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
And my heart, like, hurts hearing myself say this, like, in a good way. They know. I think kids know. And maybe he says that because that's what we are. But I think kids know. And I can't even tell you how many kids I used to work with, and teens especially, the pain of their parents not embodying their authority was so clear. They knew that they shouldn't be out at a certain time.
They knew that they were hanging out with kids who were like bad news and their parents had no idea. And they felt unanchored. Like they really, really knew not that their parents weren't exerting power. That word isn't their parents weren't embodying their appropriate authority to protect their kids.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
I have some reactions to that. I think, I mean, I kind of think you're talking about values and principles, right? And so I think there are, in my house, to be honest, it's not like we have some wall of like, these are our family values. I've seen those in people's homes. Yeah, that's not.
Not organized enough to do that. But if I thought about a couple that come to mind, like my job is to keep my kids safe. By the way, safe does not mean they're never in a situation without risk. That's not what I mean. You know, but in general... That's its own form of danger. Exactly. The minimization of risk is also not safe, right? So, but in general, my job is to keep you safe.
I'm not going to let you do things that, you know, endanger yourself or others. So that's one. Another principle I think about is... I will always tell you the truth, even if it's uncomfortable. Like you can always count on me for that. We call that kind of, I call that truth over comfort, right? So if my kid says to me, how are babies made? That value is useful, right?
Another thing is like all feelings are allowed. Not all behaviors are okay, right? Stuff like that.
To me, what's very different is these kind of rigidities around behavior. Mm-hmm. We don't swear. Swearing is a behavior. We don't cry in public. Behavior. We don't tantrum here. That's a behavior. Behaviors all the time are a manifestation of feelings that overpower skills. So saying we don't do certain behaviors, to me, it doesn't even make logical sense.
Well, what if I'm in a situation where I have a really intense emotion and don't have the skill to manage it? The behavior is going to happen, and then I feel like a bad person. That's very different than values around intention. I want to be truthful with my kids, even if things are uncomfortable. I might fumble around with the words, right?
I might even sometimes lie because I didn't do that value in action. But what I can come back to is, okay, nobody lives their values 100% of the time. So I think we're talking about actually something core to what we think about at Good Inside, which is I'm a good person with values who is totally imperfect and sometimes acts in ways I'm not proud of. Both are true.
When families have values that are very behavior-based, what ends up happening in the kids is they start to equate certain behaviors with morality. These are good behaviors that make me loved in my family, and these are bad behaviors that kind of make me feel like I'm not the right part of my family, and they even make me wonder, like, Am I lovable? Am I good inside after all? Am I worthy?
That's not good. Because whenever we tie behavior to identity, that's shame. And we've tried to motivate kids with shame for hundreds and hundreds of years. And it does not work and causes a lot of problems. I think another one, which is interesting, especially as my kids get older, I said this to my teen recently. I said, this is really tricky.
One of my jobs, as always, has been to create guidelines and rules with you. You know, it's always going to be kind of collaborative. Some, because of my authority, will be directive that I believe are going to keep you safe. I think this really relates to a phone. I want to tell you another part of my job that might sound contradictory, but I actually think we just need to hold them both at once.
Another part of my job is to be there for you when you inevitably go against those guidelines. And I want you to know that we have rules around what can and cannot be done online.
And I'll say this here, like, and like, if you do kind of become part of a really inappropriate text conversation, if there is bullying, if you do come across some images online that make you feel really uncomfortable and you're like, I shouldn't have seen that. You're not getting in trouble with me. I'm not going to throw you a party. I will be there for you to help you through those moments.
Those things sound contradictory. And in our family, we know two things can be true. And those are both true, right? To me, that's a really important thing for a teenager to know.
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Showing 1261–1280 of 3,434 · page 64 of 172
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