In my work with patients, I often say that two things are true: practical, solution-based strategies can also promote deeper healing.

 

I believe you can be firm and warm, boundaried and validating, focused on connection while acting as a sturdy authority.

 

Let me share an assumption I have about you and your kids: you are all good inside. When you call your child “a spoiled brat,” you are still good inside. When your child denies knocking down his sister’s block tower (even though you watched it happen), he is still good inside. And when I say “good inside,” I mean that we all, at our core, are compassionate, loving, and generous. The principle of internal goodness drives all of my work—I hold the belief that kids and parents are good inside, which allows me to be curious about the “why” of their bad behaviors. This curiosity enables me to develop frameworks and strategies that are effective in creating change. There is nothing in this book as important as this principle—it is the foundation for all that’s to come, because as soon as we tell ourselves, “Okay, slow down . . . I’m good inside . . . my kid is good inside too . . . ,” we intervene differently than we would if we allowed our frustration and anger to dictate our decisions.

 

As a result, many parents see behavior as the measure of who our kids are, rather than using behavior as a clue to what our kids might need.

 

The Most Generous Interpretation (MGI) Finding the good inside can often come from asking ourselves one simple question: “What is my most generous interpretation of what just happened?”

 

Your younger son responds: “You and Daddy are going out with Nico without me? I hate you! You’re the worst mom in the world!”

 

“Wow, those are big words, let me take a breath . . . I hear how upset you are. Tell me more.”

 

But my MGI of my child’s response is this: “Hmm. My son really wishes he was included in this special lunch. I can understand that. He’s sad. And jealous. Those feelings are so big in his small body that they explode out of him in the form of big hurtful words, but what’s underneath is a raw, painful set of feelings.”

 

We orient them to their internal experience, which includes thoughts, feelings, sensations, urges, memories, and images. Self-regulation skills rely on the ability to recognize internal experience, so by focusing on what’s inside rather than what’s outside, we are building in our children the foundation of healthy coping.

 

Convincing has one goal in mind: being right. And here’s the unfortunate consequence of being right: the other person feels unseen and unheard, at which point most people become infuriated and combative, because it feels as if the other person does not accept your realness or worth. Feeling unseen and unheard makes connection impossible.

 

Understanding (“two things are true”) and convincing (“one thing is true”) are two diametrically opposed ways of approaching other people, so a powerful first step in any interaction is to notice which mode you’re in.

 

Parent: “You have to put a jacket on before you go outside. It is freezing!” Child: “I don’t get cold! I’ll be fine, let me go outside!” Parent: “Okay, one second. Let me take a breath. Let me see if I understand what’s happening here . . . I’m worried about you being cold, because it’s pretty windy outside. You’re telling me that you feel your body doesn’t get that cold and you’re pretty sure you’ll be okay, huh? Did I get that right?” Child: “Yeah.” Now there are lots of possibilities. There’s an opening in the conversation. Let’s continue with two different options. Parent: “Hmm . . . what can we do? I’m sure we can come up with an idea that both of us feel okay about . . .” Child: “Can I bring my jacket with me and if I’m cold, I’ll put it on?” Parent: “Sure, what an awesome solution.” When children feel seen and sense their parent is a teammate and not an adversary, and when they’re asked to collaborate in problem-solving . . . good things happen. Now, let’s say you’re insisting your child wear the jacket—it’s two degrees outside with fifty-mile-per-hour winds. This isn’t a control thing but a true safety thing. 

 

Boundaries are not what we tell kids not to do; boundaries are what we tell kids we will do.

 

The absence of a sturdy adult keeping them safe is more dysregulating to them than the original issue. “Please stop hitting your brother!” “Stop running! I said to stop running! If you keep running with those scissors, you’re not going to get dessert!” “Didn’t we say you’d be done after this show? Can’t we be done? Why do you have to make this so hard?” In each of these examples, parents are asking their kids to inhibit an urge or desire that, frankly, they are developmentally incapable of inhibiting.

 

“You’re upset, that’s real, I see that.” Invalidation, or the act of dismissing someone else’s experience or truth, would sound like this: “There’s no reason to be so upset, you’re so sensitive, come on!” Remember, all human beings—kids and adults—have a profound need to feel seen in who they are, and at any given moment, who we are is related to what we are feeling inside.

 

Now you have your job description: keep your child safe, emotionally and physically, using boundaries, validation, and empathy.

 

A child’s job in a family system is to explore and learn, through experiencing and expressing their emotions and wants.

 

When those emotions transform into dangerous behavior, we set appropriate boundaries, while still validating and empathizing.

 

Then I review: I said to my son in the time before separation, “Sweetie, I know it’s so hard for you when Mommy has to do work. That makes sense; you love being by Mommy’s side! You will be with Daddy, and I will see you for lunch. Mommy always comes back.” I set boundaries that felt right to me, and I expressed validation with my words and empathy with my tone. My son protested. And screamed. And cried. He did his job: he experienced and expressed feelings. In response, I said, “I know it’s so hard, sweetie. You’re allowed to be upset. I love you,” and then left. Validation, empathy, boundary. He cried. Again, experiencing and expressing feelings. 

Here’s the big takeaway: kids wire themselves to adapt to their early environment, forming expectations about the world based on the data they take in; that early wiring impacts how they think about themselves and others long after childhood.

 

A child who sees a parent as his secure base feels a sense of safety in the world, a sense of “someone will be there for me and comfort me if things go wrong.” As such, he feels capable of exploring, trying new things, taking risks, suffering failures, and being vulnerable.

 

The more children feel they can depend on a parent, the more independent they can be. Our confidence that someone will understand us, not judge us, and support us, comfort us when things go wrong—this is what allows kids to develop into adults who are assertive, confident, and brave.

 

This is why it’s so important to distinguish behavior from underlying feelings and experience.

 

So when your child says, “I hate my baby brother, send him back to the hospital!” and you yell, “Don’t say that about your brother, you love him!” the lesson they learn isn’t that their words were inappropriate. The lesson they learn is that jealousy and anger are dangerous emotions, ones they shouldn’t have at all.

 

There’s one question I hear from parents more than any other: “Is it too late?” My answer is always no. Because it’s always true.

 

I often think that parenting is really an exercise in our own development and growth; when we have kids, we are confronted with so many truths about ourselves, our childhoods, and our relationships with our families of origin. And while we can use this information to learn and unlearn, break cycles, and heal, we have to do this work while also caring for our kids, managing tantrums, getting by on limited sleep, and feeling depleted. That’s a lot.

 

One recent study confirmed this effect in the context of parenting: it examined the impact of parenting programs aimed at two-year-olds through eleven-year-olds, and found that as long as the interventions were adapted to the age of the particular child, parenting programs had equal effectiveness.

 

Since parents are the most significant fixture in a child’s environment, perhaps it should come as no surprise that when a parent changes, so too does a child’s wiring.

 

But there’s another, more optimistic and encouraging interpretation: “Wow, this is amazing. If I can work on some of my own emotion regulation abilities—which will feel good for me anyway!—my child will change in response. How empowering!”

 

Here’s what I always tell parents: It’s not your fault that your child is struggling. But it is your responsibility, as the adults in the family system, to change the environment so that your child can learn and grow and thrive.

 

Psychiatrist Ronald Fairbairn may have said it best when he wrote, regarding children and child development, “It is better to be a sinner in a world ruled by God than to live in a world ruled by the Devil.”

 

It’s more comforting for a child to internalize badness (“I am bad inside”), because at least then he can hold on to the idea that the world around him is safe and good.

 

Mommy was having big feelings that came out in a yelling voice. Those were my feelings and it’s my job to work on managing them better. It’s never your fault when I yell and it’s not your job to figure out how I can stay calmer. I love you”)

 

Remind yourself, right now: “Good parents don’t get it right all the time. Good parents repair.”

 

And this is one I’ll remember forever, from a grandparent: “A few months ago, my daughter asked me to follow you so I could understand how she is parenting her kids. Wow, has this been an education for me. I called my daughter this morning and told her that I wish I could rewind and parent her in this way and that I see now that it must have felt so bad to her when I yelled or saw the worst in her, not the best. She cried. I guess she really needed to hear this. We talked about it for a while. It was one of the most important moments of our relationship.”

 

What are we talking about when we say, “Cheer up!” or “You have so much to be happy about!” or “Why can’t you just be happy?” I, for one, don’t think we’re talking about cultivating happiness as much as we’re talking about avoiding fear and distress.

 

And yet, I’m not sure that “the best” for them is to “just be happy.” For me, happiness is much less compelling than resilience. After all, cultivating happiness is dependent on regulating distress. We have to feel safe before we can feel happy.

 

Happiness is not my ultimate goal for my own kids. Unhappiness certainly isn’t my goal for them, but here’s a deep irony in parenting: the more we emphasize our children’s happiness and “feeling better,” the more we set up them up for an adulthood of anxiety. Setting happiness as the goal compels us to solve our kids’ problems rather than equip them to solve their own.

 

When we tell our kids, “I just want you to be happy,” we are telling them they need to get out of distress and into comfort.

 

You are the architect of your child’s resilience, and that is the ultimate gift you can give them.

 

Behavior, in all its forms, is a window: into the feelings, thoughts, urges, sensations, perceptions, and unmet needs of a person. Behavior is never “the story,” but rather it’s a clue to the bigger story begging to be addressed.

 

The only way I’d be able to change and show up more grounded and less reactive in the future would be to embrace curiosity about what was happening for me underneath the behavior.

 

When we use methods of behavior modification, we can—temporarily—change behavior. I won’t deny that. I also won’t deny that it can take time to do the deeper work, which is a privilege we don’t always have. There are some situations where we need to correct a child’s behavior and do it quickly, and others where we simply can’t dedicate our limited resources to doing the additional work—where we’re already stretched too thin between work and family and the many demands of being a parent and a person in the world. But without attending to what’s under the surface, we cannot change the dynamics that motivate a child’s behavior. It’s like putting duct tape on a leak in the ceiling instead of wondering about the source of the leak. When we address the behavior first, we miss the opportunity to help our children build skills, and beyond this, we miss the opportunity to see our kids as people rather than a collection of behaviors.

 

However, while reinforcing our kid’s people-pleasing tendencies can be “convenient” in childhood, it can lead to major problems—a reluctance to say no, an inability to assert or even locate one’s own needs, a prioritization of other people’s wellness to the detriment of one’s own—later on.

 

And for non-people-pleasing kids? Well, these methods often intensify challenging behavior, not help it. Because when we are not heard or seen on the inside, we escalate our expressions on the outside, in hopes of being taken seriously and getting our needs met. In short: when we see behavior as “the main event” instead of as a window into an unmet need, we may “successfully” shut down the behavior, but the underlying need remains, and it will pop up again, Whack-a-Mole style. When we don’t attend to the source of the leak, the water flow remains unchanged.

 

When we sacrifice relationship building in favor of control tactics, our children may age, but in many ways, they developmentally remain toddlers, because they miss out on years of building the emotion regulation, coping skills, intrinsic motivation, and inhibition of desires that are necessary for life success. When we are busy exerting extrinsic control over our children’s external behavior, we sacrifice teaching these critical internal skills.

 

“So many professionals advised us to use the system of time-outs and punishments and rewards, and it all seemed so logical. And they quoted impressive data, like a ninety percent reduction in difficult behavior. Who wouldn’t want that? But I didn’t see the bigger picture. We don’t want to ‘craft our child’s behavior’ . . . we want to help our son develop into a good person. We want to understand him, to help him with the things that feel bad to him. It never occurred to me that our earlier approach was actually making our problems worse. This is so important for parents to know.”

 

Parents often ask me: “How can you be against a parenting approach that has data showing it changes kids’ behavior? How can that be bad?” Well, it’s not necessarily bad. But here’s my issue with it: the evidence around behavior change can make us lose sight of what actually matters in favor of what is immediately observable.

 

Here are some questions to get you started, to ask yourself after any tough moment: What is my most generous interpretation (MGI) of my child’s behavior? What was going on for my child in that moment? What was my child feeling right before that behavior emerged? What urge did my child have a hard time regulating? What is a parallel situation in my life? And if I did something similar, what might I have been struggling with in that moment? What does my child feel I don’t understand about them? If I remember that my child is a good kid having a hard time . . . what are they having a hard time with? What deeper themes are being displayed underneath this behavior?

 

I define shame as the feeling that “this part of me is not connectable—no one wants to know or be with this part.”

 

It’s a powerful feeling that tells us we should not want to be seen as we are in the moment. Shame encourages us to avoid contact with others—to hide, to distance ourselves, to move away rather than toward others.

 

But here’s what’s critical to understand about shame: it is an evolutionarily adaptive feeling. Being alone as a child is synonymous with being in danger, so shame works, within the attachment system, as a signal to a child to hide the part of them that does not successfully gain attachment.

 

Here’s an intervention that doesn’t help to reduce shame: “Irha, you have to say sorry. It’s a simple word! You’re making the situation worse! How could you care so little about your sister? COME ON!” Here, Irha is put in the “bad kid” role and spirals further into her badness, and further into her frozen shame state. Here’s an intervention that’s aimed at shame detection and reduction: “Hmm . . . it’s hard to find your ‘I’m sorry’ voice. I have times like that too. I’ll use it for you before you find it again.” Then you, the parent, go to your other child and say, “I’m sorry I took your lovie. I know that was upsetting. Is there anything I can do to make it better?”

 

She explained it to me this way: “It seems that the underlying theme of everything you talk about is connection. Connection first, everything else second. My son says, ‘I hate you!’—I can still connect first to what’s happening inside. My daughter isn’t listening to me—I can connect with her having a hard time listening instead of trying to force her to comply, which of course never works anyway. Even my husband, when he is mad at me about something, I can connect to what he’s saying before defending myself. And with myself! No matter what I’m feeling or thinking, it never becomes bad or overwhelming if I can add my own connection or connection with others to it. ‘Connection first’ has helped me in every area of my family life.”

 

Shame is a warning sign of aloneness, danger, and badness; connection is a sign of presence, safety, and goodness. Now, to be clear, connection does not mean approval. Approval is usually about a specific behavior; connection is about our relationship with the person underneath the behavior.

 

This might sound like a silly principle, an obvious one—perhaps my most straightforward idea in this book—and yet, telling the truth is surprisingly tricky to put into practice. Speaking to your kids honestly, without vagaries or avoidance, requires sitting with a lot of your own feelings, even the unpleasant ones, for the benefit of your children. And that’s something that’s hard for most of us.

 

Parents often fear that telling their kids the truth will be too scary or overwhelming, but we tend to have it all wrong when it comes to what scares children. It’s not information so much as feeling confused and alone in the absence of information that terrifies them.

 

Unformulated experience is terrifying to a child, because that “something’s not right” feeling free-floats around the body without an anchor of safety. Plus, when kids are left to make sense of a scary change on their own, they usually rely on the methods that give them control: self-blame (“I must have done something to cause this. I’m bad, I’m too much”) and self-doubt (“I must have misunderstood the tension around me. I am not such a good feeler of things. If something really was different, my parents would explain it to me”).

 

What’s an alternative to leaving a child feeling alone? Clear, direct, honest information shared while connected to you, your child’s loving, trusted adult. This is what helps kids feel safe and build resilience.

 

When I find myself in a “tell the truth” situation with my own kids, I often start with these words: “________ happened. You were right to notice that.” This is critical. Our children are deep sensors and perceivers of their environment. They simply haven’t amassed enough life experience to differentiate what is dangerous from what is merely annoying from what is safe. In fact, research has found that children notice more details in their environment than adults. We often tell ourselves stories such as “My child is too young to have noticed that,” or “There’s no way he picked up on that,” but . . . no. If you’ve noticed something in your environment, your child has too. Children are, generally, helpless—they are keen observers because noticing changes (i.e., potential threats) is what allows them to seek safety. 

 

I often have to remind myself: “Only say what happened. Name what’s true, and nothing more complicated.”

 

Want your daughter to stand up for herself when she’s uncomfortable in a hookup or dating scenario? If, when she was a child, her parents validated her perceptions and wired her for self-trust, she’ll be more inclined to say, “No, I’m not comfortable with that,” or “Stop. I don’t like that.”

 

Next, let’s think about questions—what are we to do when our kids ask questions that makes us feel uncomfortable, that feel too “mature” for their age? Questions like, “Are you going to die one day?” and “Okay, but how does the baby get into the belly? Like actually get in there?”

 

So try to catch your “My kid isn’t ready for this!” reflex and remind yourself, “Ready or not, the foundation is already there.”

 

Talking honestly with our children about what we don’t know is an important iteration of the “tell the truth” principle.

 

Let’s take something bigger. Maybe you tell your child that his grandmother has cancer. He asks, “But is she going to be okay? Is she going to get all better?” Telling the truth about “I don’t know” would sound like this: “What a great question. I hope she gets better, sweetie. And the truth is that . . . we don’t know. We don’t know if she will get better. What I do know is that I will tell you the truth, even if it feels uncomfortable, and that I am here for you with all the feelings you have about this.”

 

I often say something like: “I want to talk about something that we’ll all have big feelings about.”

 

Say this slowly and with eye contact. Afterward, take a deep breath—this will ground your body and also give your child an opportunity to “borrow” this regulation from you in a tough moment. Next, use real words, not euphemisms, to describe what’s happening. This means saying, “Grandpa died today. Dying means the body stops working,” rather than “Grandpa isn’t here anymore,” or “Grandpa went to sleep for a long time.” After you’ve delivered a hard truth, pause. Before giving more information, check in with your child. You might ask, “How does it feel to talk about this?” or say, “It’s okay to be sad about this. I feel sad too.” Maybe you just look at your child with a supportive glance, placing your hand on his back.

 

If your child shares a feeling—with words (“I feel sad”) or an expression (crying, angry look on his face)—respond with acknowledgment, validation, and permission to feel. And if your child asks a question that you know has a tough answer, maybe start your response by saying, “That’s such an important question. I am going to tell you the answer. It might feel hard to hear, but as we talk, I’m right here with you.” In those moments, you might want to collect yourself before answering. “That’s a great question and I want to give you a great answer. I need some time to get back to you—but I absolutely will because answering your questions is so important.” The key here is to go back to your child with a response when you’re ready, even if your child doesn’t bring it up again. If you don’t, your child will be left with more fear, because he’ll be alone with the feelings and knowledge that inspired him to ask the question in the first place. Finally, remember: it’s okay to cry. Label your feelings as your own and remind your child that you’re still ...

 

Here are some things I don’t want my children to say about me when they’re older: “My mom? She did everything for me,” or “My mom always put me first,” or “My mom never took care of herself, she was too busy caring for us.” I hope they never say any version of, “My mom ran herself into the ground while she parented me.”

 

What do I want my kids to say instead? How about: “My mom? She knew when she needed time for herself and balanced that with meeting my needs,” or “My mom was an awesome model for self-care. She taught me the importance of taking care of myself, and how to do that while still being connected to someone else.” Or maybe even, “My mom showed me that parenthood doesn’t mean losing yourself. Parenthood means helping your child develop and grow while you yourself are developing and growing at the same time.”

 

Selfless parenting is parenting by a leader without a self, and that idea is terrifying to a child.

 

But a simple reframe can transform self-care into something empowering and hopeful: “I have an opportunity. I can heal things within myself at the same time as I parent my kids in a way I feel proud of. I can do both at the same time.”

 

Remember, we cannot pour energy into our kids if we have no energy to give. We cannot exude patience if we don’t show ourselves patience. We cannot change externally until we have rewired internally. The quality of our relationships with others is only as good as the quality of the relationship we have with ourselves.

 

Getting Your Needs Met and Tolerating Distress Time for an experiment! I want you to say the following sentence aloud, preferably in front of a mirror, and then observe how your body responds: “I am allowed to have things for myself even if they inconvenience others.” Now pause. Does your body want to accept or reject what you just said? What’s your natural reaction to that statement? Do any memories or images come to mind? The only goal here is to learn about yourself. One reaction isn’t better than another; all data is good data.

 

Taking a breath and remembering that often the only way we get our needs met is by simultaneously tolerating others’ distress helps prevent us from losing ourselves.

 

How to Do It Tell yourself, “Someone else is allowed to be upset when I assert myself; this doesn’t make them a bad person and it doesn’t make me unable to uphold my decision.” Visualize yourself on one side of a tennis court and someone else on the other side. Remind yourself, “I am over here . . . I have my need and my decision on my side. He is over THERE, on his own side. His feelings about my decisions . . . those are on HIS side of the court, not mine. I can see them, I can even empathize with them . . . but I didn’t cause them and I don’t need to make them go away.”

 

Here’s a list of small self-care activities to get you started: Drink one glass of water in the morning Meditate for two minutes Drink your coffee while it’s hot Cook yourself a legitimate breakfast Listen to calming music Read a few pages of a book Have a good cry Take five hot cocoa breaths while seated Rest in child’s pose Color Talk to a friend Brush your hair Journal

 

And here’s something else I know: You’re going to mess up. You’re going to yell. You’re going to say something and think, “Ugh, why did I say that? I didn’t want to say that!” But that’s okay. You are not defined by your reactivity or your moments of depletion or your latest behavior. You are a parent who is good inside, and you are working on yourself at the same time as you are giving to your kids.

 

Our kids don’t listen to us, and it feels like we’re in an endless cycle of tantrums with our four-year-old and rudeness with our seven-year-old.

 

Heston, our oldest, is suddenly saying he’s stupid and has no friends, and whenever we try to talk to him about it he says we don’t understand and slams his bedroom door. Izzy, our four-year-old, is hysterical every morning when we drop her at preschool. It’s so draining and such an awful way to start the day. PLEASE HELP!”

 

I took a breath. “First of all, I’m so glad you’re here,” I said. “Second of all, I am going to solve all of that. Every single thing.” They laughed. I smiled. I started again. “Okay, that’s not true. We aren’t going to solve any of it, at least not today. Here’s the thing: we can’t change behavior until we build connection, so our first interventions need to focus on that. The real problem here isn’t any of the specific issues you named—it’s not the tantrums or the back talk or the door slam...

 

As I explained to my clients, when parents struggle with their kids, it almost always boils down to one of two problems: children don’t feel as connected to their parents as they want to, or children have some struggle or unmet need they feel alone with.

 

Imagine your child has an emotional bank account. The currency in this bank account is connection, and their behavior at any moment reflects the status of their account, how full or depleted it is. I mentioned earlier the idea of this “connection capital”—when we really connect with a child, see their experience, allow for their feelings, and make an effort to understand what’s going on for them, we build our capital. Having a healthy amount of connection capital leads kids to feel confident, capable, safe, and worthy. And these positive feelings on the inside lead to “good” behavior on the outside—behavior like cooperation, flexibility, and regulation. So in order to create positive change, we have to first build connection, which will lead kids to feel better, which will then lead them to behave better. But note, behavior comes last. We cannot start there. We must start with connection.

 

The following interventions are meant to be used in calmer moments, prime time for improving your relationship with your child, building new skills, and developing pathways for change. When things feel off in my own family, I begin with these strategies, which essentially result in connection capital deposits.

 

Ok, let’s get practical and talk about how to implement PNP Time in your home: Give it a name to indicate that this time is special. I use the term PNP Time because I happen to love a good acronym and, also, there’s something a bit silly about the term that my kids really like. Feel free to name it something else, like Daddy-Marco Time or Mommy-Daughter time. Limit time to ten to fifteen minutes. No phones, no screens, no siblings, no distractions. Let your child pick the play. This is key. Allow your child to be in the spotlight; your job is only to notice, imitate, reflect, and describe what they’re doing. 

 

are scripts for introducing PNP Time: For younger kids: “Let’s have some PNP Time! I’m going to put my phone in another room so I can really focus on being with you. It’ll be just us, and you can choose what we do!” For older kids: “Hey, sweetie. You know what? I need PNP Time with you—just you and me, with my phone far away—because I know it’s annoying when it makes noise and distracts me. How about later today we get some time just us? It will last for ten to fifteen minutes, and you can pick what we do.” Remember, PNP Time is focused on your child’s world. Try to avoid asking questions; instead, join in your child’s ideas. If this feels unnatural, that’s okay! Most parents are unused to engaging in this way.

 

Try these approaches: Describe: “You’re building a tower,” or “You’re coloring with a red crayon.” Mimic: If your child is drawing a flower, grab your own piece of paper, sit near her, and draw your own flower. No need for any words. When you mirror, you show your child that you’re paying full attention and they are valuable and interesting to you. Reflective listening: When your child says, “I want to play trucks!” respond with, “You want to play trucks!” If your child says, “The pig wants to come into the barn,” say back, “That pig wants to go into the barn, huh?”