Even non-parents get advice from this TikTok parenting guru

When you make purchases through links in our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn commissions.

becky kennedy Not trying to help anyone become a perfect parent. This is not possible. The 43-year-old clinical psychologist and author told me matter-of-factly on a Zoom call on a Monday afternoon in mid-March that perfection would not be her aim, even if it were. Was. “Perfect is scary,” she says. “I don’t limit myself to the goal of being perfect or perfect all the time.”

Kennedy is better known to her 3.4 million followers on Instagram and 342,000 followers on TikTok Dr. BeckyAnd it’s that kind of honesty and open-mindedness — backed up by the credibility of being the mother of three children, ages 14, 11 and 8 — that got her there. She earned the title of “Millennial Parent Whisperer” during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when she shared videos of herself sympathetically addressing the concerns of modern parenting from her New York City living room. Their popularity at a time when parenting advice is regularly pouring out from every corner of the internet speaks volumes for itself.

Kennedy has a series of Instagram videos with titles like “How to say I’m sorry” And “How to stay calm during a tantrum,” But she says parenting advice has never really been the mission behind her platform. “I think of it more as the emotional infrastructure for a family,” she says.

Six years after her first viral Instagram post, which focused on responding to the stress and uncertainty of the pandemic, Kennedy is now co-founder good inside. It is a multi-platform brand that includes his podcast of the same name, his bookAnd a membership-based website that offers support in the form of online workshops, live events, 24/7 AI-assisted chatbots, and more.

On our call, we learned what it means to be good on the inside, the importance of seeking community and the challenges we face as parents. modern parenthood.

The name of your brand is Good Inside. Can you tell what this means?

I think this means that I have a sense of my inner worth separate from any external behavior or moment, and I can separate my inner worth from a moment that I’m not proud of. Despite not being proud of my behavior, I may wonder: Why did I do that? What happened? What can I do differently next time? Now I don’t have so much shame that I can freeze. I always say on my podcast that, even if we struggle on the outside, we remain good on the inside, and I think it’s this ability to get in touch with your inner goodness that is really a necessary prerequisite for positive change.

Before co-founding Good Inside, you were sharing personal stories about fatherhood via social media. Why did you feel it was necessary to expand your platform?

For me, social media The most important topics in our lives are hard to miss, so I like to share ideas and outlines and thoughts and excerpts. But honestly, turning it into something else came from the DM and people saying, “We want more. This is the first time something made sense in my head and felt right in my heart.” And I wanted to follow that formula. In fact this is why we do everything.

What kind of reaction were you hearing early on?

There are a lot of people in our community who are not parents and say, “Oh, that sounds good to me as someone who doesn’t have kids.” I think they were seeing these social media clips and recognizing that these were deeper structures by which they could be empowered. People will say, “Oh, there’s a post about a baby, but I think this would be the way to think about boundaries.” helpful with my boss Or with my mother-in-law.” I have people who say, “I use this stuff in the classroom all the time” or “This will make me a better manager” or “I think this is marriage advice.”

Has becoming a parent changed the way you practice psychology or interact with your patients?

Yes! I think a lot of us are still kids in adult bodies and with adult responsibilities. And yet, the things we struggled with in childhood or the areas in which we often felt judged or ignored, work themselves out. Only then do we get excited, only then do we have a strong reaction. And I think that’s the beauty parenthood It’s the most emotionally moving journey we’re on, and if we use it that way, we see moments that we’re not proud of in our parenting, but we can, again, use it as a window to better understand ourselves and move forward as parents or just as a human being.

“Maternal instinct” emphasizes that parenting happens naturally…the only thing that comes naturally in parenting is how you were raised.

How do you differentiate Dr. Becky the psychologist from Becky the parent?

I always tell people, “My kids don’t have Dr. Becky as a parent.” This is true. But I think what’s inherent in Good Inside is that it’s not the perfect parenting platform. This is not an approach to being an ideal parent. We always say that perfect is scary. If it were possible, perfection wouldn’t even be the goal. To quote Dr. Becky, what we created at Good Inside is the idea of ​​messing up, the idea of ​​”I’m not going to be able to say what I want to say all the time,” and the idea that I can always improve. I think my kids have parents, so yes, I think Good Inside Thoughts and Dr. Becky thoughts come to me as often as I can. They are definitely the framework with which I understand my children, but I don’t limit myself to the goal of being perfect or cool all the time. I try to improve most of the time, but I only improve when I struggle as much as possible.

you talked trevor noah About how important it is for parents to have community, but it’s a hard thing to find these days as people have become more isolated. Do you think your platform is filling that gap?

The best thing about Good Inside Is community. Anyone who’s delved deep into the Good Inside world talks less about Dr. Becky and more about other parents she’s met. The best part of our membership is that there are members from over a hundred countries, and there is always someone awake to talk. The discussions we’re having online and live events—this is the best corner of the Internet. You don’t get this anywhere else. People are opening up their hearts and being so real and responding to other people’s vulnerabilities and saying, “Sure, that makes sense. Tell me more about it. Me too!” There’s nothing I can say to a parent that’s as powerful as the real visceral experience of knowing you’re not alone, and AI can’t give that. Dr. Becky doesn’t give that. The only thing it offers is community. I’m very aware of this, which is why I’m very proud of the containers we’ve built for a safe community.

It’s interesting that you pushed AI, because there are so many people who are turning to it for everything, including medical advice. As a psychologist, how do you deal with this?

I think it’s really attractive to have something that, at least superficially, provides this very quick solution and quick answer. I mean, I think what it misses is that often when we’re anxious, our question isn’t really the true question in our mind. We’re asking a million questions about it baby sleepBut in the back of our minds, we’re wondering, “Will it be like this forever? Am I the only one struggling with this? Do I even understand what it’s like to be at this age?” And so we keep asking question after question, and the reason we keep doing that is because we’re really looking for something deeper than the subject of our question, so I think AI is great. We all need a quick answer to something sometimes. I think we all know in other moments too, it’s not really landing in a way that feels helpful. So maybe instead of insisting on the same thing and expecting a different response, (I need to do something different). I think really importantly, The Good Inside has never been about parenting advice. I think of us more as the emotional infrastructure for a family.

There’s no shame in investing in supporting the hardest and most impactful work in the world.

We are constantly being told that fewer people are having children and the statistics show it. Do you think being a parent is harder now than it was a decade ago?

I don’t know from personal experience, but I think so. This is the first generation of parents who are parenting in a world that never stops, and where short-term convenience and comfort are everywhere. Raising children is an act of short-term discomfort with long-term gain and I think the world we live in is increasingly oriented toward short-term convenience, short-term reward, short-term dopamine available everywhere. Raising and raising children requires just the opposite, so it’s hard. Having a phone means that any of us, as adults, can get endless amounts of entertainment with very little effort. Well, raising children does not require a lot of entertainment but a lot of hard work. It’s like tolerating stress and doing short-term hard work for the long-term benefit of raising another human being.

You talked about the “myth” on the podcast maternal instinct” Why do you think this idea is harmful, especially for mothers?

“Maternal Instinct” It signals that parenting happens naturally and you just need to know that. The only thing that comes naturally in parenting is how you were raised. I know a lot of parents say there are things they want done differently, but we wouldn’t expect someone who grew up in English to be able to speak Mandarin naturally. We’d say, “Sure, you can change languages. But you have to learn Mandarin.” It doesn’t happen naturally, and I think that’s really what Good Inside is about. There are some moments that come naturally, some moments that are spontaneous. There’s a lot that doesn’t do, and it doesn’t mean you’re failing, and it doesn’t mean you’re defective. It certainly doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. In fact, in every other area of ​​our lives when something doesn’t come naturally, it’s time to just say, “I’m going to step up my support here.” There’s no shame in investing in supporting the hardest and most impactful work in the world.

What’s something you wish more people understood? motherhood And how do children behave?

There is always a story behind someone’s behavior. Behavior is really like the window on one’s house. Behavior is not an indicator of identity. This is a clue to what a child is struggling with, and when we figure that out, we can do the next part, which is not being permissive. It’s saying, “Okay, well, now that I have a better understanding of what driving behavior is, I have some of the elements that I need to actually improve the behavior.” Look at behavior as a clue, not to who someone is, but to what someone is struggling with.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

read magazine