how can i get my partner on board my partner is so skeptical of this parenting approach my partner always says it's soft or it's too permissive and we're gonna raise kids who are snowflakes in the world and we can't do that dr becky can you help okay i think this is a question I get as much as any question.
And so what I want to do today is basically answer this question, but probably in a different way than you might expect.
See, I am going to say something surprising.
I love skeptical partners.
I know you expected me to say something different.
Like, how dare they question my approach?
I know that good inside is sturdy, not soft, right?
But I think skepticism And I don't know.
I think it's such a close cousin of curiosity.
And I love curiosity.
I love when people are curious.
Oh, why do people do that?
Why is this happening?
I wonder. And I think right next to curiosity is skepticism, where there's just maybe a little bit less generous of an outlook, but they're so close.
And in my experience, especially in working with parents in private practice and connecting with people in our membership.
Skeptical parents, they really care about their kids.
I'm not saying non -skeptical parents don't, but the skepticism often comes from really caring about their kids' future.
And I guess I love parents who really care about their kids' future, skeptical or not.
And so today I want to go over a few things.
I want to go over how I think about good inside parenting.
I want to also really get into more details of the good inside approach as contrasted with kind of what would be called softer feelings -only approach on one side and on the other side, kind of a more harsh disciplinarian punishment behavioral -based approach on the other side.
So there's almost three things, and I want to go through this in a really fun way where there's an example of a behavior and we can contrast responses in each style.
I also want to talk about what working means, but does this approach work?
I think there's a lot to unpack there.
And then I also want to make sure we just connect with each other because even with my reframe about skepticism, I know that if you're a parent who's really kind of bought in or as bought in as any of us are to this approach, having a skeptical partner, it's tiring and it probably feels like a lot of the work
falls on you and I want to speak to that.
I'm Dr. Becky. And this is Good Inside.
We'll be back right after this.
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How do I get my partner on board?
The first thing I want to share is there's a difference.
Between believing the same things and speaking the same language.
See, I only speak English, okay?
But let's say I spoke Spanish and my husband spoke English.
That would be really, really hard to communicate effectively.
I'd be speaking in Spanish.
He'd be speaking to me in English.
Clearly, there would be words that would be said, but I don't think anyone would say that we're communicating.
Okay, now let's say I learned English or he learned Spanish or both.
I don't think any of you would say, oh, well, now that you're both speaking Spanish, you must believe the same things.
What? First of all, we're never gonna believe the same things.
We're two different adults with different temperaments and, you know, different histories, different outlooks, all of that.
But I think you would tell me that my partnership got a massive upgrade when we were at least speaking the same language.
Now, at least if we're both speaking in English or both speaking in Spanish, we could talk about our differences.
This is how I want you to think about parenting, and this might surprise you because you might say, wait, Dr.
Becky, I really believe in the good inside approach.
You don't want my partner to be as much of a believer?
You know, I guess I have a hard time saying yes or no to that question, but I guess I would just say that I would have a kind of priority above that.
I would love you both to think about the same ideas together, to talk about the same concepts, to have frameworks you can both discuss to understand kids' behavior today, kids' development, and what we're really optimizing for down the road.
That would be my wish for you.
Now, within that way of communicating, if you don't have the same beliefs, I actually don't really think it's that much of a problem.
Most kids I know, when I think about how their parents intervene, they intervene slightly differently.
They really do, sometimes very differently.
But what really, really helps a kid and what really, really helps a partnership or a co -parent relationship is being able to say, hey, let's talk through that together.
Hey, what are the big picture things we both care about?
Hey, where do we disagree?
And as soon as that happens, that's going to make things feel so much better.
And I hope that feels relieving.
I personally believe that when kids have parents or other adults in their life who do things kind of differently, you know, maybe when someone, quote, talks back, one parent can really stay calm and see the goodness underneath and talk through it live.
Maybe another parent doesn't become totally reactive, but leads a little bit more with You really can't talk to me that way.
And then kind of connects and figures out the situation after.
And maybe there's a little more fire there.
But again, no one is deeply injured in the situation.
Nobody's terrified.
Those are different situations.
I actually think your kid's going to benefit from that.
Especially if they have parents who can talk to each other about it after.
Not to be on the exact same page, but where they speak the same language.
There's a lot of practical implications of that difference.
I would love, let's say, for you to watch a workshop with your partner.
But I would tell you, and I've told so many of our members this, please don't tell your partner.
Please come to the workshop, and you're going to see why Dr.
Becky is right, and finally it's going to make sense.
I mean, I'm going to tell you do not say that.
I would actually tell you to say I'd love us to watch this workshop together, but it might be for a surprising reason.
If we watch it together, you and I can talk about it after.
We will have heard the same things.
And I would expect you to say, I don't love this part of it.
I think Dr. Becky doesn't know what she's talking about in these moments.
And I can say, oh, maybe I agree or maybe I think about it differently.
But we have this third thing.
We have this common language so we can actually discuss it together.
That's how I would frame watching a workshop.
I'd love to watch it together and you can tell me the parts of it that make sense to you and the parts you're iffy about.
we are all much more likely to engage in something if someone frames the situation in that way.
And that is where your partner skepticism, where it's not exactly about getting them on board, it's getting them to look at the same things, getting them to have a conversation, being on the same team where people see things differently but can actually talk to each other.
okay so with that reframe I want to do a kind of fun exercise okay and maybe you're now understanding my definition of fun but I do find this fun because I'm someone who always learns through specific examples you know someone you know once that I'm so grateful that you take really deep ideas and translate
it into very concrete scripts I think the only reason I do that is because I need things to be very very concrete and specific to understand them in any area of my life.
So what I want to do is I want to take a situation where a kid is saying, I hate you.
Let's take that situation.
I hate you. And I want to go over three sets of reactions.
Number one is probably the traditional way a lot of us were raised.
A kid has a bad behavior and you kind of react just to the behavior.
And so there's punishment, there's consequences in that.
That's situation one.
Situation two, as I would say, is the overcorrection to the other side.
That is soft and permissive.
You care kind of so much about your kids' feelings that there's almost no boundary.
And in those situations, I feel like there's almost no adult.
I mean, frankly, I kind of feel like there's no adult in the first situation too, because we just get desperate and reactive, but that's another story.
And what's the third?
The third, I would say, is the sturdy, good inside approach.
It is not soft. It is not permissive, but you're right.
It is also not reactive and full of punishment.
So let's just go through this so it'll become more clear.
You tell your kid that they can't have a sleepover.
And maybe you're thinking my kid's younger.
Okay, so maybe it's that they can't have ice cream for breakfast.
Maybe they're older and you say they can't go out to a certain party, whatever it is.
You tell your kid, you can't do something now that you want to do.
Okay, that's the situation.
And your kid reacts like this.
What? I hate you. You're the worst parent ever.
I hate you. Did you hear me?
I hate you. Okay. Okay.
Parent response one.
Kind of, I would say punishment first.
I see the behavior and I respond only to the behavior.
And I know you might be thinking what's wrong with that, but you'll see there's some nuance as we go on.
What would I say back?
First of all, I want to go over mindset because the mindset we're in determines the intervention we use.
It's not so much punishment interventions that I always like to talk about.
It's a punishment mindset.
Because that's a more pervasive thing.
In a mindset like this, a kid says all these nasty things to you.
I agree. They're kind of nasty and no one likes to hear them.
And our mindset becomes, what is wrong with my kid?
What is wrong with my kid?
I would have never said that to my parent.
My kid is disrespectful.
My kid does not respect my authority.
And as a result of this mindset, we get heated.
We get very, very heated.
And we feel this urgency, like everything about our parenting is coming up in this one moment.
And we think, which I get, my kid cannot engage in this behavior anymore.
We might even fast forward and say, oh my goodness, if my kid ever responded that way to their boss saying, no, they're going to get fired.
I have to protect my kid from that outcome.
And then we do something like this.
You can't talk to me that way.
I cannot, I would have never said that to my parent, that's it.
And then we say something like, go to your room, no dessert for a week.
We kind of say something, I think, that almost tries to make our kid feel as bad as we feel in that moment.
And we, I think in that mindset, the bad behavior colors our version of the kid.
We kind of think our kid's a bad kid.
And so we send them away.
Now, what's the impact of this intervention.
I want to be honest, okay?
And this is something I should probably say more often because I think it's really true.
What's the impact? Well, what's the impact to you as a parent in that moment?
Actually, I bet it feels relieving.
I really do. I'm going to say it.
That doesn't mean it's okay.
But here's the thing.
When our kids have, quote, bad behavior, whatever it is, it's really hard for us as a parent.
We have all these really uncomfortable emotions.
We worry we're a bad parent.
We worry we have a bad kid.
I mean, in a very basic level, we're like, this is just massively inconvenient, and I'm very, very frustrated.
No part of me drew up dealing with the situation and my ideal Tuesday night, right?
And so we're in distress.
We're uncomfortable.
And in the moment that you say to your kid, get out of this room.
Go to your room. No dessert.
That's it. I'm taking your phone.
I'm taking your iPad.
Whatever we take, I always visualize this like all of our own frustration and distress, we just get to vomit it onto our kid.
We do. And in the moment, I'm not saying after, in the moment, it feels cathartic.
We just get to release all of our uncomfortable feelings.
We take no responsibility for having to manage those feelings as an adult.
We just get to expel them.
And so I believe in the moment, in the short -term way, this type of intervention definitely feels easier and almost feels better as a parent.
Now, after, I think this is the stuff that keeps us up at night when we've kind of come to, we're like, oh, that was awful, and I had a power struggle, and I don't want to parent this way, and my parent parented this way, and I don't even know what else I could do, but we spiral after, right?
But in the moment, it's true.
You get to let this all out, and in the moment.
This is important too.
You get to watch your kid be very upset.
No, not my iPhone. No, not my iPad.
Not my iPad. I need to watch my shows.
And this gives us almost like quote evidence that our intervention worked.
Now, not surprisingly, I have a lot to say.
Like, is that really evidence?
We actually know from research that how upset a kid gets at a punishment has no impact on whether the punishment is effective in the long term, okay?
But in the moment, it feels like it's working.
Like we feel better because we vomited this.
We watch our kid feel upset, which we interpret as, oh, good, they're going to change.
And that's what we do.
Now, what's the real impact?
There's so much real impact, okay?
But one of the things that I believe is core to change is we have to separate our kid's behavior, which can be bad from their identity, which is always good, hence the name good inside.
That never permits bad behavior, but it's what actually allows a kid to have better behavior because a kid learns to think, huh, I wonder why I did that.
I wonder what I could do to change it.
What skill can I practice?
What expectation will I be held to?
And do I have an adult to actually help me make those changes?
In a punishment mindset and framework, none of that happens.
You send a kid away.
Now, here's my question to you.
How did you feel when you were sent away to your room after an explosive moment?
You're definitely not thinking as a kid, you know what, I was explosive.
Yeah, I get why my parent took away my phone for the week.
It's totally understandable.
And it's so understandable.
And I get it that I'm going to actually figure out what to do to have better behavior the next time.
I mean, thought no child ever.
You feel so angry. You actually engage in like revenge fantasies as a kid.
Like, oh, I'm gonna show them and they don't understand me, right?
And you're just getting angrier, which ironically makes you more explosive the next time.
So that's the punishment mindset.
it. Now, I want to be honest, because I remember talking to parents very early before I was even online, and they'd say to me in my practice, but Dr.
Becky, like if I have to work on managing my own emotions, like that moment where I just get to release all of it and say, go to your room, like do I not get that release?
It's true. You know, we can't have all the things.
We don't get it. I think we get other things, which I'll get to.
But in the behavioral model, you just aren't responsible for regulating your feelings and the unfortunate consequences.
You feel more disconnected from your kid.
They feel more angry.
They get more explosive.
They become more fearful of you.
And in my experience, none of this results in the type of stuff we actually want for our kid short -term or long -term.
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Okay, but now let's go to the other extreme.
I just heard my kid said, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, all this stuff.
And here is what I think we fear, or at least some people, and I've been seeing it online.
They mock. Now, I don't know if anyone actually does this, but let's just say it because it's out there.
Oh, you're mad, mad, mad.
Oh, you really want to watch more TV.
You really want that sleepover.
You really want to go to that party.
You really want ice cream for breakfast.
I understand, sweetie.
Okay. That reaction, that like very soft reaction is so kind of not in proportion with the virulence of what my kid just said to me.
I have a hard time imagining any parent actually leading that way, but I think the framework that represents is I care so much about leading with validating feelings that I have no attention to this huge reaction from my kid.
I don't really hold them responsible for a better form of behavior.
I don't really set a boundary for them.
And I always say my visual is there's no edge.
It's like now my kid is the one vomiting their frustration on me.
And I'm just saying, oh, give it to me.
I love you. You're such a good kid.
And all those feelings give me more feelings.
I can just take all the feelings.
I can, yeah, I agree.
That is not a tenable parenting strategy.
That is zero percent good inside.
There's two extremes.
Behavioral. I see the behavior.
I punish. I send away.
I just let my emotions as a parent come out in my kid.
The other extreme is I care so much about the feelings that I almost pay no attention to the behavior.
I don't realize my kid needs my boundary, and I become an endless container for my child's dysregulating emotions.
Those are two extremes.
And in my experience in life, there's always a better answer than two extremes.
And this is where I see good inside and what we call sturdy parenting.
Framework for sturdy parenting.
And get ready for this because it's revolutionary.
I have a good kid. Wait, did you hear their bad behavior?
Dr. Becky, did you not hear?
They were just screaming, I hate you.
And I would say that parent, oh, I heard.
That's some nasty words.
Got to work on that.
Still, conviction. I have a good kid.
They are good inside.
Now, this is where we do all types of things.
Oh, so then it's just okay that they yell.
No, what? Why do we say that?
That would be like, I don't know, watching me drop my phone and break it.
And then hear me say, I wonder why I broke my phone.
I wonder why that happened.
I was trying to be careful.
And you say to me, oh, so it's just okay.
Oh, so you have compassion.
You're trying to understand why you broke your phone.
So it's just okay you broke your phone.
It's like so weird.
I don't have to chastise myself and say, I'm such an idiot.
I'm such an idiot for dropping my phone.
I'm the worst. I'm going to punish myself for a week for breaking my phone.
The irony is, how is any of that going to help me figure out not to drop my phone the next time?
When we remember we have a good kid and hold that separate from their bad behavior, that does not mean you're approving of behavior.
It does not mean you're permitting behavior, it means you're actually interested in being an effective leader who understands behavior so you can change it.
That is the mindset.
Then what would I do?
Two major jobs at Good Inside.
We have two jobs as a parent.
Every time, we set boundaries to keep our kids safe and set limits and have an edge, and we connect to the good kid underneath by seeing feelings and validating those.
What would that sound like?
Whoa, those are some intense words.
That's a lot of I hate who's coming my way.
You're a good kid. We're going to figure this out together.
And I know you can talk to me in a different way.
You can hear in my voice, there's nothing soft about it.
It's the way a pilot or a coach or a good CEO would assert their leadership.
The best CEOs in the world and the best sports coaches don't assert their leadership by losing it on people.
It's like a very outdated thing.
Ironically, every area of life, business, sports, right?
They've modernized their view of leadership before we've modernized it for kind of the most vulnerable humans on the planet, our children.
I would set a boundary even around talking.
I might even say, whoa, you continue to say that, sweetie, I love you.
I am gonna walk out of your room.
I need a break. and also it's just not helpful for you to hear yourself screaming at me in this way.
I'm gonna go take some deep breaths, I'm on your team and then I'm gonna come back and we'll figure this out together.
Now, does figuring it out mean giving my kid the ice cream or letting them stay up late or letting them go to a party I'm not comfortable in?
No, no way, I'm the leader, I'm the authority, I get to make those decisions.
Figuring it out means trying to understand what it's really about.
Oh, you feel left out when you're the only one not at the party.
Oh, your friends get to stay up late.
oh, you really want something yummy and our breakfast choices are so boring.
Okay, well, let's get to the bottom of this together.
That's what our kids really need us for.
That's what a good leader does.
I wanna shift to something that I think's really related to getting a partner on board, which is the idea of working.
What does it mean? Is this working?
I would do the good inside approach, but I don't know if it's working.
I actually think this is very connected to something we touched on when we see the reaction our kids have to our punishments and our threats.
We unconsciously think that threats and punishments work because our kids get very upset when we deliver them, but that's actually not a sign of something working.
That's a sign of their reaction, but again, we know research has even established, you don't even need me to say it, that that isn't what connects to long -term change.
I want to share my sense of what it means to be working.
Because when I think about kids' behavior changing, I think about this visual.
Picture a line that represents what you can see at the surface.
Above the line is what's visible to you.
Oh, my kid now stays calm when I say no.
Oh, when my kid is upset, they don't say I hate you anymore.
They just say, hey, I'm feeling frustrated.
Oh, wouldn't that be amazing?
That's above the line.
And then there's everything below the line where a lot is happening, but it's not visible to us.
It's kind of like how swimming works.
There's a day when you're watching your kid in the pool and you're thinking, oh my goodness, they're really capable of swimming independently.
But there's months, sometimes years, where your kid is learning how to swim and they don't know how to swim independently, but a lot's happening below the visible surface.
They're learning skills.
They're trying to put things together.
And if in those moments you say, you know what, no more swimming.
They didn't learn how to swim.
That's it. Three months in, nope.
I think like a wise friend or our wise mind in that moment would say, whoa, just because you don't see change yet in the pool doesn't mean your kid isn't learning and it doesn't mean their lessons aren't working.
I think when you're evaluating that, you'd say, well, let me watch the lessons.
Do I believe in what they're teaching?
Do I believe in the process?
And if you believe in it, you tolerate the period where you're working on skills and they have not yet converted into observable behavioral change.
To me, that's how our kids' development is.
Like my kid is in a hitting stage or a rudeness phase or a difficult sleep stage, I think it's so easy to go to, well, it's not working.
Versus I would ask you to think about what skills does my kid need to learn?
Do I believe in the method we're using to teach them those actual skills?
Are they given opportunities to practice those skills?
Does that whole system feel right?
What small signs can I see that we're actually on the right path?
that to me those are kind of the set of questions to ask ourselves when we think about whether a parenting approach or anything long term in our life is working now the last thing i want to end with in this kind of multifaceted complicated nuanced emotional conversation is just you if you have a partner
or co -parent who's skeptical of the parenting approach that you really identify with that's very real and very taxing it's very exhausting and frustrating and my hope is maybe even listening together to this might make things less adversarial and remind you both you really are on the same team you want
the same thing for your kids I know that you probably want them to be resilient confident kids who are at home with themselves and able to get into healthy relationships and right you want the same things and it still has probably been a hard path for you and i just want to acknowledge that i would love
to talk to some of your skeptical partners not to convince them but again kind of ending with what i started with i think it would be so cool to have conversations maybe even do some podcast episodes together with people who are skeptical and just voice those things together, talk through very, very
common concerns, fears I think that skeptical partners have, criticisms of this approach.
It's so common and I would love to do this.
So if you have a partner who would be willing to have a conversation with me, please email podcast at goodinside .com and keep checking back so hopefully we can get some of those episodes out.
Thank you for listening.
To share a story or ask me a question, go to goodinside .com slash podcast.
Or you could write me at podcast at goodinside .com.
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Let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves, even as I struggle and even as I have a hard time on the outside, I remain good inside.
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