Sarah

“Parents are often told to “name the feeling” when our children are upset (“You are so mad!” or “You’re feeling sad, I know”). This can be useful when we are trying to connect with our kids in “regular” moments, but in moments of big tantrums, I find that validating the magnitude of the feeling is much more effective.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Practical Guide to Resilient Parenting Prioritizing Connection Over Correction

“A child’s job in a family system is to explore and learn, through experiencing and expressing their emotions and wants.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Practical Guide to Resilient Parenting Prioritizing Connection Over Correction

“Building resilience is about developing the capacity to tolerate distress, to stay in and with a tough, challenging moment, to find our footing and our goodness even when we don’t have confirmation of achievement or pending success.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Practical Guide to Resilient Parenting Prioritizing Connection Over Correction

“We Don’t Do Fair, We Do Individual Needs” I see so many families set a goal of being “fair” as a method of attempting to decrease conflict, but in fact, making things fair is one of the biggest propellants of conflict. The more we work for fairness, the more we create opportunities for competition. When we make things fair, we increase a child’s hypervigilance; we essentially say, “Continue to watch your sibling like a hawk. Make sure you keep track of everything your sibling has, because that’s how you can figure out what you need in this family.” And there’s a longer-term reason why we don’t want to aim for “fairness” in our families: we want to help our kids orient inward to figure out their needs, not orient outward. When my kids are adults, I don’t want them to think, “What do my friends have? What are their jobs, their homes, their cars? I need what they have.” Talk about a life of anxiety and emptiness. It leads to a life with no interiority—no sense of who you are on the inside, only a sense of how you stack up to other people on the outside.”
― Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Practical Guide to Resilient Parenting Prioritizing Connection Over Correction