Days 15 & 16

A Short Book Commentary

A few days ago I mentioned that I listened to a podcast with Dr. Becky Kennedy, author of the book, Good Inside. I connected so deeply with many of the stories and strategies she discussed with host, Ryan Holiday that I wanted to read the full book sooner rather than later.

So over the past couple of days I’ve started to dig in. To be honest, the reading is going a bit slower than normal given the responsibility and attention needed by our newborn. But I’ll get through it!

I’m only a couple chapters in and I already have many takeaways and tactics that I want to incorporate into my parenting philosophy.

Kennedy starts with the most basic foundation, reminding us that inherently “we are all good inside.” And she makes a distinction between the person and the behavior. This again is similar to the concept of not confusing identity with external factors or circumstance. Let me give some examples here…One that I have struggled with in the past is feeling like I, Felix am a failure when I would get a poor grade on a test or wouldn’t get the job offer after an interview. The right way to talk to myself about this is to remember that I am not a failure, rather, the outcome may not be the one I wanted, but I worked hard and I can make a strong attempt again in the future. And most importantly, I am a good person, or as Kennedy would say, I am good inside. My identity is not affected by these things.

Applying this distinction of identity versus behavior to parenting is critically important. She says that parents should remember when things aren’t going well that our child is a good kid having a bad time. This helps to reframe both the situation and the appropriate response. Say a young child hits his brother (maybe a disagreement about the possession of a toy), the parent’s response is very different if they see the situation as the child is mean and bad versus the child is good but also having a bad time. In the first interpretation, the response might be a timeout in another room to discipline the child in an attempt to correct the behavior. Whereas if the parent takes the opportunity to step back and attempt to understand why the child is having a bad time, they might realize an underlying fear and that isolation as punishment may be making it worse in the long run. It’s not to say that consequences for bad behavior are not warranted, but rather to be thoughtful about fully understanding the situation to ensure corrective action or boundaries are both effective and helpful to the child’s development.

This is just the first of many concepts I’ve connected with in Good Inside, and I’m sure I’ll want to write about more in the coming days.

Seeing Family

We took a road trip (about an hour’s drive) to see some of my wife’s family. Our niece and nephews were pumped to meet their new baby cousin. The kiddos are all under the age of 7.

When we arrived, they were all so excited to see her. They had matching shirts on with “Cousin Crew” prominently on the front and even had a onesie for our daughter to wear for the visit. They each took turns holding her and taking a few pictures to remember the moment.

It was so sweet to see the love they already had for their cousin. She’s going to have such a great support system and family to make memories with for years to come!

So long for now.

Felix