Good Inside for working parents
A reader asked me recently how I define success as a parent. I’ve been thinking about this a lot (more to come here), and the best definition I’ve come up with so far is: success as a parent means that I have a strong and trusting relationship between my child and me.
This is one of the reasons that I thought Good Inside, by Becky Kennedy, was a great parenting read – it provides tactical support on how to connect with your child, especially in the harder moments, and in doing so, build a stronger relationship with them.
The book has two clear benefits for working parents. First, the type of parenting that is most energy-draining (to me, at least) is dealing with meltdowns. Clear tactical strategies for handling and reducing challenging behaviour are a major win. Second, many ideas in the book about psychological safety, connection and growth mindset apply equally to managing teams. It’s an excellent example of how building parenting skills supercharges skills in the workplace.
I have summarised my learnings here to share with you. That said, this is one of the few parenting books I recommend reading in its entirety – it covers a ton of valuable ground, and the examples and scripts help demonstrate meaningful nuance.
Core thesis
Good Inside is about emotional regulation in children and their parents. It’s goal is to help parents navigate challenging behaviours from their children and, in the process help the child build emotional regulation for the future. It is also a guide to help parents improve their own emotional regulation in the parenting relationship.
The core thesis is that behaviour is an expression of what’s going on inside a child – it’s not who the child is. By seeing behaviour as a window into what is going on inside we can connect with the child as a full human being and help change what is going on outside. In doing so, we build our child’s emotional resilience. If we just try to impact what is going on outside we’re treating the symptom, not the cause, and are likely to be less effective.
Why is emotional regulation and resilience important? Emotional resilience is the foundation for important life skills like learning through frustration/failure and developing the ability to make good decisions when disappointed. Emotional resilience ensures a child can handle difficult emotions like sadness or disappointment, especially when parents are not around to ‘make them feel better’.
Beyond those important life skills, we also don’t experience the full richness of life without accepting and experiencing the full range of human emotions. Our happiness has meaning partly because of our ability to experience our saddest moments. Our ability to love deeply comes with the risk of loss and disappointment.
We learn through Good Inside that children don’t like behaving in a dysregulated way and that his behaviour is not manipulative. These moments are opportunities for parents to connect to what is happening inside, and support their child. This doesn’t mean being a permissive parent or letting children behave badly, in fact clear and strong boundaries are crucial.
Axioms
An axiom is a statement that is accepted as true as the basis for an argument. In this section I’ve pulled out the axioms that Kennedy has relied on in this book.
Axioms of Good Inside:
Everyone is good inside: Everyone, including our child and us as parents, is good inside and doing the best job they can with the resources available to them. The resources we are referring to here are primarily internal resources like emotional regulation.
Emotional regulation, and therefore how we behave, is a growth journey: We need to be able to try and fail in order to improve, neither children nor parents are going to get it right all of the time. Making room for failure and responding in a way that the child feels safe creates the environment for this growth. When growth mindset is cited with respect to children, it’s often in relation to mental skills like reading or physical skills like sports. It’s rarely discusssed in the context of emotional skills.
Psychological safety is built on connection: Psychological safety is an essential foundation for growth, and having a strong connection between parent and child creates this psychological safety. Children have a biological fear of abandonment that is crucial for their survival, so creating psychological safety for children includes creating an environment where they are confident that their behaviour won’t result in abandonment.
Resilience > Happiness: It’s more important to teach our children how to handle difficult emotions than how to avoid difficult emotions.
Operating Principles
In Good Inside, Kennedy lays out a number of examples of how to build emotional resilience. I’ve summarised these inso a set of key operating principles for parents. Operating principles are just that, they are principles that describe how we can act or operate that apply generally. Breaking out the principles allows me to handle any range of situations in the future without needing to open up the book.
The key operating principles of Good Inside:
Assume the Most Generous Interpretation (MGI) of our child’s behaviour: Look for the need under the behaviour and assume good intent. Ask: “what is the most generous interpretation of what just happened?”
Invest in connection and building relationships: We are more likely to cooperate and be influenced by someone we like and have a good relationship with. We can also better give our child the MGI of their behaviour when we feel deeply connected to them.
Lead with curiosity: Curiosity helps our child feel seen instead of judged. Leading with curiosity means not making assumptions about what is going on for our child.
Recognise that multiple things can be true at once: This is key for connection; at its root, it allows two people in a relationship to have two accepted realities. It also allows us to have multiple realities personally, e.g. I love my children, AND I also need alone time. These things can both be true. When we end up in a me-versus-you moment, it’s often a symptom of not holding the reality of both individuals as valid at that moment.
Stay in your lane: The parent’s job is establishing safety through boundaries, validation, and empathy. Children have the job of exploring and learning through experiencing and expressing their emotions. And when it comes to roles, we all have to stay in our lanes. Our kids should not dictate our boundaries, and we should not dictate their feelings.
Boundaries help our children feel safe: Boundaries help teach them that they can manage their behaviour, because they are used to show them how to manage dysregulated behaviour. A boundary is something we can enforce unilaterally, not something that the child has to do. This is important because we cannot control anyone else, including our kids. We can only control ourselves. And when a child is hijacked by their emotions, asking them to control themselves is scary. It’s our job as parents to step in and help them — to protect the child from their own dysregulation.
Validate emotions, don’t shut them down: We are looking to enable children to regulate their emotions, not shut them down. That means we need to accept the feeling as real and valid. This is hard, as parents, our instinct is to try to make them feel better and make the ‘bad feeling’ go away.
As parents, we arguably have the most influence over our children’s internal narratives. A healthy internal narrative supports emotional regulation. Our earliest relationships also build a blueprint for us to take into the world as adults, which means parents have an opportunity to teach children that feeling valued and seen in relationships is normal and healthy. If we react to bad behaviour with “you are bad”, their internal narrative becomes “I am bad”. If, instead, we help them understand their feelings that are taking over inside, we can help build an internal narrative that is “I’m feeling bad, I can get through this”. The operating principles are designed to do this.
Hijacked by emotions
It’s helpful to understand what happens to a child when we see ‘bad behaviour’. Kennedy states, "Bad behaviour comes from dysregulated feelings that we cannot manage.” These are like a giant wave washing over and overwhelming our child. Instead of being able to respond in a regulated way, they are overwhelmed by the feeling inside, which takes control.
Adults also experience emotional hijacking. Think about the last time you behaved in a way you were not proud of. You were likely feeling something like shame or anger, and this feeling ‘took over’, resulting in a reaction that might be embarrassing to look back on. The same is happening inside our children. Making them feel bad or shameful for having these ‘hijacked moments’ doesn’t help them regulate going forwards — it makes a big feeling scarier because they don’t have any tools to stop it from taking control.
The operating principles help our children learn to surf the wave (or stay afloat). That doesn’t happen in this meltdown; it happens by using this meltdown as a growth moment to handle the next one better.
Children get hijacked by their emotions way more regularly than adults because of how their brains develop. The part of the brain that helps us regulate, make decisions, be empathetic and self-aware is only fully formed in our twenties. (From the Whole-Brain child by Siegel and Payne). So it’s developmentally appropriate that they find this difficult – not a sign of being a bad parent.
Knowing that the emotion or impulse is hijacking them helps us think through how we respond. They don’t need to be told that their out-of-control behaviour is bad (if you were really angry and yelled at someone, you wouldn’t need to be told yelling was bad, you know that already because it doesn’t feel good). So instead of lecturing them about their behaviour, which separates them from us, the operating principles help us connect and make sure they are not alone with their big feelings.
Examples of handling challenging situations
It’s easiest to illustrate the operating principles in action in terms of what we might say and do.
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Recently, my son yelled at me because he only wanted to eat grated cheese for dinner. Using the operating principles, our interaction might look something like this:
Son: “Cheese!”
Me to self: [Operating Principle 1 – MGI] My son isn’t rejecting my dinner or being difficult. He has an impulse that makes him want cheese and he doesn’t know how to moderate it yet. I know how that feels!]
Me to son: [Operating Principle 6 - Hold the boundary] You’ve had a lot of cheese already. You still have potato and sausage on your plate if you are hungry, or you can have a banana.”
Son: “Cheese!’ Starts crying and stamping the floor.
Me to self: [Operating Principle 1 – MGI] He has a really big want here that isn’t being met and he’s getting hijacked by his emotions.
Me: [Operating Principle 5 - Stay in your lane and Operating Principle 7 - Validate emotions] You really want more cheese for dinner. It’s my job to keep you healthy so we’re all done with cheese for tonight. I know it’s really hard; you’re allowed to feel angry about it.
My son didn’t suddenly calm down. He stamped some more and longingly pulled on the fridge. But I safely held the boundary and validated the emotion. We still feel connected even if he isn’t getting what he wants, and he knows it's okay and not scary to have big feelings.
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Child: “I hate you! You’re the worst!”
Parent to self: [Operating Principle 1 - MGI] Takes a deep breath.“My child is upset inside. His outside behavior is not a true indication of how he feels about me. He’s a good kid having a hard time.”
Parent out loud: [Operating Principle 3 - lead with curiosity not judgement] “I do not appreciate that language . . . you must be really upset, maybe about some other things too, to be talking to me like this. I need a moment to calm my body . . . maybe you do too . . . then let’s talk.”
Later once things have calmed down
Parent: [Operating Principle 1 - MGI and Operating Principle 2 - Build connection] “Hey, that was a lot. And yet, you must have had something big happening for you, because I know you don’t like reacting that way. So let’s talk about it—I care more about what was going on for you than I do about the specific reaction. I’m here. Let’s figure it out together.”
Tools to build connection
Building connection is foundational to applying this parenting style, and it’s a skill we can invest in (growth mindset again!). Below are some tools from the book to connect:
PNP Time (Play No Phone time): This is time to play with your child focused 100% on them, without your phone or any other screens to distract you. Let this be child-led; at its simplest, you can narrate what the child is doing. That shows them that you are present and interested. You can also mimic what they are doing and play alongside them. Don’t ask them questions or try to engage them in your own agenda. Kennedy recommends at least 15 mins of PNP time per child per day.
Fill-up game: If they are being difficult, ask if they need a ‘fill-up’ of mummy or daddy. Ask them where they are (as a gauge of connection) using their body and give them big hugs until they are ‘full’. This game can be played proactively if you’re entering a situation that might be tough for the child and feel like taking a moment to connect can help in advance..
Sit on the bench: There is nothing worse than being alone with our feelings. When our child has tough feelings, we can build connection by sitting on the bench with them. This doesn’t mean trying to get them off the bench and feel better, it means sitting with them in their feelings. Let them know that you see them, that it sucks to feel this way, and that you’re glad they are talking to you about it. Lastly, always remind them that you love them.
Be playful and silly: Being playful and silly can get us out of the busyness and seriousness of parenting and build connected moments with our kids. Humour can also be used in difficult situations, like if a child forgot to say thank you, instead of admonishing them, you could say something like, “oh, you seem to have dropped your thank you’s on the floor! Here let me get them for you.”
Wrap up
Emotional resilience and regulation is one of the most critical skills for our child to develop, both to help them to thrive and make good decisions and honestly to make our parenting easier. The better they can manage their emotions, the fewer challenging meltdowns we have.
The hardest part about parenting from the Good Inside principles isn’t knowing the right script to say; it’s handling our own emotions, for example:
Being able to manage our own judgement of ourselves or embarrassment as parents when our child is having a meltdown. It’s helpful to remember that a child having a meltdown isn’t a reflection of our bad parenting but often a developmentally appropriate reaction of a tiny human who is still learning to regulate really big feelings.
Not taking their words or actions personally, and staying focused on the child inside, not their behaviour
Being comfortable with our authority, including letting the child be upset with us as we hold boundaries (particularly hard for people-pleasers).
All of this takes investment in our emotional resilience, which supports them. It’s interesting to note that research shows that therapy for parents is more effective on a child’s behaviour than therapy for the child. A child’s emotional regulation develops through the lens of their parent’s emotional maturity.
If there is one takeaway from all of this, it is that emotional regulation is a growth journey. How our child or we behave today doesn’t have to be how we behave tomorrow. We always get a chance to improve and rewrite the ending, if we have a safe and loving space to do so.