Dr. Becky Kennedy: Overcoming Guilt & Building Tenacity in Kids & Adults

In the dynamic world that children grow up in, Kennedy and Huberman reveal the critical need for programs that cultivate resilience by teaching frustration tolerance, managing reactions to challenges, and the importance of finding one's passion.

Cultivating a Growth Mindset and Embracing Learning

Struggle and Frustration Are Crucial for Resilience and Skill Development

Kennedy discusses the significance of teaching children to manage frustration rather than trying to eliminate the source of it. She conveys that inconvenience and struggle are not only necessary but beneficial for learning resilience and capability. According to Kennedy, watching oneself overcome challenges is a thrilling experience that can become addictive. She insists it is crucial for children to learn that feeling capable comes from overcoming difficult tasks, not just from success.

Helping Children Reframe Challenges As Growth Opportunities

Kennedy stresses the idea of reframing challenges as opportunities for growth, hoping her children would base various struggles at home where they can develop skills to manage them. She also suggests that by sharing personal struggles with children and showing them the process of working through those struggles, parents can help children view such challenges as growth opportunities. Kennedy believes that by practicing resilience in non-toxic environments like sports and crafting, children can better handle frustration.

Teaching Practical Strategies For Managing Frustration

Introducing the "Frustration Tolerance Graph" to Aid Children In Learning

Kennedy has a graph that portrays the learning journey from not knowing how to do something to becoming proficient, a phase characterized by frustration. She suggests an exercise for children where they acknowledge their frustration, which is congratulated as a sign of being in the "learning space." This reframe encourages kids to view stress or nervousness as normal and something to be proud of.

Modeling Healthy Coping Mechanisms and Self-Regulation Skills

Drawing from Huberman's scientific insights, Kennedy advocates teaching kids to perceive emotions on a "dimmer switch," enabling them to regulate emotional intensity. For instance, she suggests that children should learn to lower frustration from a nine out of ten to a more manageable seven, highlighting the necessity of learni ...

Dr. Becky Kennedy and Huberman delve into the complexities of emotions like guilt and shame, discussing how they can be understood, managed, and distinguished to foster healthier responses to life's challenges.

Guilt as an Indicator of Value Alignment

Kennedy posits that guilt can serve as a natural consequence that brings awareness to the divergence between one's actions and values.

Distinguishing True Guilt From Misattribution of Others' Emotions

Kennedy clarifies the importance of distinguishing true guilt from the misattribution of others' emotions. She explains, using the example of a parent feeling guilty about going to dinner with friends, that this feeling may not be true guilt if going to dinner aligns with her values. Huberman also discusses feeling bad for not responding to texts promptly, reflecting on whether his feelings are genuinely guilt or a product of misplaced expectations. Kennedy suggests that naming and communicating mismatches between expectations and actions can diffuse false guilt.

Guiding Children to Responsibly Act Without Crippling Shame

Kennedy further discusses how helping children to act according to their values without experiencing crippling shame when they deviate from expectations or make mistakes is crucial. A child feeling guilty about taking an eraser can be a healthy signal that leads to behavior change and provides a teachable moment without causing excessive shame.

Fostering Self-Compassion and Emotional Awareness

Kennedy emphasizes the importance of encouraging the healthy expression of feelings and fostering emotional resilience, especially in children.

Encouraging Children to Express Feelings Healthily

Kennedy stresses that emotional talks with children are valuable as emotions contain important information. She encourages parents to help their children build resilience by acknowledging and embracing their emotions. Feeling something intensely enough to cry indicates significant information, and Kennedy suggests that these feelings should be attended to rather than dismissed.

Empowering Children to Set Boundaries Guilt-Free

Kennedy discusses how societal conditioning, par ...

Andrew Huberman and Becky Kennedy investigate the profound ways in which technology is influencing parenting practices and the development of children, underscoring the challenges related to gratification, attention spans, and the nurturing of human connections.

Navigating Challenges of Gratification and Attention Spans

Recognizing Neurological Impacts of Constant Digital Stimulation

Andrew Huberman addresses how a significant percentage of young people, who are sleep-deprived, face serious deficits in neural rewiring — an issue indirectly tied to technology usage that affects sleep, attention spans, and gratification processes. Huberman also discusses the strain our brains face from sudden adaptations to being aware of many people's activities and emotional states through technologies like text messaging. Similarly, Becky Kennedy speaks to technology's fundamental reshaping of evolutionary drives around attachment, shifting gratification from direct interactions to multiple digital sources such as social media notifications.

The constant barrage of digital stimulation is suggested by Kennedy to be impacting our natural selection of instant gratification over long-term benefits, potentially affecting neurological responses to slower Non-tech-related activities deemed as depressing or boring.

Promoting Delayed Gratification and Variable Effort-Reward Schedules

The immediate [restricted term] rush from technology, as opposed to the satisfaction derived from the effort and reward cycle of activities like completing a puzzle, is a point of discussion. Both Huberman and Kennedy highlight the importance of helping children develop the space between wanting and having which technology can compress, thereby reducing their tolerance to frustration and the learning process.

Becky Kennedy suggests that setting non-negotiable rules, like restricting phone usage, can help encourage delayed gratification in children. Andrew Huberman conducted a personal experiment with technology distancing, placing physical barriers between himself and his phone to break the cycle of instant gratification. This practice highlighted the significance of managing and appreciating variable rewards that come after different durations and efforts — similar to earning birthday money versus rewards that come from actual effort.

Preserving Opportunities for Human Connection and Learning

Technology's Role In Fragmenting Attention and Relationships

Huberman notes the challenge of technology tethering us to the emotional states of many others, fragmenting our attention and potentially hindering genuine human connections. This new normal contrasts starkly with historical hu ...

Andrew Huberman and Becky Kennedy delve into the complexities of modern parenting, stressing the importance of shared narratives and empathy to help children navigate through their experiences.

Using Stories and Socratic Questioning For Self-Reflection and Problem-Solving

Sharing Struggles and Growth to Build Empathy and Reduce Shame

Huberman and Kennedy suggest a narrative of shared struggles and growth can foster empathy and reduce shame in children. Kennedy advocates for parents to openly share both past and current personal struggles with their children. This openness helps to demonstrate perseverance and de-stigmatize failure. Huberman further emphasizes the importance of acknowledging imperfections and vulnerability, which can build empathy and help children cope with the inevitable reality that they too will make mistakes.

They discuss situations where children may behave in ways that could be quickly judged negatively, such as indulging an urge to push all the elevator buttons. Instead of labeling the child negatively, acknowledging a child’s lack of skill in regulating impulses is encouraged, as it fosters understanding and reduces shame. Huberman shares his experience about discussing mistakes with his father as a learning curve, reinforcing the idea that it is acceptable not to be perfect at everything. These personal narratives serve as powerful tools for building empathy and understanding in children.

Kennedy reflects on her daughter’s early struggles with speech apraxia and how overcoming such challenges non-verbally can build empathy and self-confidence. She shares her own practice of choosing to play a game she is not proficient in, like Scattergories, to show her children that facing challenges is a normal part of life.

Encouraging Children to Explore Solutions Through Open-Ended Questions

Kennedy promotes the use of Socratic questioning, engaging children with open-ended questions that encourage them to explore solutions independently. She emphasizes the importance of provoking thoughtful developmental processes rather than simply handing out answers. For example, through storytelling, parents can inspire children to think about how they would approach problems and build resilience.

Kennedy suggests preparing children for future challenges by equating it to the training of pilots, emphasizing the value of encouraging problem-solving skills. She believes using personal narratives effectively prompts children to reflect on their frustrations and consider alternative ways to tolerate and navigate them. Huberman adds that questions create an open loop in the brain that seeks closure through finding solutions, set forth more effectively than by making statements.

Cultivating an Environment of Trust and Emotional Safety

Modeling Healthy Emotional Expression and Regulation For Children

Kennedy and Huberman underscore the importance of creating emotionally supportive environments for children. They discuss the value of sharing emotions honestly with children and providing clear explanations, arguing that this builds resilience and ensures that feelings are honored rather than suppressed.

Kennedy explains the importance of showing emotions in a healthy way, assuring children that they can notice and care about feelings, but they are not responsible for fixing them. Children can be empathetic without feeling responsible for their parents' emotional challenges. She notes that parents need to be sturdy and self-reliant to avoid becoming overly dependent on their children for emotional support.

Huberman highlights the necessity of a coherent narrative to explain emotional experiences, as the absence of information can be harmful to children. Kennedy states that creating an environment of trust and emotional safety is also about recognizing and adapting to the varying emotional needs of each child within the family.

Clear Boundaries and Expectations, Res ...