Book Summary of Good Inside — A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

My wife and I just finished reading the book Good Inside together, and I gotta say its the best relationship book I have ever read. While it is focused on parenting the lessons in it are applicable to all relationships. There were so many gems in the book. Here are a few of my top takeaways.

• Good Inside: The core thesis of the book is that kids are good inside and bad behaviors are the surface level response to unmet needs or the inability to regulate tough emotions. Bad behaviors are not the problem instead they are a window into an internal struggle your good child is having deeper down. Trying to prevent or control behavior is a losing battle because the core of what is driving the behavior gets left unaddressed. Instead parents should take behavior as an opportunity to connect with their children to better understand what is going on inside. In short… start with the understand that your child is good inside, and view behavior as an opportunity to connect with your child on what is going on beneath the surface.
• Safety First: Safety trumps all else when it comes to parenting. Even above raising a good human, the parent’s job is to keep their kid safe. Sometimes this can mean physically holding your child back or not giving them the opportunity to make a decision for themselves. As we will discuss in the following bullets, parents should give their kids lots of ownership over their decision, but when safety is involved that trumps all else.
• Two Things Are True: Another core idea of the book is that two things can be true at once. It can be true that your child is mad at you for enforcing their bedtime and it can also be true that you are going to enforce that boundary even if they throw a fit. It can be true that you are mad you did not get a promised raise at work, and it can also be true that your boss did everything they could. It can be true that your spouse is angry at you, and it can also be true that you honestly don’t understand what you did wrong. The idea that two things can be true at once, even if they are conflicting is so important to remember. It is also important to remember that feeling an emotion is a form of truth. This does not mean you should depend on your emotions to tell you what is true about the world (that is a recipe for disaster) but there is truth to being able to identify how you feel and tell someone that — its valid and true that you feel that way regardless of any other facts. The lesson of two things being true at the same time is such a great lesson to take to all relationships. Two people can have conflicting views or feelings about a situation and both can be true. This framing is important because it shifts the resolution strategy from trying to persuade the other person, to trying to understand the truth from the other person’s point of view.
• Understanding Does Not Imply Agreeing: It is a powerful conflict resolution technic to just be able to state another person’s truth in a way that sounds right to them. This shows them that they are heard and understood, which is what most people want during a conflict. Being able to state the other person’s view point in your own words does not mean you agree with the view point but it does mean that you understand the truth they are experiencing. A good quote I like to use to remind myself of this idea is, “convincing someone is the opposite of understanding them.”
• Boundaries: A boundary is a promise to your child about something that you will do not an expectation you have of them. For example saying, “Charlie, you have to turn off the TV in 5 minutes” is an expectation you are placing on your child. Whereas saying, “Charlie, in 5 minutes I need the TV to be off and if you don’t turn it off I am going to” is personal boundary you are enforcing. Firm boundaries give children something strong they can lean on because they know it will be enforced no matter if they are strong enough to hold themselves accountable or not.
• Assumption of Goodness Does Not Mean Permissive Parenting: Assuming your child is good inside does not mean your parenting should be permissive. To the contrary, the assumption of internal goodness often manifests in setting firm boundaries for your children that enable them to do the right thing even when the emotional regulation skills they have developed do not yet enable them to do the right thing on their own.
• Assume Good Intent: Starting from the assumption that your child is good inside, ask yourself the question what is the most charitable interpretation of my child’s behavior. For example if your older son is hitting your younger daughter, one interpretation would be that he wants to hurt her because he is mad. But another might be that is adjusting to having a new member of the family and getting less attention… this is his method of trying to get your attention. Assumption the best intention and then asking questions about behavior to try to understand what is going on beneath the surface is great advice for any relationship.
• Give Your Child Ownership: Telling others you believe in them and trust them to do something it empowers them. For example telling an employee at work, “I need you do this XYZ hard thing, but I think you are a rockstar and I know you can do it. Please go drive this thing to completion” is an incredibly empowering thing to say. When people feel empowered they want to rise to the occasion and show you that that they are worthily of the trust you are putting in them. Children are no different they want to feel like owners of their decisions and they want to do good when trust is put in them. But children also have under developed emotional regulation skills and are incapable of owning adult sized decisions. Therefore, its the parent’s job to provide guardrails in the form of boundaries and empower children to make their own decisions within those guardrails. For example if its cold outside and you know that for safety reasons your child needs to wear a coat, but they don’t want to wear a coat, you could say something like, “Charlie, I know you don’t want to wear a coat, I understand your emotion. But its too cold outside for it to be safe for you to go outside without a coat. But hey, how about you pick which warm coat you want to wear?” This is a great example of connecting a few ideas from the book. The parent is setting a firm boundary by enforcing that their child must wear a coat if they want to go outside but also providing bounded ownership over the decision within a safe set of options. Don’t compromise on your boundaries or on safety, but within those guardrails provide children with lots of opportunity to own their decisions, these are training grounds for owning big adult decisions later in life.
• You Are a Good Parent: Just like we believe children are good inside, we should also tell ourselves that we are good parents. Sometimes our behavior as parents might not live up to what we wish it would be, and yet we are still good inside. Just like you should give others the the most charitable interpretations for the their behavior and view other’s behaviors as a window into what is going on beneath the surface, you should also view your own behavior this way.
• Its Not Too Late: In parenting it can sometimes feel like its too late to make an impact. But its never too late. While it’s true that early stage development really matters, it’s also true that the brain never stops rewiring itself, and as a result the lessons in this book are useful if your kid is 1, 5, 15 or 40. It’s never too late.
• Work on Your Own Emotional Regulation: One of the best ways to teach your children to regulate their emotions well is for you to improve at your own emotional regulation. Children look to their parents to understand how to react to situations. If parents react to situations with stress or anger, the child will learn from that. As a related idea to this, investing in having a good marriage is one of the best things you can do for your child. Your child is looking to you to learn about relationships and emotional regulation, and having a strong marriage provides something sturdy that your child can lean on as they learn these things.
• Its More About Repair: Every relationship is going to have hard moments. People are not perfect and they are going to make mistakes. This is fine and expected. Therefore, the quality of a relationship ends up having more to do with the peoples’ ability to repair from a tense times than to not have tense times.
• Getting Comfortable With Doing Hard Things: Learning new things is hard. If we draw a line from not knowing something towards knowing something, the state in between is called learning… and learning should feel hard. In fact if it does not feel hard its an indication you are not learning. This state of struggling with something hard to learn is uncomfortable, but its important that people get comfortable in this state. Encouraging children to be okay with the struggle is key to building up their resiliency to doing hard things later in life. There are several strategies you can use to build up this tolerance. First, don’t take your child away from hard situations. If they are struggling to build a block tower and getting upset, don’t take them away or distract them instead meet them where they are at. Be comfortable with them in that frustrated feeling. Its fine to feel frustrated when things are hard that is a sign that we are learning. As parents we should be comfortable with our children living in that uncomfortable space of struggling with something and meet them in that place. Second, do hard things yourself and get comfortable yourself with struggling. By pushing your own boundaries, being willing to fail and living in the uncomfortable spot of doing something you don’t have mastery over you are modeling this behavior for your children. Third, try turning learning and failure into a household game where these things are celebrated. An idea my wife and I had around this was to institute a dinner time conversation topic about something we had learned about today or something we failed at. In this way we try to create a family culture that celebrates failure and learning. Fourth, don’t distract when your child is feeling frustrated with their failure. Don’t try to change the subject and remind them of things they are good at. Instead, let the feel that emotion. That emotion is a truth for them at that moment and sitting in that truth is an opportunity to connect with your child. Fifth, and finally, try creating a saying you use in your family to remind yourselves that doing hard things is good, something like “If its not hard I am not learning.”
• Tell the Truth: When children ask a hard question, they are not afraid of the truth they are afraid of the uncertainty of not knowing. For a child not knowing something and feeling alone in that confusion is more scary than hearing the truth. So if you child asks you a hard question, tell them the truth, or at least tell them the start of the truth that they are ready to hear. Also remember that if you child is asking you a hard question it means they are already thinking about the topic and this demonstrates a readiness to hear at least some of the truth. Sometimes the truth will be that you don’t know the answer, that is also fine to share with your child. You can connect about the scariness of not knowing something and promise them that as you learn more you will share with them.
• Self Care Is Necessary: As a parent making time for self care can be challenging, but its necessary. Self care is not only necessary for your own wellbeing but its also an important thing to model for your children. When children see a parent taking time to take care of themselves and setting a firm boundary around this, they will learn the importance of self care for themselves.
• You Cannot Control Other’s Emotions: You are able to control your decisions and those decisions will have an impact on other people’s emotions but you did not cause those emotions. For example if you need to go to the gym for some self care that might cause your partner to feel distress. In this moment two things are true at the same time, it is true that you need to go the gym for your own self care and it can be true that your partner is mad at you for leaving them alone with the kid. But in these moments remember that you cannot control other’s emotions, all you can control is your actions. It is not your responsibility to own your partners emotional state. This does not mean you have free reign to be selfish. Actually, to the contrary by holding firm boundaries you enable yourself to be the best version of yourself and to show up better for your family. You can hold firm boundaries and be an amazing partner and parent.
• Have a Core: Children want their parent to have a strong sense of self. A parent is the most important leader a child has in their life and it is very scary to follow a leader that does not have a strong sense of self. Just picture being an employee at a company where the CEO was always bending over backwards to make employees happy and did not have strong conviction about the right thing to do. That is not a leader you would feel safe or confident in following. Children are the same, they want their leader (you) to have a strong sense of self, to hold firm boundaries that they feel safe exploring within and for you to take care of yourself so that you can show up well for your family.
• Connection Bank Account: Think about connection building as a bank account. When you have quality time together you are making deposits into this bank account, and when you need to discipline or pull away from your child you are making withdraws from this bank account. By investing in connection with your child you fill your child up, and give yourself room to make withdrawals when necessary.
• Dedicated Playtime: It is important to have completely focused play time with your child. This dedicated play time should be phone free and completely focused on time with your child. This time should also be child led; it is up to them to decide how they want to play. Your job is to follow along and fully enter their world.
• Listening: In order to improve listening there are two things you can do. First, you can invest in connection with your child. When connection levels are high in a relationship members of the relationship are more likely to listen to the other person. Second, you can provide choice to your child — rather than telling your child what to do, pick two options that you are comfortable with and let them make a decision between them. By giving them a choice you enable your child to engage more actively in the decision.
• Tantrums: Tantrums are a sign that a child is experiencing an emotion that they do not have the skills to deal with. During a tantrum remind yourself that two things can be true at once, it is fine that your child is upset and also you are going to hold your boundary. We are not responsible for our child’s feelings, we are responsible for holding boundaries that provide safe guardrails for our child to operate within. If the tantrum involves unsafe behavior (e.g. hitting a sibling) the priority should not be connection in that moment but rather getting back to safety. This may involve physically holding your child back.
• Fairness is Not the Goal: In a family structure the goal is not fairness. Different members of a family have different needs and it is more important to act based on the needs of the family members than it is to establish fairness. In fact an over focus on fairness is counterproductive because it makes members judge what they have based on what others are getting and as a result family members keep track of what others are getting.
• Lying: When you catch your child in a lie the goal should not be to get a confession out of them in the moment. A lie is a sign that there is something going on beneath the surface and trying to figure out what that is is more important that getting your kid to admit that they lied.
• Shyness: Don’t worry about your kid being shy or hesitant to play with other children. Shyness if often seen as a lack of confidence, but in fact it can be a sign that your child is a confident enough to not feel pressure to do what everyone else is doing. Shyness is concerning for parents but its not a problem for kids, so don’t discourage shyness.
• Eating: Feeding your child can be stressful for parents. In some ways a parents’ ability to feed their child gets back to the core of what it means to be a parent. Food represents nourishment used to build up a healthy person. If your child is not eating well, its easy as a parent to feel like you are failing at some core responsibility. The book presents a rule that I love to deal with these feelings. The book suggests that a parent’s role is to decide what food is available to eat, where it is available and for what time. The child’s responsibility is to decide how much to eat, if they want to eat at all and what part of what is offered they will eat. This creates super clear boundaries between the parent’s responsibility and the child’s responsibility. If the child throws a fit about wanting to eat something not offered, it is your job as the parent to hold a firm boundary and say, “Charlie, these are things we have for dinner tonight. You can decide which of these things you want to eat or you can decide to not eat anything at all, but having something different is not an option.” On the other hand if you child tells you that they don’t want to eat because they are not hungry, it is not your job to force them to eat. You can check with them to make sure they are confident in that decision, but ultimately they know their body best and its up to them to decide if they want to eat.