Here is the full text and summary of clinical psychologist Becky Kennedy’s talk titled “The Single Most Important Parenting Strategy” at TED conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
All right, quick poll. Raise your hand if you have a relationship in your life that’s meaningful to you. Okay, I assumed, but always good to check our assumptions. I’m saying this because while I’ll be focusing today on a parent-child relationship, please know that everything I’m talking about is applicable to any meaningful relationship. So with that in mind, let’s jump in.
So it’s Sunday night, I’m in my kitchen, I just finished cooking dinner for my family, and I am on edge. I mean, I’m exhausted, I haven’t been sleeping well, I’m anxious about the upcoming work week, I’m overwhelmed by all the items on my unfinished to-do list, and then my son walks into the kitchen. He looks at the table and whines, ‘Chicken again? Disgusting.’ And that’s it. I snap.
I look at him and I yell, ‘What is wrong with you? Can you be grateful for one thing in your life?’ And things get worse from there. He screams, ‘I hate you’, he runs out of the room and he slams the bedroom door, and now my self-loathing session begins as I say to myself, ‘What is wrong with me? I’ve messed up my kid forever.’
Well, if you’re a parent, you’ve probably felt that pain. For me, it comes with an extra layer of shame. I mean, I’m a clinical psychologist, and my specialty is helping people become better parents. And yet, this is true as well. There is no such thing as a perfect parent. Mistakes and struggles, they come with the job, but no one tells us what to do next.
Do we just move on, kind of just pretend the whole thing never happened? Or if I say something, what are the words? Well, for years, as a clinical psychologist in private practice, I saw client after client struggle with this question. And now, as the creator of the parenting content and community platform, Good Inside, I see millions of parents around the globe struggle with this issue. All parents yell, no one knows what to do next.
Well, I’m determined to fill this gap. After all, there’s almost nothing within our interpersonal relationships that can have as much impact as repair. Whenever a parent asks me, what one parenting strategy should I focus on? I always say the same thing, get good at repair.
So what is repair? Repair is the act of going back to a moment of disconnection, taking responsibility for your behavior, and acknowledging the impact it had on another. And I want to differentiate a repair from an apology, because when an apology often looks to shut a conversation down, hey, I’m sorry I yelled, can we move on now? A good repair opens one up.
And if you think about what it means to get good at repair, there’s so much baked in realism and hope and possibility. Repair assumes there’s been a rupture. So to repair, you have to mess up, or fall short of someone else’s expectations. Which means the next time I snap at my kid, or my husband, or my work colleague, instead of berating myself like I did that night in the kitchen, I try to remind myself, I’m focusing on getting good at repair.
Step one is rupture. Check that off, I crushed it. Step two is repair. I can do this. I’m actually right on track. So let’s get back to my example. I’m in the kitchen, my son is in his room. Well, what will happen if I don’t repair? That’s really important to understand, and helps us make a decision about what to do next.
Well, here are the facts. My son is alone, overwhelmed, and in a state of distress, because let’s face it, his mom just became Scary Mom. And now he has to figure out a way to get back to feeling safe and secure. And if I don’t go help him do that, through making a repair, he has to rely on one of the only coping mechanisms he has at his own disposal. Self-blame.
Self-blame sounds like this. Something’s wrong with me. I’m unlovable. I make bad things happen. Ronald Fairbairn may have said it best when he wrote that for kids, “It is better to be a sinner in a world ruled by God than to live in a world ruled by the devil.” In other words, it’s actually adaptive for a child to internalize badness and fault, because at least then they can hold on to the idea that their parents and the world around them is safe and good.
And while self-blame works for us in childhood, we all know it works against us in adulthood. Something’s wrong with me. I make bad things happen. I’m unlovable. These are the core fears of so many adults. But really, we see here, they are actually the childhood stories we wrote when we were left alone following distressing events that went unrepaired.
Plus, adults with self-blame are vulnerable to depression, anxiety, deep feelings of worthlessness, none of which we want for our kids. And we can do better. And it doesn’t mean we have to be perfect.
When you repair, you go further than removing a child’s story of self-blame. You get to add in all the elements that were missing in the first place. Safety, connection, coherence, love, goodness. It’s as if you’re saying to a child, I will not let this chapter of your life end in self-blame. Yes, this chapter will still contain the event of yelling, but I can ensure this chapter has a different ending, and therefore a different title and theme and lesson learned.
We know that memory is original events combined with every other time you’ve remembered that event. This is why therapy is helpful, right?
When you remember painful experiences from your past within a safer and more connected relationship, the event remains, but your story of the event, it changes, and then you change.
With repair, we effectively change the past. So let’s write a better story. Let’s learn how to repair. Step one, repair with yourself. That’s right. I mean, you can’t offer compassion or groundedness or understanding to someone else before you access those qualities within yourself.
Self-repair means separating your identity, who you are, from your behavior, what you did. For me, it means telling myself two things are true. I’m not proud of my latest behavior, and my latest behavior doesn’t define me. Even as I struggle on the outside, I remain good inside.
I can then start to see that I’m a good parent, identity, who was having a hard time, behavior, and no, this doesn’t let me off the hook. This is precisely what leaves me on the hook for change, because now that I’ve replaced my spiral with groundedness, I can actually use my energy toward thinking about what I want to do differently the next time. Oh, and I can now use my energy to go repair with my son.
Step two, repair with your child. There’s no exact formula. I often think about three elements. Name what happened, take responsibility, state what you would do differently the next time. It could come together like this. Hey, I keep thinking about what happened the other night in the kitchen. I’m sorry I yelled. I’m sure that felt scary, and it wasn’t your fault. I’m working on staying calm even when I’m frustrated.
A 15-second intervention can have a lifelong impact. I’ve replaced my child’s story of self-blame with a story of self-trust and safety and connection. I mean, what a massive upgrade. And to give a little more clarity around how to repair, I want to share a few examples of what I call not repair, which are things that come more naturally to most of us, definitely me included.
Hey, I’m sorry I yelled at you in the kitchen, but, you know, if you wouldn’t have complained about dinner, it wouldn’t have happened. Been there? Been there? Okay. Or, you know, you really need to be grateful for things in your life, like a home-cooked meal. Then you won’t get yelled at.
Not only do these interventions fail at the goal of reconnection, they also insinuate that your child caused your reaction, which simply isn’t true and isn’t a model of emotion regulation we want to pass on to the next generation. So let’s say we’ve all resisted the, it was your fault anyway, not repairs, and have instead prioritized a repair that allows us to reconnect. What might the impact be? What might that look like in adulthood?
My adult child won’t spiral in self-blame when they make a mistake, and won’t take on blame for someone else’s mistake. My adult child will know how to take responsibility for their behavior because you’ve modeled how to take responsibility for yours. Repairing with a child today sets the stage for these critical adult relationship patterns. Plus, it gets better.
Now that I’ve reconnected with my son, I can do something really impactful. I can teach him a skill he didn’t have in the first place, which is how kids actually change their behavior. So maybe the next day I say, you know, you’re not always going to like what I make for dinner. Instead of saying, that’s disgusting, I wonder if you could say, not my favorite.
Now I’m teaching him how to regulate his understandable disappointment and communicate effectively and respectfully with another person. That never would have happened if instead I had been blaming him for my reaction.
So here’s a point where you might have a lingering concern. Maybe you’re thinking, you know, I have a feeling my kid’s older than your kid. I think it’s too late. Or, I’ve done a lot worse than you did in the kitchen. Maybe it’s too late.
Well, I mean this. If you have only one takeaway from this talk, please let this be it. It is not too late. It is never too late. How do I know? Well, imagine right after this you get a call from one of your parents. And if neither of your parents are alive, imagine finding and opening a letter you hadn’t seen until that moment.
Okay, walk through this with me. Here’s the call. Hey, I know this sounds out of the blue, but I’ve been thinking a lot about your childhood. And I think there were a lot of moments that felt really bad to you. And you were right to feel that way. Those moments weren’t your fault. They were times when I was struggling, and if I could have gone back, I would have stepped aside. I would have calmed myself down and then found you to help you with whatever you were struggling with. I’m sorry.
And if you’re ever willing to talk to me about any of those moments, I’ll listen. I won’t listen to have a rebuttal. I’ll listen to understand. I love you.
I don’t know many adults who don’t have a fairly visceral reaction to that exercise. I often hear, why am I crying? Or, listen, that wouldn’t change everything, but it might change some things.
Well, I definitely do not special in math, but here’s something I know with certainty. If you have a child, that child is younger than you are. Always true. The story of their life is shorter and even more amenable to editing. So if that imagined exercise had an impact on you, imagine the impact an actual repair will have on your child. See, I told you. It’s never too late.
Becky Kennedy’s talk, “The Single Most Important Parenting Strategy,” emphasizes the significance of repair in parent-child relationships and meaningful connections in general. She provides valuable insights and practical advice on how to repair relationships when conflicts or ruptures occur. Here are the key points from her talk:
1. Repair Is Essential for All Relationships: Kennedy begins by highlighting the universality of meaningful relationships and the importance of repair in maintaining them. Although she focuses on parent-child relationships, her insights are applicable to any significant relationship.
2. The Scenario of a Parenting Challenge: Kennedy shares a personal anecdote of a difficult moment with her son, illustrating how parents can sometimes react negatively to their children’s behavior. This scenario is relatable to many parents.
3. The Imperfection of Parenting: Kennedy acknowledges that there is no such thing as a perfect parent. Mistakes and struggles are inevitable, but what matters is how parents respond to them.
4. Understanding Repair: Kennedy defines repair as the act of revisiting a moment of disconnection, taking responsibility for one’s behavior, and acknowledging its impact on others. Repair differs from a simple apology because it opens up a dialogue rather than shutting it down.
5. The Importance of Repairing: Repairing is crucial because when parents fail to repair, children often resort to self-blame as a coping mechanism. This self-blame can lead to long-term emotional issues, such as anxiety and depression, in adulthood.
6. Changing the Narrative: Repairing effectively changes the narrative surrounding a difficult event. It replaces self-blame with feelings of safety, connection, and love, which are essential for healthy emotional development.
7. Steps to Repair: Kennedy outlines two key steps for effective repair. First, parents must repair with themselves by separating their identity from their behavior and acknowledging that they can improve. Then, parents should repair with their child by acknowledging what happened, taking responsibility, and sharing what they would do differently next time.
8. Positive Impact on Adulthood: Repairing with a child sets the stage for healthy adult relationship patterns. It teaches children how to take responsibility for their behavior and handle disappointment while communicating effectively and respectfully.
9. Never Too Late to Repair: Kennedy stresses that it is never too late to repair relationships with your child. The story of a child’s life is shorter and more amenable to editing than an adult’s. Repairing can have a profound impact on their emotional well-being.
10. The Emotional Exercise: Kennedy concludes with an emotional exercise, asking the audience to imagine receiving a heartfelt apology from their own parents. This exercise emphasizes the transformative power of repair in any relationship.
In summary, Becky Kennedy’s talk underscores the importance of repair in maintaining meaningful relationships, especially in parent-child dynamics. Repairing involves taking responsibility for one’s actions, changing the narrative of negative events, and creating a lasting impact on a child’s emotional development. It is a strategy that can be applied at any stage of parenting and has the potential to strengthen connections and emotional well-being for both parents and children.
