I have a complicated relationship with parenting experts. I usually leave them feeling worse than when I walked in, one more list of things I'm apparently getting wrong. So I sat down with Dr. Becky Kennedy, the most trusted parenting expert in the country, half braced to feel like a failure again. Instead I said the quiet thing out loud. I'm tired. I'm so tired. And the woman who wrote the book looked at me and said, me too. We're the first generation of parents in a world that never turns off.
Then she told me the only thing she'll call herself an expert in is imperfect parenting, and something in me unclenched for the first time in about a year. Because here's what nobody hands you with the baby: the exhaustion isn't a sign you're doing it wrong. Sometimes it's just proof of how much you're carrying. We get into all of it. Why our kids' feelings run the entire household now, and how that even happened. Whether we're performing motherhood for an invisible audience instead of just living it. And the line I genuinely cannot shake, that optimizing for our kids' happiness is the fastest way to optimize their anxiety.
She also asked me one question I was too embarrassed to answer honestly. How often are you just around your kid, quiet, not on your phone? Reader, I did not have a good answer. Somewhere in there I had to admit I don't fully know what I'm doing as a mother, and she let me off the hook in the best way: nobody does. The whole conversation kept landing on two words. Do less. So much less. I cannot tell you how good it felt to be told that by the one person allowed to say it.
This is for the mom who reads every book, holds every boundary, names every feeling before it becomes a tantrum, and still lies awake certain she's the one getting it wrong. You're not. You're just tired, and you've been sold a version of good mom that was never real. This is Dr. Becky Kennedy, and I left this one lighter than I've felt in a long time.
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WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT
2:00 My tricky relationship with parenting experts
3:30 I'm sick of it, and I don't think doing it all made me a better mom
6:10 When did being a good mom mean never stopping?
9:05 Why we hear a mother want less and think she loves them less
11:40 She's tired too, even as the one everyone runs to
13:30 Around your kids versus actually with them
16:20 The performance of motherhood
18:30 Optimizing for their comfort at every moment
21:15 Happy kids don't become happy adults the way we think
24:00 Optimizing for happiness optimizes for anxiety
26:30 The two words that change everything: I believe you
29:03 Why fixing their feelings backfires
33:10 The death of the tiger mom
36:40 The childhoods we came from
40:00 Raising them entitled without meaning to
42:23 Stop negotiating the same thing every day
45:30 A firm boundary and real empathy at the same time
49:15 What she actually does at seven in the morning
52:00 She doesn't parent like Dr. Becky either
55:30 Do less. So much less
58:42 You yell, I yell, and then we repair
1:02:41 Repair is the whole thing
1:05:30 This isn't really a parenting book
1:07:05 Perfect parenting was never the goal
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