115: The Difference Between Bullying and Ordinary Meanness (and why it matters) with Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore

Hello, World!

Today’s episode covers the topics of bullying, meanness, and conflict. My guest is uniquely qualified to share her wisdom and expertise, which she did in a TEDx talk. Bullying or meanness: what’s the difference, and how do we recognize the two? Join us to learn more!

Show Highlights:

● Dr. Eileen’s background as a clinical psychologist and author

● The specific criteria in the definition of bullying

● Empowering our kids to withstand meanness without taking a victim stance: “Conflict is inevitable.”

● Bullying has become “a thought-stopping cliche.”

● Meanness and bullying in the online world

● Vulnerability in being a content creator and dealing with feedback

● A better approach with kids: “Whose opinion matters to you?”

● The truth about self-esteem and a “quiet ego”

● Connecting with something greater than ourselves

● Helping kids learn self-compassion rather than self-esteem (Dr. Eileen teaches a “reflect, but downshift” technique in her book, Kid Confidence.)

● Dr. Eileen’s formula for teaching reflection to kids

● “Whose feelings are most important?”

● Validating and normalizing kids’ feelings (by following their lead) by offering empathy and confidence

● Being your kids “biased biographer”

● Learning to “stay in the water” instead of standing on the edge of the pool ● “Testing the water” to pull back on accommodations

Resources and Links:

Connect with Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore: Website (Find books for parents and kids!) and Kids Ask Dr. Friendtastic podcast,

Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook

Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website:

www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes.

• Transcript

  KC Davis 0:00

  Music. Hello, you sentient balls of stardust. Welcome to struggle. Care. I'm your host, KC Davis, and today I have Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore with me, and we're going to talk about the difference between bullying and ordinary meanness, which is the title of the TEDx talk that you did. That's right, although

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 0:21

  Ted central changed the title to conflict resolution on the playground, which is so bland,

  KC Davis 0:29

  but what can I do? Oh, that's funny, yeah. No, I like the first title better, for sure. So tell me a little bit of your background of how you kind of came to be the person on TED stage talking about the difference between bullying and ordinary meanness. Well, I'm

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 0:42

  a clinical psychologist, so I work with adults, children and families, and I've also written a whole bunch of books about children's feelings and friendships for both parents and kids, and one of the things that I often saw in my practice is that the B word gets thrown around too casually. So one of the stories that I tell in the TEDx is I had this middle school boy come in and he told me I was bullied today. And I said, what happened? And he said, this kid, he told me, quit making that annoying noise. It's like, No, that is not bullying, and researchers actually have a very specific definition of bullying. It involves deliberate meanness targeting a specific person, usually repeatedly over time, although sometimes one especially horrible action can count, and the most important part of the definition is that there is a power difference between the kid doing the bullying and the kid being bullied without that power difference. It's not bullying, it's just ordinary meanness or conflict or an unfortunate event or something like that. Now this definition, this distinction, is really, really important for a number of reasons. First of all, if we call every little thing that a kid does that we don't like bullying. We're really trivializing the very serious cases of peer abuse, and I don't like that. The other thing is that we're saying to our kids, you're fragile. You can't handle it if anyone is even slightly mean to you, and I don't think that that's empowering for our children. They are going to face somebody being mean to them. We do it as adults too. You know that somebody will say something like or, you know, we'll be irritated with somebody, and maybe we'll say something that, oh, gosh, I wish I hadn't said that. This is not good, but it's something that we can work through.

  KC Davis 2:41

  Yeah, that's what's hard, right? It's like, okay, on the one hand, I don't want to say we should normalize ordinary meanness as if it's okay or provable, or it's not a big deal, or it's not hurtful, but there is a sense of, like, normalizing it for a child, in the sense of, like, hey, this isn't okay. It's not acceptable. But like, it's going to happen, and you can survive it, and we can walk through it, and we can figure and it's not like the world is not ending Exactly,

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 3:09

  exactly. You are not devastated by that.

  KC Davis 3:13

  This is not going to cause, probably long term damage, like most people are going to have general meanness experiences in their life, right?

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 3:23

  And that, again, I'm so glad that you brought that up. I am not in favor of bullying or meanness or anything like that, but I do think it's something that we all need to figure out how we're going to deal with conflict, because conflict is inevitable. My favorite work activity is I have this little podcast that comes out every week. It's just five minutes, and it's called kids ask Dr friend tastic. And every episode features an audio recording of a question from a kid about friendship, and then I try to say something practical and thought provoking. So I have so many favorite episodes, but in one of them, a kid, a little six year old named Zen, asked, How do I not have conflict with my friend? And I said, Well, there's only one way you can never have conflict with your friend, and that is you and your friend have to think and feel exactly the same at every single second, but wait, then you couldn't be friends, because he would be the same person. So, you know, it is just unavoidable that we're going to disagree, but that conflict is actually useful. Now, most of us go through life assuming that, yeah, pretty much everybody thinks the way I do, but that's just human nature. So conflict is actually what brings us up in those moments to go, Huh? I guess they see it differently. Oh, okay, so

  KC Davis 4:48

  here's something that I think is light bulbing. For me for the first time, is that if we call everything bullying, one of the things that we lose, we position our children to react to. Any feelings of hurt, feelings in this very black and white, they've done something wrong. I am a victim. They are bad. There is nothing else to think about here, when, in reality, like the majority of the conflict we experience, you know, because we're human, there might be, you know, a slightly out of line comment, or maybe a little too sharp of a tone, or maybe outright something kind of mean they said,

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 5:25

  or they didn't realize that that was a sensitive topic for us. Yeah, they

  KC Davis 5:29

  didn't, they didn't realize it, or maybe you did something really hurtful to them, and that's their knee jerk reaction. And we're not saying it's okay that that's their reaction. It almost it's like bullying has become a thought stopping cliche in some places. That's exactly right, and it also seems like it would harm people that are being bullied, because if someone is being bullied, we don't want to talk to them about, Well, what did you do to bring that on? And do you see their point of view and like, it really does come down to like. You need really different interventions and responses depending on what it is, you need to diagnose it Right exactly.

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 6:03

  Because, if there truly is a power difference, if it's the kid doing the meanness or the bullying is bigger, stronger, tougher, more socially powerful, or if it's a group of kids picking on one kid, we cannot expect that one kid to say, you know, we'll just speak up to them. No, they can't. There's the power difference. That's what makes it difficult or impossible for that kid being targeted to deal with it. In that case, they need adult intervention to be those safety guardrails. But if it's just one stupid comment, because they're a kid and you're a kid, and they don't know how to handle conflict, and we adults, let's be honest, we're not so good at conflict either.

  KC Davis 6:45

  This is all applicable to adults, absolutely.

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 6:47

  So we all need to figure out, how can I raise my point without, you know, punching at them verbally, or certainly, otherwise, How can I when do I just need to, like, roll my eyes and say, I love them anyway. And, you know, so it's a balance. It's not like they're just do this one thing and then you're fine. We really need to be thinking about it. We always, always, always need to try to imagine the other person's perspective. Because, as you said, maybe they're responding to something that I did before that. Michael Thompson, the author, has this wonderful line that I wish I'd written, and it says his description of conflict among between kids. And it goes it all started when she kicked me back. Isn't that great?

  KC Davis 7:37

  So good. So Dr Eileen, I want to ask you about, like, if we take this concept of meanness and bullying, and then I want to step for a minute into the world of the internet, which is like, where a large portion of my presence is, is being on Tiktok and Instagram and being a content creator there. And it's been really interesting for me to see the discourse around what bullying looks like online. And certainly, I think we have instances, you know, where, especially with children like you mentioned, like, oh, the website of all these are cyber bullying and things like that. But when I think it gets interesting is when we think about someone who has, like, an online persona, and the difference between meanness and bullying. And this is actually funny, because this on my mind today, because I actually just had someone comment on one of my videos and said, You know, I think that, you know, I've been trying to tell you that I think that you're a bully, because you are sometimes really mean to people. And there is such a stark power differential. You have 1.2 million followers, and you know, you can mobilize a huge group of people. And we see this, there are people, there are creators out there who have, we call, like, call out accounts or, you know, they'll kind of get into an interpersonal spat with someone. And it is true that someone with a really large following has social capital and can, sort of like direct other people to go to this other kind of lone person on the internet. And so their point was that there is a power differential always between me and some like, random commenter on the internet, and now I've never, like, sought someone out to like, say something mean about them what they're referring to.

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 9:29

  Yeah, like, I haven't, I don't know what they're talking about, but I cannot imagine you getting all your followers to say, Take that one down. That doesn't seem like anything I know about you.

  KC Davis 9:39

  No, it's almost always me responding to someone in my comment section that has said something that I thought was inappropriate or hurtful or whatever. But what I have found really interesting is that while I agree with the argument that in that instance, there's a case to be made that I am in that like it's not just. Me being mean to someone, even if I was mean, right? Like, let's say it's not just me. It's bullying because of the power difference. But in my experience, like, there's also a lot of power that comes from being anonymous on the internet. I

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 10:15

  was just gonna say that there is absolutely the power of because I've done a fair bit like between the books and videos and articles what have you. I'm out there. Also, there is a vulnerability, because anybody can say anything about you. So I'm not sure I totally buy that. It's a one way power dynamic. You Yeah.

  KC Davis 10:43

  I mean, certainly there are things you could do to leverage it, like we the example of, Hey, everyone, go get this person. Or if you're making maybe, like, video after video after video about a random private citizen or whatever,

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 10:54

  but you're not going to do that, but you are very vulnerable. And I and you know anybody who makes the effort to share content with the world? Because the world can be vicious, and it

  KC Davis 11:07

  becomes groups of people who anonymously, make more profiles or get other people to come, and it's like, you can't. My thing is always, and I don't want, I'm like, trying to, sorry, this is like, fresh on my mind.

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 11:18

  Because, yes, of course, so do. I

  KC Davis 11:20

  think that not only did I get that one, but I got a ton, but that's on the back of a ton of other like, hate comments I've been getting for days about how ugly I am and how mean I am and how awful I am. So

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 11:30

  Brene Brown talks about that, about people writing, you know, more Botox, less research. It's like, ouch, ouch. So it is a very brave thing to go out there and put stuff out there, put your ideas out there, try to be helpful. And yeah, anybody can say something vicious about you, and you can't really hit back, and you wouldn't want to, but I think that people don't always realize how vulnerable creators are. And exactly as you said, because it's so public, so that person who said whatever mean thing about you, they are actually harnessing your earned audience to punch at you. So I don't think they're powerless. That was intentional. Like I'm not gonna quibble about who's bullying who you know? I think that was certainly unkind,

  KC Davis 12:24

  but I do think it's interesting when we think about online spaces, I think that's where power differential sometimes becomes harder to quantify, like, if it's this is my boss, okay, power differential, right? If it is, maybe even from a social capital more, where it's like a white woman in public, sort of harassing a black woman. It's like, okay, there's an obvious social capital racism power differential there. If it's a like you said, a bigger kid, a stronger kid, a more popular kid. But it's interesting to me, once we move online, that it's a little bit harder to talk about bullying versus meanness, one because power differential, I think, is harder. But also what I find interesting is the repetition part. You mentioned that, like, it can be one thing that's really severe, but usually it's sort of like a cumulative and targeted over and over. And I think that anybody who has

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 13:13

  put their ideas out in public has encountered nasty people like so my first book for parents was called the unwritten rules of friendship, simple strategies to help your child make friends. Like, what is more G rated than that? Like, I am the most G rated person on earth, right? But I saw this one reviewer who called the book nauseating because it doesn't contain bible quotes. Now, okay, like, I don't have to go there, but I don't remember a lot of comments about play dates in the Bible. But you know, so and you know, this person felt very free to just say this. And of course, they had the right to their opinion, but they didn't just not buy my book. You know, they made a point of announcing it to everybody that it's nauseating, and it's like, Do you know how long it took me to write that book? You know, all the research that I read for it, but, and I would consider

  KC Davis 14:08

  that and tell me if you'd agree, like that would be to me, like, ordinary meanness, yeah, because

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 14:13

  I don't care. Like, this is not, you know, something that wounded me, because this is not someone's opinion I respect. Yeah, exactly. But

  KC Davis 14:20

  what's interesting to me is, like, let's say you have a teenager online and whatever, in way, they're like, they're getting a lot of comments, but it's not from the same person. It's not even coordinated. It's not like a group of people who are coordinating, coordinating. It's just that, as they grow up and they're on the internet, and this, this is, I think this happens a lot with teenagers, I think, and I see it a lot with, like, professional people who have any kind of online persona where, okay, no one is bullying them, but psychologically they are being bullied like they are still having the experience. Of this repetitive onslaught, anonymous power differential, like, it's just like an interesting thing that I think happens online, and I'm curious, like, how we address that with kids, how we handle that as adults? And because it is, like, a huge impact.

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 15:15

  So a lot of times, parents will give their teenagers sermons about you shouldn't care what other people think. Well, they can't. You know that that's just not possible. And if they did, they would be sociopaths, because only sociopaths don't care what anybody right. So I think the better message to give them, or the more useful message, is whose opinion matters to you? Your parents, sure your close friends, sure, your teacher, yeah, some anonymous person who you know, you know, grumpy pirate 27 like whatever. You don't even know who that is, and that person is not creating things and trying to put it out there. So I think with teenagers, they're trying to figure out who they are. They're experimenting with different ideas, almost like putting on hats. So one of my main advice pieces to parents of teenagers is, whatever the kid did a month ago, you can't hold that against them, because that was an entirely different person. So you just gotta let it go. But so they're trying on these identities, and sometimes they're going to get nonsense. And like you and I, are old enough to be have more established identities, maybe more established relationships that anchor us. It's harder for a young person, and all we can do, I think, is talk about it. What do you think motivates someone to make a mean comment to a stranger, let the words come out of their lips. How do you think you should respond if a stranger says something that's mean,

  KC Davis 16:49

  I like that. You're saying that, you know, that we shouldn't just say, oh, you know, don't care what people think. Don't listen to what people think. Because I think there's something kind of invalidating about that. And I think in my experience, and I feel like this is how any teenager would feel, like, even if you know that that person's opinion maybe isn't correct, or that's just their projection or whatever, it doesn't take away the pain of this individual wants to hurt me, like, whether their information is accurate or not, it's still wounding to be like, there's a person out there who just, like, decided what they wanted today was for me to be in pain, right?

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 17:28

  So is that person who's someone whose opinion you respect, somebody who has nothing better that to do with their time than be nasty online. So let's not give them the satisfaction and to say your problem, not mine. Now it's different because you said sometimes you'll have a teen who gets multiple comments along the same direction. So you know, if you get feedback, you might want to think about it. It's like, Huh? I've heard several people said that maybe I should tone it down a little bit, or think about how I'm expressing that feedback doesn't feel good, but if you're

  KC Davis 18:05

  getting, yeah, do you think that's part of it too? Like, I feel like people they mistake I don't like what you're saying with your being mean, or like you're this feedback about me that's critical. Is you being mean? And people have a hard time distinguishing? Yeah,

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 18:20

  and I think there's, it's very people are very quick to cancel someone and say you're toxic, meaning you have no value, no worth. And I don't believe that, like you might have made a mistake, you might have done something unkind, you might need to learn something, but you know, to just dismiss people entirely. So I had a client once, she was a college girl, and she had a best friend who was very close to her, and then she fell in love with this guy, and they started dating, and the roommate, the best friend was jealous, and my client tried to say, well, let's have brunch. Let's do this, and let's make sure we have time. But the best friend was still angry, and then, after she'd been dating this guy, I don't know, was it six months a long time, the roommate sent her a letter, five pages handwritten, and the gist of the letter was, you're bad, like that is not how you resolve a conflict. So if I had the other roommate as a client, I would have suggested start first with connection. I miss you. Offer validation for their point of view. I know it's so exciting for you to have this relationship, and I'm so happy for you that it's been going so well for so long, you look really happy with him, and that's great. And then ask for what you want like. So could we make sure that we have some time together? You know, let's talk about what makes sense, and that's going to get a. Positive response, as opposed to the you're bad, which is just a conversation Ender, yeah.

  KC Davis 20:05

  And when you talk about, you know, helping, maybe helping kids or teens deal with the ordinary meanness by sort of saying, okay, like, just because they say that about me doesn't mean that that's true. I feel like that really ties into, sort of like, your other area of expertise, which is like children and self esteem. And I want to talk about that for a minute as well, because I know there's a lot of parents that listen to the podcast, and I've also never heard advice for children that wasn't applicable to adults. To be honest, like so many of my

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 20:36

  Yes, yes. Isn't it fascinating? Yes,

  KC Davis 20:38

  but you know, I think it's I'm really interested in self esteem, because I feel like when I was growing up, there was a big push for the self esteem movement, and now we're sort of looking back and going, did that work? Like, yeah, I want like, I know that science

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 20:54

  says no. So what research finds is that higher self esteem is not associated with better mood. It is not associated with better school performance. It is not associated actually, it might be associated with better mood, but it's not associated with better school performances. It's not associated with having kids avoid sex, drug and other bad things that we don't want them doing. It's not associated with better relationships. In fact, bullies tend to have higher self esteem. I was gonna say, like it, yeah, yeah. So this is not and you see a lot of stuff on like Instagram about how you can't succeed without believing yourself that is the key to success, or you can't have a relationship unless you love yourself, and that's simply not empirically true. So what I like I was I wrote this book because I kept seeing all this nonsense about self esteem, things like affirmations to say good things to yourself, or heap your kids with lots of praise, and scientifically, that does not work. If you've got a kid who's self doubting and tell him to do affirmations, or you heap them with praise, it makes them feel worse, because it highlights the contrast between whatever it is you're saying and how they actually feel. This is science.

  KC Davis 22:17

  I remember being a kid, and I remember that the more praise people would heap onto me, the more shame I felt, because I was, like, if you only knew, Oh, look, I feel even I feel even less disconnected, like I feel even more disconnected now, because the only people that like me are the ones that don't know me.

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 22:38

  Yes, that is perfect articulation of how a kid or an adult with low self esteem tends to think, and also the other recipe that's always pushed is accomplishments. No, we all know adults who are very accomplished but hate themselves, so then we certainly don't want to put our kids on a treadmill of constantly having to prove their worth. And I think the problem is that the whole premise of boosting kids' self esteem is wrong. So I mean, how many people stand in front of a mirror and say, gosh, I love myself and like, would you want to be friends with them if they did? No, no, that is not what we're aiming for. What we're aiming for is more like the way we are with a close friend, so you're not thinking, does he like me, or is she impressed by me? You're not even thinking about yourself, because you're immersed in the conversation or the activity. And there's this beautiful kind of forgetting of the self, which is called a quiet ego. Isn't that beautiful? I just love that term. Yeah,

  KC Davis 23:40

  it reminds me of my favorite quote by CS Lewis, where he says humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less. And this has been my experience to a T like I went through rehab when I was 16. I had really low self worth, self esteem problems, and they did the whole Oh, stare in the mirror and tell yourself, I'm good enough today. And none of that worked. No. But what's interesting is that, you know, as I got better, I did get sober, and I did become like a healthy person, but I didn't think about myself any less. Now I was just thinking about, Am I doing the good things? Am I doing the good things? Am I doing the good things? It really wasn't until I just stopped thinking about myself in general as much.

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 24:18

  Yeah, so either thinking I'm amazing or, you know, I'm terrible, both of those are focused inward. And what we want to on judging the self, and that's a dead end. So what we really want to do is turn down the volume on self focus and self judgment, and we do this by connecting with something bigger than ourselves. And that sounds so Hallmark, but it is absolutely true. And we've all had moments of that, when you're moved with compassion for a friend. You're not thinking, do I look good now when you stand under the night sky and just feel that deliciously small that. Sense of, oh, again, you're not thinking, how am I doing? You know, is everybody impressed?

  KC Davis 25:04

  Well, there were periods of my life where I was thinking that even under the night sky, but those were the ones where I was not happy. But Dr Eileen, how do I help my kids do this? Like I have a six year old and when she struggles with perfectionism or self doubt or something, it's hard as a parent to not go right to but you're so special. I love you so much. You're so great. How do I help a young child instead learn self compassion instead of self esteem? Right?

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 25:31

  So it depends on what they're doing. So the book that I talk about this is called Kid confidence. Help your child make friends, build resilience and develop real self esteem, and I talk each chapter is one of those things that the self doubting kids say, like, nobody likes me, or the worst kid in the world, or whatever it is, so we kind of just take it step by step with each one and like, I'm a clinician, so I'm very much a roll up my sleeves. What are we going to do kind of thing, but for a kid who is putting themselves down. Remember, with a little one, some of it is experiment to see how you respond, and what I recommend, yeah, some of it is a twinge of oof, but some of it is also they're feeling their way in the world and in relationships. So what I would recommend is don't get into an argument about whether or not they're worthless, like that's not the topic. You know, they're a human being. They have worth. What I would do instead is focus on the feelings behind the comment. And one technique that I recommend is what I call reflect but downshift, so you describe the kid's feelings, but then for bonus points, you attach in this situation at this moment, so it's not a Forever and always. So you're feeling discouraged with this particular project that you're trying to do tonight, you know? So we're making it smaller and more anchored, but we're acknowledging how they're actually feeling. Don't tell them don't feel that way. Just reflection is such a Dippy intervention, but some of us have made a career out of it, because it works. It feels good to be heard, and especially as a parent, when you acknowledge your kid's feelings, you're ramping them up in words, which makes them feel more understandable and more manageable. And when you as a parent do it, it's like you're holding half the weight of those big feelings. Now I have a couple of recommendations about how to reflect with kids. The basic formula is you're feeling blank because blank or you could also say it's hard for you when, or it bothers you when, or you wish whatever it was. We adults tend to want to skip the feelings and go right to the solution, but kids won't let us, so we really have to meet them where they are. I had a family once. The parents were these lovely, gentle people, and one day, their son came home and said, I hate Stuart's guts, and I'm changing names, of course. So the parents responded by saying something like, throughout history, dehumanization is what has led to atrocities. So I work in Princeton, what I can't What can I say? So, like, this is true, right? It's good. We shouldn't teach our kids, not sure, but they were completely talking past the kid. So the kid responded by saying, I want to kill Stuart and these poor parents were horrified, thinking they're raising a future AX murder. But the principle is, when kids don't feel heard, they get louder. So this is a Dippy intervention, but just reflect, reflect, reflect, until you see the softening in their face and in their body, and then and only then can we move on to problem solving, and it's better to ask rather than tell.

  KC Davis 28:47

  And when do we pivot? Like, because I feel like sometimes reflecting works really well for my kids, but then, like, occasionally I get a that's what I just said, like, you know, like, I'm like, I'm getting and I feel like, as a therapist, I've, it's like they kind of go, okay, therapist like, that's true. Like, we get a little too therapisty on it. And, you know, when where's that middle ground of, like, I want to validate your feelings. I think we follow the kids lead. Yeah, follow the kids lead. Okay. I love that downshift language because I was just talking to a friend this morning about, you know, I really I want to validate my kids emotions, and I want them to, you know, honor their feelings and things like that. But at the same time, you know, I don't want to make such a big deal out of every feeling they have, that they think every time I have a feeling the world needs to stop because something horrible is happening, or something or that I can't do things that are uncomfortable or that there aren't, you know what I mean. And so how do we validate but also normalize? You know, I feel like there's kind of a middle there absolutely is,

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 29:53

  and we follow the kids lead. So if they say, I know that's what I just said, and you can say, Okay, I just wanted to make sure that. I understood, and that's fine, but it is we do have to watch our instinct to leap in. So I had a mom of a high schooler once as my client, and one day her kid came home spitting nails because of something that happened at school. I don't remember what it was, but she's like, I can't believe the teacher did whatever it was. And the mom told me that for once, she remembered to do the reflection. Because normally she would be like saying, well, you should do this. You know, you should go talk to the teacher, but she said, for once, I remembered, and she said, you're really frustrated that the teacher did whatever she did. And the kid goes, Yeah, and it's not fair, because she's always doing things like this. And the mom said, it's hard for you when she keeps doing this thing, even though, you know it's hard on the rest of you, or whatever. And the kid said, Yeah, and it's just not fair that she does that. And she says it really bothers you that she's doing this thing again and again. And the kid said, yeah. So now what did we see? We see the softening in her face and her body. So the mom knew, if she could say, So, what do you think you might do about it? And the kid said, I guess I'll go talk to the teacher. And she stormed off. And the mom was like, Well, it worked so and it worked a lot better than the mom said, why don't you just talk to the teacher, even though the mom was right, that's exactly what she should have done. But we made room for the kid to think about it. But to your point about their feelings are not the end of the world. Like you know, I've devoted my whole professional life to people's feelings, but our feelings in a given moment are not necessarily the most important thing. I had a younger kid once who just hated, hated, hated getting her picture taken. And it was grandma's birthday, and the whole family was gathering from all over, and I said to the kid, I get it, you hate pictures. You know, you just feel uncomfortable. You just really dislike pictures. She goes, yeah. And I said, whose feelings are most important at grandma's birthday? She goes, grandma's. And I was like,

  KC Davis 32:01

  yeah, that is so helpful, Dr Eileen, that has unlocked some things, because it's also not even, like, whose feelings are most important, but like, I was just listening in this moment, just this morning, I was listening to a Tiktok of this lady that was like, you know, if your kid says, you know, I don't want to try this, like, the sandwich tastes like peanut butter. And you know, it doesn't, because there's no peanut butter on there. And, you know you like, maybe just say, okay, that's fine. Don't eat it. And in my head, I was like, my child's diet would be two items if I just literally validated every fear and feeling she has about food. But at the same time, there's this concept that you just mentioned, of like your feelings can be valid, and is your feeling more important in this moment than perhaps what your body might need, the opportunity to have a new food, the like, like that, I think, unlocked something for me where it's not either or it's not shut up and try the sandwich, or quit being so sensitive, or, ugh, you're too much eat the sandwich. But it's also not okay, sweetie. You know, I told I want to validate your fear of the sandwich. And, you know, like, or having to have this long, drawn out kind of, like tiptoe conversation about, like, cajoling them into the sandwich. It's like, hey, you know what? Sometimes I feel afraid when I've tried something new, too. And

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 33:25

  that one yeah and yes

  KC Davis 33:29

  in this moment. You know, trying, you know, the opportunity to try a new food that might give you a lot of nutrition for your body is more important than what you feel.

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 33:38

  I mean, we all it's always a judgment call, but one of the reasons that we adults are the ones with the car keys and the credit card is because we have a bigger perspective. You know, kids are just like in this moment right now. So there's a lot of interesting research by somebody named Ellie Liebowitz, and he's out of Yale, and he treats childhood anxiety, and he never meets the parents, or never meets the kid. He only works with the parents. Isn't that interesting. And what he finds is that when kids have an anxiety disorder, more and more, the parents do things to accommodate that anxiety, you know, like we don't want the kid to explode. So okay, we'll find we'll, you know, do it three times and, you know, check the whatever, and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. So what he has to do the parents do is dial back the accommodations. Can't control the kid. Can only control what happens around the kid. And he says that there are two key ingredients that parents need to offer empathy, because the kid really is struggling. You know they're not doing this just to make your life harder, and confidence that this is hard for you, and I know you can do this. I know not that you won't feel scared or uncomfortable or whatever, but I know you can get through it. One of my favorite interventions for developing real confidence is. Is for parents to be our kids biased biographers. So tell the collect and tell those stories of where the kids struggled initially and then triumphed. I remember when you were first learning to swim and you were afraid to put your face in the water. And now look at your year of fish. I remember when you were first learning to ride your bike and you fell and you fell and you fell, and now look at you zipping around. I remember the first time you went to soccer and you were so nervous and you didn't know what to do, and now it's your favorite activity. So because we have that broader perspective, we can be their biased biographers and tell these stories of struggle followed by Triumph.

  KC Davis 35:42

  You and this idea of empathy is big, I think, because I just know there are people listening that when they heard the term dial back the accommodations, they bristled and they felt triggered and they felt because I think part of where a lot of this comes from is that we remember being children kind of raised by that, you know, be seen, not her generation, or that generation, that maybe we were undiagnosed ADHD or undiagnosed autistic, or we undiagnosed anxiety, and our parents were going, you know, get over it. Who cares? And so we're trying to do the opposite. But I think sometimes we might go too far, like, we're parenting out of a reaction of our own wounds,

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 36:24

  yes, and you can't make up for what happened before. Like, if that's your game plan, it's

  KC Davis 36:29

  not gonna work. Yeah, yeah. Like, because my parent was too tough and never gave me accommodations. Now I almost parent out of this fear, and I am over accommodating, over tiptoeing, over sort of like, you know, I'm almost like, making my kids anxiety worse, because, you know, I'm doing all these things. And so, you know, I know that you don't mean rip all the accommodations away, but I don't want to just specify that for the audience, because I do think that attuned, connected, empathetic caregiver saying, You know what, Honey, we're actually not going to do that right now. Or, you know what, Honey, we're going to do it anyways. Or we're not going to use this, you know, accommodation of this tool right now, right? And I know it's going to

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 37:16

  be hard for you. Yeah, that's so different. And I believe in you. I believe in you. I know you can do this, and you might even say, I'll be right here with you, or I'll see you at the whatever or so and so's gonna help you, or whatever. So the metaphor that I use with kids all the time, and sometimes with my adults too, is that you can't get used to the water by standing at the edge of the pool, so we really have to stay in the water, and what changes? You know, you jump into the pools like, oh my gosh, it's freezing. If you stay in the water, you're going to get used to it. That's just a physiological fact. Does the water temperature change? No. What changes is our perception of it. Now, if the kid wants to go in toe by toe, that's absolutely fine. I'm certainly a toe by toe person myself, but no amount of standing by the edge of the pool is going to get you used to the water. So the protecting the kid from feeling uncomfortable, it feels good to us, because, you know, we don't have to deal with the big fuss. And you know, we like the idea of being protective, but sometimes, and it's hard

  KC Davis 38:22

  as a parent, if you had parents that did not accommodate you, that were not empathetic towards you, that did not think about your need, it's hard, I think, when you had parents where you felt like your pain didn't even affect them, or didn't affect them the way It should, we never learn what amount of discomfort is okay for our children to feel and what isn't, because it is my job to protect my kid from some kinds of pain or to accommodate for some kind right? But I think sometimes, if you don't have that model, you don't know how much discomfort is appropriate, and you're we're all just kind of trying to figure it out. But I think, to your point, you know, knowing that it's not one extreme or the other exactly,

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 39:06

  and it's got to be both ingredients, the empathy plus the confidence. So one of my principles is that realistic expectations for kids are what they do pretty much most of the time now, or just a bit beyond that, we can get very tangled if we think about, you know, what kids ought to do, or what most kids could do, or what the younger sister could do. I don't care we deal with the kid in front of us. And so when you're thinking about, you know, what kind of accommodations might I start pulling back like I would recommend talking about it with a kid, you know, see, you know. And because I do this all the time in my practice, and I'll tell the kid, I will never push, but I will nudge, because I believe in you, and our job is to put our heads together. And I'll look for like we usually do, a scale of one to 10. Of because I don't know how bad something is for a kid. I cannot know that without asking the kids sometimes can't know either. So I'll say we're looking for something that's uncomfortable but definitely doable, and our job is to keep doing it until you're bored. So it's really about building confidence, rather than ripping away because they shouldn't. You know that that's not helpful well.

  KC Davis 40:24

  And one example is, you know, when you're doing, like, food things, like, if you have a really picky eater, or a kid that really has some stuff around food, I'll never forget, like, listening to a nutritionist that was talking about, like, Okay, your parents old school method of you have to eat everything. We're not doing that. Or you have to eat this before this. We're not doing that however. We're not just gonna go all the way over to eat anything you want, and it doesn't matter, and we're not gonna push you to try new things. But when she talked about the like, the steps you should be taking towards it, the first step was always the child tolerating it on their plate, right like, before we get to you have to take a bite. Even it's you don't have to eat it, but it does have to stay on the plate. Now, obviously, you're, we're listing depends on your kid. Oh, I have a sensory thing, a smell I can't do, right? But I just thought, like, that's a good example, not a rule, but an example of, like, how sometimes we might go to what we think is the first step of, sort of like pushing them past their comfort zone, but it's really like way back in the back there. This has all been so super helpful. Can you, like, just as we land the plane here, where can parents go if they're going, oh my gosh, this is so great. You know, what books have you written? What's your website? Tell us all the stuff where we can find you. So

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 41:37

  my website, for my main website, is Eileen kennedymore.com, e, i, l, e, e n, k, e N, N, E, D, y, M, O, O, R, e.com. So you can see my books there. I've written four books for parents. The most recent one is kid confidence. Help your child make friends, build resilience and develop real self esteem. I've also written four books for kids. Moody moody cars is for four to eight year olds. That's just such a joy. It goes freewheeling, full of feeling, traveling near and far. Honk if you see me. I'm a moody, moody car. So it has beautiful photos of antique cars, and I think they look like they have feelings. And I also have two books growing friendships and growing feelings for six to 12 year olds. And those ones, each one has little cartoon vignettes of common friendship problems, and then the narrator comes in and gives research based tips. And then wandering through the text are this cat and dog character that make goofy suggestions, like, he should sniff their butt, their butts. I'm like, No, he shouldn't. He should not sniff their butts. But it makes the kids laugh. It makes them feel smart because they know not to do that, but it's still getting the information in there. Yeah. And then my joy is the kids ask. Dr friend tastic podcast. You can find it on any podcast app that you like, or drfriendtastic.com Dr friendtastic.com you click on the podcast tab. And for accessibility, I have full easy to read pod transcripts there. There are always discussion questions also. So an interesting thing you can do is just play the episode up to the end of the kid question. Ask your kid, what advice would you give, and see what they say, and then play my advice. And then it always comes with a couple of a handful of discussion questions to deepen your kids understanding to and mostly it was about, have you ever had something like that happened? Or why do you think that it's so much fun? I'm

  KC Davis 43:31

  definitely going to check that out for my six year old. Can

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 43:34

  I tell you one of my favorite episodes there was this little girl named Vera, who is eight, and she asked, do we have to change ourselves to make friends? So my answer was, oh my gosh, my favorite questions and life, not just the podcast, are ones where the question seems simple on the surface, but the more you think about it, the more questions it raises. So what do you mean by change, and what do you mean by self? What do you mean by make friends? So I talked about how we are all different in different situations, different relationships. We also change over time. At the same time, we have a felt sense of authenticity, those moments where we think this is who I am or want to be, but sometimes we'll do something that's not exactly what we want, because it's what a friend wants, but that can be very authentic, because it taps into our deepest value of caring for the front and that's the foundation of friendship. So the answer to the question, do we have to change ourselves to make friends is no we have to show up as our most authentic, caring selves. So it's just, I like that and

  KC Davis 44:49

  like I think the difference making that distinction between authentic change, which is maybe I have a way of acting that I don't even maybe I don't like it either, but I can. How it's impacting people, and maybe I want to change that, and I want to be and like, that's an authentic change, versus a, you know, oh, I need to hide what I like, or, you know, what

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 45:09

  I think and what I feel, and I that's so cool. That's helpful. Is this really a balance so growing feelings, which is the second book for six to 12 year olds, that's about children's feelings about friends, because feelings don't usually come up in the abstract. You know, it's usually because they did that, whatever. So we talk about the feeling cycle, so or stories, feeling stories cycle, and it starts out with an event, and then as soon as that event happens, we start making inferences about what does this mean for me, for you, for our relationship, and those thoughts lead to feelings, and those feelings prompt actions, and those actions trigger reactions from other people, which could be setting the cycle of motion again. So what I find is a lot of the discussion about emotions nowadays is not taking the social piece into consideration, and that's really, really important. Kind of like that college girl who's like, You're bad, like, you know, she's just barfing out her feelings to be crude there, without any sense of what is the response you are hoping for and what kind of communication is most likely to get that that's not about being fake or manipulative. It's about being able to see beyond just, you know, this feeling that's happened in this moment. Can I expand my awareness both to what's going on with them and to what I really want? So I think that can be a really powerful perspective for kids, and each of those areas on the cycle are something that we can intervene with. I'll tell you one more thing. This is probably the best thing I ever invented, because it worked and it's, I call it a soft criticism. So the normal response to criticism for all of us is to defend, wow, it's not my fault. And you do it too, and they do it worse. That is just human nature. So the soft criticism is designed to get around that normal defensiveness. And I find this works with kids. It works with partners, it works with coworkers. So step one is you give an excuse. So you might say something like, I know you didn't mean to. I get that you were trying to do that. I understand that you were having a lot going on, or you were really tired, or whatever it was. The beauty of giving the excuse is, in order to come up with an excuse, you have to stop for a second. Imagine things from their point of view. Raises your empathy, lowers your anger. Great place to start. And just practically, if we give an excuse, they don't have to come up with one. And we can just skip that. And and you've put yourself on the same side with them, rather than against them. You're bad and I'm good, you know, like, that's not useful.

  KC Davis 47:51

  So see that working really well with kids? Well, really with anybody. But I'm going to use that with my kids too.

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 47:56

  But step two is the part we want, which is to describe the problem. And here, the formula we would use is, when you bad behavior, bad outcome. So you might say something, like, I get that you were really frustrated last night when you're trying to do your homework and your brother was making a racket. The same time when you throw your shoe at him, you could really hurt him. So like, we can be very specific here. And then step three is the most important, which is about moving forward. A lot of times, parents think they have to solve it. It usually works better if you get the kid to help you solve it. So ask a good question about, what can we do instead, or what can we do to prevent this? Or, you know, what can you do to help him feel better? You know, if the kid's crying or whatever, and you get the kid back on track with being a good kid, and we solve the problem together, rather than, you know, thinking, Oh, I gotta figure this out. No, let's figure it out together and see what we can do. So

  KC Davis 48:58

  that is really helpful, and I really appreciate the time that you've taken, and especially since I missed our time this morning, this afternoon, and I hope that you have a really great day.

  Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore 49:08

  Thank you. This was very fun. You.

  Transcribed by https://otter.ai