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.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 2.
Appearances
We would never want that player in our team. We'd be like, refs, whatever. I miss my foul shots. I'm going to go to the gym tomorrow so I can make more. I didn't pass as much as I was hogging the ball. And to me, we have to help our kids in terms of confidence really see that confidence isn't about being the best.
It's about tolerating being you when you're not the best and getting more of a sense of what's going on inside you than blaming the world for your struggles.
And maybe it came from fear for her. Another place it could come from, to me, this is a powerful question. What jobs do I not want to work my way out of as my kid's parent? And what jobs do I want to work my way out of?
Like I can tell you, as my kids get older and they inevitably make mistakes or find themselves in tricky situations, a job I'm always going to be happy to have is I want them to know they can call me and I'm going to be able to help them right through it. I do want that job. I want them to have other people who have that job, but always happy to have that job. water bottle rememberer.
I don't really want that job at all. I really don't. Toast maker in the morning when they're, nope, I would like my kids to know how to make themselves breakfast and remember their water bottles and check in at the orthodontist. So at various ages, I think I can say to myself, okay, Becky, Am I working my way out of water bottle rememberer or am I locking myself in?
Because then we have a kid who's 10 and I say to them in a moment of frustration, you have to remember your water bottle by yourself. This is insane that I'm still doing it for you. But I have to a little bit look in the mirror and say, okay, so first of all, am I setting my kid up for success? This is a skill. Do I help my kid with their own handwriting? Write post-it notes on the door.
Remember water bottle. We all need visual prompts. When my kid does it but still forgets, again, this is a water bottle. It's not an EpiPen. Am I like, you know what? This feels harder than I thought, but I'm not doing it. I'm not purposely letting them fail. No, again, intention matters, but this is an okay thing to go through.
It probably will be part of the arc of, oh, man, I was thirsty at soccer practice all Oh, yeah, that stings. Oh, you forgot. Okay. I want to work myself out of that job. And so I think your mom worked herself out of that job. And what happened is there was enough of a vacuum that you worked yourself into that job, which made you more confident and capable.
I guess I don't think kids inherently are born with one or the other, but a lot of this comes from the messages, the responses. Kids are just expert in noticing this I believe you and I believe in you. Do my parents think I can become capable over time about something that I initially find difficult? Or do they rescue me from it?
Which is really a way of saying they don't think I'm capable of doing it. And so what I noticed with kids over time who have higher self-esteem, number one, they've learned to figure things out for themselves. But that process is messy. What it really means is in the home, parents were tolerating tantrums. They were tolerating whining. They were saying some version.
I remember my son whining about this puzzle he was doing. Probably three or four years doing a puzzle he couldn't figure out, please. He's just doing it for me. I can't figure it out. And as a parent, of course, there's a moment. Permission to anyone listening to be like, you know what? I'm just doing the puzzle. I can't deal tonight. Fine.
But I remember this thing I said to him vividly because I was like, wow, that just felt really right. I said, look, I'm not finishing the puzzle for you. But let me tell you why. The best feeling I think in the world is the feeling you get when you think you can't do something and then you take a breath, but then you watch yourself make progress. That is literally the best feeling in the world.
And I won't take that feeling from you because I just know it's going to come today, tomorrow, sometime soon. Okay, now again, he didn't say like, oh, that feels so poetic. He kept whining. You know what I mean? He did. But to me, kids with high self-esteem, have been in environments where they go through the mess and then figure out after.
It's only after mess that you're like, wow, I guess I'm capable of more than I thought. That's what self-esteem is. And then they take that in to the math class later and they're willing to take on the bonus problem.
They're willing to put their hand up and get something wrong because they know not from knowledge of someone telling them, from experience, that they can get through those things and bounce back.
Yeah. And look, and again, our intention matters because a different version of that is this is a puzzle. Do it or don't do it. But by the way, you're just giving up and you could definitely do this puzzle. I picture Pam being like, but I'm doing the thing Dr. Becky said. The reason I even said that is because, first of all, I don't know if you could do the puzzle. Who knows? It was kind of hard.
When our kids are younger, essentially. We're forming their talk tracks. We might as well do that in a way that works to their advantage. We have this opportunity to build identity that a kid thinks they're capable and nobody feels capable from early success.
You actually feel fragile because you feel so attached that your identity is linked with early success that you can do a very, very narrow range of things. This is the best news for a parent. They're like, wait a second. So my kid not doing the puzzle is a good thing? Yes, your kid not being in class with their best friends. Yes, you're not doing a bad parenting job by being there to support.
You're actually allowing your kid to access over time their capability. It's just a lot messier than what we think that will look like.
You know what's interesting? Zero.
Showing 981–1000 of 3,434 · page 50 of 172
← Previous
Next →