I have a complicated relationship with parenting experts. I usually leave them feeling worse than when I walked in, one more list of things I'm apparently getting wrong. So I sat down with Dr. Becky Kennedy.
I have a complicated relationship with parenting experts. I usually leave them feeling worse than when I walked in, one more list of things I'm apparently getting wrong. So I sat down with Dr. Becky Kennedy, the most trusted parenting expert in the country, half braced to feel like a failure again. Instead I said the quiet thing out loud. I'm tired. I'm so tired. And the woman who wrote the book looked at me and said, me too. We're the first generation of parents in a world that never turns off.
Then she told me the only thing she'll call herself an expert in is imperfect parenting, and something in me unclenched for the first time in about a year. Because here's what nobody hands you with the baby: the exhaustion isn't a sign you're doing it wrong. Sometimes it's just proof of how much you're carrying. We get into all of it. Why our kids' feelings run the entire household now, and how that even happened. Whether we're performing motherhood for an invisible audience instead of just living it. And the line I genuinely cannot shake, that optimizing for our kids' happiness is the fastest way to optimize their anxiety.
She also asked me one question I was too embarrassed to answer honestly. How often are you just around your kid, quiet, not on your phone? Reader, I did not have a good answer. Somewhere in there I had to admit I don't fully know what I'm doing as a mother, and she let me off the hook in the best way: nobody does. The whole conversation kept landing on two words. Do less. So much less. I cannot tell you how good it felt to be told that by the one person allowed to say it.
This is for the mom who reads every book, holds every boundary, names every feeling before it becomes a tantrum, and still lies awake certain she's the one getting it wrong. You're not. You're just tired, and you've been sold a version of good mom that was never real. This is Dr. Becky Kennedy, and I left this one lighter than I've felt in a long time.
You can find Dr. Becky on:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drbeckyatgoodinside
Good Inside Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodinside
Good Inside with Dr. Becky (podcast): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/good-inside-with-dr-becky/id1561689671
Good Inside: https://www.goodinside.com/
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Dr. Becky Kennedy is the clinical psychologist a whole generation of parents actually trusts. She is the founder of Good Inside, with a community of parents in more than a hundred countries. Her book, Good Inside, was an instant number one New York Times bestseller. Her TED talk has been viewed millions of times, and TIME named her the millennial parenting whisperer. She trained at Duke and Columbia, she is a mother of three, and she built her entire practice around one deceptively simple idea, that you can hold a firm boundary and real empathy at the very same time.
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