Good Inside with Dr. Becky
Hosted by Dr. Becky Kennedy
Yale professor, scientist, and podcast host, Dr. Laurie Santos, joins Dr. Becky to talk about happiness.
7,739 words · 2 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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I often talk about kind of these not so great feelings as the kind of dashboard on your car where like your tire light, your engine light comes on. And you know, is your engine light coming on bad? You know, it's just information, but it's kind of a pain in the butt. There's something you have to do at that point. You got to take the car in. But if you don't take the car in, if you don't listen to that information, then you know, your car is going to die on the highway. And I like this analogy for a couple of reasons. One is like, it gets to this point that you were making about the neutrality of different kinds of emotions. It also tells us something about what we need to do with negative emotions, which is like, you don't necessarily have to deal with it immediately. Like, if the engine light goes on, you'd have to like immediately pull off the next exit of the highway, but you got to schedule some time to kind of work on it.
I just want my kid to be happy. Why isn't my kid happier? How do I make sure my kid becomes a happy adult? The topic of happiness is honestly one of my favorite topics to talk about, mostly because I think there's a big difference between kind of optimizing for happiness in the moment and optimizing for happiness long term. I know that's confusing, right? If we make our kids happy today, won't they become happy adults? Well, I have some thoughts on this, but I wanted to bring in one of the most known experts on the topic of happiness. Today on the podcast, I have the incredible, lovely, brilliant, warm, thoughtful Dr. Laurie Santos.
She's a Yale professor. She's the host of the Happiness Lab podcast, and she helps people improve their wellbeing with the science of happiness. By the end of today's episode, you're going to get a couple of things. You're going to rethink what happiness is. You're going to also have a new perspective on those moments when you want to intervene and just make something a little easier for your kid. And you're going to actually have an arc or kind of a road, a pathway, for how to actually make sure our kids feel confident, confident and happy. I'm Dr. Becky, and this is Good Inside. We'll be back right after this.
I don't know about you, but by the time September rolls around, I am ready for cozy season. That's when I start thinking about Thanksgiving plans and travel that allows me to spend quality time with my family. I'm thinking board games, changing leaves, maybe even a living room with a fireplace where we can read our books together. Maybe you're the kind of family that loves an adventure and wants a cabin in the mountains somewhere. Or maybe you're dreading the end of summer and need to look forward to staying at a home on the beach with a view of the ocean. Or maybe you love to cook, so you want to stay in a home with your dream kitchen. Wherever your travel plans take you, it's the perfect time to get a little reset together as a family before the holiday season and craziness begins. But here's something you may not have considered. If you're planning to go away this year, leaving your own space empty,
you can list it on Airbnb while you're away to give another family some quality time in a home away from home. You get to make use of your space, and you can earn some extra income to put toward your family's future travel plans. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com/host.
So I'm going to say the word happiness. And you are one of the experts on the science of happiness. And so maybe we can just jump in with what is happiness? What is Dr. Laurie Santos's definition of happiness?
Oh, my gosh, we're going to have such a long conversation on this. But, but yeah, I'll keep, I'll keep it short. I mean, so social scientists tend to think about happiness as having two parts, kind of being happy in your life and being happy with your life. So being happy in your life is that you have a decent amount of like positive emotions. You have joy and laughter and maybe a good ratio of those positive emotions to negative emotions. We don't, we don't want to get rid of negative emotions completely. We might talk about this, but you want to have a decent ratio of the positive stuff. That's sort of being happy in your life. But being happy with your life is the idea that you have a sense of meaning and purpose. You feel satisfied with your life. Another way to think about it is like how you, how you feel in your life and how you think about your life, the sort of affective parts and the cognitive parts.
And, and I love that definition because I think, you know, sometimes we can get off on one, but be okay on another. You know, I think any parent who thinks back to like, you know, when they were in the newborn days, they're like lots of meaning. You're so satisfied with your life. This is rich sense of purpose, but you know, nobody's sleeping and there's dirty diapers. And you're kind of off track a little bit. I think the best case scenario is that we're bumping both of those up at once, where you have a life where you're experiencing joy, calm, like laughter, fun, but also feel like you're doing that in a way that gives you meaning and purpose.
Yeah. Okay, so I guess that leads me to my next question. What do you think a lot of people misunderstand about happiness?
Yeah, I think the biggest misconception is that, well, one big misconception is that it's out of our control. Right? You're kind of genetically born either the happy kind of person or a down in the dumps person. And, you know, that's it's kind of luck of the draw. But so much research suggests that our happiness is something that we can take action on. We can kind of build it up. We can sort of do things, whether it's with our behavior or our mindset to sort of feel a little bit happier. I think a different misconception, though, is just that happiness is something that is kind of like hard to build up unless you fix your circumstances, right? We think, okay, fine, I can build happiness, but to do that, I have to hit the lottery. I have to change my job. I have to switch my partner. Like, all these life circumstances have to come together in a particular way to make me happier.
And the research really shows that this is a misconception in part because it is true that if you have really dire circumstances, like, you know, if you're living as a refugee, you can't put food on your table, yes, of course, changing your circumstances will matter for feeling better in your life and with your life. But for the vast majority of people listening right now, circumstance changes probably won't have as big of an effect as you think. You'd be better off focusing on changing your own personal behaviors, your mindset, your thought pattern, your kind of standard like CBT stuff, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy, have changed the way you think and the way you feel. That works better than like, oh, if I can only switch my job and get another $100,000 a year, I'd be way happier.
Interesting. Another, another moment, Laura, you and I can talk about CBT, because I would probably say some other stuff would be helpful, but we could put that, we could put that to the side for now.
You know, one of the things that I also think people kind of misperceive about happiness, and I really want to get your opinion on this, because obviously I think a lot about kids and parenting. And I think there's this difference, but you tell me, between optimizing for our kids' happiness in the moment versus setting our kids up to experience happiness down the line. And I think the easiest thing is like, okay, so I'm going to optimize for my kids being happy now and then, they'll be happier later. And I actually have found And I haven't done true academic research on this, but that actually it's the opposite.
Now, let me just be clear because people always go to extremes. Oh, so I should make my kid miserable and then they'll be happy? No, no, I've never said that. Please don't quote me on that. Okay, no. But when you optimize for their happiness, short term, meaning my kid wasn't invited, I don't know, to a birthday party. Okay, well, we'll have our own party and we'll invite all the kids that person invited. So no one even goes to their party. I don't know, we say like crazy things sometimes as parents. I do too. Or, I don't know, my kid is like, oh, I don't want to go with you on that errand. And like they're whining. So I'm like, you know what? Forget it. Okay, I'll make sure I have a sitter that day and you'll be happier. Okay. So if I'm optimizing for happiness short term, I have found that those kids end up so anxious later on and relatively unhappy.
Like, is there truth to this? Or like, how would you think about that?
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of truth to this. I think so often parents, I mean, for all good reasons, right? You know, we need to change childcare, et cetera. Right? But like, so this is not beating up on parents at all. But I think so often parents are optimizing for like Thursday night at 6:00 PM, not thinking of the consequences of what they're intervening or placating or something will do to, you know, every Thursday night beyond that or five years from now, 10 years from now and so on. And, and we know that this kind of like intensive parenting winds up having some negative consequences down the line, especially things like intervening for kids, right? When you solve their boredom immediately, so they kind of get over boredom super fast. It makes it kind of harder for them to kind of soothe themselves later on.
When you intervene, especially in academics for older kids on things like homework or help them remember their backpack or remember their lunch. All these things are kind of solving for the moment, but not helping kids in the long run kind of learn how to do it.
I think that's what I'm talking about. And, and just because I think, I imagine someone listening, okay, so if my kid's upset and I'm not just trying to convince them to be happy, like, and I'm also not trying to like double down on their misery, what do I do? And I think, I think about this image, and I'm curious, related to happiness, where like, we have a lot of feelings. I personally don't call feelings positive or negative. I know a lot of people do, just because, I don't know, I just feel like they are. Like, they're all information.
Totally.
And so, to say something is like negative information. I'd be like, I don't know, it's just data. Like, it's our body trying to tell us something. And I don't know, I picture in like a jar. So let's say in the jar is disappointment, frustration, excitement, happiness, joy, pride, like, all of them. And then, like, obviously, we'd all want our kids, when they get older, to have, like, happiness be like a relatively large part of that jar. Me too. That's what I'm, you know, hoping for. But to some degree, I feel like these, these balls of feelings are all floating in this jar, taking up different amounts of space. But the coping skills for each feeling is kind of like the container for each.
And if a feeling, a ball feeling, in this mic image, doesn't have a strong container, then it would end up taking up a lot more space in the container. It's like an egg without a shell. And so, when I think about, how do we optimize for happiness? My thought is, we need to help kids develop really good containers, kind of coping skills, for all the harder feelings. That ends up creating more space in your jar when you're older, for the experience of happiness. But we can't like, get those uncomfortable feelings out of the jar. Like, we're never gonna, I don't know, like, you know, kill them off, right?
Which is a good thing, right? I love your analogy of this idea of kind of not-so-great feelings as, like, information. In, in my course with Yale students, I often talk about kind of these not-so-great feelings as the kind of dashboard on your car. Where like, your tire light, your engine light comes on. And, you know, is your engine light coming on bad? You know, it's just information, but it's kind of a pain in the butt. There's something you have to do at that point, you gotta take the car in. But if you don't take the car and if you don't listen to that information, then you know, your car is going to die on the highway. And I like this analogy for a couple of reasons. One is like, it gets to this point that you were making about the neutrality of different kinds of emotions. It also tells us something about what we need to do with negative emotions, which is like, you don't necessarily have to deal with it immediately.
Like, if the engine light goes on, you'd have to like immediately pull off the next exit of the highway, but you gotta schedule some time to kind of work on it. And I think so many of the negative emotions that parents go through have this feature, right? You know, a big one is overwhelm, where parents are just like, I can't even, you know, that's like your engine light coming on, saying, you need a break, you need to ask for help, you need to take something off your plate. And, and it doesn't have to be right then at dinner, when the kids are screaming and you feel that moment of overwhelm, but it has to be sometime soon, right? You can't kind of let your, your emotional car, as it were, go into disarray. And so, yeah, I love this sort of analogy of like, what we need to be doing is to recognize these emotions, not push them away, but come up with great coping strategies, you know,
for, you know, for parents themselves, but then also to help our kids cope with those emotions. So they can navigate them and use the information correctly when it comes up.
I love that. I really love that. I mean, I'm like a lover of metaphors, just such a sucker for metaphors. And yours is so beautiful, because if we think about childhood and adulthood, obviously, you know, kids are driving a car. We know our five year olds aren't driving, but let's pretend that they were, in your dashboard metaphor. And if their engine light goes on, or it's again, it's not like a red, but there's some yellow thing. And a kid learns, when a yellow light goes on, my parent picks me up and puts me in a new car.
Okay?
Yeah.
And I don't know what happened to that old car, but it's someone else's problem, right? Or my parent comes and they're so worried about me being worried, that they put duct tape over the light.
No, us parents, we're all doing the best we can with the resources we have available. And I think sometimes when we see our kids distressed, we do kind of take them and give them a new car or duct tape the light. We think cognitively it's to help them. I think it's actually because we're distressed and we just want to stop feeling.
I know from my experience, I'm like, I just don't want to deal with this moment. But then what will you end up doing is you train your kid to disregard engine lights.
So then they become an adult who, when an engine light comes on, they, they go buy a new car or, or try to think that's the only thing they can do. Or they put duct tape over it, which I think if we fast forward and make that metaphor literal, we'd say, that's not useful. Like, why don't you pay attention to bad things? But then I picture a 25 year old saying, like, but, but you, you trained me not to. Like what, um, not what, how, how do I make that switch? I'm just supposed to be happy all the time, remember? But is that something you find too, that as parents or as adults, we have a hard time also not being happy? Like, we try to exit into happiness?
Totally. I mean, I think adults, as adults, we have to work on our distress tolerance, but we especially have to work on our kind of distress tolerance for our kids' distress tolerance, right? In so many different domains. And I think, I think, again, this is not, this is parents trying to do the best with the circumstances they have and the culture they've inherited. The culture parents have inherited tells parents, you know, you must be enriching your kids at every moment of the day. If they experience boredom, you, parent, have done something wrong. And so it makes sense that parents are feeling distressed at this. First, it's just like, your kid's not feeling good. So that doesn't feel awesome as a parent. But beyond that, that increases parent guilt and parent shame and parent like, oh gosh, I'm doing something wrong, right? And so I think it makes total sense that parents are experiencing this distress.
But the problem, as you've noted, is then that makes parents sort of solve for Thursday at 6:00 PM. Right? Versus thinking about, you know, how do I want my kids to kind of navigate their engine lights, you know, in decades and years to come?
I don't know about you, but by the time September rolls around, I am ready for cozy season. That's when I start thinking about Thanksgiving plans and travel that allows me to spend quality time with my family. I'm thinking board games, changing leaves, maybe even a living room with a fireplace where we can read our books together. Maybe you're the kind of family that loves an adventure and wants a cabin in the mountains somewhere. Or maybe you're dreading the end of summer and need to look forward to staying at a home on the beach with a view of the ocean. Or maybe you love to cook, so you want to stay in a home with your dream kitchen. Wherever your travel plans take you, it's the perfect time to get a little reset together as a family before the holiday season and craziness begins. But here's something you may not have considered. If you're planning to go away this year, leaving your own space empty, you can list
it on Airbnb while you're away to give another family some quality time in a home away from home. You get to make use of your space and you can earn some extra income to put toward your family's future travel plans. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com/host.
You know, I just want to come out and say, I love when my kids are bored. Like, I get a sick happiness when they're bored. Like, there are times when they're like, why can't you get me this thing on Amazon? It's not even that expensive, or something. And in my brain, I used to be like, oh, like, my kid's upset. Like, I guess I could get that. Or I'll justify it. Like, it is educational. I don't know, whatever I say to myself. And I've, I've realized that what helps me tolerate that moment is I have to go so extreme. I'm actually like, this is gonna be my best parenting moment. Not my most enjoyable one, but actually, my kids' whole life, they're gonna have moments of wanting and not having. My kids' whole life, they're gonna be at work one day, they're gonna like, maybe finish
a project or find a project hard and just be like, I'm bored, I don't know what to do. Do I want my kid to look for immediate satisfaction? Or do I want my kid to say, I actually have like, built up an arsenal of skills to manage through this? And wait, Becky, in this moment, even though it's like, really annoying, I can help my kid build that skill by, by probably doing what I think is one of my favorite and least used parenting strategies. Okay? And everyone listening, get ready to write this down.
Doing nothing. Okay. Doing nothing. Because parents often say to me, Lori, they're like, so I'm just supposed to do nothing? As if it's like so minimal. And I was like, no, no, I want to do capital D, capital N. Do nothing. It's an official parenting strategy. When my kid is bored, I am going to say, oh, I get it. It is boring. Maybe I'll say something like, I have a feeling you'll figure something out. I don't know. But I might just choose to do nothing. That's like the parenting strategy. I feel like it's the most underutilized parenting strategy. What do you think about that?
Oh, I agree. I agree completely. And you know, there's, there's literally a period of it. It's especially about intervening in like these academic contexts, where if you can get parents to do nothing, their kids wind up succeeding better later, persisting more later. This is some lovely work by Julia Leonard, one of my colleagues at Yale. But she finds that it's so hard for parents to do nothing. Because our instinct, you know, we're caregivers, right? That caregiving instinct is when you see distress, you act to sort of fix that distress. And it's so hard to remember that the way you fix distress is to think about not this distress in the moment, but distress in the future. And that do nothing strategy, what it's doing is, you know, take the case of boredom. Your kid's feeling a little boredom. You do nothing. They have to find their own way out of it. They get one little rep in of that distress tolerance of dealing with their own boredom.
And if you give them, you know, more and more reps of that over time, like they're doing a kind of boredom reduction workout that will help them get stronger doing that later on. It's kind of like a little distress tolerance gym that we can put our kids into whenever we do nothing and just don't act to kind of fix everything for them.
It is, and I just want to validate what you're saying. It is hard. Like, it's really hard. I remember, you know, thinking with, you know, as my kids got older, I really don't want to be the water bottle rememberer the rest of their life. It's like, there's a lot of jobs I want to keep as my kids get older. I want to be there for them, one chat. Remembering the water bottle, I just like, I feel like that's really not a job. I'm like dying to do forever. But I remember one day saying to myself, am I working myself out of this job? Or am I continuing to lock myself into this job? And I was like, shoot, Becky, I am, I've got to change my approach. And then I was like, it's actually not that sophisticated. All I'm going to say to my son today, hey, from this day forward, I'm not going to put your water bottle in your bag for you.
And here is actually, for everyone listening, the same intervention can either be done from a place of kind of like anger and resentment, or from a place of capability empowerment. And it will have a completely different impact based on the intention, because your kid feels the intention. So I could say to my kid, um, look, you're 10. Like, you don't need your mom to put your water bottle in your backpack. And so I'm not doing it anymore. And the reason I can say that like that is because that, that was my first attempt. It wasn't so successful. Okay, I ended up preparing. I was like, wow, that was, you know, you know, let me take this back. I feel like you're capable of remembering your own water bottle. That's really what it is. Like, I think you're capable of that. And every time I do it for you, in some ways, I'm telling you that you're not capable.
And so the reason I'm not doing it is because I think you can remember. In fact, maybe we could think of a strategy. How you, how could you remember? What, and my son literally said to me in that conversation, maybe I could put a Post-it up in the kitchen. I was like, I was like, that's going to help you more going forward in life than, than whatever you're learning at school. Like, you just figured out how to help yourself. And he did. And I remember the first time he forgot his water bottle, and I saw it in the kitchen. I feel like it was one of my hardest parenting moments.
Because you're like, I know what I can do to fix this. I could be the savior. I could fly in with my wings and see what I've done.
No, I know, exactly. And I remember saying to myself, Becky, I'm gonna, I'm not just doing nothing. Because that makes it, um, I am choosing the hardest parenting strategy right now. I'm a strong parent. I'm going to choose to do nothing. Because in anything in life, and I think this relates to happiness, right? Like, The good stuff always comes after the hard stuff.
It's never like the good leads to the good, the easy leads to the happy. It's always like, and so I was like, this is the hard. He's gonna go and be like, shoot, I forgot my water bottle. And I don't have to like make that happen. I'm not gonna like hide his water bottle, but that experience is going to naturally make him, I don't know, write another post-it on the door. Right? And it was, it was so hard, but I, but I do think it was so important.
Totally. And I think this is what we forget is that, you know, if you think about the moments in your life when you've learned something, it's usually not because somebody told you to do it. Like if anything, when people tell me to do things, like my spouse tells me like, oh, remember this thing? I get almost like a resistance where I like, don't, almost don't even want to remember, even if it's good for me, just because like, don't tell me what to do, right?
We forget our kids are like that too. But when you mess up and like you actually face the consequences of messing up, like you'll usually learn something, one-shot learning, like really, really fast. Um, I had this lovely conversation with a parent we're working with in this Yale parenting class that we're working on right now. And she told this lovely story where she was always paranoid that her son, you know, around like 13 years old would just forget to charge his phone. So it was every day, did you charge your phone? Yeah, mommy charged your phone. Did you charge your phone? And that was in part because they live in the city. He was gonna take the subway and she's like, if you don't have your phone charged, you won't be able to, you know, figure your way back. Anyway, fateful day comes, despite her reminding him a million times, phone's not charged. He gets on the bus. He doesn't have a way to figure out where he's home.
And what she said was the sad thing is if he had even just like a tiny bit of charge and he called her at that moment, she would have been like, get off the bus. Like, I'll come find you. She would have swooped in and rescued him. But he had no charge. And so what did he do? He had to just use the skills that he had to figure it out. He talked to the bus driver. The bus driver explained how he gets back to his house. He had this fun conversation with the bus driver. He gets home and she was like, two things happened. What is, he was so excited to have figured it out on his own. But the second thing is she's like, that was three months ago and I have never had to tell him to charge his phone ever again. Cause now he just like knows the importance of charging it. Right? And like, you could see that of like, oh my gosh, this mom. Who let her kid, you know, go on this spot, but like, no, no, now he's learned, right? So as a parent, you've helped your kid, but you've also helped yourself.
Now this poor mom doesn't have to like remind her 13 year old every single day about the phone. It's like they can move on to other things that don't feel naggy, that don't cause resistance. Like it's just such a win win for everyone when we let our kids screw up. But the moment of screwing up, that's hard, you know? If she had, if he, she, he had called her, there's no way she would have been like, nope, sort it out on your own. I've told you, she should have like the ultimately be better, but it's so hard to let your kids screw up. When you're kind of watching this screw up happen in real time.
It's so hard. I think knowing the arc of something is helpful to me as a parent, like totally differently. One of my kids used to always wake up in the morning, be like, I'm not going to school today. Okay. And when I realized that's just part of that child's arc before that child goes to school. That child always says that it's just like, it's, it's not terribly enjoyable or convenient, but it's part of that child's arc. And then I reacted differently. And I think for every parent listening, I want us, this is going to sound bold, but it's, I think we have to say it boldly to really make movement. When we intervene fast, we steal our kids competence.
We actually steal it from them because competence isn't built in a moment when someone's supporting you. Competence is built after feeling in general supported, finding yourself in an uncomfortable situation. And eventually just surviving it and figuring it out. And I think if we think about our kids feeling competent, if you think about the arc there, it involves doing less, maybe doing nothing. It involves the mess up. The mess up is part of the arc. You can never have a successful arc to competence without the mess up. And so I think the next time it's like, my kid doesn't have a water bottle or, oh my goodness, they didn't charge their phone.
If you can say to yourself, kind of like, check, crushed it, crushed it, you know?
Like all those other developmental milestones I wanted him to go through potty training, click like, oh, forgot their cell phone, forgot their water bottle. Like you're clicking off this list of things, experiences you have to give your kids so they can succeed later. That's right. Like I'd pat yourself on the back because I think being hyperbolic is needed. You're like, that is my best parenting moment. My kid forgot their, their cell phone today. My kid does not have their water bottle for practice. My kid does not have their track uniform.
And they will be running in the track meet as maybe the only kid without the track uniform, not to be mean. If it feels like it's from a place of punishing, it is not an intervention you should use. If it feels like it's part of supporting your kid's arc to feeling competent, and you, as a parent, will know the difference, then you should pat yourself on the back of tolerating that moment because it's so important.
And I think when parents kind of experience that distress, it might be a good signal that you're doing it the right way, right? If it's hard for you, if it's hard, like, it wouldn't be hard for you if your kid was really in true danger or safety. There would be no, like, maybe I shouldn't grab the water bottle or not. If it was truly a situation where you had to intervene with the right safe thing to do with to intervene, you would intervene. You would not be kind of going back and forth about, is this the moment to sort of step back?
That's right.
If you have that conflict, it means this is probably a safe space to just let the little mess up happen and allow that learning that comes with it.
That's right. And I think when, you know, our number one job as our, of parents, I think, is to keep our kids safe. But safety has somehow been perverted into comfortable. Safety, like, if my kid, when they're older, I don't know, called me from somewhere and their friends were drunk and they didn't have a safe ride back, I wouldn't be like, this is the moment. No, like, I'm gonna go pick up my kid. We'll deal with that later, like.
And if it's like their soccer match, that's like the final soccer match of the year for state championship, and they forget that, yes, you intervene in that moment.
Right. And maybe the track meet, you're like, actually, that, that feels too embarrassing. I know something about my kid. It's like this, we all know the difference, right? But there probably are moments that fall into comfort that we categorize as safety, and we can just even take the step of just questioning, like, which, which really is this? And probably just even questioning it at times will lead to, to different, you know, decisions.
Yeah, I love this, sort of, am I parenting for, again, like, Thursday night? Am I parenting for this moment, this soccer game, this water bottle situation? Or am I parenting for them when they're 25 or 18?
That's right. And I think, you know, one of the things maybe you and I take for granted, but I've really learned because it makes sense, we're never taught these things. The way we interact with our kids does impact them.
When they're later, right? Like, they're really developing these circuits of like, how do I think about myself? What do I expect of the world? What am I capable of tolerating? What do I need other people to fix for me? How much can I do on my own? So I agree. I always talk about that term like being long-term greedy in parenting. Because when our kids are out of our house, like, the stakes really do only get higher. It feels high stakes to not have a water bottle for soccer. But whatever's gonna happen out of our house, you know, I don't know, remembering to be on time for your first job. Right? Like, that's higher stakes. And I know for me also, I don't wanna call my 22-year-old to make sure they're awake, you know, the first day of their new job.
Yeah. And the sad thing is, like, you know, being a person who deals with college students a lot, there are parents that still do that. I can't, like, a surprising number of college students' parents with students at Yale University, call them in the morning to make sure they're waking up before their important midterm. And that feels, to me at least, that feels really sad. Right? Like, if you raised a kid who was smart enough to get into Yale University, I hope you'd also let them screw up a few times with the alarm clock so they learn the habit of making sure they could put their own alarm clock on before some big event. So don't be that parent, everyone who's listening.
So kind of, we have like a little, not like a formula completely, but like, question, like, safety or kind of comfort? Or is this for the moment or for long-term? Really remember that capital D, capital N, do nothing is actually like a legitimate, very useful parenting strategy. Know that the struggle, the miss, the mistake, the mess-up, that is part of the arc to independence and competence. Right? And kind of pat yourself on the back for like, allowing all that to just transpire. I think that's so powerful. Before we end, I'm thinking about parents' happiness. Like, I think about parents listening, and I think a lot of parents tell me,
I feel like I would be less happy. Like, I love my kids, I'm so happy. Like, am I less happy? Is that a weird thing? Does that mean I don't, you know, love being a parent? Like, what are your thoughts on that?
Yeah, I mean, I think that parents experience a lot of stress, right? A few months ago, the Surgeon General Vivek Murthy just put out this public health report saying that parental stress was like a major public health threat to the United States, right? This is like on the, on like cigarettes or obesity or something. And so I think one strategy for dealing with that is to normalize it. Like, parenting is tough. It's especially challenging, given a lot of the structural issues that parents face, the financial issues, et cetera, et cetera. It makes sense that you're going through this. And I think that's a strategy that comes from the happiness literature. Researchers like Kristin Neff often talk about this idea of self-compassion, right? Where you kind of first mindfully acknowledge, like, this is hard. This is really tough right now. But you recognize that it's a common human experience.
You say, but this makes sense. All parents go through this. It makes sense that if I'm parenting in a way that protects my kids, like, you know, failure and distress, that it's going to hurt a little bit. But then the final step is self-kindness, which I actually think is the remedy for so many moments of kind of parent unhappiness. You just ask yourself, what do I need to take off my plate? You know, how can I, what do I need right now? You know, these are questions that are really important for parents to ask. Even if you don't always have an immediate answer, you can get closer to this question of how, who could you ask for help to try to take some stuff off your plate? You can renegotiate the expectations you often have on yourself for what you need to be doing, um, to kind of feel a little bit freer and more spacious.
Yeah, I love that idea. And I think that's so actionable to end on, everyone listening. Like, just like, what can I place down today? And like, I think we, we do this thing where like a moment becomes a forever. Like, okay, I'm going to leave my playroom super messy. It doesn't mean I'm like a lazy person or don't have a nice house. Like, I'm doing that today. You can trust yourself to know, like, you can make a decision today that's different than the decision you make tomorrow. You could be like me and leave the playroom messy, like, every day. I don't know.
And it's like, it's also just the radical acceptance that like, nothing's ever going to be perfect. One of my favorite parenting strategies is like, parenting is like just juggling way too many balls that you can
Possibly juggle and a bunch are going to fall. Yes. But your, your question is which are the glass balls and which are the plastic ones? Like as long as you keep the glass balls from shattering, the plastic ones you can pick up and deal with later. You know, the, the, the messy kids room, that's a plastic ball. Um, you know, there are lots of glass balls to, to, to kind of manage, but the little ones, the kind of plastic ones that can drop and you don't care about, that's fine. You have to accept that.
Well, thank you. This has been great. Yeah. Thanks so much for having me on the show.
Thank you for listening. To share a story or ask me a question, go to goodinside.com/podcast or you could write me at [email protected]. Parenting is the hardest and most important job in the world and you deserve resources and support so you feel empowered and confident for this very important job you hold. I'm so excited to share Good Inside membership. It's the first platform that brings together content and experts you trust with a global community of like valued parents. It's game changing and built for a busy parent who wants to make the most out of the few minutes they
have. Good Inside with Dr. Becky is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Newsom at Magnificent Noise. Our production staff includes Sabrina Farhi, Julia Knapp, and Kristen Muller. I would also like to thank Erica Belsky, Mary Panico, Brooke Zant, and the rest of the Good Inside team. And one last thing before I let you go. 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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