Dr. Becky Kennedy
speaker
3,434 appearances
7 recordings
6 series
first heard Feb 2024
last heard 18 Jun
Dr. Becky Kennedy’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 2.
Appearances
It just all was a perfect storm. And so... What should I do? This actually goes back to our job. I think a lot of times we get into situations where we're punishing and, quote, disciplining, even though I don't think that's the right word, our kid. Because again, we're not really doing our job as parents, right? Where we're not setting a limit.
Where maybe the intervention is, and again, this is where our intention matters. Because I'm going to say the same thing, but you'll hear it differently. Look, you're being ridiculous with that gun. I can't trust you, and so I'm taking it away. Intervention is taking it away. A kid is going to feel like a shitty kid.
And you're going to feel bad at the end of the night versus, look, the truth is it's really hard to have a Nerf gun and make responsible decisions, especially when other people are around. I'm taking the Nerf gun, but it's not because you're a bad kid. You're a good kid who had a hard time. My job as a parent, my number one job is to keep you safe. And I actually love you so much.
I'm willing to make decisions to keep you safe, even if you protest and get mad at me. And this is one of those decisions. The Nerf gun is going away. Maybe there's a time in a week or two where I'll take it out, where it's just you and I. There's no one around. We'll play with it safely. And as we do that a few times, you'll show me you're increasingly capable. But for now, it's going to be away.
Like we do that not to our kid. We do that for our kid because we actually want to protect them from doing things that make them act like a bad kid.
I think about someone, I don't know why, like someone who's trying not to drink alcohol. And like if someone's, hey, you really shouldn't drink alcohol when you're in a bar. Someone would just say, yeah, if you're early recovery, you probably shouldn't be in the bar.
Yeah, you don't go to the bar. It's hard to have that urge when you're trying to build skills. And it's actually our job to protect our kid. And that's actually going to help them make better decisions over time. Where probably a Nerf gun isn't the first situation where they're going to build impulse control. we would have a hard time having impulse control with a Nerf gun.
I think that's too negative of a question. I think there's a couple things I'm seeing. Number one, I see a lot of confusion around boundaries and a lot of orientation toward keeping your kid happy, which generally means not setting boundaries. And the thing about this, and I think there's a lot of talk about cell phones and pledges and John Haidt is amazing in the work he's done.
My perspective starts younger, which is the cost to not being able to set boundaries with your kids has never been so high. It has never been more important to set boundaries because back when you and I were young, if our parents didn't set boundaries, I don't know, we like stayed up an hour later or had an extra cupcake.
Now, if you can't set a boundary, your kid's on TikTok at age seven, playing video games for five hours.
And the other thing I would say to parents is if setting boundaries and tolerating your kid being upset with you, if honestly with yourself, that's hard. The idea that the first boundary you're going to set is delaying your kid's cell phone, that's a joke. Like a boundary setting is a muscle. And we have to build it when our kids are young around all types of things.
And then when you tell your kid, no, we're not getting you a cell phone, their reaction isn't even as intense than other kids because they're thinking, well, you've always set boundaries. You've always tolerated me being upset with you. You're not becoming a new parent overnight.
So I think one of my favorite things is to show parents, though, you can set boundaries in a way that helps you be closer with your kid. Kids know when their parents aren't parenting. They know it. They won't say it to you because short term it feels good.
I can't even tell you how many teens in my practice back in the day would tell me stories of essentially parental neglect and not neglect like they weren't there, but they weren't being a parent.
It sticks with me all the time. And I think the lessons of it can be really, we can rewind, right, to when our kids are much younger and apply it. So, yeah, there's a 16-year-old girl and she's such, I don't even know the right word, a pizzazz. That's my most generous interpretation. And so she comes in and she had been cutting, right, her arms for years.
And I asked her about it and she had been cutting for two years. And I said, oh, have you seen a therapist? Because she told me her parents knew about it. She goes, no, you're the first one. I saw. I said, oh, so let me just see if I got this right. You've been cutting your arms for about two years. Your parents knew. And this is the first time you came to a therapist.
Like, how did that connect those dots for me? And she goes, well, my parents did tell me I had to see a therapist two years ago. And I told them, oh, so you're saying I'm a f***ed up kid. So you're basically saying I'm the messed up one in the family. Fine. I'll go to a therapist. But I'm going to lie about everything. I'm just going to waste your money. And that's how it's going to go.
All this, like, rage. I don't know why I knew it in the moment. I was like, I'm just going to say nothing. I actually think that's one of the most important parenting strategies also is do nothing. Wait. And her countenance and everything about her body language completely shifted from this, I don't need anyone. I don't care about the world, scorched earth, to she just had this downward gaze.
And when she finally looked up, she was so sad. And the words that she said to me literally were, can you believe they let me make that decision? I still have the chills. And the way I think we can zoom out from this. is our kids will never say to us, thank you for making a decision for me, but they feel it.
Imagine being on a plane and you're flying from LA to New York and you're like, I've got to get to New York for this meeting, for this podcast, for this wedding, something very important. And the pilot is saying, look, I have bad news. I just have this light go off. I don't know what exactly it means, but we've got to make an emergency landing in Iowa. And everyone in the plane is like,
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