However, it shortly dives off the deep end, making the parent completely responsible for the emotional world of their children.

Good Inside – HarperCollins Good Inside – HarperCollins

There’s one question I hear from parents more than any other: Is it too late? Have I messed up my child? My answer is always No. To learn more about this book and how it can help you transform your parenting experience, read on for a comprehensive summary and review of its main ideas and strategies. I think the best gift we can give our kids is helping them realize that happiness is not the goal. Of course, we want our children to experience happiness. But if we only focus on happiness, we don’t leave room for all of the other emotions that our kids are going to experience. If we focus on building resilience, we help our kids learn to regulate when they experience sadness, anger, and distress.From this perspective, the author offers tangible examples and scenarios to help parents interact with their children in more helpful ways.

Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

Seeking fairness in a family dynamic actually leads to big problems. When you focus on equality, and not equity of need, you raise a bunch of bean counters that obsess about what their siblings have received. You set them up for disimpassioned entitlement. Many parents are worried about behaviors that are completely normal. Shyness, frustration intolerance, food challenges, tears, and perfectionism are all behaviors that occur out of a child’s normal need to find control over their environment. Spending one-on-one time with your child on a regular basis can prevent much of that negative behavior. As we’ve already mentioned, your relationships with others will only ever be as good as your relationship with yourself. If you’re like most parents, you’ve experienced your fair share of shame. It’s important to face that shame, name it, and bring it out into the open. You’re doing this for your own healing, but also so you can recognize shame reactions in your children and help them navigate those tough emotions.Parents have the job of establishing safety and connection through boundaries, validation, and empathy. Children have the job of exploring and learning through experiencing and expressing their emotions. We all have to stay in our lanes: Our kids should not dictate our boundaries, and we should not dictate their feelings. Don’t you just want your kids to be happy? I’m asked this all the time. And honestly, the answer is No. To be clear, I am not wishing for my kids to be unhappy, but a focus on happiness in childhood tends to lead to an adulthood filled with anxiety. Sometimes a child’s emotional demands are too high and it comes out in their body. Emotional tantrums, aggressive tantrums, and fear and anxiety are all manifestations of high emotional demands on a child who’s unable to regulate them. Here’s a sample script to bring all of these elements together: “I was having big feelings that came out in a yelling voice. Those were my feelings and it’s my job to work on managing them better. It’s never your fault when I yell. I love you.” “Parenting doesn’t have to be defined by moments of struggle.”

Good Inside: A Practical Guide to Becoming the Parent You

As someone who gets overstimulated easily, tantrums can be hard for me to deal with. It always helps to remind myself that tantrums, while uncomfortable, are normal and healthy. In these moments, the child is experiencing an emotion that is simply too big for them to regulate at their stage of development. This approach overall is so needy on the part of the parents. There's so much in there that assumes being in your kid's face all the time (e.g., the 'fill you up with mommy' game, sitting with them in their room) will solve every issue. Sure...it's a flattering thought and I see why some parents like it. Yes, it makes sense to treat kids like humans, but if you are saying that children process things differently from adults, stop saying that the way you would feel when you heard a certain statement is obviously how a kid would also feel. And don't assume that all adults react to things the same way! (ha the coffeeshop example). In summary, I think every parent should read this book. This review really only scratches the surface. Every time I opened the book to reference for this post, I’d find something else I wanted to include. I had to finally just cut myself off, lol!Here are examples of ‘not’ boundaries, but instead ways we essentially ask our kids to do our jobs for us.” When your goal is resilience, not only do you have to work on yourself, you also have to see behavior for what it is – a glimpse into your child’s inner world. Whenever startling behaviors occur, remember to make your most generous interpretation, remind yourself that two things are true, and approach with a desire to understand. Ultimately, you want your child to grow up with resiliency and confidence. You want them to be able to navigate tough situations, understand consent, hold their own boundaries, and grow in their relationships. They won’t be confident if they don’t trust their own feelings. They can only trust their feelings if you model that trust by being with them through their emotional highs, holding the boundaries, and helping them recognize the good inside themselves. Summary Arguably, the most important connection-building technique is something we’ve already discussed: repair. Your goal should never be to avoid relationship ruptures – because that’s impossible. But if you learn the skill of repair, you’ll strengthen your relationships and give your children the skills they need to be resilient in the future. Atcerieties: bērniem nekas nešķiet tik šausmīgs kā sāpīgās jūtas, ar kurām viņi paliek vieni, attiecību salabošana šo vientulību aizstāj ar saikni, un tam vajadzētu kļūt par mūsu viskvēlāko vēlmi un mērķi.

Good Inside Good Inside

Children should be treated with respect and not as adversaries. Their behaviors should get the most generous interpretation and least aggressive correction. When you see a child hesitate to join the group, that’s actually a good thing. They’re trying to understand what’s going on before jumping in. You can help your child by talking about something big beforehand or by sitting with them through their hesitancy and answering any questions they may have. Don’t push them into a situation they don’t feel comfortable with. In the end, you want them to be able to trust their feelings, and that won’t happen if you tell them their feelings are wrong by pushing them into something they don’t want to do. Embrace the multiplicity of your roles as a parent. You can be fun and authoritative at the same time. You should be many things at once for your child. Understand when your child is having an unformulated experience (like listening to a vacuum for the first time and not knowing what its purpose is and being afraid). You would never dismiss an adult’s feelings of fear and anxiety so why is it normalized to do this with a child? Their feelings and thoughts are just as real and go unregulated meaning they are in even more need of compassion and connection constantly. Proverbs 17:25 "A foolish son brings grief to his father and bitterness to the mother who bore him."By focusing and obsessing about behavior modification, we impute that behavior onto our children’s identity. In other words, our reactions to their transient behaviors get internalized into their identities which can be extremely harmful and toxic and can last well into their adulthood. The obsession with fixing their problems and focusing on happiness being the optimum state ill-prepares children to navigate their emotions. If we shame away emotions of distress, this translates into adulthood anxiety because we’ve created an adult who suddenly doesn’t have someone to enforce happiness and they can’t achieve it themselves so they are left with anxiety, dread and depression. Using an MGI doesn’t make a bad behavior OK. It just helps you see the good kid or adult who is under the behavior. This encourages intervention from a place of seeing our kid as a good kid having a hard time, not a bad kid doing bad things. This mindset difference is everything. 2. Know your job. K, well I’m a parent of three. Here’s how this would go down with my fearful middle kid. He doesn’t want to go in to the birthday party. I validate and reflect his emotions. Now he is convinced that it's scary, since I’m not providing guidance that it’s not. He continues to refuse to go in. Nepievēršot uzmanību tam, kas notiek dziļāk, zem virsējā slāņa, mēs nespēsim mainīt spēkus, kas ierosina bērna uzvedību. Tas būtu līdzīgi kā nolikt spaini vietā, kur no griestiem tek ūdens, nevis meklēt cēloni, kāpēc tas tek. Ja pievēršamies galvenokārt uzvedībai, mēs zaudējam iespēju palīdzēt saviem bērniem attīstīt prasmes, kā arī palaižam garām iespēju raudzīties uz saviem bērniem kā uz cilvēkiem, nevis uzvedību kopumā. Despite the sunny cover and branding, it's still conceptually quite guilt/damage heavy. It's all about 'repairing' the damage. 'Rewiring' your kid. I don't find this metaphor that helpful, it's a bit guilt-inducing and permeates the book.