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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, and now parents, it's Dr. Becky time. Listeners of older generations who may have been helped by the advice of Dr. Spock or Dr. Sears or T Berry Brazelton or Penelope Leach, there's a new parenting guru in town, and she's got a million plus followers on Instagram, as well as a popular podcast. She is a Columbia University-trained clinical psychologist, Dr. Becky Kennedy, who generally goes by Dr. Becky. She also has a new book that gets at the philosophy that's attracting so many parents to her.

The book is called Good Inside, and she is an actual practicing psychologist with an actual private practice, and she is an actual parent raising three actual children. Dr. Becky Kennedy joins us now. Dr. Becky, thanks for a free session. Welcome to WNYC

Dr. Becky Kennedy: Absolutely, excited to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, parents, grandparents, former children of any age, we will invite you now to call up with a question for Dr. Becky. We'll have time for just a few. We're looking for a question about a child's behavior and how to find what's underlying it. A free Dr. Becky session here for a couple of you right now who has a question. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Obviously, that's our on-air number, not our pledge line. We're not going to ask you for money on the air ever.

Dr. Becky, right at the start of your book, I see that you try to refocus the question that many parents may ask at one time or another from, "Can you fix my child's behavior?" to, "What is the child struggling with?" Can you dive right in on that difference and how easy it is to miss?

Dr. Becky Kennedy: Yes. What we see at the surface is observable behavior. Our kid says, "I hate you to us" or our kid hits a sibling or throws a block or has a meltdown because we said no to ice cream, whatever it is. I think as humans, we're all predetermined, me too, to see a behavior, and then we collapsed that behavior into identity. My child who threw a block becomes a bad kid as opposed to a good kid who must need to build some type of coping skill to deal with, let's say, their frustration or anger in a different way. I'm a big fan of always reflecting on the questions we ask because I think we all want to jump into strategies.

Me too, but the questions we ask determine the interventions we come up with. I think that shift from what is wrong with my child and what kind of punishment can I dole out to them to probably what boundary do I need to set to ensure safety? Then after that, what is this behavior telling me? What does my child need, and how can I help them learn so that my child is actually in a different place to make a different type of decision?

Brian Lehrer: Tell us a story because a key question that's a sub-question to the one you just laid out that you suggest parents ask themselves is what's the most generous interpretation of my child's behavior? I think that flips the script for a lot of people. What's the most generous interpretation of my child's bad behavior? Can you give us an example of that from your experience?

Dr. Becky Kennedy: Yes, and I think that's a life-changing question to ourselves and to our partners and to people we work with because it enables us to see a good person under a bad behavior, and then intervene accordingly. Let's say my kid is at their sibling's birthday, and instead of sitting quietly while their sibling opens presents, they're saying, "Oh, that's a stupid present," or, "Oh, I hate you," or things like that. If I say to myself, "Okay, wait, what's the most generous interpretation of my kid's struggle at their sibling's birthday?"

I might come up with, "Oh. probably it's pretty hard for a three-year-old to watch their five-year-old sibling get all the attention from presents from the family," and, "Oh, they probably feel jealous and I would feel jealous," and, "Oh, maybe they don't know how to deal with jealousy yet." Then that would lead me outside that moment to think, not that jealousy is the problem, we all feel it forever, not that my kid is the problem, I have a good kid, but, oh, how can I help my kid learn to cope with jealousy? Then that question, not only will help my kid the next time they're jealous, but actually, it helps them build coping skills for adulthood when the stakes are even higher.

Brian Lehrer: Really interesting. Let's take a phone call. Greg in South Orange, you're on WNYC. Hi, Greg.

Greg: Yes, hi. I have a nephew who is in sixth grade, and he refuses to go to school. He'll go to school maybe one out of the five days. Austin, he doesn't do his homework, so then he feels afraid about going to school because he didn't complete his homework. His parents have tried everything to get him to go to school through a reward system, "If you go to school, we reward you with X, Y, and Z" and he still has some sort of fear about going to school. Any thoughts?

Dr. Becky Kennedy: Yes, thank you for that really thoughtful question. Actually, this question I think gets to the heart of my approach. Number one, most of us have raised our kids before they're in middle school with a whole system of rewards and punishments and timeouts because we were instructed to do that by professionals and by the media. Inevitably what happens is every kid gets to an age where they essentially say, "I literally don't care about your stickers and I'm too big to put in a timeout. Now, in the last 12 years, you haven't really gotten to know me or help me or help me build skills."

Then often I see so many families in that situation because now you have a teenager where those tactics have no lasting power. I think it's a reflection also on just this parenting strategy that so many of us are taught to do from the start and inevitably ends in effectiveness. Now what would I do with my teenager in that moment, I would not approach it from a reward standpoint because I think that always leads to exactly what you're describing. I think we have to start by leveling with our kid, by saying some version of, "Look, two things are true. My number one job as your parent is to help make decisions that are tough, but that I know are good for you, and going to school is one of those.

Now having said that, here's something else that's true. There must be something really, really hard about going to school and there must be something about it that I haven't fully understood or even helped you with because we're on the same team. You're a good kid having a hard time. I know you would want to learn and would want to go to school if you felt a little better. Maybe what we can start with is 10 minutes together later, and all I'm going to do when you talk to me about how hard school is or why you don't want to go is write down notes. I'm actually not going to do anything else. I'm just going to understand.

I'm not going to convince you out of it, I'm not going to tell you I'll give you $5 or more time on your screen. I'm just going to listen because you must have a reason to be so resistant." Now, I think this is a core part of what I consider family jobs, that our job as parents is to set boundaries, but often when we set a boundary, we miss the second part of our job, which is actually making our kids feel like real and respected kids. Then how long that's going to take to be effective, and of course, there's other things I'd recommend too.

I think it also depends on, up to that point, how connected my kid has felt to me. We're not all starting at the same place with our 12-year-old.

Just I'm a pragmatist, we're not, but I think that starting with understanding, starting with believing, and then maybe building coping skills; "Oh, wow, it feels really bad if you haven't done your homework." I think we're likely to say to our kids, "Just do your homework," instead of, "Okay, well let's talk about that. Let's talk about what you would tell your teacher. I'm on your team here and I'm going to help you figure this out." That can really start to shift things for kids.

Brian Lehrer: That's so interesting. Greg, I hope that's at least a little bit helpful with your situation. That idea of when there's a problem behavior, offering your kid, like you said, 10 minutes to just listen and take notes as they talk about it.

Dr. Becky Kennedy: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Not judge, not even offer solutions and just take notes as one kind of intervention, one kind of different communication than most people probably do with children. That's so interesting. On this show, we usually talk more politics than parenting, and in this age of science denial, we usually embrace what we call evidence-based approaches to public policy rather than ideological or partisan ones. That certainly came up in our climate segment, which was the previous one, but I see you had a bad reaction to a training that you had that was built as an evidence-based approach to your child's behavioral problems, and this is one of the themes of your book. Where does something evidence-based go wrong in your field?

Dr. Becky Kennedy: Let me just say from the start, I'm a big believer in science, I'm a big believer in data, I'm a big believer in evidence. I have my PhD. That's how I was brought up and studied, and of course, I appreciate evidence. I think we need to be skeptical of all the data we consume. For example, I remember a supervisor saying to me about all these evidence-based approaches like timeouts and sticker charts and there's all this evidence that it works, but again, what does work mean? For how long are these things effective? What if things are short-term effective and long-term harmful? How effective and how great is that evidence?

I remember my supervisor just set up the cup because I could do a study and every time a kid had a tantrum, if I hit them or if I put them on the street for two nights when they're five years old, I would bet you that my kid would not have a tantrum, but I don't think anyone would be going around and praising that study or that evidence. I think we have to look at the assumptions, I think we have to look at the type of evidence we actually take in, and what the framework is for that evidence. That's my criticism of this obsession, I think, with evidence-based, which is yes, evidence matters, yes, studies matter, yes, data matters, and what also matters is being critical consumers of data and evidence.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take another call, and this is going to be very timely because I think Mendel and West Hartford is calling to say they've got a parent-teacher conference coming up today. Is that right, Mendel? Hello, you're on WNYC. I'm with Dr. Becky.

Mendel: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: I can hear you just fine, yes.

Mendel: Okay, great. Yes, thanks for taking my call. Our daughter just turned four and she's been saying a bunch recently that she's a boy and been saying that in class in her preschool, and the other kids in the class tell her that she's not a boy and the teachers are denying it as well. My wife and I believe fully in gender fluidity, and if she identifies as a boy, we're cool with that. How do we respectfully approach that conversation with the teachers knowing full well that there are probably parents in the class that are not in believing with that and weigh the water with that?

Brian Lehrer: There is a question Dr. Spock probably never got when he was writing his parenting advice books, Dr. Becky.

Dr. Becky Kennedy: Probably not. Though, maybe, you never know.

Brian Lehrer: You never know.

Dr. Becky Kennedy: Thank you for bringing up such an important topic, and I think there's such a way to even generalize from this. Our kids say all the time things that make us as parents or my teachers say like, "Whoa, what is that?" What I love about what you're saying is approaching your child with openness and curiosity because I think when we approach a kid with openness and curiosity, just like if someone approached us that way, the best thing is that you just learn more. You learn more about what they're trying to express.

The way I would talk to a teacher about it is, number one, I think when we're in conflict with someone, whether it seems to be a teacher, a partner, a kid, I think we have two modes of talking to them. One mode is you're at one side of the table and you're essentially looking at them on the other side of the table as if they're the enemy. That leads us to say things like, "You don't understand," or, "Why don't you just see it the way I do?' or accusations. Another way in a moment of conflict is to think about it with you and this person, even though you disagree that you're on the same side of the table, and together, you're looking at a problem.

In my mind, nothing should ever be uttered to anyone until you can get in the second mindset because any time we approach anyone like they're the problem, the only thing that happens is defensiveness and explosiveness. I think the way of putting that mindset into practicality with the teacher would just be saying, "Hey, I'm going to make up that your kid's name is," I don't know, Alex. "Hey, we're both team Alex. I know that. We are team Alex, we want Alex to develop into a person who's confident and feels comfortable in their body and knows who they are, and honestly, I know you want that for Alex too.

One of the things that's coming up now in Alex's life is how Alex is identifying gender, and I just wanted to talk through that with you so we can come up with some language and ways of responding and ways to even talk to Alex in private so that we're all on the same page." I think it's really disarming to someone to hear that because teachers are probably used to parents coming in saying some version of, "I don't like the way you're handling something with my child," and then, of course, anyone gets defensive there. Then I think after that warm-up, you can share your reasoning. It just comes off very differently. Like, "Hey, here's how we deal with it at home.

Like when Alex says, 'I feel like a boy,' we say, 'Oh, tell me more about that,' or, 'Oh, that sounds important. That sounds like something that's really on your mind. What does it mean to identify as a boy and not a girl? Say more about that. We just open it up. Usually, then Alex shares a little bit more and if you feel ever like, hey, this is bringing something in the classroom that not all the other kids are ready to talk about, okay, I can understand that. I wonder if there's a way to address it with Alex so you both meet the class's needs, but also we can meet Alex's need to express what's going on for them."

I'm just making that up as an example, but nobody's the bad person. Nobody has to be defensive, and again, you have this conversation remembering that you really are on the same team.

Brian Lehrer: I hope that's at least a little bit helpful, Mendel, thank you for your call. As we've run out of time, Dr. Becky, I'll set you up for one more thought. You say your approach is not only about child development, but also about self-development. You want to just talk about why you make that distinction? We've got about 30 seconds.

Dr. Becky Kennedy: The hardest moments with our kids, we think it's because of our kids' behavior. It's, I think, in my mind, actually because the things that are triggered inside us as we witness our kids' behavior. The way to make a big shift isn't just memorizing a strategy or trying to change their behavior, it's actually the rewiring or reparenting or really self-development that we need to do in ourselves, not only for our kids' benefit but I think mostly, it just feels better to feel less triggered and more grounded and more of a sturdy leader across the board in multiple areas of your life.

Brian Lehrer: As the psychologists and psychiatrists say at the end of many sessions, our time is up for today, we'll see you in two weeks. Except in this case, I guess we'll see you on Instagram and for people who want to read your book, it's called Good Inside by Dr. Becky, who does have a last name. It's on the book jacket, Dr. Becky Kennedy. Where else can people follow your work? Just real briefly.

Dr. Becky Kennedy: I think goodinside.com is where everything is. It's the hub for everything and it's where the book and social media are, our amazing membership platform. Everything is goodinside.com.

Brian Lehrer: I can just hear a lot of conversations that are going to take place among a lot of adults after listening to this segment. Thank you so much for coming on. We really appreciate it.

Dr. Becky Kennedy: Thanks for having me.

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