Transcription
Anger is a healthy emotion. The issue is most of us weren't taught skills to effectively manage anger, and we weren't given a long enough runway to learn how to do that. In adulthood, a big part of repairing, and this is some of my favorite work to do with parents, is to start to reclaim access to healthy anger.
I'm Dr. Becky Kennedy. I'm a clinical psychologist. I'm a mom of three, and I am the founder of the online parenting platform called Good Inside.
How to regulate your emotions at any age. There are things we can do to improve our emotion regulation skills. Number one is actually just realizing it's a skill. I think parenting is a skill, too. That's actually what everything we do at Good Inside is based on. We've been told forever, parenting comes naturally. You should just know what to do. I hear this from parents all the time. "I'm struggling with my kid. They're having these tantrums. I'm yelling at them all the time." And then they say, "Yeah, I'm getting tips on Instagram. I read a book here or there." But when you really realize, hold on a second. This is a skill. Any other area of my life that I really care about? I invest in learning skills. I get some professional help. I practice. That's actually so empowering. That's a sign of strength. It's just that parenting has always been told to us. It's something that just comes naturally, which is why we feel shame and we stay alone when we're struggling. That's actually the biggest thing I hope to change.
And so, yes, there are so many things we can do to work on our parenting or to work on emotion regulation, which is definitely a part of parenting. Attachment theory and emotion regulation are deeply connected concepts. Kids are born with all of the emotions and none of the skills to manage those emotions. That gap, right, explains why kids and adults act out. It's when emotions are greater than skills. But the thing about these skills that's different than some other skills is they're rarely just taught in a textbook or in a classroom. Kids learn skills to manage their emotions through their attachment with their parents.
This brings up the concept of dysregulation, and then co-regulation, and then the thing we all want: emotion regulation. So let me explain. Because kids are born with all of the emotions and none of the skills, they're often in a state of disregulation. All that really means is my emotions are greater than my skills. So, my emotions come out as a tantrum, as a huge outburst, maybe as an "I hate you," as flailing on the floor. That is a state of disregulation. My kid is having big emotions but doesn't have skills to manage. Okay.
What's co-regulation? One of the ways, and the most powerful ways, kids get from disregulation to regulation is through borrowing a parent's regulation. So, let's picture the scene. My kid is melting down. Why? Because I cut their grilled cheese into triangles, not rectangles. Classic meltdown. Which is probably just representative of there have been so many things in my day that didn't go the way I imagined, and my bucket of frustration is full, and the triangle of grilled cheese is just the thing that spills it all out. My kid is disregulated on the floor. How kids learn eventually to regulate, even in the face of frustration or disappointment, is that they experience over and over and over and over and over again a caregiver who was able to stay relatively calm in the moment the kid was disregulated. It's almost like, here's my disregulated kid flailing on the floor. Here's my calm. And it's almost like the calm can transfer from my body to my kid's. And now my kid has this much calm. Not much, but it's growing. You can almost imagine this is, well, when will my kid be able to stay totally calm? A big part of it is the repetition over and over and over. My parent stayed calm. I've absorbed through co-regulation enough of that calm regulation that it's in my body, and I can access it.
See, the scariest thing to a kid is when they get disregulated and overwhelmed, which is essentially like the feelings in my body are so scary that they take me over. That's such a helpless state. But imagine your four-year-old in that helpless state, and then they see their parent, who they depend on for survival, and see, "Oh no, the things that feel overwhelming to me are also overwhelming to my parent. My parent can't stay calm with this." That's that situation where you're freaking out when there's turbulence, and the pilot's freaking out when there's turbulence. The way you're eventually, even as an adult, going to feel safe amidst turbulence is actually probably going on flights over and over that have turbulence and absorbing the regulation from the pilot. You start to believe it yourself.
And so through a kid's attachment relationship with a caregiver, they start to see things that overwhelm me might not overwhelm me forever. Things that kind of knock me off my rocker and feel intolerable actually are tolerable to my most important, safest adult. And that over and over brings a kid from disregulation to co-regulation to that eventual state of emotion regulation. I should say that we never fully live in emotion regulation. All adults still need other adults in time to help co-regulate. That's why when you've had a horrible day and you go out with some friends and you're having dinner, and they say, "Oh, that stinks. I've been there, too." You're like, "Wait, that's so weird. Nothing about my day changed, but I'm actually feeling better." We absorb some of the validation and calm, and maybe someone believes in us in a way we forgot that we could believe in ourselves. We still need co-regulation even as adults, but hopefully, we're not as dependent on it as often as our kids. And I promise you, your kid won't be as an adult if they've gone through that motion a bunch of times in their early years.
Our ability to hold opposing truths at the same time is one of the most important things for our mental health and successful adult relationships. I'll explain both. Our feelings, our internal states, are very complicated. Very rarely do we just feel one thing. For example, in parenthood, you might feel like, "I love my kid in a way I've never loved anyone in the world." And you might also think, "I kind of miss my pre-child life." If we're forced to reconcile those two thoughts as if only one of them can be true. When I have the thought of, "Oh my goodness, I miss my pre-child life," I start telling myself a story. "I'm a horrible person. What kind of parent would say that? I had to do so much to get pregnant. I'm a monster. Good parents don't think that way." You can imagine the negative downward spiral from there. As if having that thought means I don't love the heck out of my kid.
When we can say to ourselves, and this is kind of a Good Inside catchphrase, "Wait, two things are true. I love my kid more than I've loved anyone or anything in the world. And there are moments when I miss my pre-child life." I don't have to reconcile those two things. I can just say they're both true. I have a type of internal peace.
Now, being able to hold two seemingly oppositional truths is also critical for any successful relationship. Meaning, my relationship with my kid, my relationship with my husband, my relationship with my colleague. People see things differently. And when we need someone else to see things the exact way we see things, we get into really intense conflict. In a marriage, maybe we both want to go to our own families for the holiday. If I'm only trying to convince my husband, "Here's why that's a ridiculous idea. Here's why I should go to my family." I think we all know how that conversation goes. If I can say to myself, "Hold on a second. I really want to go to my family this year. Maybe I can understand why my husband wants to go to his family. Maybe we just need to put on hold which family we're visiting. But maybe I can understand my husband and still understand myself. And maybe that conversation will be a lot more productive." And guess what? It is.
This comes into play all the time with parenting, too. Setting boundaries is a big part of a parent's job. And news flash, kids generally have one reaction to our setting boundaries: a tantrum. Especially when they're young. When I say to my kid, even beautifully, "I know it's hard to turn off the TV, and TV time is over. I'm going to turn it off now." I've never had a kid say to me, "That's a really good decision, Mom. Thanks for your sturdy leadership." No. Especially when my kids were younger and they weren't used to boundaries, they would cry. They would tantrum. They would say, "You're the worst mom in the world. All my friends watch more TV than I do."
If I can't hold two things as true, if only one thing can be true, I start getting very mad at my kid. "You're acting ridiculous. You already watched a show. I surveyed all of your friends' parents, and all of them told me they actually watch less TV than you do." Explosion. If I can hold two things are true, I'd say to myself, "Hold on. My job is to set boundaries. My kid's job is actually to kind of feel their feelings so they can learn to deal with them. I'm allowed to make the decision to turn off the TV. My kid is allowed to be upset about it. My decision doesn't dictate my kid's feelings, and my kid's feelings definitely don't dictate my decision. I can make a decision. My kid can be upset." Two things are true.
Boundaries are one of the most important things to understand. I think for any relationship, a parenting relationship, a work relationship, partnership, definitely in your relationship with in-laws, you have to understand boundaries. And there's something I hear all the time, right, in passing, "My mother-in-law doesn't respect my boundaries. My son doesn't respect my boundaries." And whenever I hear this phrase, "Someone doesn't respect my boundaries," if I'm honest, what I think is, I don't think this person has a correct definition of boundaries. So, let me share my definition of boundaries, and then we'll go through why it's so important and why boundaries actually help us connect to other people as opposed to boundaries getting in the way of connection, which is what a lot of us think.
Boundaries are what we tell someone we will do, and they require the other person to do nothing. So, there's like a two-part checklist, and I love this. It's very practical. The next time you think you're setting a boundary, you can check in with both parts. Boundaries are something we tell someone we will do, and they require the other person to do nothing. Okay, so I think I set a boundary. Did I tell someone what I will do? And does the success of my boundary require the other person to do nothing? You have to have two yeses for it to count as a boundary.
So when I say to my son, right, and this is a great example because I live in New York City. I live in an elevator building, and I have a kid who has about 0% people-pleasing in him, right? So, he's not inherently people-pleasing. Good for him later on. Challenging in childhood, right? And so, if I say to my kid when we get into the elevator, "Don't press all the elevator buttons. It's very annoying to stop at all the floors, or it's disrespectful to other people waiting." And then my son goes in and just presses all the buttons. So many parents would say, "My kid doesn't respect my boundaries." Or, "Get off the couch. Hey, stop jumping on the couch. Hey, I'm going to count to five." My kid doesn't get off, and I say, "My kid doesn't respect my boundaries." Okay. In both situations, did I tell my kid what I will do? No. Does the success of my boundary require my kid to do nothing? No. In both situations, this is so powerful. I am making a request. I'm requesting for my kid not to press the buttons. I'm requesting for my kid to get off the couch. Now, there's nothing wrong with a request. We make requests all the time. And if our kid, especially, isn't able to follow a request, and we think it's really, really important, we have to set a true boundary.
Now, watch for the difference. "Hey, when we go into the elevator, I'm going to stand between you and the buttons. And sweetie, even if you lunge for the buttons, I will stop you." And then if you're wondering what I would do, yeah, I would get ready. I'd have my like move ready when my kid lunges. I would just say, "I'm not going to let you do that." That's a great boundary. Not, "We don't." It's like a weird thing we all learn to say to our kid. "We don't press buttons. We don't hit." Hopefully, your kid knows that. Not, "We don't." That's really giving away all your authority. Listen to this language: "I'm not going to let you do that," and then I'm going to stop my kid. That's a boundary. I'm telling my kid what I will do, and I'm not putting the success of my intervention in the hands of my four-year-old. And that actually gives you back your power. A true boundary gives you your power.
Think about all the times we say, "Ugh, I told my kid to turn off the TV, and they didn't do it. They don't respect my boundary." Why am I giving my six-year-old my power? And then in doing that, I actually lose connection because you know what happens in that TV example or the couch example? My kid doesn't get off the couch, they don't turn off the TV, and I end up yelling at them, which really diminishes connection. But if I zoom out, I can almost say to myself, "Why am I setting myself up for this moment?" I don't even have the impulse control to turn off the TV. I go to bed later than I want to. How, in any situation, is my six-year-old going to watch a TV show and say, "You know what? It's a good decision to turn off the TV." It's just not realistic. So, what should I do? The next time we watch TV, I'm going to hold the remote, sweetie, and at the end of your showtime, I'm going to turn the TV off. My kid will not say thank you, but that is a boundary. And it's more connecting because I'm setting my kid up for success. And I'm not asking my kid to do my job for me. I'm not saying, "Could you do the thing that's hard for me because I don't really want you to have a tantrum and I don't really want to deal with that?" So, I'm going to put the power in you. No way. We want to get our authority back, which is a big thing at Good Inside. I call it authority without aggression. It's a rare form of authority we haven't seen a lot of models of, but it's authority without aggression. I'm the decision-maker. I'm going to set boundaries before I get frustrated. I'm going to set boundaries before you end up doing the bad behavior. And that's actually going to preserve our relationship.
Another example of this at work, because it's the same thing. You're always showing up for a 9:00 a.m. meeting. You're leading this meeting, and someone's always late, and you're so annoyed, and you say to them maybe some various passive-aggressive things. "It would be nice if we could start on time tomorrow, right?" And then we think this person doesn't respect me. "Please be on time." They didn't come. If you want to set a true boundary, you can say at the meeting, "Hey, starting tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. meetings, I just want to let you all know, I will begin the meeting at 9:00. I won't end up repeating things. If you end up being late to the meeting, I know we're all trying our best. Some mornings are like that. You can come to me after. You can get notes from someone else. I will begin meetings at 9:00 starting tomorrow." Like, I hope you feel a little pep in your step. You're like, "Oh, instead of giving my power away to someone else, I'm actually reclaiming it, and I can do it in a really kind, connecting way." And that's really what leadership, whether in the home or in the workplace, is all about.
So, when we're flustered, and parents ask me this all the time, "What do I do when I'm really flustered to like calm down?" And I think a parent even once said to me, "I'm on the edge. I'm about to scream at my kid. I know it. I don't want to. What do I do in that moment?" I often think of this being the equivalent of someone saying to me, "All right, I drove to a cliff. My car is on the edge of the cliff. How do I not fall off the cliff?" And what I would say to that person is, "Why? Why are you driving to a cliff?" Like, I mean it. We're asking the wrong question. The best question is, how can I recognize that I'm on a road that always ends on a cliff and try to like exit that road before I get to the cliff? When you're on the cliff, how do you not fall off the cliff? I really mean this. Nobody has a great answer to that. I don't. I mean, sure, I guess there's one or two things we could do, but our ability to do something productive when we're teetering on the edge, it's selling ourselves short. It's kind of like not setting our kid up for success. We're not setting ourselves up for success.
So often, I think we're asking kind of the wrong questions, which is actually why we're stuck. And it's so empowering to know if you feel stuck with a question, "How do I not tip off the edge?" It's so empowering to say to yourself, "Wait, maybe it's not that I don't know the answer to this question. Maybe I just need to ask a different question." And the question here is, "How do I start recognizing that I'm getting overwhelmed? How do I start recognizing what's happening in my nervous system before I'm at a 10 out of 10? How do I recognize I'm getting overstimulated so I can kind of empty some of that sensory bucket before I get to the point that I'm full, at which point anybody would explode?" And I love this question because it's much more hopeful.
Number one is we have to realize anger is a healthy emotion. I don't just mean a normal emotion. It's a healthy emotion. Anger tells us what we want and what we need. I actually wouldn't wish the removal of anger on anyone. If we want to preserve any sense of self-esteem and self-worth, we have to have access to anger. Can you imagine someone saying, "I'm never angry"? That's really a way of saying, "I never know what I want. I never know what I need." That's actually a really, really sad state of being. Actually, having access to anger means you still have access to self-worth, the belief that you do kind of deserve to want and need things.
Now, why is anger so hard to manage? It goes back to attachment and internal family systems and our earliest years. Anger is one of the hardest emotions to develop skills for because it's so powerful. But the issue wasn't anger itself. The issue was most of us weren't taught skills to effectively manage anger, and we weren't given a long enough kind of runway to learn how to do that. Instead, we were like sent to our rooms, which ironically only makes us more angry without having skills. Pretty counterproductive.
In adulthood, a big part of repairing, and this is some of my favorite work to do with parents, can do maybe a little preview of it here, is to start to reclaim access to healthy anger. Here's an example, and most people wouldn't think about it as anger. Okay, I'm really overwhelmed at bath time. Let's say, let's say I'm a stay-at-home parent, or I'm home earlier, and my partner works every night. I think, "I wish I had more help. I wish I had more help." Right? You feel a little angry. If you're able to recognize anger, "Hi, anger. Well, that makes sense. Anger tells me what I want and need. What do I want? I want some help. I need some support." Okay, I'm allowing myself to feel anger. And maybe then, because I've done that process, I'm able to, and this takes practice and skills, which I love to teach parents, speak directly. Not this. This is what we do too often. "It would be nice if you were home for bath time sometime." No. "Hey, I feel overwhelmed around doing bath time by myself, and I really, really need more support. Can you let me know two nights this week that you can be home by 5:25 p.m.?" I really mean it. I start with a feeling. I name a need, and I am specific. I always just have this little acronym: feeling, need, specific. The specificity matters because so often, especially in parenting, when you're the holder of information, you say "bath time," the person who's less involved, for whatever reason, might have no idea what you mean. They're like, "I came home at 7:00. Oh, I didn't know that bath time was at 5:30."
And this is hard for a lot of us because we have been so conditioned to try to get as far away from anger as possible that we don't communicate directly. We kind of dance around it, and we do something extremely powerless. We hope someone else recognizes our need before we do. Like we're almost crossing our fingers. "I hope my partner knows I need help at 5:25." We do something I call we hint and hope. "Oh, I'm just going to drop a hint and I'm going to hope." So disempowering. So amazing to realize, wait, anger is healthy. It's telling me what I need. What do I need? Can I listen to it? Can I name a feeling? Right? I probably need help. That's what my anger's telling me, right? With bath time. And the minimum is two nights a week at 5:25.
Now, what I'm doing, and I always talk about this with parents, kind of if I think about a road to rage, which is what we mean when we fall off the cliff, is instead of waiting till I'm almost at the cliff, I'm exiting. I'm I'm literally taking an exit. Another example might be, "Oh, I'm so touched out. I can't even deal with my kids anywhere near me." Wait, maybe that's an anger signal in a way. What do I need? I need some time alone. Huh? Whenever I tell my kids I'm going to go for a walk, maybe my partner's home, or I have some help, or they're old enough to stay home alone, and they say, "Wait, I want to go with you." Now I realize, "No, sweetie. I really love being your parent and being with you. I want to be very direct. I also really need time to myself. That's really important. So, it's okay if you're upset. I'm going to take this walk for the next 20 minutes totally by myself. That's something I need." That is another kind of exit on that road, and ironically comes from your ability to recognize anger. You're feeling a little angry at your kids, resentful, and you can actually use that information to exit that road again before we're on the cliff.
I actually think the simplest thing you can do is adopt this AVP practice. AVP is a basic foundational emotion regulation skill. And just to go through those steps, it's acknowledge, validate, permit. I'm not going to be able to regulate my feelings of anxiety or jealousy if I'm not able to say, "I think I'm feeling anxious. Oh, there's that jealous feeling." I always think of acknowledgement as saying "hi" to something. And I find this really, really useful because as soon as I can say "hi" to jealousy, then jealousy is a part of me and not all of me. Okay? So, as soon as I can say, "Whoa, hi, jealous feeling about my friend getting a promotion when I'm kind of struggling at work." Now, instead of jealousy kind of being in the driver's seat of my car, it just feels like it's taken over. That's when we make really bad decisions. I'm in the driver's seat of my car. I'm kind of like waving to jealousy in the back seat. It's kind of like an annoying, pesky passenger, but I'm acknowledging it.
And then I think we have validation. Validation is telling yourself why your feeling makes sense. That doesn't have anything to do with saying your behavior about the feeling makes sense. It might make perfect sense that you're feeling jealous. That doesn't mean you should send a nasty text message to your friends about your friend who got the good job promotion. Not okay. But you have to be able to say to yourself, "Well, I've been really working hard at work, and I haven't gotten the promotion I thought I was going to get. So, it makes sense that I'm jealous." Validation does not mean I agree with how you feel. When I say to my kid, "I get it. You wish you could stay up later." No part of me thinks it's a good idea for them to stay up later. They have a bedtime because I think it's the right bedtime. But validation is so important because it's kind of saying to someone else, "I see your emotions as real for you," which is really no skin off my back. I'm not saying it's real for me. I'm not even saying I would feel like that if I were in your position. It's interesting. The only reason we can't validate someone else is because we are in a "one thing is true" mentality. We are only thinking, "Well, I don't feel that way." "Well, I wouldn't feel that way." "Well, I didn't feel that way when I was that age." That could all be true. But we have to hold two things are true: I don't feel that way. I wouldn't have felt that way. My child is feeling that way. At our core, as humans, we are all just looking to feel believed. And the reason that's so important is because our feelings are both so powerful and completely invisible. See, when a kid falls and skins their knee and is bleeding and they're crying in pain, there's something very useful about seeing the blood or the cut. They're like, "I thought that was painful. Oh, look at that. It's real blood. I'm right." Feelings are so confusing because every adult knows when you feel something intensely, it is just such a powerful sensation in your body. But there's no blood to prove it. There's no blood test. There's nothing external that is a sign that what you're feeling is real. And so as humans, when someone sees an invisible feeling that's taking over our body as real, it's like the ultimate sigh of relief. It's like, "I'm not so crazy after all. This thing that I feel is real. Yeah, this is a real thing."
Now, the reason validation also is something we want to do for our kids, knowing that it doesn't mean we agree, is our kids can't learn to manage a feeling in their body if they don't get the message that the feeling is real. That's a precondition. So, people say to me, "But I don't want my kid to think it's just okay to freak out like this about going to bed, so I'm not going to validate the feeling." I said, "Whoa, let's take the long game here." Ironically, if you want your kid when they're older to not freak out about going to bed, you actually do want to validate their feelings. That's step one. It's hard not to make your own decision. It stinks to have someone else pick your bedtime. Even just, "You're really upset that you have to go to bed right now. I believe you." Now, the same thing is true for self-regulation in adulthood. Validating your own feelings doesn't mean this feeling is going to be true forever. It doesn't mean this feeling means you have to act in a certain way. It's just kind of a way of saying to the sensations in your body, "You're real. I believe you." And I promise you, what that does to kind of cool down the intensity is remarkable. You can almost think about your feelings like this annoying friend who's just trying to get your attention, and you're like, "Stop it. Stop it. Go away. I wish this friend wasn't at this party." You just kind of have to look at the friend sometimes and say, "Hi, I see you. You're real." And then that friend will like simmer down a little bit and won't be as pesky. So, big picture, validation doesn't mean agreeing. Validation doesn't mean I feel the same way. Validation is just a way of saying a feeling is real for that person. And when you think about it that way, it might be a lot easier to start doing.
The next thing that I think is missing is what I call permission, which is just giving yourself permission to have the feeling. It's actually remarkable. Sometimes I think our feelings would be saying to us, "Please just allow us to be there. Please just allow us to live in your body. We're not looking for much more." As soon as I can say to myself, "I allow myself to feel jealous. I permit this jealous feeling." It also doesn't have as much of a hold on us.
So, I'm asked a lot, "All this validation of my kids' feelings, am I just coddling them?" And I love this question because I really, really want to differentiate the two. Coddling is a real thing. Let me be clear. There are a lot of parents I see it too where there's coddling. And what that really means is you are limiting your kid's capability. Good Inside is all about helping your kid access and bring out their capability. I believe that's the best thing for kids. That's what resilience is. And validation of whatever your kid is feeling is a part of helping your kid be capable, but it's not the whole thing. I think about two things that are really important components of helping a kid become more capable. And the first one is kind of that "I believe you." And and we hear other people talk about this. So let's say a kid is on a soccer team, but they're no longer starting, and they found that out. They don't want to go to practice tomorrow. To me, the first "I believe you," the validation, would sound something like this: "Look, I get it. I would probably feel the same way. Like I just kind of want to stay in my room. I can't believe I lost my starting spot. That stinks." If I say that to my kid and then I say, "I guess you don't have to go." Yeah. I I think that's really limiting to a kid. Really limiting. It's not just coddling. I I just think it's a very sad thing that when a kid feels that they're not capable of something because of their emotions, we collude in that not-so-capable version of themselves. I think that ends up being a horrible feeling to a kid. "Oh, I didn't think I was capable of doing something hard. And no one else really believed in me either."
Now, the opposite of coddling, I guess, would be something like, "You're making a big deal out of nothing. Go to practice. This is absurd." It's interesting. I I don't think that helps bring out a kid's resilience either. Now, all of a sudden, my kid really doesn't want to go to practice because it's just a way to defy me. So, that's counterproductive. My kid's going to feel let down at a million points in their life when they're older. And if they can't do that first step of acknowledging and validating and permitting their feelings, they're not going to be able to recover from it. And just judging yourself for your feelings makes them harder to deal with.
So what's that middle ground? What's that resilience-building ground? We have this "I believe you." But the second part, and I do think this is missing sometimes, but let me tell you, it is core to what we do at Good Inside. We never forget it: "I believe you, and I believe in you." It's actually really easy to remember that: "I believe you, and I believe in you." You want to raise a resilient kid, especially in the face of some nervous or anxious feelings. You need both parts. Okay? And in a way, I picture my kids kind of in a hole, almost. Not like an abyss, but let's say it's like a little hole. Like, "I can't do this." No, I kind of need one foot in the hole with them. Like that's the part that's validating. "I believe you. I'm with you." But this is important. You need one foot out of the hole. I always think about it: one foot in validation, one foot in capability and hope.
So what would that sound like? We started. "Look, I get it. I feel the same way. Honestly, not having a starting spot anymore, that's really hard. And I, too, would probably just want to curl up in my bed and not go to practice. And you're a kid who can do hard things. I want you to hear that from me. You are. And showing up to practice really uncomfortable and a little bit embarrassed. I'm not going to tell you you can work your way out of that. It is going to be a really, really hard practice. And you're actually going to get more out of going through that than you probably would if you were just having the starting position for the rest of high school. I want to be honest, and I really know you can do this." That's not coddling.
Now, parents get very specific. So, do you make them go to practice? There's so many dynamics in a family. No parent is usually that successful making their like, 16-year-old do anything. But this also has to do with the way you've related to them until that point and whether you kind of have enough of what I call connection capital built up with them for that intervention to really be helpful. I'll give you another example, right? Your kid isn't in class with anyone they're friends with. You have to call the school. You have to switch me so I'm with Molly and Priya, whatever their friends' names are. "Look, sweetie. I remember when I was your age and I found out I wasn't in first grade with my best friends. That stinks. That doesn't just stink like this or this. It's like big time. And you're a kid who's going to get through this. I'm not going to call the school. Sometimes we don't get our friends in our class. And actually, you're going to feel more confident at the end of this year having gotten through that. Probably having made some new friends. But either way, just seeing that you can get through disappointment. So, I'm not going to call the school. I'm not going to switch your class, but I will remind you every day how capable you are. And I'll also understand that you're sad, and we're going to get through this together." That is resilience building. Because when you get older and something's really hard, you have to do that first step. "This stinks. I got fired from my job." And then if you also hear that second voice, "And I'm going to get through this. I feel overwhelmed with kind of sadness and shame. But I also know there's some other version of me who's going to get to the other side. I can't even really see her right now, but I know she's there." That combination of those two. Oo, chef's kiss. That's resilience.
I think a lot about how screens, both our relationship with screens as parents and our kids' relationships with screens, are affecting emotion regulation. I think the core thing I think about is our relationship with frustration is dramatically changing so quickly because of the ease and frankly the quick dopamine hits that screens give us all the time. So, let's start with children, but then I'll talk about parents, because I think that's the part that's often left out of the conversation.
Our kids, because of technology, there's just a lot more ease built into their everyday life. Whether it's, "I just get to sit on an iPad and basically go like this, bing bing bing bing bing, basically nothing, effortless, and dopamine and enjoyment and excitement and reward just come to me." It's kind of the opposite of all the circuitry we would want kids to build in terms of what will be adaptive later on. Like, even think about your kid at five learning to read, or in their first job taking on a hard project. You want them to have a circuit that kind of says, "I have to put in a lot of effort and a lot of work. By the way, a lot of time, a lot of struggle, a lot of intentionality, and then one day in the future, I will have a reward." Reward comes later after a lot of hard work is basically the opposite of "I do basically no hard work and get reward right away." So it makes sense that our kids have less what I call frustration tolerance. There is less tolerance for frustration, which is essentially the space between wanting and having, because the space between wanting and having for children and technology has been collapsed.
I often think even just about watching a movie. I was fortunate to grow up in a family where we had a Blockbuster membership. Okay, so I think about, "Oh, I really want to watch a movie. Okay, let me go talk to my parents and see when they can take me to Blockbuster." Okay, maybe that's a day or two. Now, let's go on the drive to Blockbuster. This is already 48 hours where I'm like, "Oh, I really want to watch this movie. Really want to watch True Beverly Hills, whatever it is." We finally get to Blockbuster. I go, and you're winding through the aisles, and then you see the image, and sometimes, as most of us remember, is you you look behind and you're like, "Oh man, they're out. They don't even have that movie." Or maybe they do, but it took such a long time between wanting and imagining and having. If we think about the time a child right now has between wanting to watch a show and having a show, I I it's essentially no time. It's almost like magic. Like, if I want something, it magically appears in front of me in that moment. And I think too often we're not thinking about how does this show up in school? How does this show up in a kid's ability to learn to read?
Now, there's definitely learning dynamics around reading, right? There's phonics. Certainly, some kids are dyslexic or have attention struggles. But for a lot of kids who struggle, it's one of the first things around age five that they actually have to wait and work and not succeed at right away. And you know what? With reading, nobody is just delivering to you right away the ability to read. And so if that circuit in a kid's body, "work, try, stick with it, don't get it, keep trying, hear that voice that says, 'I can't do it,' take a deep breath, take a break, come back, keep going," and the best it gets is, "I don't know, you can read a part of a word, but not even the whole word at the end of that lesson." If that circuit has not been developed in other parts of a kid's life by the time they learn to read, it's no wonder the kid looks like they're essentially having a meltdown and can't attend to it because it is a totally new task and completely at odds with all the reward circuitry they've come to expect in their 5-year-old life.
Okay. Now, the part that I think we often neglect and is so important is what our relationship with screens in adulthood has done in terms of the dynamics around parenting. So, we kind of know our kids are less tolerant of frustration, which actually does mean they probably do have more bad behavior because their expectations are so different than ours were. But now in adulthood, I know, and I can just speak for myself, I'm on my phone a lot. I've gotten used to this world where I don't have to go to Blockbuster. I want to watch a movie. I'm going to watch that movie. I even think about an ingredient I might want to have for tonight's meal. I can go bing bing bing, and the thing is delivered to my house. So much more ease, so much more immediate gratification, so much more dopamine, so much less frustration, so much convenience, and so much less inconvenience in our adult life.
I think one of the most important things to know about raising young kids is actually that it's massively inconvenient when it's done well. Your kid will have a tantrum when you go to the grocery store, and you're like, "Well, I guess I'm not getting groceries. I'm going to have to pick my kid up and carry them out. You're a good kid having a hard time. Whatever I say, put them in the car. Work through it." So inconvenient. I'm home for 10 minutes after work, and my kid is screaming. I get it. Inconvenient. If you think about what phones have done to our tolerance of the day-to-day inconveniences of parenting, it's dramatic.
I think one of the reasons we kind of can get into this bad cycle: our kids are less tolerant of frustration, in part because of technology and their expectations of too much immediate gratification, more bad behavior. We are less tolerant of our kids' bad behavior because of our relationship with our screens, which means instead of tolerating it, "Oh, we're going to work through this together," where it's like, "Fine, take an iPad. Fine, have the ice cream. Fine, let me change my rule. I just want to make this go away." And we're in this horrible cycle. We're less tolerant, they're less tolerant, more bad behavior, more shutting down and avoidance, more bad behavior, off in a bad direction. And it's one of the reasons why helping adults and kids increase what I call frustration tolerance, like my work around frustration tolerance, it's hand-in-hand with resilience. There's nothing more important in this day and age than teaching your kid frustration tolerance, which also means we have to increase our own frustration tolerance to help our kids do the same.
When we think about our kid's bad behavior, like, "My kid doesn't wait. They interrupt me all the time." Well, our kids have less waiting built into their lives. They do. They're not waiting for a movie. They're watching five minutes of a movie, maybe just a show, and they're like, "Nope, don't like this. Next, next, next, next, next." And so, we actually have to make sure with our kids, like, I've actually said to my kid, "I'm going to teach you waiting. It's a thing. It's a thing. It's still real. I'm going to make sure we learn it." And it is one of these reasons on the margin, right? I live in Manhattan, and I might think, "Oh, I'm going to jump in a cab." You know what? I'm going to carve out more time, and I'm going to go wait for the bus. Not just because it saves money, which I like, but because my kid actually needs more moments than I did, based on my childhood, to wait to literally learn how to wait and practice doing them.