Good Inside
A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be
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4.5 • 37 Ratings
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
An Instant Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Indie Bestseller
“This book is for any parent who has ever struggled under the substantial weight of caregiving—which is to say, all of us. Good Inside is not only a wise and practical guide to raising resilient, emotionally healthy kids, it’s also a supportive resource for overwhelmed parents who need more compassion and less stress. Dr. Becky is the smart, thoughtful, in-the-trenches parenting expert we’ve been waiting for!”—Eve Rodsky, New York Times bestselling author of Fair Play and Find Your Unicorn Space
Dr. Becky Kennedy, wildly popular parenting expert and creator of @drbeckyatgoodinside, shares her groundbreaking approach to raising kids and offers practical strategies for parenting in a way that feels good.
Over the past several years, Dr. Becky Kennedy—known to her followers as “Dr. Becky”—has been sparking a parenting revolution. Millions of parents, tired of following advice that either doesn’t work or simply doesn’t feel good, have embraced Dr. Becky’s empowering and effective approach, a model that prioritizes connecting with our kids over correcting them.
Parents have long been sold a model of childrearing that simply doesn’t work. From reward charts to time outs, many popular parenting approaches are based on shaping behavior, not raising humans. These techniques don’t build the skills kids need for life, or account for their complex emotional needs. Add to that parents’ complicated relationships with their own upbringings, and it’s easy to see why so many caretakers feel lost, burned out, and worried they’re failing their kids. In Good Inside, Dr. Becky shares her parenting philosophy, complete with actionable strategies, that will help parents move from uncertainty and self-blame to confidence and sturdy leadership.
Offering perspective-shifting parenting principles and troubleshooting for specific scenarios—including sibling rivalry, separation anxiety, tantrums, and more—Good Inside is a comprehensive resource for a generation of parents looking for a new way to raise their kids while still setting them up for a lifetime of self-regulation, confidence, and resilience.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
If you’ve ever worried that you were repeating your parents’ mistakes with your own kids, this is just the thoughtful book you need. Clinical psychologist and mother of three Dr. Becky Kennedy offers grown-ups the tools to validate their children’s feelings while still reinforcing boundaries. As she explains, parenting guides used to wrongly focus entirely on behavior. But behavior is not a window into a kid’s character—it’s just a reflection of how children communicate emotions that their developing brains aren’t yet wired to process. (That message is where the book gets its brilliant title—since all parents and kids are “good inside.”) Kennedy shows you how to validate your child’s feelings to build trust and help them manage their emotions. Backed with lots of research and easy-to-understand examples, Good Inside can help build better relationships and happier families.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Psychologist Kennedy, better known as Instagram's Dr. Becky, brings her advice to the page in her encouraging debut on how parents can "do better on the outside and feel better on the inside." She makes a solid case that self-development and child development go hand in hand, and to help readers accomplish both, she lays out 10 parenting principles she lives by. These include the belief that all children are good, that resilience is more important than happiness, and that telling the truth is key to having a strong connection with one's kids. Then come some strategies for increasing "closeness in a parent-child relationship," with a focus on behavior issues: validating the intensity of a child's feelings ("your upset is as big as this whole street!") can help with tantrums, for example, while talking to a child about their feelings can ease separation anxiety, and recording a reassuring message on a "comfort button" kids can press can calm sleep worries. Kennedy's points that it's key to really understand a child and that one-on-one time goes a long way are well delivered, and the book is flush with useful ideas—so much so that end-of-chapter summaries would have been a helpful addition. Frustrated parents will find this well worth their time.
