Do I Have a DFK?
21:24 Share

Do you have a kid who goes zero to 60, who you tell yourself all the time, I really feel like my kid has more intense tantrums and meltdowns than any other kid. I really feel like those meltdowns last longer. I also feel like they're more intense. And I swear, I swear I am doing the things that psychologists say, that I read, and they're making things worse. Now, this is the type of situation I was in myself.

And it felt almost gaslighting. I felt like, wait, am I just doing it wrong? Is something wrong with me? Is something wrong with my kid? And then everything changed when I realized, holy moly, no. I just have a kid who is a little bit different than some other kids. And I need to understand this kid. I need to figure out interventions that actually work. I'm not doing it all wrong. I'm not making it all up.

I just don't yet have an approach that works. Take a deep breath with me because if this sounds like your experience of one of your kids, this is going to be one of the most profoundly important episodes you'll listen to. This is going to be about figuring out

Do I have a deeply feeling kid? Because I want you to kind of get to the bottom of that. Because once we figure that out together, then the next steps become clear. I'm Dr. Becky, and this is Good Inside. We'll be back right after this. So if this episode resonates, if you found yourself thinking, oh my goodness, this really sounds like my kid.

I feel like I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't share the supporting resources we have available within the Good Inside app. First, I want to personally invite you to my upcoming Deeply Feeling Kids workshop.

There is nothing more hopeful than being connected to a group of parents who just get it, who are in the trenches with you. You will walk away with a whole new understanding of your kid, with strategies and tactics that actually work, probably also with the new community of parents who are right there with you, with their deeply feeling kid.

How else can the Good Inside app support you and your deeply feeling kid? Well, you have an online private community kept safe by Good Inside parent coaches with forums for discussion and deeply feeling kids support groups at no extra charge. You also have access to a chatbot trained in my DFK approach. This is available 24-7 for any question that inevitably comes your way.

And seriously, thousands of scripts and strategies curated for you and delivered in bite-sized pieces based on the age of your child so you know it's developmentally appropriate. Something you should know about me. I never want someone to pay for something that I don't think will make a massive difference in your home. I mean it.

I feel so confident in my ability to help you turn things around with your deeply feeling kid that we offer a full 14-day money-back guarantee. No tricks. Tap the link in the show notes or visit goodinside.com to learn more. And if you have a question about my DFK approach or about the app, truly just shoot me a DM on Instagram. I always try to answer as many questions as I can. So I just want to start with a personal story.

As I think you know, I'm a clinical psychologist, private practice, and I think it was probably around the time my first kid was, I don't know, two. I was seeing all of these parents in my private practice who were telling me,

Dr. Becky, I swear I'm doing the things you tell me to do. My kid's upset and I'm saying, oh, you're so upset. I get it. But Dr. Becky, it is not reaching my kid. It is making my kid worse. And I swear I'm doing the other thing. Okay, so they had a hard time. We get through it later in the day. I try to kind of retell the story with them. Like you told me that helps build coherence. I

I try to bring it up in the most loving, nonjudgmental way. My kid puts their hand over their ears. They hiss at me. They scream, I hate you. Okay, so this was happening over and over. And I have to be honest, my first reaction internally was kind of judgmental. Okay, I'm just going to be honest with you. I think my first thought was, well, you're probably not doing it right. I laugh at myself because...

It took having more kids to realize how absurd that was. But in the moment, I think I thought that. I didn't say that. But what I'd say to these parents is, okay, it's not working. And I really love to be creative. So I'd say, okay, well, let's try something else and let's do this. And then we eventually would make progress with these very different interventions. Then I had my second kid and my second kid got older.

And I was doing the same things that would really help my first kid. Oh, it's so frustrating to do this puzzle. I think you can do it if you stick with it. And that kid, instead of looking calmer, would look at me with like dragon eyes as if I had just stabbed her in the heart with what I thought was a beautiful intervention. This kid, we'd be out in public.

And something embarrassing would happen. Maybe she'd fall down or I don't know, she, you know, did something in a way that didn't feel right. And I'd go over and I'd say, I'm right here with you. And she'd blame me. She'd like blame me for something I clearly had nothing to do with. Like I tripped you while you were running on the mat during the gymnastics party. I was truly 50 feet away from you. It's impossible that I did that. And so many things started to connect in my brain. Oh my goodness, these things.

are the same situations all of these parents would describe to me. When I would work with these parents and in the back of my mind, probably feel judgmental, I was watching myself do things that were so helpful with my first kid that I watched be helpful with so many other kids and they were making things worse.

Now, around this time, there were words swirling around my child. And I started hearing these same types of words swirling around other kids. Dramatic, oppositional, difficult, disproportionate. That was like always in a disproportionate reactions. And something started to strike me when I kind of heard all these words. They just kind of made me like my kid less.

Like, okay, so now I'm thinking of my kid as dramatic. I don't know about you, but there's no way I feel closer toward a kid when I think about them as dramatic. Oppositional, defiant, like, whoa. Even those terms, I just have such harshness. I have an oppositional, defiant kid. And I kind of went back to my principles. Wait, kids are born good inside. They're born with all the feelings, none of the skills to have these feelings. And then I started to connect to something very new.

I feel like my second kid truly felt things more often and more deeply than other kids. She noticed more things around her. Maybe she sometimes misperceived them. Like some kid was smiling and waving at her and she thought that kid was judging her. But another one of my kids wouldn't have even noticed the kid even looking in their direction. And I started to think of this very different term, deeply feeling.

My kid was a deeply feeling kid. And around this time, I actually called some of those parents in my private practice who, some of them I was still seeing on and off, some of them I hadn't seen in years. And I kind of said, oh my goodness, wait.

Do some of these things sound like your kid? And I'm going to describe to you what I started to say to them because my goal with this episode is for you to really understand, do I have a kid like this? And it's not so clean. I want to be honest. Is there some like diagnosis here? I happen to, you know, be a little...

I don't know, squirmy about diagnosis in general. I think sometimes it's helpful. Sometimes it puts kids in a box and pathologizes them. And so this is definitely not a diagnosis, but there are a collection of things that I think are really similar with these kids. And I want to use today to describe these things to you. Is this going to give you everything you need to then help your kid? I want to be totally honest on the front. No, it can't, right? I mean,

What I'll tell you about later is I've actually developed a whole approach for these kids. This was honestly years of work and my practice and going back to my books from my PhD program and putting things together. And that would, you know, that's too nuanced and frankly too important for a single podcast episode. But my goal is to give you clarity because when you start to understand, oh my goodness, maybe this is my kid, there's even tears that come because we think our struggles are with our kids' behaviors. Our struggle is actually that we don't understand our kid.

And when we understand our kid, we feel relief. Then we can get in a different road for getting the approach we need to get to the outcomes we're looking for. So here's some of the things I want to ask you to start to almost assess. Do I have a deeply feeling kid? Number one.

Does it feel like you can be kind of in the lobby of a building with your kid? Now, this is a metaphor, but you're kind of in the lobby of a building. Maybe you're in the elevator on floor zero. And one thing happens, and it feels like, what happened to floor one, two, three, four, five? All of a sudden, the elevator catapults to the roof.

Like when I think about zero to 60, I think about being in an elevator with a deeply feeling kid and everything's seemingly okay. And then one thing is off. Like someone laughs around them. They don't even laugh at your kid, but they laugh even at something funny your kid said, or they laugh at something someone else said. And this is enough. Your kid is tamed.

10 out of 10. And you, like being in an elevator that goes from zero to floor 50, like you're taken for a ride. You're like, holy moly, what just happened? Core to a deeply feeling kid. Next, when your kid gets upset, they're disappointed, they're frustrated. Maybe you're thinking, I don't even know what the feeling is, but it is messy and totally dysregulated. Do they push you away?

instead of wanting you close. This is so key to think about. If I think about my other kids when they're upset, it's not like they say to me in such a sophisticated way, mom, I'm upset and I'd really enjoy your presence to help me through this. That has literally never happened, let me be clear. But I picture one of my kids being upset and if I inch toward them,

Like they're okay with it. Or maybe even they soften. Or maybe I do give them a literal hug. Or I say, hey, we're going to get through this. And even if it doesn't make it better, this is key, okay? They tolerate it. With a deeply feeling kid, when they're upset, it's almost like your presence is an additional threat. And so what would that come out as? Get away from me.

Get out of my room. Leave me alone. And I think this is a very conflictual experience as a parent because you're thinking, like, I'm literally just trying to help you. And then we get very activated because we feel like we're trying to help. And I think we feel like rejected or nobody sees our effort and we'll often yell back, fine, fine. I was just trying to help. Or you make things impossible. Or fine, if you don't want me here, I'll leave. So when your kid is upset,

and maybe you don't even understand why they're upset, that's fine. Do they tend to push you away? And the other thing, if I go further on this one, do they tend to push you in a way where they kind of do it well? Like they're kind of effective in getting you away because it can be full of like such vitriol, right? That we tend to almost then move away from them with anger.

Do they go zero to 60? Do you feel like you're taken for this ride from the elevator that's in the lobby to an elevator all the way on the roof all of a sudden? And do they push you away when they're upset? And in a way, the way I can additionally reframe that, and I think it makes us all soften, is does your kid push you away when they kind of need you the most?

And you're not going to see that they need you the most because on the surface, it looks like they don't want you. But if you right now think about your kid and these moments when they scream, get out of my room, my guess is they're not doing it in like a calm way. Hey, I really need alone time. They're so out of control. They're in such an awful state that like in our best moments, we think, oh my goodness, my kid must need me. I mean, they're really not in a good way.

But do they actually push you away, scream for you to go away? When it's our year to travel and visit family over the holidays, Airbnb is a go-to. I love feeling a bit more at home when I travel, and Airbnb nails it for us every time. We can celebrate the holidays just like we would in our own home.

If you're traveling over the holidays and have an empty home, consider making a little extra income by becoming a host on Airbnb. I mean, every little bit helps, especially during the holiday season. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com slash host. Okay, next thing. I kind of went over with these parents I called to try to assess this and bring this all together. Do they tend to blame you

or blame other people when they made a mistake, when they can't find something, when they lose something, when they lose a game? Do they tend to blame others when they're kind of upset or embarrassed? I don't know, you're playing Candyland and it's clear that someone else is about to win.

And it all becomes that, I don't know, someone skipped their turn or they cheated. And you're thinking, you know, none of that happened. To me, a classic example of this is, you know, they trip. They bump their elbow. They're maybe surrounded by friends. And then all of a sudden, they tell you, you push me into the table, right? And again, this tends to activate us because we're like, what?

Me as your loving parent injured you? Like that's not what happened. And then we try to intervene at the level of logic. I didn't push you into the table. I wasn't even in the room. It explodes. We get confused. We get angry and the whole thing gets worse. Do they tend to blame others for things that are definitely not other people's fault? Next, do they tend to not love surprises? This isn't true of all deeply feeling kids, but it's true of a lot of them, even good surprises.

I remember being a mystery reader, okay? In my kid's preschool class, I went for my first kid. It was like, oh, which parent or caregiver or special adult is coming? And they'd give clues and the adult would come. And the kid was like, oh, it's my special adult. And they'd read a book and, you know, then they'd leave. Cool, mystery reader. My first kid, oh, he was surprised. He was like, oh my goodness, it's you.

My second kid, and this was before I put this together because holy moly would I have handled it differently now that I understand my deeply feeling kid. Let me just tell you, the reading of the book never happened. That's really all I need to tell you, okay? This moment that was supposed to feel lovely never happened. Even happy surprises, definitely difficult surprises, anything where they're kind of having an unexpected spotlight,

kind of, again, reacts with a lot of intensity. The last thing I want to share, again, isn't true for all deeply feeling kids, but if this is happening, I would, you know, really sign my name to something that said, I think this is definitely your kid. When they get their most activated, do they actually seem animalistic? Growling, hissing, scratching. Does it feel like they're acting like they're a caged animal?

Now, as you think through this, it's possible that you're like, three of those really resonated, two of them not as much. What's so important is I want you to give yourself freedom just to say, does a lot of this resonate? Could this be a very different way of seeing my kid and understanding? And if there's a way of connecting all these things, and if all these things relate to some core dynamics, could that be something very new? Because I think for these kids, we're generally given...

An approach that's full of punishment, that tells us we're not harsh enough on these kids. I cannot even tell you how wrong I believe that is and how I believe that just exacerbates all of these kids' issues. Because as you can see, these kids are very sensitive to threat or the perception of threat and badness. So I just want you to give yourself freedom to say yes to all, maybe some, not others.

And I just want to then quickly go through a little lightning round of very common parent questions I usually get. The first one is kind of what I named. My kid has some of these characteristics, but not all.

Are they a deeply feeling kid? Are they not? This is where I have a very mixed relationship with my own term. If someone has a deeply feeling kid, to me, they also have many other traits to them. I would like to say, do they have some of these tendencies? Is this a part of them? Or when my kid gets very activated and upset, do a lot of these things come out? And so if any of this resonates, I would just say this idea of deeply feeling kid is really going to be for you. Okay, next question.

My 18-month-old has started having huge tantrums. They're not even in the terrible twos yet. Does that mean I have a deeply feeling kid? I actually won't tell you. No.

No, I think actually one of the biggest misperceptions is that tantrums start in the terrible twos. Tantrums start around age one. They do. It's when kids kind of wake up to the world. They have a better sense of wanting things and having feelings when they want something and, you know, don't have them. Now, you know, could your kid have some of these tendencies? They might as they get older. But I would also just remind yourself tantrums are normal. Tantrums are actually a healthy part of development. And I would not say that an 18-month-old having huge tantrums means that they're a deeply feeling kid.

Next question. Your description of a deeply feeling kid sounds like my kid, but my kid's neurodivergent and so many approaches I've tried don't end up working because they don't account for his neurodivergence. Okay, this to me is a great example of what I say is two things are true. Your kid is neurodivergent. I believe you. Lots of things therefore haven't helped. I believe you. That's one thing that's true.

Another thing that's true, there's so much overlap between neurodivergence and deeply feeling kids. Getting overstimulated, sensory sensitivities, big reactions to what other people would say was a seemingly small thing, the tendency to shut down when you get upset. And here's what I want to say, your kid can be both. Now, anyone listening who says, oh my goodness, it sounds like my kid, that means my kid is neurodivergent. No, it doesn't. A deeply feeling kid can be neurodivergent.

and a deeply feeling kid could be neurotypical. The last question I want to answer is, will things ever get better? Will things ever get better? Yes. Yes. You hear that I have a very hard time answering questions in a straightforward way. I have a lot of nuance, but this one I want to answer in a straightforward way and then I want to add one thing. Yes.

One of the things that's really heartening to me is, again, in the private community that we have in the membership, we have a room also called Wins and Gems. Let's post some wins you've had. By far, the most posts we have revolve around people who have done the Deeply Feeling Kid program. What I hear all the time is, in the first eight minutes of the program, I was hysterically crying because I understood my kid.

for the very first time and actually had hope because now with the understanding and concrete, and I mean concrete strategies, he'll know exactly what to do, what to stop doing, what to stop saying in key situations. We are seeing change fast. The other thing to say about deeply feeling kids is these are the kids where if we can harness their power, these are the kids who will change the world. When I think about my deeply feeling kid, she's going to change the world.

She's so special. She has so much in her. She feels things so deeply. She can put things out into the world so intensely. And if we harness that, which I really believe most of the strategies and approaches that we're given won't do that. It will, they often do, you know, almost get us in this awful power struggle cycle. But if we do harness it, these kids are going to change the world.

Thank you for listening. To share a story or ask me a question, go to goodinside.com slash podcast, or you could write me at podcast at goodinside.com. Parenting is the hardest and most important job in the world, and you deserve resources and support so you feel empowered and confident for this very important job you hold.

I'm so excited to share Good Inside membership. It's the first platform that brings together content and experts you trust with a global community of like-valued parents. It's game-changing and built for a busy parent who wants to make the most out of the few minutes they have. One last thing before I let you go. 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. Today's episode is in partnership with Airbnb.