How To Repair the Damage After An Argument | Dr. Becky Kennedy

It's good to apologize when you've hurt someone's feelings, but there's more to "making up" than simply an apology. We're bringing you some of our favorite gems from the archives, as chosen by our staff, and this week we're hearing from parenting expert and psychologist Dr. Becky Kennedy about taking the next step when you've made a mistake. Full Episode: How to Repair the Damage After a Fight | Dr. Becky Kennedy https://www.danharris.com/p/how-to-repair-the-damage-after-a-96b?r=4o5o&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false The Single Most Important Parenting Strategy | Becky Kennedy | TED https://youtu.be/PHpPtdk9rco?si=aNmOGfYkfqoIUWDg Join Dan's online community here http://www.danharris.com/ Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzDGet ready for another Meditation Party at Omega Institute! This in-person workshop brings together Dan with his friends and meditation teachers, Sebene Selassie, Jeff Warren, and for the first time, Ofosu Jones-Quartey. The event runs October 24th-26th. Sign up and learn more at eomega.org/workshops/meditation-party-2025 http://eomega.org/workshops/meditation-party-2025. To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Dan Harris?

  This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

• 0:18Dan Harris?

  Happy Friday, everybody. Today, we're going to talk about a truly game-changing concept. I've found this to be incredibly helpful. It helps me to be way less hateful and judgmental, two deeply-wired tendencies on my part. Just to back up, basically, what we're doing on Fridays these days is we're highlighting some of the golden nuggets from our vast archive. So, the system we've been using this month is that we go to our staff members and ask them, like, "What's still with you?" from the many, many years of this show. And this week, we went to the newest member of our team, Taylor Brandares, who's our Director of Operations, and she mentioned this moment that was also a huge moment for me, in an interview that I did with Dr. Becky Kennedy, who's a rock star in the

• 1:02Dan Harris?

  parenting advice world, but she also has plenty to say for non-parents. And she has this concept called MGI, which I will not spoil for you. I will let Taylor and then Becky explain it to you. But here's how this is going to work. After a quick break, we'll come back and we'll hear from Taylor. She'll describe why this moment was so impactful, and then we'll play the moment from Dr. Becky. Before we do that, just a quick reminder that we're offering bespoke guided meditations for all of our Monday/Wednesday episodes, and we have now decided to offer those indefinitely, so that's cool. For this entire month, the great meditation teacher Kyra Jewell-Lingo has crafted meditations to go with all of our Monday/Wednesday episodes. These are available only to paid subscribers over at danharris.com.

• 1:46Dan Harris?

  This is a Friday episode, so there's no meditation to go with this one. Another thing I want to plug is that I'll be up at the Omega Institute for another installment of meditation party in late October. This is an in-person extravaganza with my friends Seven A. Selassie and Jeff Warren. Also, this time, Afosu Jones-Cortez is coming, like I said, October 24th through 26th, at Omega, which is north of New York City. You can sign up at eomega.org, and I'll put a link in the show notes. Okay, quick break, then we'll hear from Taylor, then Dr. Becky.

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• 3:44Speaker 04

  Hi, I'm Taylor Brandares, Director of Operations, and my staff pick is Dan's conversation with Dr. Becky Kennedy. As a mom of two little boys, a five and a two-year-old, and someone who's trying to just show up better in all areas of life, this episode really landed for me in a personal way. Dr. Becky's idea of the path of repair has genuinely changed how I parent. And that's not in a one-time aha moment kind of way. It's something that I find myself learning and relearning every single day. I remember one moment clearly when my oldest was pushing his little brother around again, and I just snapped. I yelled, and the second it came out of my mouth, I regretted it. It hit me immediately.

• 4:29Speaker 04

  And I realized that I often expect more from him just because he's the oldest, and that's not fair. He is still so little. So instead of brushing it off and just moving on, I circled back a little later, and I said, hey, I got too mad. I didn't like how I handled that. It wasn't some big emotional moment, but I could feel him soften. That's not to say that I didn't tell him what he did was wrong. I absolutely did. But I also knew that I didn't like the way that I had said it. And that's what stuck with me. That's what I took from Dr. Becky. That repair is not about being perfect. It's about being willing to reconnect. I've also started using her idea of most generous interpretation, especially with my husband.

• 5:14Speaker 04

  When things are chaotic and he doesn't immediately jump in, I try to pause and think, maybe he's not ignoring what's going on. Maybe he just needs a beat. Maybe he's in his own head, thinking about something that happened at work or trying to shift gears before he jumps in. And that tiny mental shift, whether it be in parenting or in partnership, has helped me respond instead of react. And that space, even just for a few seconds, has made a real difference. And it's not just as a parent or a partner, but as a person just navigating everyday relationships with a little bit more patience and care.

• 5:53Dan Harris?

  Thank you, Taylor, and welcome again to the team. And I love that you remember that moment because that moment really landed for me. So now let's hear the key part of the interview with Dr. Becky, where she talks about the power of repair. And I should say, just to plug Dr. Becky, that much of this material comes from a great TED Talk she gave, and I'll put a link to that in the show notes. Let's start with a TED Talk. You start the talk by describing a fight with your son. Can you tell that story?

• 6:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, so essentially, I had been cooking dinner for my family. It was a Sunday night and Sunday nights to me, they're just so hard. Like, there's a million things that were undone from the weekend. There's a million things I know I need to do for the week. And so I'm often kind of on edge. So I actually cooked dinner that night, which is not something I usually do. But I did, and then my son kind of walked into the kitchen. And he just looked at the table and he's like, oh, chicken again. And then he kind of like mumbled, like disgusting, like that. And there's so many things I wish I did in that moment, but I didn't. And I just exploded.

• 7:03Speaker 03

  And I think my body was just completely full of frustration at that moment. There was not like one ounce left to metabolize any additional frustration. And so it all came out and I just yelled at him. I was like, what is wrong with you? You're so spoiled, you know? And just kind of went on in this scary reactive way. He then proceeded to say, I hate you. And then he ran out of the kitchen. He ran to his room. He slammed the door. He's alone there. I'm alone in the kitchen. And, you know, that's how the night began.

• 7:42Dan Harris?

  Sounds like good parenting to me. What's the problem?

• 7:46Speaker 03

  Well, you know, and I think this is the focus of the TED Talk. And in that, that moment happened. And I actually think every single person, like if you're a parent, you're like, yeah, yeah, that moment happened in my house. If you're not a parent, you're like, oh, I've said things I didn't want to say. I've used a tone that I am not proud of, right? That is the moment. And then often what we do after the moment, and I did this, we spiral. We usually spiral in one form of blame. And actually, often we seesaw, right? The blame of what's wrong with my kid? My kid is so obnoxious. I'm cooking food. What's wrong with my kid? Or what's wrong with my boss? Or what's wrong with my partner? Like, what's wrong with the other person? And then we seesaw between that and what's wrong with me? Why did I do that?

• 8:30Speaker 03

  I messed up this other person forever. I'm such an asshole, right? And irony, and I think the thing that the talk really speaks to is what does in some ways more damage to another person? Isn't actually the event or the moment of yelling. It's actually what happens in that spiral. Because as we spiral in blaming someone else and/or blaming ourselves, we actually fail to go reconnect and to repair the relationship. And repair, as is the subject of the TED Talk, is actually the most powerful parenting strategy we have. So we miss out on this really, really important overall relationship moment.

• 9:11Dan Harris?

  So mess ups are gonna happen in parenting or any other relationship. It's what you do subsequently, the repair, that is the key.

• 9:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I think there's like a really big picture here, right? I didn't talk about this too much in the TED Talk, but a lot of my thoughts around repair really come from trauma literature and understanding trauma. And we know trauma is not the event that happened. It's the way an event gets processed in your body. I think another way of saying that, I love Gabor Maté's way, says, "Trauma isn't the thing that happens to you. It's kind of what happens inside of you." And so, parents, non-parents, we all can really focus on the event, on the moment. But in every relationship, it's actually more about whether that moment gets stored in our body

• 10:04Speaker 03

  next to aloneness and nobody talking about it, or denial from other people, or whether that moment gets stored next to connection and safety and love and explanation and understanding that actually determines the way the event gets remembered in our body. So yes, those moments happen for everyone. Everyone yells, everyone snaps, everyone says the thing that's imperfect. We all do. And I think what I really want people, you know, to shift in terms of their perspective is rather than focusing on the kind of harmful impact of the event, to really, really be aware

• 10:46Speaker 03

  of the healing, powerful opportunity of the repair that can happen next.

• 10:51Dan Harris?

  This is an interesting reframe because most of us, as you said, use moments of dysregulation to blame other people and beat the shit out of ourselves. But actually, the reframe that I'm hearing from you is, "Oh, these are gonna happen anyway. You might as well view them as an opportunity."

• 11:09Speaker 03

  Completely. And we've inherited those coping mechanisms, right? Like that tendency to blame ourselves or blame someone else. I mean, that's not something we were born with, right? Like, no baby is like in their crib, waking up their parents at 2:00 a.m. and being like, "Oh, like, is that too much? Like, did I really need that feeding? Or I'm such a selfish baby." We're not born with that tendency to blame. And actually, that tendency we all have, which we can talk more about why, but the blaming mentality is a very stuck mentality. There's no movement possible. I'm kind of burrowing back into myself, or I'm focusing all my energy on how awful someone else was. Nobody can make any changes from that place.

• 11:53Speaker 03

  So it's also, and I know you're a pragmatist too, Dan, like, it's just, it's a very ineffective mindset. Because after we yell, most of us like don't want to do that again. And so it's about finding a mindset and a couple of next steps that actually can help us change, rather than keep us stuck in that awful moment.

• 12:12Dan Harris?

  So you talk about the three steps for repair. Let's go through them. Step number one is actually internal, not external.

• 12:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, when I think of three steps to repair, the first step, okay, and I really mean this, is to mess up. And that, I think, is so important. It's helped me personally as a recovering perfectionist so much. Because I remember being in grad school and hearing this line that my professor said, like, in passing. And I remember being like, "I'm not going to hear anything else you said. That thing you said in passing was just so profound." And what she was talking about was how repair is a marker of secure attachment. Kids who had more repairs growing up were more likely to have a secure attachment. Secure attachment basically predicts everything good that we want for our kids. And then she kept talking about attachment. And I was like, "Wait, wait a second, wait a second. No one else is like finding this profound."

• 13:03Speaker 03

  If repair is a marker of secure attachment, that means everyone ruptures? Like, why is no one highlighting this? Because also, if repair helps kids get into secure attachment...

• 13:16Speaker 03

  Then you can't repair if you didn't rupture. It's almost like full permission to mess up. It's like you have to rupture to get good at repair. And so when I think about the three steps of repair and saying step one is rupture, which means yelling, saying the thing you don't want to say, messing up, whatever you want to say, that actually is step one. And the reason that helps me so much is because, and I did this in the kitchen after I yelled at my son. I was like, okay, instead of going to the abyss of I'm an awful parent, I messed up my kid forever. I actually pictured this road. And I'm like, okay, I'm actually on the road to repair. And I know I'm on the road because I just ruptured. If step three is repairing with my kid, step one is rupturing. Like I crushed that step, I'm a third of the way there. Like that's, that's pretty close. Look at my momentum, right?

• 13:59Speaker 03

  And I really do say that to myself, like, wow, look at me. I'm like getting closer. Okay, so that's step one. And if you're thinking about repair, you've already done step one. It's pretty, you know, pretty compelling. Step two is repairing with ourselves. And this is the step that I think too many people were never taught. And it's really the singular reason why so many people would say, yeah, I'm not good at apologizing. And it's not because you're selfish and it's not because you don't have empathy. It's actually probably because you hold yourself with such derision and shame and blame that you literally can't face the reality of this thing you did. So we can never repair with someone else if we can't accept that this not so good thing actually is something that we did.

• 14:42Speaker 03

  And the only way we can accept that we did a kind of bad thing is actually by differentiating how I'm still a good person who did a bad thing. And if I can't repair in that way, which does not mean excusing it. We mix up all those things, okay? If I can't separate for myself, hey, Becky, I'm a good person who did a bad thing. I'm a good parent who loves her kid who yelled. Like really separating what I say is my good identity from my bad behavior. It will be actually completely impossible to repair with my kid. We cannot give out compassion and connection and goodness if we haven't re-accessed those qualities in ourselves. We can't give out what we don't have in. It's just like, I don't know, there's like physics, I think it's just not possible.

• 15:27Speaker 03

  Um, it's actually not physics, um, but it's something. And then the last step is actually repairing with your kid. And this is where I think getting into some of the details matter because I think a lot of us probably have received apologies that didn't feel good. And that is not what I'm talking about. A repair is not, "Sorry, I yelled, but if you didn't complain about dinner, it wouldn't have happened." That is not a repair. And if my son had said, "Yeah, like, I really didn't like when you yelled at me," if I say, "Yeah, I'm sorry you feel that way," that is that classic line should be thrown in the garbage. It is not a repair. A repair is naming what happened, taking responsibility for your behavior, acknowledging the impact it had on someone else, and if you really want to go for bonus points, kind

• 16:11Speaker 03

  of like sharing what you would do differently the next time or what you're working on. And that sounds very different than, "I'm sorry, but if you didn't do that, it wouldn't have happened." Sounds more like, "Hey, I yelled at you in the kitchen, and it's never your fault when I yell. I'm sure that felt really scary. And, look, I was frustrated, but I'm working on managing my frustration, so it doesn't come out as a yell."

• 16:34Dan Harris?

  Does repair always involve an abject apology and admission of fault? What if it's more complicated? What if there are, I mean, your kid wasn't being awesome in that moment, and sometimes when we lose our shit with other people, they're being worse than that?

• 16:49Speaker 03

  100%. So there's a lot of nuance here. So there's a couple of things, because I know, you know, as a parent, you're like, "But, like, if he didn't say that, you wouldn't have yelled. Like, isn't he kind of responsible?" Or, you know, you say in a partnership, "But my wife said this kind of not-so-nice thing." So like, she kind of did make me snap back at her, okay? But here's, here's one of the things I think about here. Number one, we confuse our right to feel frustration with our right to express frustration in an angry, disrespectful way. They're two very different things. The right to have a feeling and our responsibility to manage that feeling so we can show up as a respectful person, especially in the relationships we care about.

• 17:34Speaker 03

  Those are two very different things. My son saying that, or maybe, let's say, my partner constantly being late for dinners? Yeah, of course, I feel frustrated. And of course, that relates to my son saying he didn't like dinner, or my husband being late. That is completely different from feeling like I have a right to express that frustration in any way I choose to express it. I think it's so important to differentiate that. So that's number one. Number two, when parents say this to me, they say, yeah, well, I said to my kid, look, if you just listened to me and got ready in time, I wouldn't have yelled. Or if you didn't complain about dinner, you wouldn't have gotten yelled at. Okay, this is what I say, okay? Because what we modeled to our kid is what they will do in the future. Like, Dan, I imagine being at my son's house, I don't know, however many years from now,

• 18:18Speaker 03

  let's say he's married, who knows if he will be. And I hear him say, let's say to his partner, look, I'm sorry I yelled at you, but if you had just remembered to bring toilet paper home, it wouldn't have happened. I'm sorry I yelled at you, but if the dinner you made actually tasted good, it wouldn't have happened. To me, it's like literally cringe-worthy if my kid would think that that is an acceptable way to talk to someone. And I don't know any adult who'd be like, yeah, I would feel pretty awesome if I heard my kid talk to some of their loved ones in that way. And if we don't want our kids to become adults who communicate with others in that way, we just can't communicate with our kids in that way and expect it to be any different. There's also like a bigger picture here if we zoom out. I realized I'm very, very big on personal agency, right?

• 19:03Speaker 03

  And I always say to parents, like, what's going on with your kid isn't your fault. I believe that. That is like a firm, firm belief of mine. Another equally firm belief that I just sit side by side is, okay, so what's going on with my kid isn't my fault. I am the adult, I'm the leader in the room, and so it is not only my responsibility, I do have an opportunity to think about what I could do to shift a dynamic in the home. Because when we shift something in a system, everyone else in the system actually has to make a shift to accommodate. And so if we give that example of, let's say instead, I yell at my kid every morning because they're never ready for school. And the truth is, if they did put on their shoes, I wouldn't yell. I guess that's true. But to me, it's very disempowering. It's very disempowering as an adult to think,

• 19:47Speaker 03

  you know, if my four-year-old just listened to me on time, I wouldn't yell. Like, I am gonna put faith in my toddler's change in behavior for me to show up as the adult I want to show up as? That would be like the CEO of a big company saying to their associates, you know, if you all showed up in time, I would be a better leader. I don't think anyone wants that CEO. You want a CEO who's like, hey, here's what I'm gonna do from the top because I actually have the most power in this situation. And there's a really important thing that happens. And this happens in my house all the time. When I do say to my kid something like, hey, listen, something like, I'm sorry I yelled. The mornings have been really hectic. I'm frustrated. I'm working on managing that. I always give myself 24 hours later.

• 20:30Speaker 03

  I always say there has to be 24 hours after a repair. Of course, I'm a pragmatist. Then I'll say to my kid, I won't say, now, remember how I apologized to you yesterday? I didn't actually mean it because you're actually just really annoying in the morning. That definitely is not something I recommend. But what I'll say is something from seeing my kid on my same team. I'd say, hey, mornings are so hard. And like, I ask you to put your shoes on. You don't. I ask again. You don't. And then it gets to the point where things feel really, really bad. And that's on me. And I have to imagine you also want mornings to be smoother. I wonder what we could do to just make mornings smoother? And when kids are approached from a place of collaboration rather than control or criticism, it shouldn't be shocking that they're actually willing to collaborate. And they're often very willing to apologize.

• 21:14Speaker 03

  I can't even tell you how many times, 24 hours later after a repair, my five-year-old came and said, you know, and I really didn't listen to you, and I'm sorry. Like, and I think this goes back to like this whole idea that drives everything I talk about, that kids are good inside, that if we set up conditions for them to thrive, they don't have to be tricked or sticker charred or time outed or punished. A lot of that does come out when we lead with a similar generosity.

• 21:45Dan Harris?

  Yeah, so I'm thinking with my son, you know, if it takes me five times to ask him to do something simple, I might say, "Look, there's gonna be a consequence if I have to ask you again, and you might lose five minutes of your iPad time," or something like that.

• 21:57Speaker 03

  Great, great, great. And again, this is just how we've all been raised to raise our kids. This is just like everywhere. So we've all been so influenced by so many ideas that I believe are false, that are like almost underlying that. Okay, so to me, the thing that's missing about a punishment is, again, if I'm one for effectiveness, is to some degree, I have to believe, "Okay, my kid's not listening." And if I kind of give him a punishment, if I basically deliver him negative feelings after, that will de facto, the next time, help him listen. And then we'll be having better listening in our house. Okay, first of all, most people I talk to who are on a schedule of a lot of punishments, they're like, "Yeah, that's like not really happening."

• 22:40Speaker 03

  I just like, I don't know, I'll keep saying punishments to my kids. It's not really changing. But I don't even understand the timeline of it. Like, okay, something happened so that my kid isn't listening. Like, there's a reason before, then the not listening happens, and I'm delivering a kind of random consequence after. Which means, like, on some level, I assume the next time, the best way to help my kid change behavior is he's gonna be not listening, and he's gonna be like, "Wait a second, wait a second. If I don't listen, in 10 minutes, I'm going to get my iPad time shortened, and I don't want that, so, knowing that, I'm going to listen." Like, I don't know about your kid, I just, I don't even know most adults who think that way.

• 23:22Speaker 03

  "Wait a second, if I yell at my husband here, he will be upset, so let me take a deep breath and actually talk to him in a more respectful way." Punishments after, to me, just don't even make sense as a way to change what would happen before. So I'm like, "Why don't we think about what's happening before?" Plus, when you punish a kid... More than anything else, a kid will not remember what we did or what we say. They will remember the version of themselves we reflect back to them. In child development, and I feel like it's something every parent needs to know, we're a kid's mirror. We show them who they are, and that is how they form their identity. And so often, I'm not saying this with your son, kids who kind of have, quote, "a lot of bad behavior," over and over, basically their set of interactions shows them,

• 24:07Speaker 03

  "You're a bad kid. You're a bad kid, go to your room. You're selfish." We even say these things to these kids. And like, in some ways, we're reinforcing an identity that we want our kid to move away from. That also doesn't make sense. So the reason I don't think punishment makes sense isn't because I'm a softie. Like, no one who knows me would say I'm soft. That's the last word someone would say. It just, not only threatens your relationship with your kid, threatens their self-esteem, but also, as a pragmaticist, it just like, actually doesn't even work to change behavior. So again, if we get to that gap, I do something, and to me, this is my go-to strategy, the idea of good insight to action. It's called MGI, Most Generous Interpretation. What is my most generous interpretation of why my son isn't listening? Most punishments are based on an LGI. We don't realize, why would we punish a kid? Because we're like, "They could listen, they just don't want to do it, they don't respect me." Right?

• 24:52Speaker 03

  It's very easy to come up with the least generous interpretation. But if we come up with a most generous interpretation, which is a muscle we need to build, most people, when they start, they're like, "I couldn't even come up with one." Doesn't mean you're cold, it probably means no one used a most generous interpretation with you when you were struggling. But I might come up with this. There's something about leaving and going to school that is hard. I might say to myself, "Okay, if I was messing around in my house, and my husband's like, 'Becky, let's leave! Becky, let's leave! Becky, let's leave! I asked you five times, let's leave!'" Why would I not listen? I'd be like, number one, I would just find that really annoying, okay? Number two, he's probably yelling on the other side of the house while he's like, on his phone. I don't know, maybe the state of our relationship isn't like, that great in that moment. Maybe I actually don't know what leaving entails. There could be so many things for a kid.

• 25:37Speaker 03

  Maybe they actually don't understand the order of operations, like, "Where's my stuff?" Maybe they do feel like, "Hey, my parents on their phone the whole time, they're totally disconnected to me, they're just kind of barking orders." Maybe they feel like, "I hate school." Maybe they feel like, "I have no control and agency in any area of my life, so at least this is one area where I can push back to just feel like my own independent person." And I just want to say, none of these things, which come from being curious, means the behavior is okay.

• 26:00Speaker 03

  But if we don't understand where a problem behavior comes from, we cannot successfully intervene to change the behavior. It would be like trying to teach someone how to make a basketball shot without understanding, like, is it their positioning? Is it their hands? Is it that they're not strong enough? You have to understand the behavior. We confuse this too, especially in America. An attempt to understand a behavior feels like it's condoning a behavior. It's bizarre. It's just not the same thing. If you want to teach a kid how to read, you have to understand if it's a phonics issue or a frustration tolerance issue. It doesn't mean it's okay that they're not reading. It actually means you're trying to help them read. So the reason I don't like punishments is it does none of that. It basically says, I think you're a bad kid. I'm not actually teaching you a skill. Because if I have a most generous interpretation down,

• 26:45Speaker 03

  for example, I might say, it's actually just overwhelming to get to school. I might say to my kid, mornings have been hard. I always ask you to put things on. You're not listening. But here's the thing, we're on the same team. You're a good kid. I'm gonna do something. I'm just gonna like put on a little chart by your front door. And I'm gonna also put your socks in like a basket by the door because I know sometimes it's hard to remember. I'm gonna do it for mine too. And it's just gonna say, water bottle, put it in your backpack, socks, shoes, out the door by 7:45. We're gonna see if that helps. And the other thing I'm gonna do, and I'm gonna say this to myself, is I'm gonna actually put my phone down for the 20 minutes of the morning. I'm gonna leave it in my room. I'm actually like talk to my kid, be present. I'm gonna see how those things go. And none of that happens when you punish your kid. And I think it's easy to say, oh, so it's because I'm on my phone

• 27:29Speaker 03

  that my kid isn't listening? To me, that's just like the most, again, least generous interpretation even of this approach. It's actually something very different, which is my kid's behavior has a reason. And I'm the leader of the family. And so if I want to help my kid figure things out and change the system, leadership always comes from the top. And so doing that little bit of reflection strengthens your relationship with your kid. And I would bet with an, and I really mean this, the change is so fast. People are like, my kid started listening in two days. Like literally, I took your listening workshop, two days later they were listening about like everything. It's just, it can be so fast when the approach actually makes sense.

• 28:06Dan Harris?

  Let me just see if I can restate that. Your approach to getting kids to listen to you is start with the MGI, the most generous interpretation, and then engineer a solution from there.

• 28:20Speaker 03

  Yes, that's exactly right. Engineer a solution that's always based in the thought that like, I have a good kid. So something must just feel off. We often don't think about kids as humans. We don't. We're like the same needs, right? Because Dan, if you were witnessing in my house, if I was like, sitting on the couch, reading a book, when my three kids were finally asleep, which like never happens, but let's say I had some glorious evening and it happened. And then, my husband was like, hey Becky, can you go get me a glass of water in the kitchen? And he was sitting on the couch too. If I was like, oh, like no, I'm like, I'm reading my book, or something. And he was like, you have a listening problem and I'm shortening your iPad time for today. I feel like you, I don't imagine you Dan, being like, Becky, I think you have a listening

• 29:05Speaker 03

  problem. I think you'd be like, your husband's an asshole. Like that's, I think that's what you'd say to me. Like that's gaslighting. If anyone has a problem, he has a problem. I mean, you didn't do what he wanted you to do. I guess you didn't comply, but it's pretty aggressive to say that you have a listening problem. Meanwhile, had me and my husband very close that day and, I don't know, I was talking about something and I felt like he was listening. And he would put his phone down and he's like, wow, that sounds hard, instead of saying like, it's not a big deal, or, right? And then he asked me, like, I don't know, I bet I would do it, because I felt close to him. Right? We listen to people because we feel close to them, or because we feel scared of them. It's the only reason we listen to people.

• 29:48Speaker 03

  And, we do not want to wire fear next to love, for a million bajillion reasons with our kids. So the only good option we have for our kids to listen, is that they feel connected to us. And we have to work to make that happen.

• 30:00Dan Harris?

  So no fear is ever good? Sometimes I feel like...

• 30:04Speaker 03

  It's better to be feared than loved?

• 30:05Dan Harris?

  No, no, I don't feel that, ever. But, there are, you know, once a month, like, and this is probably just me being shitty, but, once a month, once every quarter, I don't know, once on a blue moon, I feel like being a little Old Testament can wake my son up out of just being super stubborn and non-compliant. I think sometimes it's not that deep. And they need to, and this is maybe delusion, so I'm saying it out loud for you to take potshots at it.

• 30:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:39Dan Harris?

  Most of the time, yes, there's interesting psychological currents. The MGI makes a ton of sense. I'm going to use that. But sometimes it's not that deep. They're just testing the limits. Or there's something going on with his mom and he's messing with her and manipulating her. And I'm just like, dude, in the car now.

• 30:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, first of all, nothing about my parenting approach, nothing about Good Inside, again, his like, soft. It's not like, always like, wait, but like, let me use the most generous interpretation. Like, no, I would say our approach is 50% connection through validation and empathy, and 50% connection through boundaries, real boundaries, sturdy boundaries, firm boundaries that come from embodying your appropriate authority. I think we misunderstand fear interactions from boundaried interactions. Most of the time, we put fear into our kids. It really comes from a place of desperation as a parent. And kids smell that. Like, when we yell, "Go to the car!"

• 31:39Speaker 03

  Like, we're really like, I don't know what to do. Like, I really don't have anything left. I'm feeling kind of desperate right now. And so, first of all, like, again, not all is lost. Like, no one, everyone like, says stuff to their kids. Me too. And I don't mean to insinuate, there's always time for processing. I actually think most parents don't understand what real boundaries are. It's probably one of the biggest thing we help parents with, because boundaries have to be an equal part to parenting as like, all the kind of, quote, warm stuff. To me, boundaries also are from a place of warmth, because they're from a place of protection.

• 32:13Dan Harris?

  Thanks again to Dr. Becky Kennedy. Check her out. She's got books, she's got a thriving social media feed and an app. She's really great. And thank you to Taylor for suggesting that excerpt. We'll put a link to the full episode in the show notes. And like I said, Becky's got a lot going on. She's got a website, goodinside.com, where you can dive into her work. Speaking of websites, danharris.com. If you become a member, you can get guided meditations that come with all of our Monday, Wednesday episodes, and also live guided meditation sessions and Q and A with me on the regular. And don't forget to sign up for another live edition of Meditation Party by in-person workshop at the Omega Institute. There's a link in the show notes. Finally, I want to thank everybody who worked so hard to make this show.

• 32:56Dan Harris?

  Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer, and Nick Thorburn of the Van Islands, Rodarfina.

• 33:28Speaker 05

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