:58:18 Mm-hmm.

Eugene 1:58:18 Mm.

Trevor Noah 1:58:18 You know? And we take for granted that community literally starts at home.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:58:21 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:58:22 If a child feels like they are part of a family-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:58:25 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:58:25 ... and that family will always be a part of them, it means they get to interact with themselves and the world differently because they feel like there's always home base.

Eugene 1:58:33 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:58:33 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:58:33 You know? They, they're not worried that it can go away. It's always there-

Eugene 1:58:36 Yeah

Trevor Noah 1:58:36 ... regardless of their action because who they are is always accepted. And the other one I keep, keep hearing you talk about is, like, truth.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:58:44 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:58:44 And truth not in the way that we think about it, but in the way that it's actually expressed.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:58:48 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:58:49 When a parent tells a child that they too lied-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:58:52 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:58:52 ... and they too stole-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:58:54 Mm-hmm

Trevor Noah 1:58:54 ... and they too made a mistake, and they too failed, you're telling the truth of who you are.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:58:59 Yes. Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:59:00 And then the child then gets to process you because there's nothing more isolating than feeling like you're the only failure in your family, the only person who's ever stolen, the only person who's ever lied, but the truth literally sets you free. And, and-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:59:14 Yes

Trevor Noah 1:59:14 ... I, I, I wonder if you, if you, like, teach parents that or how you teach them-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:59:19 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:59:19 ... to express the truths that are not readily apparent.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:59:22 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 1:59:22 And what I mean by that is, an example I, I can think of is parents will say, "Hey, Eugene, did you, did you steal Mommy's favorite thing? Eugene, did you, did you take Daddy's, uh, tool? You can tell me. You won't get in trouble." Then Eugene's like, "Okay, I took it." Then they're like, "Trouble, you piece of shit. You ready for trouble now?" And I go, "That's a lie."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:59:48 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 1:59:48 And I think a lot of parents-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:59:49 Mm

Trevor Noah 1:59:49 ... don't realize this, and I think even in relationships as people go on, they don't realize this. I've seen this in, like, literally in relationship therapy as well, like couples.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 1:59:57 Yes.

Trevor Noah 1:59:58 People go like, "They lied," and then the other person's like, "Oh, no, no, but you don't understand that you're also telling a lie."

Eugene 2:00:02 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 2:00:03 'Cause you've said to your kid, "Tell me this and we're good."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:00:07 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 2:00:07 They tell you, and then they're not good.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:00:09 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 2:00:09 So how do you, how do you, what are the tools that parents can use to be more truthful in the way that they both respond or interact with their kids in all of these situations?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:00:20 Well, I think probably the first kind of tool, e- even though I love a good strategy or script, our best tools for anything in life is our mindset, right? 'Cause the mindset is how you're thinking about something or, in a way, it's the glasses you wear.

Eugene 2:00:33 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:00:33 The glasses you wear to see a situation has more impact than anything you're gonna do or say because as long as I'm thinking about a situation in one way, I can't use a certain strategy or a script because I'm locked into that first interpretation.

Eugene 2:00:46 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:00:46 So to me, the first mindset kind of difference to notice is whether I'm in a least generous interpretation mindset or a most generous interpretation mindset, and we all, me too, we have LGI, I call it. That comes naturally. My kid hits, and immediately, right, I'm like, "Oh, my kid's a sociopath. They're never gonna have friends. They're gonna be in jail." They're three meanwhile, right? Least generous interpretation-

Eugene 2:01:09 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:01:09 ... versus most generous interpretation. Okay, I have a good kid who is overwhelmed.

Eugene 2:01:14 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:01:14 I have a good kid who doesn't have the skills to manage anger. So I think that's one. And the other mindset that I work with parents on all the time is trying to check in and noticing whether you're looking at your kid as a teammate or the enemy.

Trevor Noah 2:01:29 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:01:29 And least generous interpretation always casts our kid as the enemy.

Trevor Noah 2:01:33 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:01:33 Right? But when you start to see your kid as a teammate, kind of like a good coach.

Trevor Noah 2:01:38 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:01:38 Right? If you're a coach and you have a player who's missing layups in every game even though, in theory, they know how to make layups-

Trevor Noah 2:01:43 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:01:43 ... it's the same thing. No coach these days, can you imagine a youth basketball coach being, "What's wrong with you? Go to your room until you [laughs] can make a layup."

Trevor Noah 2:01:50 [laughs]

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:01:51 And the parents are like, "I love that coach. That coach doesn't take bullshit from anyone." You know, you're like, "What?"

Trevor Noah 2:01:55 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:01:55 "Like, what are they doing in their room?" You want a coach who maybe pulls the kid out of a game, maybe they're not playing well, that's kind of the boundary, and then says, "Let's get into the gym early tomorrow."

Trevor Noah 2:02:06 Oh, yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:02:06 And you know what a good coach will probably say? "I had a big championship game when I missed a lot of layups, too. I mean, that's it, [laughs] and we're gonna work on it, and I believe in you, and we're gonna figure this out together." And what's so interesting to me about that is I don't know one parent who would say, "That coach is so permissive."

Trevor Noah 2:02:24 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:02:24 "That coach is so soft."

Trevor Noah 2:02:26 Oh, damn. Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:02:26 Extra time with that kid, it's basically reinforcing Bad behavior. I mean, it's so laughable how we've revolutionized how we think about being the CEO of a company or a professional-

Trevor Noah 2:02:39 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:02:39 ... sports coach, and how still parents who see bad behavior as a sign kids need a certain type of extra help, that's seen as soft and permissive. And I think when you have a sense of boundaries and being on the same team and teaching kids skills, leading with the truth becomes easier because-

Trevor Noah 2:02:58 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:02:58 ... you're in a mindset where you actually have a system-

Trevor Noah 2:03:01 Mm-hmm

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:03:01 ... that actually kind of holds together.

Trevor Noah 2:03:03 I love that you, you bring that up because that idea I think can be mirrored directly in society and how we think of punishing people-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:03:13 Mm.

Eugene 2:03:13 Yeah

Trevor Noah 2:03:13 ... or how we think of justice.

Eugene 2:03:15 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:03:15 Mm. Yes.

Trevor Noah 2:03:16 It's, it's really fascinating how many people will say on, like, a societal level, "We need to, we need to reform our prisons. We need to reform. We need to give people chances. We need to, like, make them better." But then in their homes they treat their kids like criminals.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:03:29 Yes.

Eugene 2:03:30 Absolutely.

Trevor Noah 2:03:30 Do you know what I mean?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:03:30 Yes.

Eugene 2:03:30 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 2:03:30 Like, their kid has a criminal record.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:03:32 Yes.

Trevor Noah 2:03:32 Something's missing. I know who always steals in this house. Then you're like, "Wait, your kid's got a criminal record in their own house."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:03:37 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 2:03:37 What are you, what are you doing? Do you know what I mean?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:03:39 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 2:03:39 And it's so interesting that this is where it all begins, is if we as a society can begin from a place where we go,

Trevor Noah 2:03:47 "You have chances. We're going to give you options. We're going to show you that..." You know, like, a judge can just say, "Hey, I actually shoplifted once. I never went to jail. I'm gonna give you a chance-

Eugene 2:03:56 Yeah

Trevor Noah 2:03:56 ... and prove me wrong. Prove me wrong." You know how many times I've seen that story go on to be a person who becomes extremely successful? All they got was a chance.

Eugene 2:04:04 Give them a shot.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:04:04 Mm-hmm.

Trevor Noah 2:04:05 If I give you a criminal record and if I give you a chance, you're the same person. The difference is one of you gets the opportunity to become the person that I think you could be. And, and, you know, as, as, as we sort of wrap up and I, I think about all of the lessons that you've, that you've taught us here, I wanna know why you, why you've honed in on, on the parent and their goodness as well because-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:04:26 Mm

Trevor Noah 2:04:26 ... this is, this is such a beautiful element that I didn't see coming-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:04:29 Mm

Trevor Noah 2:04:29 ... honestly, and yet it became the most important in, in all of the work we get into. You talk about generous, less generous and more generous. It, um, it sparked a, a, a memory of probably my favorite philosopher, Le- Alain de Botton, who said, um, he said in his opinion, love ... You know when people go, "What is love?" He says, "Love is processing somebody through the most generous lens possible."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:04:54 Mm.

Trevor Noah 2:04:55 That's all it is, processing through the most generous lens possible. And then I found myself thinking while reading your book and thinking about parenting, why is it that people will often be the most generous with a pet?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:05:07 Mm.

Trevor Noah 2:05:08 It doesn't matter what a pet does. They'll go, "They chewed my shoes. Oh, it's because I left them at home for too long."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:05:13 [laughs]

Trevor Noah 2:05:14 You know? "Oh, they, they peed on, on the carpet. Uh, it's because I, I, I made them nervous-

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:05:18 Mm

Trevor Noah 2:05:18 ... and there were fireworks and..." You'll see people, they go like, "Oh, but they're a rescue. You must understand all the things. The reason they bit you is not because of them, it's because of how you moved towards them."

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:05:28 Yeah.

Trevor Noah 2:05:28 And this is a beautiful, generous way to see them.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:05:29 Yes.

Trevor Noah 2:05:30 But then w- with their kid, you'll go, "Why did your kid do that? Ugh, good question. Little piece of shit. I don't know why they do anything." And you do something that's so beautiful at the end of the book and in your work. You flip the lens on the parent and you go, "I need you to remember that you are good inside." Why is that so important, and what are you trying to teach parents of children who are trying to see the good in their kids?

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:06:01 Well, I mean, that's ... I think that's why I find parenting to be such a compelling topic, is because-

Trevor Noah 2:06:08 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:06:08 ... at once we're talking about a kid and a parent. You can't help your kid if you're not doing some type of internal work, and anything that's new feels really uncomfortable.

Trevor Noah 2:06:21 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:06:22 That's r- our body's way of saying, "This is new. I don't really have a circuit for this." It's kind of like skiing down a ski slope that's never had a track, right?

Trevor Noah 2:06:30 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:06:30 That would feel really awkward and uncomfortable. And for most of us, in human relationships, compassion is very new, and so new is registered as dangerous I think.

Trevor Noah 2:06:41 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:06:42 So compassion feels dangerous. I, I see it-

Trevor Noah 2:06:44 Yeah

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:06:44 ... when I talk about kids' behavior through a more generous lens. Parents, "U- uh, so you're, so you're saying my kid's just gonna be like this forever?" Like, compassion feels dangerous because it's new. And so in the name of, yes, both helping kids but also [laughs] helping adults, we have to start with the adult.

Trevor Noah 2:06:59 Yeah.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:06:59 Like, I just firmly believe parents, every parent loves the heck out of their kid.

Trevor Noah 2:07:04 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:07:04 And every parent is doing the best they can with the resources they have. And if they want to do something differently or they want to break cycles or have some type of intergenerational change, intergenerational change doesn't start by changing your interaction with your kid.

Trevor Noah 2:07:20 Mm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:07:20 It starts by changing your interaction with yourself.

Trevor Noah 2:07:22 Hmm.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:07:23 You have to change something internally to give out something new, right? There's, I feel like there's a visual, almost a math equation of that. And so yes, I think being more of the parent you wanna be to your kid probably starts with recognizing the good inside yourself.

Trevor Noah 2:07:41 [instrumental music] Dr. Becky, this was as wonderful as I hoped it would be.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:07:44 Oh.

Eugene 2:07:44 Mm.

Trevor Noah 2:07:44 Thank you so much for the work you do.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:07:46 Thank you.

Trevor Noah 2:07:47 Yeah, because I think all of us take for granted that every single person we meet in the world is the way they are oftentimes because of how they were parented. And if all of us got the hugs, the recognition, the repair, the trust, and the reassurance that we deserve, the world might be a much, much, much better place, so thank you very much for joining us.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:08:09 Thank you.

Trevor Noah 2:08:09 This was amazing.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:08:10 Thank you.

Trevor Noah 2:08:13 This was really great. Thank you.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:08:14 So 7.

Eugene 2:08:14 Also, you called Trevor to say piece of shit twice.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:08:16 Oh, good. Is that more than the average?

Trevor Noah 2:08:18 [laughs]

Eugene 2:08:18 It's never happened before.

Dr. Becky Kennedy 2:08:19 Oh, wow.

Trevor Noah 2:08:21 This episode is presented by Whole Foods Market. Whole Foods Markets has everything you need for the holidays, whether you're a guest or hosting the big dinner. Whole Foods Market has convenience and cost-friendly finds that'll delight everyone at your table, plus great gift ideas, all of which follow the Whole Foods Market's strict ingredient standards. Shop for everything you need at Whole Foods Market, your holiday headquarters. [upbeat music]

Trevor Noah 2:08:50 Thank you so much for watching the episode. If you enjoyed it, pass it on to a friend. If you didn't enjoy it, pass it on to your friend still. Let them suffer for a change. And don't forget to engage with us in the comments. Uh, if you wanna, uh, suggest a guest, maybe there's questions you want, maybe there's ideas that you have, you can chat to us. We will read through the comments, and we'll get into it. Either way, I appreciate you taking the time. Thank you for hanging out with us on What Now? And remember, we do this for you, so we would like to hear from you. Till next time, thank you.