Deep Dive: Tackling Big Transitions With Outschool CEO Amir Nathoo

0:00 why is it so hard to find reliable answers to parenting questions how is it in 2022 parents still search on google for answers from strangers well now there's a better way introducing the good inside membership an expert guided community-powered platform redefining modern parenting in our library you'll find hundreds of bite-sized videos articles scripts and workshops tackling the trickiest parenting topics and it doesn't stop

0:33 here we've created a private community guided by me dr becky and coaches trained in the good inside parenting method here you can ask questions connect with other parents or attend a live event on a topic that matters to you this is the parenting handbook that doesn't exist this is parenting advice at your fingertips where you need it when you need it the most this is good inside membership hi i'm dr becky and this is good inside

1:07 i'm a clinical psychologist and mom of three on a mission to rethink the way we raise our children [Music] i love translating deep thoughts about parenting into practical actionable strategies that you can use in your home right away one of my core beliefs is that we are all doing the best we can with the resources we have available to us in that moment so even as we struggle and even as we are having a hard time on

1:38 the outside we remain good inside [Music] today's episode is a deep dive with amir nephew ceo of outschool an online education platform that looks to inspire a love of learning my family loves outschool and has for years my kids don't even think they're learning math or science or writing skills because they think of outschool as a place to have fun and laugh i am

2:10 thrilled to be talking with amir about his experience as a working parent we talk about his transition to having two kids his transition from parental leave to going back to work we talk about how to build frustration tolerance and the importance of play in learning both educational skills and emotion regulation skills with all that in mind let's jump in so i'd love you to tell me a little bit about you maybe

2:41 introduce yourself and from there we'll talk a little bit about what's going on in your family and kind of brainstorm through some things together absolutely so my name's amir nathu i grew up in england but um are now based in san francisco and i've been living here with my wife kirsty since 2009 and we have two kids my son cosmo who is a little over two and a half years old and our daughter talia who has just turned

3:10 10 weeks old for my work i'm co-founder and ceo of outschool which is a marketplace of classes for kids and i've just come back of parental leave so i took eight weeks of parental leave and hoped to take more later so navigating the transition back and that's a little bit about me excited to be here well that's a really great start and i really do need to tell you that i am a major out school fan we've used out

3:38 school for a while we love out school and i'm so excited to be connected with you i'm so happy to hear that really pleased that we can be of help to your family especially during these times when you know schooling as a whole is a little bit unusual absolutely so there's so many different things that come to my mind as you even just give your introduction and the word transition really comes up for me there's a lot of transitions it seems

4:04 like in your family cosmo became a big brother you just had a baby the two of you you and your partner became now parents of two kids which is definitely different than parent of one and you were home and now you're back to work how is that going is it just all amazing and butterflies and unicorns no i mean it is you know there's so many good aspects about it but the work week where i went back to

4:36 work for the first time i i don't know i feel like it's one of the toughest weeks in my life for all kinds of reasons and you know one aspect which surprised me a bit just how hard it was to mentally transition back to work move to be fully remote during covid yeah we moved house in order so that we had enough space the right setup so that i could have a home office and we could have two kids when we had

5:04 cosbo and i returned to work i was you know walking or commuting into the office and there's this kind of natural gap between home and work which let me kind of settle into each and you know that doesn't exist in in this new way of working you know that made the transition hard amongst many other things but uh yeah now i feel i feel like i've just got through that transition into the next kind of phase yeah one of the

5:29 things working from home does is it actually creates many more transitions over the course of the day so we want to go say hi to our kid and that's so amazing for them i can sit with my child while he's having a snack or i can play a quick game or i can pop into you know magna tiles or blocks whatever's happening and then there's a goodbye and then there's a hello and then there's a goodbye right and there's

5:52 so many more separations so i think working from home when you have your kids around like you said there's pros and cons but it's tricky those moments yeah totally and you know it's heartbreaking when you know cosmo in particular thinks i'm going to stay downstairs for a little bit longer or wants to play with me and there's a meeting coming up and i i really have to be you know i'm leading this meeting i have to be on time for this one

6:16 and i've just got to go and we we have this little routine which which helps which is that cosmo likes to kind of push me up the stairs i think maybe it makes him feel like in control of it so you know um that helps but you know sometimes that just doesn't work and he's just you know crying and doesn't want me to leave and sometimes i have to and yeah that's heartbreaking it is you know as you're talking about that i

6:42 think about some of my working from home experiences and all these kind of separation moments with my kids and my youngest one just turned four so toward the beginning of all this working from home he was around cosmo's age two i don't know if you ever think about it this way but it strikes me that you have a leadership position in two major systems in your family system and in your work system right and i'm pretty sure at out school for you or

7:08 for anyone you hire there's a very clear job description we don't hire people and just say figure it out i don't know do what you think is useful right like we say here's what you're or if we do it probably doesn't go that well right it's so important to know in a work system what's my job what's my colleague's job what is this person's job you can't even feel good about your job at the end of the day if you don't

7:28 know what your job is right and i remember coming back to my thoughts around family jobs over and over when my kids have had difficult separation stages especially during those multiple separation days of working from home and the way i think about it is a parent we kind of have three parts to our job which are boundaries validation and empathy so what that means is it's my job to make key decisions and set boundaries

7:59 around safety or around just decisions that shouldn't be in a child's hand it's not my kid's decision when i go to the meeting or not right that's not up to cosmo so those are the boundaries and then the other two parts often go hand in hand that a big part of my job is validating and empathizing with my kids feelings which usually come up in response to my boundaries i always think about the seesaw i set a boundary my kid

8:23 ends up having feelings about it i empathize and validate those feelings hopefully on a good day and hold the boundary and then i think a kid's job and i think it's really powerful to think about this a kid's job in a family system i think is to actually feel and experience and express their feelings because the only way we ever learn how to cope with feelings is by having them right i don't know anyone who's 40 and

8:49 said my parents definitely never allowed me to feel anger but boy do i manage anger well as a 40 year old no one said that right and we don't get rid of feelings so either by the time we're adults we're kind of prepared to have them or we're not and to look at your kids early years as well their actual their job their job is to feel these feelings to me that gave me a lot of peace

9:11 when especially my youngest used to really protest when i went to work because i could say to myself wait my job is to decide when i'm going to this meeting okay that's on me my son is crying that's interesting that doesn't mean i made a bad decision he's he's actually doing his job okay and i can do my other part of my job which is saying oh you wish mommy didn't have to work now you wish i could finish building

9:35 this tower with you i get that and then still say some version of i'm gonna put two more blocks on and then i am gonna go walk up those stairs and i'll see you in a little bit if that still feels really bad to you and the tears keep coming only you know how you feel and in my head i'd say i'm doing my job and he's doing his job tell me tell me what you think about

9:59 that or how that might apply to you and cosmo i i love that model because it kind of characterizes responsibility for me and you know one thing i know that i struggle with is you know setting and holding those boundaries i think i'm better with my personal assessment on the kind of validation empathy side whereas my wife is often the one saying hang on we need to we need to set you know a boundary around this and and hold to it i'm not sure it

10:28 makes it any easier [Laughter] to in those moments where i'm making the decision to go to the meeting and leave the tears behind but honestly i wouldn't have it any other way i guess it's my job to care about how my son is feeling and to empathize with that and and i think one of the things i think for so many of us holding a boundary when our kids are upset especially when we're we know i'm kind

10:53 of an empathic person i i do really care about how you're feeling is really reminding ourselves kind of it goes back to boundaries but like whose feelings are whose right like he's sad and that sadness is something i care about but it's not my sadness right like that's he's upset and he's in some ways learning to deal with feelings that come up when someone you love separates right and i'm sure one day

11:24 when he's older if he has some really meaningful relationship and that person moves across the country which would be a different form of separation you'd say yeah that would be pretty normal that he felt sad right and we want to teach our kids during these years of course you have these feelings and i know for me when i get back to my room where i'm doing my meeting and i still hear my son crying it's never easy

11:46 it's not like the most pleasant part of my day by any means but being able to put my feet on the ground and just saying everyone did their job here okay he's still crying that's that's on kind of that's on him that's him he's doing his job i did my part this is a job well done right and i'm guessing too in out school sometimes you job you do a job well done but still it might not

12:08 feel great you're like i kind of think i made the right decision but it's just it's still messy right like that happens with our kids a lot i think i made the right decision it doesn't mean it's clean and my kid pats me on the back and says oh you're the best dad in the world go take that meeting right that's not what our kids you know usually it's not what my kids do for me right um but again i think

12:29 that grounding in jobs kind of can also help us move on with our day and say okay i'm not a bad parent because my kid is crying because i often think also with those jobs my kids feelings don't need to change my boundaries but also my boundaries don't need to dictate my kids feelings like again they're just two totally separate things yeah that makes so much sense to me and i i think what resonates for me

12:54 especially is just this idea that he's learning and that by setting that boundary and by you know giving him that responsibility for his feelings and for managing them i'm preparing him for the for the future and sometimes that's not not comfortable and another reflection i i had and i've had over the last couple of weeks is that the you know pain that i feel on setting those boundaries raises the bar for me in how i spend my

13:26 time and the impact that i want to have on my work you know if i'm going to be spending this time and step away from my son when he wants to be with me it better be for a really good reason [Laughter] so i'm continually you know i'm exploring that and continually finding that uh it's honestly improving my work because i'm more insistent of the way i spend my time at work is most impactful and in line with my values that's such

13:51 an amazing perspective it's kind of a different version of thinking about jobs and the different jobs you have that one of my jobs is to be a really present parent and so if i'm making a mindful decision to be engaged at work like yeah i better be doing my best job yeah like i'm gonna really crush that moment right it's gonna be extra focused i'm not messing around during that meeting totally totally exactly and in some ways

14:13 that actually fortifies me to make tough choices at work um because um you know i know i know what i'm giving up in order to in order to do that and i've i've actually you know that's part of what's helped me with this transition back to work honestly i just feel great about some of the work i've done in the past week because i'm i think i'm doing things a little bit differently than i would have before and both the

14:36 perspective of having taken eight weeks off and now you know pushing myself to make sure that i'm i am making a transition on the work side as well and that's i'm up leveling the impact that i have when i am spending time there um is the part that i'm really happy about tell me a little bit more about cosmo's transition to being a big brother it's a big shift yeah it is and we were very mindful of

15:02 it you know my wife bought these books to start to talk to cosmo before tally was born about the transition that was happening and he loves books and he couldn't have known what was going to come but you know he was repeating the words it was like oh he knows something's happening here he's paying attention and when we first brought talia back from the hospital he was so excited he first ran behind the curtain and was shy then he came up

15:26 to kind of tell you and kind of rocked the car seat it was really wonderful to see and you know what we feared was kind of resentment or kind of you know rejection of talia but that hasn't played out and i think i don't know what that is i think it's partly the preparation we did i think it's partly cosmos temperament and so he's really sweet and gets super excited about talia he's changed his bedtime routine so now he insists on

15:52 going and playing in talia's room for a little bit and giving her a kiss good night i think the challenge has come from the fact that he gets really really excited he's used to just like giving me a smack on the art affectionately and you know rough and tumble play and he's really excited to play with talia and he like starts squeezing her hand or starts jumping close to her and you know a problem that um

16:21 i've been trying to figure out and the boundaries we're trying to set is you know at times you have to step in and pull them away saying no this is this is two days you could you're gonna hurt talia or you've squeezed her too hard and now she's crying i don't think it's coming from a place of oh he's jealous i think he's coming from a place he's excited and so we don't want to kind of create

16:37 resentment or jealousy by pulling him away we want to kind of have him keep that this excitement about hey we have a new addition to finally hey you have a sister now but it's hard because we're not sure how to set that boundary and say hey you really need to be careful we kind of say tell him gentle gentle and he goes bigger because that's just he's in that mode where he wants everything more and everything

16:56 bigger so yeah that's that's something we're navigating and haven't really haven't really figured out yet i have some ideas about that but i'm first just associating i see this image of my older one he had a little sister born around the same age around three and really kind of carbon copy of that experience the excitement the excitement and then it's a little too much excitement like let's like dial back right just dial it back a little

17:21 bit because that was a little rough right for for a little baby and you want to facilitate this really close loving relationship between your kids and like you said you don't want to dampen their excitement but you also want to keep everyone safe and kind of figuring out what to do is tricky i totally remember being there myself i'm still there i think with my kids sometimes even though they're older so a couple thoughts and one is a

17:43 general i think sibling thought that i want to start with i think so many times in our excitement for our kids to be really close we even as parents don't always see that just having a sibling is tricky there's a range of feelings we have about siblings and it kind of makes sense for kids to feel like that and some kids feel it right away some kids feel it you know as their sibling gets older but our

18:11 kids are in some ways always vying for their secure attachment with us and especially a first kid their whole world is rocked when there's another baby right it's like whoa i thought it was the three of us right you said even if we prepare them it's hard to comprehend what that really means in terms of a violation of every expectation we've had around who a family is and first kids are used to they're being gazed at they're being

18:37 looked at i mean i looked at my child waiting for him to roll over for hours i don't even i don't even know if my other kids ever rolled over like i don't even know if it ever i guess they figured it out eventually right but our kids our first kids they get so much one-on-one attention or two-on-one like two parents to one and then this other human you know infant comes along and everything changes and i don't know if you read this

19:02 somewhere else it was not my metaphor at all so i'll give faber and maizlish the authors of siblings that rivalry write this that imagine your spouse coming to you and just saying you're gonna be so excited oh my goodness oh my goodness oh my goodness a mirror you're gonna get a second husband like i found someone else and you're gonna you're gonna be the big husband and he's me the little husband you're gonna love every moment right and

19:25 everyone's coming up to you saying are you so excited are you so and you're am i living in the twilight zone why is this good for me right and then one day you go to this guy's closet and like take a pair of his pants and everyone's like a mirror a mirror like go to your room you know you're like this guy stole my life okay i took his pants like what's going on here right and that is a

19:48 little bit what happens to our first kid so the fact that cosmo is acting so magnanimous in some ways about this transition is is so amazing and at the same time i do sometimes encourage families to get a little bit ahead of what is natural to have the other side of the conflict just because the feelings we don't recognize and the feelings we don't allow ourselves to have are always the feelings that get acted out in our

20:14 behavior because they're looking for recognition and i often think feelings are forces so if we don't see them inside of us and kind of in some ways oh say oh you're okay to be there they they need to get our attention so they catapult out of our bodies so i think just sprinkling in here and there uh ah you have a little sister i bet part of you feels so excited about that and another part of you might just

20:38 feel like that's kind of tricky right i don't think if you say to a kid in a part of you might might hate her you know like you don't have to like go there if you're like i really don't think that's what's happening but you're just naming that it's okay to have many feelings and it's okay i i love the word tricky for this because i find it's it speaks to what happens and that things are uncomfortable but it doesn't

21:01 label something that we're not quite sure what it is um and just sprinkling that here and there you know you're having breakfast right or yeah it's okay to have so many feelings i'm sure i said this honestly to my kid i said ah part of me loves being a family of four and it's just so many more people and all the different relationships and and i want to be honest there are other moments that i kind of miss

21:26 like just me you and mommy i do there's other moments anyway all of that is kind of part of my experience right now so just kind of really laying the foundation for the idea that we can have multiple feelings at once and because we name it in advance we're also kind of saying to a kid you're not a bad person for having those feelings interesting i i love the word tricky as something that i can try and use without having to

21:57 characterize what i don't know may or may not be present and i can see how you know sprinkling that in to conversation could be validating to something that might not yet be expressed i was you know wondering about conversations like that with you know a two and a half year old but sometimes i i kind of don't know how much is really being understood so i feel like so glad you asked that that holds me back from like just

22:22 talking like you you just did to to him yeah how do you think about that it's funny whenever someone says to me my kid is blank years old i'm like you feel like they really understand that i always say yes and i know that sounds funny because like becky you don't even fill in what the age is and what they're asking you i always say yes our kids understand so much more than we think they do so

22:46 much more than we often give them credit for and there's other nuances there too if we don't talk to our kids as if they could understand more nuanced topics then they don't get to a place where they start to understand more nuanced topics right as a parent we somewhat our kids mirrors they look to us i think always kind of saying who am i all right like how do you see me because our kids start to see themselves

23:11 the way we see them so i wouldn't i don't think you have to like sit down cosmo and talk about the cold war right now you know like i don't fully understand you know that history but i often think if i was in a foreign country in some country where i totally didn't understand or speak the language i really think i could differentiate between the people who are talking to me as if i was kind of worthy of being

23:33 explained to and the people who are talking to me in a way who just kind of thought i couldn't understand i i think we can really feel that from people yeah and so i think that's first and foremost a reason to talk to our kids and every time we end up talking to our kids at a level a little bit above where we think they might understand i think we always get something back maybe not in that moment but later because in the

24:02 moment our kids usually say okay dad can i have those pretzels like can i just have pretzels right we always end up seeing evidence of wow that that impacted them that sunk in because our kids actually perceive more than we do they're more hyper-vigilant about their environment they're really noticing everything they have to to survive right they're so dependent on adults and so they notice everything and so either they have an adult who's trying to explain it to them or they're

24:28 just kind of alone trying to as a two three-year-old make sense of their perceptions right which i think we both know probably doesn't go that well and so i think it's just a really powerful framework to say what if i assume my kid does understand this does understand some part of this and i can play around with it i don't have to expect him to have something profound back to me but just saying things like a part of you

24:52 might feel this and a part of you might feel this or you even can communicate more with your tone they feel that before the words anyway right part of me is so excited we're a family of four and you know part of me feels it's like a little tricky i don't even know what to call this feeling it's just kind of a little weird in my own body cosmo i don't know pause that that's the conversation not much more is happening

25:14 right but i really really believe wholeheartedly that that gets in there to our kids and that speaks to the range of feelings that are happening in that moment or are soon to happen after that you know as you were talking i realized there's one context in which i feel i already do this which is reading books you know since he was a very young kid we were reading him kids books without any expectation that he really understood

25:39 what was going on but just looking at the pictures and i guess just culturally with how i was brought up that made total sense and what you're saying is it's just applying that same kind of thinking just to regular conversations that there's no reason why i can't try to you know talk to cosmo about more subtle and nuanced things just as a conversation rather than using a book i think that's such a really amazing parallel i think

26:10 one more level to make it even more relevant in a kid's world is i use play all the time to kind of teach things to my kids or to try to express ideas so i can imagine uh my son was super into trucks when he was cosmo's age like every truck it was we're always playing with trucks and so i would take a dump truck and just say oh you know excavator you became a big brother recently right

26:38 i bet that's sometimes really fun and sometimes just kind of different right again i'm not expecting my son to kind of in play say something profound back but play is an amazing medium because it's close enough to a kid's world that they identify with it but it's far enough away that it doesn't seem to evoke any kind of defensiveness or shame or anything else and play is really where kids learn right i'm sure you guys talk about this in out school

27:06 all the time right the more fun classes are the more kids can learn because their defenses are down because they feel engaged because they can push themselves further and i think pretend play for kids when they're dealing with transitions or maybe dump truck's dad went back to work and oh he works at the construction site sometimes i see him and he's working on a project and sometimes he has to go to a meeting how annoying what should dump truck do when

27:31 his dad dump truck goes back to that meeting hmm i wonder if this dump truck would take a deep breath and say i can feel sad dad comes back i can feel sad dad comes back i'm in play right but our kids are learning a coping skill probably more profoundly than if we say to them when i go to work cosmo i want you to take a deep breath and say i can feel sad dad comes back right

28:02 because they're experiencing it in play their bodies are actually experiencing that moment and so they're actually creating that skill inside themselves and it feels less heavy-handed to everyone as well i love that i just now need to go channel dr becky acting skills because that was amazing play talk to the dump truck i mean so much in play even i do i feel like play play is really it's like a

28:33 kid's world right and i think yes like these sibling transitions or even what you were saying how do we play with a baby right first of all it's just it's so tricky for kids to figure out i have to be honest i sometimes have a heart and i'm like how am i playing with my own baby you're my nephew like what am i really doing with the 10 week old like it's not you know it's not the most

28:54 scintillating of all play experiences right so i think our kids our toddlers they're really when we use kind of our most generous interpretation oh can i can i jump around them can i do like what can i do with this child right is one of the reasons our kids can sometimes get a little bit aggressive just because they truly are trying to experiment but you could bring that into play too right i can imagine a little truck or again

29:20 maybe it's not trucks it's baby dolls or it's farm animals and oh there's one little chick and there's one big cow i wonder i wonder if the cow should like roll around with the chick that oh wait wait i'm just the cow so big the chick is so little that's a shame because the cow could definitely roll around and play tag with i don't know the moves i'm moose i'm just i'm not very good at my animals right

29:47 but again you're speaking to what happens but you're not like you said reprimanding and actually now we're including cosmo right because in play kids are likely to generate ideas well what could the cow do if the cow wants to do something kind of really big and jumpy what should the cow do if the chick is right there right and actually pause because i can't even tell you how many times in play my child will say something to me that i know they're

30:15 working through the situation in their life but if i just said what could you do when you're around your sister they might brainstorm and i think that's a fine intervention too but their ability to be creative and engage and play is so much higher because guess what it's in play we all engage in play more than we engage in something serious right no one wants to be sat down you don't be sat down right by kirsty and been like amir

30:36 what do you think you can do next time you know in this situation but if she says to you my friend is having this problem what do you think her husband could do you're probably like oh i have a lot of ideas for that right we all we all can do that a little more easily that makes sense i mean that happens sometimes i mean kirsty definitely sits me down like that but yeah uh it's totally easier to be less

30:58 defensive and more creative when looking at it from a third party perspective cosmo has these uh little frogs and one big frog in his bath toys that gives me an idea for bath time tonight about saying oh this one's talia and this one's cosmo [Laughter] how are they how are they gonna play together oh i think the little one might be feeling uh a little bit um you know scared and the big one is uh is doing things that

31:24 might harm her what could the big one do and try those kind of role plays that you described exactly and when we're doing those role plays i would actually encourage parents to to try to be as general as possible i don't i don't think we have to name the the animals as the kids because in some ways we want to allow them to stay in the safety of play right is so safe right we all learn

31:48 emotion regulation skills academic skills any skills when it's infused with play so i think it's it's kind of awesome for us to think about how that is already happening i think that's what out school does right like inspire a love of learning right absolutely you know that's what we're all about that idea that learning should feel fun and um should be really engaging and if kids fall in love with learning then um everything else will follow when it

32:16 comes to development test results engagement and core learning and it's so interesting to you know hear that insight reflected when thinking about my own kids at a younger age than we support our school and i've never thought about it this concretely but there is a powerful framework like my kid is struggling with something so oh my kid can get a little rough with his sibling or who knows right later on my kid is always forgetting their jacket

32:40 or my kid you know is is hitting this other child on a play date to say okay there's learning that has to be done there's learning that has to be done to learn to read to learn how to do fractions right and if we inspire a love of learning like you said the the results follow the behavior follows the behavior happens when it happens but we want to work on the process so how cool to bring

33:03 that to what i think of as the core skills of childhood which is like learning emotion regulation and to say as a parent what is my kids struggling with oh they have to learn how to kind of inhibit the urge to get a little more physical when their baby sister okay that's the skill they don't have yet how can i do like for you especially how can i do what i try to do every day at

33:23 my job also how can i make this fun how can i make learning the regulation skill a little fun well it has to involve some type of play right so you can do that with frogs you can do that with trucks or you could do that between the two of you right you could have a baby doll on the floor and you could say okay i've i have a funny thing cosmo i'm gonna be cosmo and you're gonna be dad

33:46 you wanna do that i'm gonna be and do you know one of the things as cosmo i love to do i love to like jump and i love to like roll around and i love to just like yell and i love do all those things and i know as my dad you love that about me just make sure i don't get a little too close to the baby just make sure and let cosmo say to you too close two like

34:05 reverse rolls a little bit and when we do that we can model something that we're hoping our kids can learn but do it in a realistic way right so i can imagine myself if my child's like mom you're getting too close be like oh but i want to be here it's my house too okay i guess i can do my jumping over there so maybe i'm speaking again to that conflict that probably why is a kid

34:30 having trouble regulating probably a little bit because they're experiencing some of that hey i never had a control where i was jumping before i not until you came here does anybody care how wild i get right so they're kind of you know holding their holding down their four if you will so i might speak to that and then model maybe moving my body back or getting out my sillies on the pillow away from the pretend baby but when we

34:57 model that and kind of allow our kid to reprimand us if it was me i'd probably say oh dad you can be you could be so annoying but fine i'll walk away right i'd say that to my kid because again that's probably i'm just trying to kind of connect to their experience again looking at let's make learning fun my child will learn how to regulate their feelings that's the outcome if i make the emotion regulation process

35:25 full of play and fun right that's uh nobody i think knows that as well as you so how cool to really apply that yeah that's incredible the idea that we would kind of swap roles and in play and that would make boundary setting easier because it's like helping them empathize from my perspective i absolutely love that one other thought that um came to mind as you were talking about that is the idea that we have to teach our kids to push

35:57 through hard things or accept hard things sometime i mean thinking a lot about angela duckworth's book grit and the power of passion and perseverance and how that relates to love of learning and this idea that to get through tough things it's it's not just kind of like pushing through for the sake of it's being pulled by something that you're drawn to which again comes to this idea of loving learning or wanting the outcome and so i love the idea through play that can

36:27 help cosmo you know establish his own boundaries or feel ownership over that process or empathy for the other side i can't help myself but to add one more kind of concrete thing around exactly that because i believe also our kids learn frustration tolerance and play right so there's so many different ways of maybe saying a similar thing resilience grit uh i often think like that the learning space i want my kids to love being in the

36:53 learning space between not knowing and knowing that's like where all the good stuff happens and how do we get our kids to enjoy being there or at least tolerate being there right so again i think about this reversal of roles so i don't know why i think about puzzles a lot because i think puzzles for kids they just bring up so much frustration so they're such a great learning ground for frustration tolerance i mean i don't really care i'm

37:16 not my kid's not gonna be a professional puzzler but it's such a great way to learn skills for life of i want to do something and it's not quite working yet how do i handle that and so one of the things i often do i did this for each of my kids is they were kind of starting to do some of those trickier puzzles when they're younger so what is it four piece eight piece twelve pieces

37:36 is i do a puzzle next to them when they might be starting and i'd you know get it wrong right oh it doesn't go here oh it's this oh i don't know if i'm gonna do it anymore wait becky one second i would just be modeling this to the side and then maybe again i'd struggle and say no i'm done for now you know what becky maybe i really do need a break okay and maybe i'd go back right and all of

38:01 this meanwhile would be well my kid just quote happened to be next to me i never looked at my kid and said see mommy gets frustrated too see you can try that song but i'm modeling resilience i'm modeling frustration tolerance and i'm also showing my kid that my kid isn't the only one who has a hard time with something that's one of the reasons so many kids get so frustrated they just see their parents being so capable over and over and over

38:26 again so through play through again this reversal of roles right i can be the kid who's trying to do a puzzle next to my kid who's a kid trying to do a puzzle and my kid can absorb so many skills through my willingness to role play to kind of play things out and really trusting this is all coming together that that's really getting in there that's going to get absorbed and that through play our kids can learn all of

38:54 these really important life skills i love that i absolutely love that and it makes me realize you know i think one thing that i've felt as a parent is this desire to have it figured out to do the best possible job for my kids whatever that means but generally to have it figured out and to not necessarily expose them to the struggles that i might be having whereas you know what you're saying is inspiring me to being a little bit more

39:22 open about that and show that i get frustrated sometimes uh people do and that's normal and to validate that feeling rather than trying to like you know have it all figured out and being this kind of like super parent that is there to look after them and you know fix things and that kind of thing i really do think that's such a gift to our kids because again if we think about our kids early years as

39:48 kind of wiring in patterns that will come up for them throughout life there's no 20 year old who says i never get frustrated i've never had something hard right either by 20 by 30 by 40 our kids feel prepared to handle frustration or they feel totally unprepared right that's really the only difference and knowing that your parent has struggled knowing oh yeah today at work something really tricky happened yeah oh yes tricky things happen to me at work all

40:19 the time i still don't know what i'm going to do about something do you ever have that you're working on something and you just haven't figured it out yet yeah today was one of those days again i'm not expecting my three-year-old to say this is profound dad this will impact me for the rest of my life but just trust trust that it does right our kids are looking at us and they're learning about who they can be

40:43 and so the more we're willing to play to show our own struggles or to kind of model them right around our kids our kids number one feel normalized they don't feel the shame of aloneness and then they can actually absorb the skills that we can model and that they can then start practicing in their own lives and this seems really important to me when just reflecting on the future how fast the world is changing because um

41:09 you know i think we as adults don't have things figured out because of the speed of change and everything that's happening in the world political change climate change technology and i think i want to prepare my kids for a world where they have to figure it out and there's not necessarily an instruction manual um and there's new professions there's a new environment there in and so that's why i want them to be resilient be creative be able to push

41:38 through tough things and figure it out for themselves and i guess i want that much more than i want them to absorb any wisdom i have to offer because they're going to live in a different world than we do today you know that makes me a little scared but then also excited by the possibilities of what they'll do in their lives yeah well i think if i can say anything conclusively from this it's i think your

42:06 kids are really lucky then to have have you as their parent they're so reflective and open and clearly so attuned to them and really been just so awesome to talk with you thank you so much yeah thank you um and i've learned a lot i have some homework i have a new word tricky which i can use i have some role play and some play ideas and hearing the incredible acting inspires me to do a bit more of that with with my kids

42:37 and not just read the book but actually do more of that imaginative play i'm pretty sure out school has some theater and drama classes if you would like to you know up your game in the in the theatrics department you know out schools for kids only so unfortunately i can't take that but once cosmo turns age three heel can take the class and i can just be in the background listening and maybe pick up a few tips

43:02 that's right we gotta supervise you guys well this this has been amazing amir thank you so much for being here look forward to another time we can we can talk again likewise thank you so much for the conversation i really enjoyed it [Music] it was so amazing to talk with amir i wish we could have talked for hours and hours more for now i want to tie it all together with three takeaways one play is the world kids live in and

43:33 it's where they learn think about now something your child struggles with and then think about how you can put this into play you might reverse roles you might speak to these themes in pretend play with stuffed animals figure out how to make a situation fun so a child feels safe and can learn two we want to prepare our kids for the feelings they're going to have throughout their lives not protect them from those feelings

44:05 which will leave them totally unprepared to cope when we focus on protecting or taking away or solving we actually miss out on critical years that we can be helping our kids learn coping skills the same skills they will need to use in their adulthood three try using the word tricky in your home i love that word i use it all the time because i find it so validating for anything that feels uncomfortable or challenging also when

44:38 we use that word our kids can often find their own resilience there's just something about the word tricky that makes kids feel seen and yet also allows them to tap into their coping skills thanks for listening to good inside let's stay connected at goodinside.com you can sign up for workshops and subscribe to good insider my weekly email with scripts and strategies delivered right to your inbox

45:08 and for more ideas and tips check out my instagram dr becky at goodinside goodinside is produced by beth rowe and brad gage an executive produced by eric kabelski and me dr becky if you enjoyed this episode please take a moment to rate and review and if you really like the episode please share it with someone you know many of you tell me that sharing an episode has allowed you to start conversations about tricky topics with spouses or extended family members

45:40 and to bond and connect with fellow cycle breakers i actually do read each and every review so please know that your feedback is meaningful to me let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves even as i struggle and even as i have a hard time on the outside i remain good inside

46:26 you