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
And so early on, when kids have painful experiences from witnessing you or something else, giving them a coherent narrative is what they need. And without that, the way I think about it is they have what I call unformulated experience. It's just affect and experience that kind of free floats in their body, unformulated. That tends to later show up as triggers. right?
And kind of other things in adulthood. And so, yeah, that's what we want to try to avoid when we can.
I think this is a great question. There's a couple of things that are coming to mind. So first of all, all of this is a matter of extent and patterning. Yes, we do not want our kids to feel like it is their job to take care of our emotions. It's not a good situation. And I think the difference here actually comes down to what the true definition of empathy is.
To me, empathy is noticing someone's feelings and caring about them. It's not taking care of them. That's a big difference. So let's say I'm crying and my kid comes over and this whole situation, maybe somebody died. And they're like, oh my goodness, mom, can I give you a hug? And do you want me to get you a cup of water?
Okay, I just want parents to know, you don't have to say, no, no, I do not want you to be a parentified child. Like, that is so, that is so kind. Yes, that would feel great. Okay, that's totally fine. I think the line is, and every parent just knows this for themselves, where it might get to, oh, you know what? I love that you're noticing I'm sad. And I love that you care about that.
And I also want to let you know those are my feelings, not yours. And I am really able to take care of them myself with whoever is a friend. And you're still really allowed to be a kid who can go play, who can go have fun. who can even not listen to me once in a while when I say it's bath time, that's actually your job. So let's go do our jobs well.
And to me, that comes down to what empathy is, the delineation of like, what is a parent's job and what is a kid's job? But also, I think all of this can get misrepresented in social media. And I don't want parents to think that they always have to chastise their kid for acting in a caring way.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I have a boss who's, I don't know, going through a really hard time or having a really hard time at home. And I kind of notice it. I'd probably want my boss to level with me and say kind of, again, you're right to notice I'm going through a hard time. But at what point would it feel like, ooh, am I safe in this organization, right? I think we probably all have a point there.
And I think it's the same thing with kids. Kids really do need to feel like they have sturdy parents. Again, I always go back to pilots because I think airplane examples are so powerful because there's very few times in adulthood that we actually feel like our safety is truly dependent on another adult, like 100%.
When you're a passenger in an airplane, you are 100% dependent, so it's kind of the closest dynamic. And you can imagine what it would be like if the pilot was saying, going through a really hard time, who wants to come in and give me, you know, I don't know, you know, tell me a nice story.
Like, oh my goodness, like I get you're going through a hard time, but this is really not feeling great, right? And what that means and which is, you know, kind of even a larger point is if you're a pilot, you need to make sure you're really doing a lot of self-care more than the average person because of this outsized responsibility you have. This is what I think about parenting.
And it's why from, you know, the bigger theme here is this is what gets me out of bed, you know, every morning. So motivated is not just to help parents understand tantrums or emotions or, you know, the latest struggle in their house. Although I actually love that.
It's to say, hold on, we've been really sold an awful story about what it really means to be a parent and how parenting really, first and foremost, is a journey of self-care. How can I be the sturdiest person possible? Who do I need in my life when things go poorly so I don't lean on my young children and give them a responsibility that is not theirs?
You know, I was just saying to someone the other day that when you have kids... All of the unhealed parts of your childhood come right before your eyes. They are just triggered over and over and over with your own children. Like, you know, oh, my kid's whining. I can't deal with that. Oh, well, whining is probably triggering because it's kind of representative of helplessness.
What was it like in my family if I kind of felt helpless? Was that allowed? Did I grow up in a... You know, if you don't stop crying, I'll give you something to cry about family. Okay, if I don't resolve that, I'm going to act that all out on my children and pass that along. So all of kind of...
These situations where parents are feeling all these different emotions from a trigger, from something in their life. I think it goes to what I always tell parents, you know, you have a first and foremost job of self-care and taking care of yourself. That doesn't mean traveling to Europe for the year and leaving your kids alone. It means what is going on inside you? What skills do you need?
What networks of support do you need? What do you have around you to help you on the hardest journey of your life and the most rewarding one of being a parent so that you don't have to say to your kids, you know, oh, you know, can you kind of take care of me?
Yes.
Showing 1161–1180 of 3,434 · page 59 of 172
← Previous
Next →