Dr. Becky Kennedy Explains What Kids Actually Need to Feel Confident
In a Nutshell
Dr. Becky argues that effective parenting requires both validating children's emotions and holding firm boundaries, rather than either dismissing feelings or letting them dictate family decisions. Parents should focus on repair after mistakes instead of perfection, and avoid rescuing children from difficult emotions, which teaches self-distrust and anxiety. The goal is building children's confidence through self-trust and resilience by sitting with them through hard feelings and giving them real responsibilities.
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Parents have shifted from ignoring children's feelings entirely to becoming scared of those feelings and allowing them to dictate family decisions. This represents an overcorrection that is equally problematic for child development.
Decades ago, the common parental response was dismissive. When a child said they didn't want to go to Aunt Sally's house, the response would be: "I don't care if you want to go to Aunt Sally's house. Put on a smile. Put on your shoes or else." This approach involves leading with control, not listening, and not connecting with the child's emotional experience.
The current problematic approach involves parents becoming scared of children's emotions. When a child says they don't want to go to Aunt Sally's house because it's boring, parents respond by getting a sitter, staying home, or calling multiple people to accommodate the child's preference. This isn't about healthy flexibility but about fear of the child's emotional reaction.
The recommended approach combines two essential elements. First, validation means acknowledging that children's feelings are real and showing interest in understanding them. Parents should say: "You don't want to go to Sally's house. I get it. You'd rather be sitting home and watching the basketball game on TV. Totally hear you."
The second element is setting a true boundary with authority without aggression. This means explaining that the family committed to going, acknowledging that many responsibilities aren't enjoyable, and stating: "It's okay if you whine on the way there. I know when we get there, you're going to be able to pull it together. It's not going to be your most fun Saturday, but we'll get through it as a family."
Parenting is unique in that society glorifies instinct alone without teaching parents how to connect with children while holding boundaries. This is comparable to expecting a surgeon to perform surgery without medical school training.
Repair is the most important parenting strategy and relationship strategy overall. The desire to be perfect is especially prevalent among mothers due to gender socialization that trains girls to focus on meeting others' needs rather than recognizing their own needs.
Girls are often trained to constantly gaze outward to notice what everyone wants from them while becoming distant from their own desires. This pattern creates value based on pleasing others and meeting needs before they arise. When applied to parenting, this creates pressure to be perfect and get everything right for everyone else.
There is no such thing as a perfect parent, and having one would not be beneficial for children. The relationship developed with a child becomes the foundation for all future relationships they will have. Children learn attraction patterns based on what feels like home, and a perfectly attuned parent would not prepare them for realistic adult relationships where partners attune to needs most of the time and repair when they don't.
Rupture moments occur when parents explode at children due to accumulated stress and triggers unrelated to the immediate situation. Classic examples include children complaining about dinner after a long day, leading to lectures about gratitude and scary voices that frighten children who depend on parents for survival.
Having a rupture moment does not define who you are as a parent or determine your child's future. Yelling at children causes far less damage than yelling without subsequent repair. Without repair, children are left alone with intense feelings and must create their own explanations, often resulting in self-blame such as "I'm a bad kid."
Repair allows parents to rewrite the ending of difficult chapters in their children's emotional memory. Instead of a chapter ending with a child feeling alone and shaky after being yelled at, repair involves the parent returning to say: "I'm sorry I yelled. It's never your fault when I yell. I'm working on managing my feelings so I respond more calmly even when I'm frustrated. I love you." This combination of boundaries and empathy changes how the memory lives in the child's body.
Effective parenting includes validating both the child's feelings and the parent's own needs and circumstances. When a parent explains they cannot play immediately because they are conducting an important interview, this provides context and perspective rather than simply saying they don't have time.
When parents set true boundaries, children do not respond with applause or immediate compliance. Instead, they typically respond with tantrums, especially if they are not accustomed to boundaries being enforced. This tantrum response is actually evidence that a true boundary was set, not a sign of poor parenting.
Parents should not expect positive reinforcement or celebration when setting boundaries. The absence of confetti or applause does not indicate failure. Understanding that tantrums signal successful boundary-setting helps parents remain less reactive to these responses.
Effective communication is not measured by receiving the perfect reaction. Parents often mistakenly use children's behavior and reactions as a barometer of their own parenting success, leading them to lose connection with their own internal guidance about what decisions they believe in.
A parent shared an example of her child experiencing a major public meltdown at a birthday party when unable to sit next to the birthday child. The parent demonstrated sturdy leadership by picking up the child, explaining they would leave the party, stating the child was a good kid having a hard time, and carrying them to the car. This was later recognized as a parenting win because it demonstrated knowing exactly what to do during turbulence rather than avoiding difficult situations.
Parents have two primary jobs that apply to almost every situation: setting boundaries and validating children's emotions. These jobs go hand in hand, and clarity about these responsibilities is essential before parents can perform them effectively.
Boundaries are defined as something you tell someone you will do, requiring nothing from the other person. Many boundary statements are actually ineffective because they require the other person to comply. For example, telling a child "Don't press the elevator buttons" is not a true boundary because it requires the child to do nothing and gives all power to the child.
A true boundary for elevator buttons would be: "When we go into the elevator, I'm going to be between you and the buttons. I know it's fun to press the button, but it's just not something I'm going to allow. Even if you lunge for it, I'm going to block you." This is something the parent will do and does not require the child's compliance.
When children take iPads during non-iPad time, the solution is not telling them not to touch it. A proper boundary involves removing access entirely by placing the iPad completely out of reach and out of sight until designated iPad time, recognizing that these devices are designed to be addictive.
Validating children's emotions does not mean agreeing with them. When a child wants grilled cheese cut into triangles instead of rectangles, validation involves acknowledging their experience: "You really wish it was in a triangle today" or "This feels really bad." This does not require making a new grilled cheese, as boundaries can still be maintained.
Children are always asking two fundamental questions: "Am I safe?" which boundaries answer, and "Am I real?" which validation addresses. Children have intense feelings without external manifestations like visible injuries, making it confusing for them to understand whether their internal experiences are real before they can learn to manage them.
Parents often view their job as making children good people, successful, or able to survive in the real world. The core questions to focus on are "am I safe" and "am I real." Boundaries and validation work together to help achieve broader parenting goals including resilience, tolerance for discomfort, feeling at home in one's body, and confidence defined as self-trust.
Resilience means being able to handle challenges and bounce back from hard things. Confidence involves trusting your own feelings rather than believing others perceive your feelings better than you do. Setting boundaries while staying connected through validating emotions supports children in their struggles without rescuing them. Parents should regularly ask themselves if they're still doing things for their children that the children can begin learning to do for themselves.
When kindness lacks boundaries and validation, or when validation occurs without boundaries, children don't learn what self-kindness looks like. They may only witness the martyr or self-sacrificed version of kindness, leading them to believe kindness means allowing themselves to be exploited or abused without any mutual understanding. This prevents them from becoming genuinely kind people and instead creates individuals who are taken advantage of.
Optimizing for happiness in childhood actually wires for anxiety in adulthood. The more parents try to make children happy, the more they develop a range of emotions children learn are intolerable. When adults later face situations where there's no immediate off-ramp to happiness, the distress feels more intense because they've always expected feelings to resolve quickly.
When a child says "I'm the only one in my class who can't read," the feeling isn't really about reading ability—it's about feeling less than others or jealous. This represents a bench in life's garden that everyone sits on at various times throughout life, whether in college, at work, or in social situations. Parents typically respond in two ways: trying to convince the child their bench isn't real, or trying to distract them to a "sunny bench" by highlighting their strengths in other areas.
When parents try to convince children their feelings aren't accurate or immediately rescue them from discomfort, they communicate that the parent knows how to perceive the child's world better than the child does. This creates self-distrust over time. Anxiety isn't a feeling itself but rather a running away from feelings—the experience of not wanting to feel the way one currently feels.
Children wire their bodies to understand which feelings and experiences are tolerable versus intolerable. When parents consistently rescue children from difficult emotions through distraction or quick fixes, children learn that certain feelings require escape. This pattern continues into adulthood, where individuals may lack the ability to cope with feelings because they've always expected an immediate return to happiness.
When children express difficult emotions, parents can use three powerful responses. First, "I'm so glad you're talking to me about this" communicates that the part of the child feeling this way is attachable. Second, "I believe you" serves as an ultimate confidence builder. Third, "tell me more" invites deeper sharing. These responses show children their parent can tolerate difficult feelings and sit with them on the bench.
When parents sit with children through difficult emotions using these three responses, 99% of the time children get off the emotional bench before the parent does. Children may suddenly ask for a snack or move on, having received what they needed—the knowledge that their parent could tolerate being with them in that difficult feeling. This process gives difficult emotions like disappointment, jealousy, or embarrassment a container and home, making future experiences of these feelings less panicky.
There's immense value in children spending time doing unenjoyable things. Modern parenting often unconsciously optimizes for children's pleasure at every moment, but learning to do things that are boring and unenjoyable sometimes is essential to being a good human. Chores provide concrete experiences of having purpose and impact in the world—seeing plates go from dirty to clean to in the dishwasher demonstrates visible contribution.
Chores should never be given as punishment but rather as important structure. They help children feel impactful and part of something larger than themselves. Children need to feel they're contributing to the family and having real-world impact, not just spinning in their own thoughts and optimization.
Starting work early builds the identity of being "a person who can do hard things" and "a person who can go into situations that are totally new." Real-world experiences like delivering newspapers or working in a grocery store provide generational exposure and learning that can't happen at home. The contrast between siblings who started working early versus those protected from work shows how early work experience normalizes work as part of life.
Beyond chores, children need opportunities to do real things in the real world. This includes going to get bagels independently, taking public transportation alone, checking themselves in at appointments, or emailing coaches directly. These experiences create visceral feelings of capability that academics and sports don't provide in the same way. Parents can ease into this by letting children handle age-appropriate real-world tasks while providing appropriate support.
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