Child Psychologist Answers Parenting Questions

I'm Dr. Becky Kennedy.

I'm a clinical psychologist, author,

and the founder of Good Inside.

I'm here today to answer your questions from the internet.

This is Parenting Support.

[rhythmic percussive music]

ActualEmu1251 is asking,

Do you ride out a tantrum at the grocery store

or give your toddler anything to make them stop?

I think the best way to think about this question

is what's going on when a kid

is having a tantrum at the grocery store,

and what will be helpful

in general for them in the long term?

And can I give myself permission 20% of the time

to just make the situation easier?

So, let me answer that first.

Yes, if it makes sense in the moment

because of your bandwidth,

because you just have to get yogurt

for the recipe you're making, to say,

You know what? Here's the candy bar.

Stop having a tantrum.

Yes, do that. No guilt.

I would do that myself.

The bigger question is, if I'm doing that every time,

then my kid gets into a cycle that I don't think I want,

and it's not gonna be good for them long term.

We think the cycle is,

Well, then my kid just thinks they can get away

with anything they want.

That's actually the least generous version

of the cycle and of your kid.

That's not what the bad cycle is.

The cycle actually is, for a kid,

I get overwhelmed by my feelings because I'm four.

Now I'm seeing that the feelings that overwhelm me

overwhelm my parent.

That's actually really scary.

That's like being scared of turbulence

and then the pilot coming on saying,

Ah, turbulence!

That is terrifying.

So the reason we wanna sometimes ride out the tantrum

or say, You know what?

I'm picking you up.

We're gonna leave the grocery store.

You're having a hard time,

is because you're actually

showing your kid something powerful,

The feelings that overwhelm you don't overwhelm me.

I am the sturdy pilot for you during your turbulence.

Which means you will now have a model

of how to do that for yourself going forward.

And I'm gonna pick my kid up to bring them into kind

of a smaller contained environment

for their kind of emotional fire to ride itself out.

That's very different than the energy of my job

is to calm them down, which ironically,

that energy is just gonna add more fuel to the fire

because all my focus is on making it stop.

Now, let's say the fire has kind of burned out,

which means my kid is calm.

In that moment exactly, it's still not a teaching moment.

Say something simple like,

Oh, it was hard to be in the grocery store,

or, We got through that together.

That's it.

The next day, I would hope you'd think,

Hm, if I don't change the conditions,

then I really shouldn't be surprised

the fire just happens again.

So what could I do differently next time?

Well, maybe I'm not gonna do my grocery store run

right after soccer practice when my kid's exhausted.

That's actually how you change [keyboard keys tapping]

the likelihood of a tantrum. [mouse button clicks]

This one is from Scry_me_a_river.

How on Earth do you raise a child

to become confident and not a pushover?

Let's start by thinking about what confidence is

'cause we can't ever develop a trait in a kid

or in ourselves if we don't actually understand

what that trait is really about.

We're told confidence is feeling good about yourself.

No, I think confidence is self-trust,

and that's a big difference

because if we're trying to build confidence

by helping a kid feel good about themselves,

we're always gonna try to build them up

and we're gonna try to take them out

of their uncomfortable emotions.

That actually leads to a fairly fragile kid.

There's lots of things we can do

to build confidence in our kid,

but I would start with two things on the daily.

Number one, believe your kid's emotions when they have them.

That's really important.

You can't bypass that step.

So, when your kid says,

Oh, I can't believe you're going out to dinner.

Want you to put me to sleep tonight,

we think our job is to take them out of the emotion.

No, believe that emotion.

Oh, you wish I was staying home.

You wish it was me and not Grandma.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't go out.

That just means you need to believe that they feel

the way that they're showing you they feel.

That is the foundation of confidence you can't miss.

The second thing you could do on that daily

is remind yourself confidence comes from learning

how to get through hard moments,

not from learning how to exit them as soon as possible.

Let's say you have a three-year-old who's whining,

I can't do the puzzle!

Do it for me!

Confidence doesn't come from your kid finishing the puzzle.

Confidence comes from your kid learning that they can get

through a time when they haven't yet finished the puzzle.

So instead of saying,

Here, put the piece in this spot,

you'd say, Oh, you're right.

This is really tricky.

I'll sit right by you.

And I'm not gonna do it for you

because I'm not gonna take away

the best feeling in the world,

which is watching yourself [keyboard keys tapping]

make progress on something you didn't think you should do.

Tracethebow is asking,

Two-year-old won't settle for bed,

and I'm truly at my wit's end.

Please help.

Sleep is separation.

I wanna say that again because it's mind-blowingly simple,

but also not obvious until you hear it.

Sleep is separation.

Think about a two-year-old being dropped off

for daycare for the first time.

They're separating from me.

Of course they're gonna have a hard time.

I have a little routine with them,

and I make sure they're settled with the teacher

and then I pick them up however many hours later.

Now, think about night.

I separate from my kid for longer, more hours.

There's no teacher.

There's no toys.

There's no other kids.

They're alone in their room in the dark.

That separation is actually much harder,

and things you take for granted,

kids don't take for granted.

You know you're gonna be there when your kid wakes up.

A two-year-old especially,

when they go in their room and you close the door,

for all they know, you travel to the Moon

and something could happen to you.

You can say this,

You know, sometimes, it's hard to go to sleep

because you might be wondering where Daddy is.

First of all, let me tell you.

When you go to sleep and I close the door,

do you wanna know what I do?

I walk out, I sit on the couch.

Actually take your kid,

Go here, then I go to my room and I go to sleep.

And then I wake up maybe before you,

I come to the kitchen, I get my coffee,

and then I am there when you walk out.

Every night, that's what happens.

That gives your kid a mental model.

Then you can teach them a mantra.

Do you know there's something you can say to yourself

when you're going to sleep that helps your body

feel a little calmer?

I'm gonna teach it to you.

Let's say your kid's name is Bella.

♪ Bella is safe ♪

♪ Daddy is near ♪

♪ My bed is cozy ♪

You can hear I'm saying it in a little bit

of a sing-songy way.

Anything with song tends to regulate the body.

And now that you're singing it,

your kid is eventually gonna be able

to say it to themselves,

but they're gonna hear your voice.

They're gonna hear your little sing-songiness,

so their mantra is, in some ways,

internalizing your supportive presence.

You can make this part of the routine.

You can say it when you go out of the room.

There's so many other things, [keyboard keys tapping]

but that is one of the ways to get started.

[mouse button clicks]

nomorelandfills is asking,

When did people get so neurotic about providing snacks

for their children every six seconds?

Was this a Gen X or millennial parent invention?

We tend to think in extremes.

There's a lot between hungry and starving.

I am not advocating for starving children

to get them to eat more, no.

But something's happened culturally

where we now try to bring kids' uncomfortable emotions

to a zero.

You're sad, here's happy.

You're frustrated, here's a solution.

You're left out, I'm throwing you your own party.

And I think this is what's happening with hunger,

where now, I have to bring snacks all the time.

God forbid my kid is hungry 45 minutes before a meal,

and all of a sudden, I'm solving for hunger

and bringing it to a zero.

There's a lot between a zero and 100.

Along these lines of snacks and food,

it's powerful to say to your kids,

You know what? We just had a great lunch.

We're gonna have dinner at this time.

Just so you know, when we're out for these hours,

I'm gonna bring one snack and by the time it's,

I'm making this up, four o'clock,

there's nothing available because it's actually important

to be a little hungry [keyboard keys tapping]

before dinner. [mouse button clicks]

FunnyYellowBird is asking,

How do I get out of the habit

of bribing my three-year-old?

A little bit of bribing here and there, it's fine, okay?

It's not harmful,

and there are certain moments if something small

gets your kid over the edge in a key moment.

That's okay.

What's problematic if I get into a dynamic with my kid

where bribing becomes the foundation,

and the reason that's problematic

is because what's actually happening is your relationship

is becoming transactional,

and that has really big implications as your kid gets older

'cause here's what I know no parent wants.

I say to my 14-year-old,

Hey, can you pick your towel off the floor?

And my son goes, What are you gonna give me?

That is cringe-worthy, right?

And we should not be surprised when our teenagers say that

if our predominant strategy for cooperation,

which really means getting our kid

to do something they don't wanna do, is bribery.

So, that's the framework.

So, how can we get out of a situation where bribery

is the primary mode or anything more than,

you know, five, 10% of cooperation or transition moments?

First of all, is the concept of connection capital.

Our relationship with our kid

in some ways is a series of moments

where we're depositing into the relationship

through being there, through listening,

through giving them our full attention,

putting the phone over here,

showing up, having fun, playing.

Every time you ask someone in a relationship

to do something you want them to do

and they don't wanna do,

you're kind of having a withdrawal on the relationship.

Now, to be clear, as parents,

we withdraw a lot, and we have to.

Our kids have to get dressed.

They have to come to breakfast.

They have to put on their shoes. They have to go to bed.

They have to do a million things they don't wanna do,

but here's the secret, though.

If we withdraw a lot from the relationship,

we better be depositing in because if we don't deposit in

through all the ways we connect to our kid,

the only thing we're gonna have is bribery.

The first time you see your kid,

when they come home from school

and the last minutes before they go to bed

are big connection capital opportunities.

And then when the moment comes,

when we have to go through a transition,

which is what most cooperation moments are about,

how can we be a little bit more on the same team

so the bridge [keyboard keys tapping]

kind of doesn't feel so big?

[mouse button clicks]

pb_and_s is asking,

Gentle parenting turned my child into an A-hole.

At Good Inside, we don't call it gentle parenting,

and that's because the word gentle,

it just doesn't resonate with me in terms of how I need

to access something in myself in the hardest moments.

Good Inside is sturdy parenting.

There's something about someone who's sturdy,

like the pilot and turbulence where you can locate them.

You think, Okay, you're connected to me,

but you're staying connected to yourself.

You understand the limitations of my reactions.

You're gonna maybe listen to me,

but you're not gonna be taken over by me.

I think many parents who tell me that gentle parenting

has made their kid an A-hole,

what they're actually saying is,

I've done the part of parenting, that's important,

of believing my kid's feelings,

but I've over-corrected.

I've now gone from caring about

and believing my kids' feelings

to letting my kids' feelings dictate my parental decisions.

That's a cultural kind of overcorrection

we've had over the generations.

We've gone from nobody cares about kids' feelings

to kids' feelings now dictate parent decisions.

Both extremes kind of produce A-holes,

so we wanna produce better,

regulated, more resilient, more capable kids,

so if this is the situation you're in,

my guess is you've forgotten about boundaries,

which don't come from exerting your power.

A boundary is something you tell your kid you will do

and it requires your kid to do nothing.

So, when we say to our kid,

Stop jumping on the couch, Timmy,

those are not boundaries.

That's a request.

A boundary would be this.

Hey, Timmy, you're jumping on the couch

so close to our glass table.

Not safe.

It looks like it's hard for you to get off,

so here's what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna walk over to you, and if by the time I'm there,

you're not off the couch,

I'll pick you up and I'll put you on the floor

and you can go jump on the carpet.

That is a boundary. [palm thumping]

Timmy's not gonna say, Thank you.

No, Timmy will have a tantrum.

Timmy will protest, especially if Timmy's not used to this.

That's actually a healthy sign.

You want your kid to have an emotional reaction

'cause that's what's gonna actually propel them

to take the next step.

And when they get upset about your boundary,

you can do the second part of your job

that we say is part of family jobs at Good Inside.

You validate their feelings, [keyboard keys tapping]

but you do it while continuing

to hold the boundary. [mouse button clicks]

From kenzycolombini, Why are little kids

so obsessed with iPads?

Seriously, go read a book or play in some dirt.

I think there's a broader question here,

why are we so obsessed with our little screens, right?

And I think about myself,

I should go read a book.

I should go play in some dirt.

We all should.

Our screens are designed for low-effort,

high-gratification patterns.

How do I realistically, as a practical, real human parent

[chuckles] in 2026, manage this kind of duality?

How easy it is to just give my kid an iPad

so they're satisfied in the moment,

so I can do things in the moment.

That is easy.

That is so real.

And how do I balance that with all the things

that they could be doing today

that will come with whining and meltdowns and struggle,

but that are actually gonna make their life

and my life easier going forward, but harder today?

We're really talking about the balance

of short-term gratification

and long-term resilience and health.

I don't wanna pretend I have a perfect answer to this,

and in every family, it's different.

I am not rigid about this.

I didn't have some totally screen-free existence.

It just didn't make sense for our family.

And sometimes, I think struggling with it

and just carving out times and even saying to your kid,

Screens are away for this period of time.

And when they're away, they have to be visibly away.

This is part of building a circuit that involves effort

and risk-taking and vulnerability

and learning how to generate ideas on your own,

and that is harder,

but if you think about it in chunks,

that balance might be more possible.

[mouse button clicks]

cheeseburghers asks, How do you correct

a three-year-old without screaming?

I'm gonna make up that the three-year-old's hitting, right?

Maybe if it's not, you can fill in the blank

with something else that you'd want to correct.

What is my job when my kid is hitting?

And if you're hearing me ask that and you're like,

I have no idea, that's okay.

I think parenting is the only job in the world

that we're expected to do well without any training, right?

So it's important to get support and education,

but that's a question I promise you I can answer.

When a three-year-old is out of control,

hitting, screaming, we have two jobs.

Number one, stop the out-of-control behavior,

and that's the job we're often too slow to do.

Here comes a playdate and I'm, like, talking to another mom

and then Arn starts hitting.

This is where, actually, we begin to have the wrong cycle.

Why am I talking to a friend when I know

my son has a hitting problem?

Like, I'm setting him up for failure,

I'm setting myself up for frustration,

and I'm setting myself up to scream at him.

That's just an unfair setup for everyone, including you.

So, first, my job is to get ahead of the behavior.

As soon as his friend takes his favorite toy,

he starts to hit, like it's kind of clockwork.

Oh, that means when Arn's on playdates, not forever,

probably only for, like, a couple weeks,

I'm gonna sit next to him and I'm gonna say,

Sweetie, when you have your friend over,

I know it's hard to share some of these toys.

I'm gonna sit close to you.

And if it seems like things are ooh,

that's what I'd say to a three-year-old,

I'm gonna hold you, bring you to the side.

We're gonna take a deep breath,

and then go back to playing

because my number one job is to keep you safe,

and hitting isn't safe.

Now, I'm gonna sit there and I'm gonna start

to notice Arn gets this look in his eyes.

You see it and you're like,

Oh, there's that look.

I'm gonna intervene then,

not because I don't believe in my kid,

because I do believe in my kid

and I don't wanna let my kid become a bad kid.

It's the worst feeling for a kid.

I'm like, I've been hitting kids for six months

and my mom's just kinda letting me do it again.

Is there no adult here who's gonna help me?

So intervene earlier.

By the time I'm screaming, to some degree,

a pattern has already played out.

We wanna try to get ahead of the pattern.

Then I think there's a second part of this question,

what do I do when I scream with my kid?

What do I do next?

We repair.

I believe we're experts in imperfect parenting.

Repair is the most important strategy.

Oh, sorry, I yelled.

You know what? It's been hard to play next

to your friends with certain toys.

I'm gonna get closer to you next time

and try to help before the hard moment comes.

And then I do that the next time.

You're a parent who's doing what the rest of us are doing.

You're learning along the way,

you're trying to show up in a way you're proud of next time,

and you know you always have repair

when something goes awry. [keyboard keys tapping]

[mouse button clicks]

This is from Strict_Print_4032,

How to find the line between picking battles

and setting boundaries?

I think it comes back to understanding what boundaries are

and what boundaries are for.

Boundaries are generally to keep our kids safe

and to prioritize our kids' long-term interests.

It's not technically dangerous for my kid

to stay up three hours too late

every night in the short term,

but that's not great for their development long-term.

But that's why we set limits, right?

Or sometimes we also just set limits

around important family values we have.

I'll take an example.

One of my family values

is not how my kid dresses to school every day.

It's not. That's just not high on my value list.

Now, I want my kid to have appropriate clothing

for a setting, appropriate enough,

and not be dressed in a tank top

when it's -3 degrees 'cause that's a safety issue,

but I'm not gonna have a battle about matching clothes.

I personally don't care.

If that's something you care about

for whatever reason you know is really important,

that's not a battle you're picking.

That is a boundary you're going to choose to set, right?

And then probably there's other things

that we have to let go of.

There's certain things that to me are just pure safety

and are not even in the choosing-your-battles category,

bedtime, screen time.

I'm not letting my three-year-old

run around with a pair of scissors.

And then the small things,

like areas where we can really give our kid more control.

I think that's really important to think,

what could I say yes to?

What is a battle I'm not gonna pick

because it's not really safety,

it's not really long-term best interest,

and it's not really one of my core values?

And then the irony is the more freedom

you tend to give your kids on those things,

the more consistent you can be about the things

that really matter

and the more likely your kid is

to cooperate because they feel [keyboard keys tapping]

like they have some agency in other areas.

[mouse button clicks]

IndependentAnimator4 asks, What to do with a child

that constantly says, 'I don't want to'?

When a kid has a lot of resistance,

what we tend to do in response

is meet their resistance with our resistance.

I don't wanna go to soccer.

Oh, you're going to soccer.

I don't wanna go to piano today.

You love piano. It's your favorite.

We, like, argue with their resistance.

All that does is make resistance more intense.

What we wanna do when a kid shows resistance

is actually approach it with a little bit of curiosity.

I don't wanna go to soccer.

Oh, why not?

Some part of us is afraid to be curious

to try to understand it because somewhere along the way,

we've conflated understanding with agreement,

understanding with permission.

Those are very different things.

We have to understand our kids' resistance

before we can change it.

And honestly, sometimes the best moment

to try to understand it, if this is habit,

is outside the moment.

Whenever we leave for school, you tell me,

'I don't wanna go.'

And you're not in trouble, and let me just take a break.

That sentence to a kid

when you're having a hard conversation

is really, really important.

Our bodies need to hear it.

What's going on?

Because I know you end up having a good day at school

and you're happy when you come home,

but I'm not trying to prove anything.

There's something about leaving this house

in the morning that must be hard.

What is it?

Now, I have a feeling I know what you're thinking.

You think my three-year-old's gonna answer that question?

No, I don't.

I actually do not, and I'm urging you to ask it.

The power of asking kids questions

like that isn't to get answers.

It's to help them start asking themself the same questions.

All of a sudden, we can brainstorm solutions

because I'm willing to look at the resistance

as a window into something going on for my kid,

as opposed to a sign

that my kid [keyboard keys tapping]

is a bad, defiant kid.

[mouse button clicks]

HeartsDeepCore asks, How do you discipline

without making the kid feel ashamed?

Am I doing something wrong?

Discipline, I think, is something

that's been really misunderstood.

The root of discipline is about teaching.

And I think in so many of our childhoods,

discipline was just shaming.

My kid says, I hate you.

You're the worst mom in the world!

And I say, You can't say that to me!

Go to your room, and no dessert tonight

and no playdate on the weekend,

and I'm taking away your stuffed animal.

And, like, then we call that discipline.

All that teaches is shame.

That's right, it just teaches a kid,

I'm small, I'm tiny.

I don't have a support.

I also don't have a setup to learn.

So I change the question.

What is discipline actually about?

True discipline is totally different from shame

because it actually figures out

what is the right moment for intervention,

which is probably not in the heat of the moment.

And then what do I actually wanna teach my kids

so they can actually be more effective

and show up differently in the future?

That has to be shame-free

because none of us can learn when we have shame.

We shut down, and inherently,

I have to pick my moments to do that

and work with my kid, [keyboard keys tapping]

not react to my kid.

[mouse button clicks]

This question's from Quora,

What is your opinion on parents asking their children

for permission before doing something

instead of just telling them what they are going to do?

There's kind of three categories of decisions we make

between parents and kids.

One are decisions we make as parents,

school decisions, bedtime decisions, screen-time decisions,

what food we have in our house decisions in general.

Then there's decisions that fully belong to our kids.

There's not many of those when our kids are very young,

but as our kids get older, hopefully there's more.

Like in my house,

basically, my kid can decide what clothes to wear,

what water bottle they choose, their decision.

And then there's decisions in the middle,

how do we make together?

Thinking my kid is seven and I'm like,

Ooh, I could sign my kid up for soccer,

but if my kid's gonna say to me,

'I hate soccer, I don't wanna do it,'

I'm not gonna force that decision.

Something has happened in modern parenting

where we've kind of neglected that first bucket.

There's a couple things I'd like to bring back, okay?

Here's one of them.

When you start back to your kids by saying,

I want to tell you a decision I've made,

you're not exerting your power on them.

You're actually telling them you take your job

as their parent very seriously.

I think we have to think about those buckets,

and I think we have to ask ourselves,

Is the bucket of things that really are my decision,

is that hard for me?

Is it hard when my kids are mad at me?

Do I almost look to them to do my job for me?

I want them to kind of agree

because it's hard for me to tolerate

their tantrums or pushback. [keyboard keys tapping]

And that's how I think about that question.

[mouse button clicks]

bckwards, Extremely picky eater.

Please help me fix my mistake.

I love thinking about Ellyn Satter's framework

for feeding children.

She says there's division of responsibility.

We have a lane and kids have a lane,

and kids tend to develop eating struggles

when we take over their lane

or they take over our lane.

What is in our lane?

Three things, what, when, where?

My job as a parent is to decide what food is served,

what time, and where it happens.

I might say, I serve chicken, broccoli,

and pasta and butter at 6:00 PM at our kitchen table.

My job is done.

I mean it. I know you're like,

But what about...

That is my lane.

Now, my kid has two jobs in their lane,

whether and how much.

My job is whether I eat any of the three foods

my parent chose and how much of each.

What tends to happen with picky eating is we move lanes.

I'm saying to my kid, You have to have four bites

of broccoli in order to have the pasta.

Wait, you can't have the pasta.

You had too much.

I have to have the chicken.

Our kids have very few things in their life

that are under their full control.

When they're young, they have two things,

what goes into their body

and what comes out of their body.

When we take over either lane,

if we have a strong-willed kid,

you better bet they're gonna double down

because when they're having picky eating,

they're not even fully responding to the food.

They're kind of saying,

Stay out of my lane.

So a little bit of a reset is to say that to your kid,

Hey, you know what I've realized?

I learned that my job is deciding what food is served,

when it's served, and where, and that's it.

And when I've done those three things,

I've done a good job.

And your job is whether you eat any of them and how much.

Here's what that means.

I'm not gonna be telling you what to eat anymore.

When I put out three options,

and I'll always have at least one,

that's kind of a safe food for you.

You don't get to tell me the other thing you want

and I'm not gonna go make it.

So, we both kinda get [keyboard keys tapping]

something we want and we both

have a little something to adjust to.

[mouse button clicks]

This is everything for today.

I hope you learned something.

Thanks for watching Parenting Support.

[subtle groovy music]