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Price: $31.00 - $17.29
(as of Mar 18, 2025 12:07:15 UTC – Details)
INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
An Instant Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Indie Bestseller
“This book is for any parent who has ever struggled under the substantial weight of caregiving—which is to say, all of us. Good Inside is not only a wise and practical guide to raising resilient, emotionally healthy kids, it’s also a supportive resource for overwhelmed parents who need more compassion and less stress. Dr. Becky is the smart, thoughtful, in-the-trenches parenting expert we’ve been waiting for!”—Eve Rodsky, New York Times bestselling author of Fair Play and Find Your Unicorn Space
Dr. Becky Kennedy, wildly popular parenting expert and creator of @drbeckyatgoodinside, shares her groundbreaking approach to raising kids and offers practical strategies for parenting in a way that feels good.
Over the past several years, Dr. Becky Kennedy—known to her followers as “Dr. Becky”—has been sparking a parenting revolution. Millions of parents, tired of following advice that either doesn’t work or simply doesn’t feel good, have embraced Dr. Becky’s empowering and effective approach, a model that prioritizes connecting with our kids over correcting them.
Parents have long been sold a model of childrearing that simply doesn’t work. From reward charts to time outs, many popular parenting approaches are based on shaping behavior, not raising humans. These techniques don’t build the skills kids need for life, or account for their complex emotional needs. Add to that parents’ complicated relationships with their own upbringings, and it’s easy to see why so many caretakers feel lost, burned out, and worried they’re failing their kids. In Good Inside, Dr. Becky shares her parenting philosophy, complete with actionable strategies, that will help parents move from uncertainty and self-blame to confidence and sturdy leadership.
Offering perspective-shifting parenting principles and troubleshooting for specific scenarios—including sibling rivalry, separation anxiety, tantrums, and more—Good Inside is a comprehensive resource for a generation of parents looking for a new way to raise their kids while still setting them up for a lifetime of self-regulation, confidence, and resilience.
From the Publisher
Publisher : Harper Wave (September 13, 2022)
Language : English
Hardcover : 336 pages
ISBN-10 : 0063159481
ISBN-13 : 978-0063159488
Item Weight : 1.05 pounds
Dimensions : 6 x 1.09 x 9 inches
Customers say
Customers find the book helpful for parents and anyone wanting to improve their parenting style. It provides practical advice grounded in psychological research that helps them tackle difficult moments. The book is concise, easy to understand, and follow. Readers appreciate the unique perspective and connection it offers. They mention it helps them take a look at their communication style and reminds them of the language and temperament they want with their kids. The audiobook quality is fantastic and the perfect companion to listening to her podcast. The pacing is well-written and keeps you engaged.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Chrissy M –
A book youâll come back to
This is such a great book for parents, and really anyone wanting to improve their relationships and connect better with others. Iâve followed Dr. Becky for a while online and this was a thoughtful, researched, and practical guide to implementing her suggestions. Itâs a book Iâm sure Iâll return to as my child ages.
Amazon Customer –
A must read for any human who had a childhood!
Oh how this book has changed me.
Highly recommend this read even if you aren’t a parent / don’t plan to be. It has helped me understand in a deeper way how our childhood shapes our lives as adults and how to be a sturdy empathetic presence for myself, my loved ones, and the kids I work with. I know l’ll read this book many more times.
Carli –
Add to cart now!
Not to be dramatic, but this book changed my life. If children came with a user manual, I think it would be this one! This book is for any parent (you should definitely read it with your spouse) looking for a practical guide to raising resilient, emotionally healthy children. Itâs also full of tons of great supportive resources.
Cacy –
Get the workbook too!
Thankful and appreciative for this book, lessons to be implemented over and over again!
McKenzie Bauer –
Thought-provoking
Some parts of this book didnât seem totally applicable to what Iâm going through with my children right now but overall, it had so many incredible takeaways, insights and strategies that will help me see my goodness as a parent and the goodness of my children as the navigate this crazy world.
Happy Reading –
After all, chidren are good inside.
Parenting is about how parents treat their kids. One important aspect of what counts for good parenting is how we face the kidsâ negative behaviors. When we were children, our parents did not respect our emotional needs. They only scolded us when we were naughty. After we become parents, we treat our kids the way our parents treated us. Dr Becky proposes in this book, contrary to what our parents thought, children are all good inside and thus we should treat childrenâs bad behaviors as if their misbehaviors are signs that they donât know how to express their needs. With this assumption, there are three implications for parenting.
First, as children are good inside, what they do outside should not be our focus. Whether it is emotional tantrums, not listening, aggressive tantrums, sibling rivalry, rudeness and defiance, whining, lying, food habits, parents should not pay too much attention to it. Instead, parents should see the cause that contributes to the resulting negative behavior. Take whining as an example. Whining, according to a Cambridge dictionary, means âto make a long, high, sad soundâ. As parents we are easily annoyed by whining and we quickly think that kids are disrespectful. In Dr Beckyâs view, whining=strong desire+powerlessness. Children whine because they feel helpless and âindicate they feel alone and unseen in their desiresâ (p.188), rather than because they are arrogant. What does this imply? Do we have to give in, knowing that they are desperate for connection and feeling powerful? The answer is no. Dr Becky said âwhile our job as parents is to make decisions that we feel are right for our kids even in the face of protest, we can still practice understanding and connectingâ. While saying no, which they probably know they do need, at the same time we can give them the sympathy they also need. Thinking that kids are bad inside often leads to power struggles or arguments when we request them to request in an appropriate tone again. Kids are good inside, and thus we should focus our attention on how to respond to their helplessness rather than their whines.
Secondly, not only should we not focus on their outside behavior, we should also be aware that what is on the surface often contrasts with what the kid feels inside. One of the most-feared emotions we are afraid to see children have is anger, also known as tantrums. When children are angry, they display undesirably violent behaviors such as hitting others. Dr Becky points out that they hit not because they are angry, but because they are scared. When we adults are afraid, we may also kill people if we are irrational. Children have not yet developed their prefrontal cortex which is responsible for logic and language, and so the most severe reaction they can possibly express is through tantrums. We may wonder why children are afraid: they are âterrified of the sensations, urges, and feelings coursing inside their bodyâ (p.158) such as frustration and anxiety. These feelings which adults are used to feel scary to kids. Naming the right emotion is the first step to solving the problem and helping kids to cope with it.
Only after we identify correctly the emotion the children are experiencing can we as parents exert the right method to deal with the out-of-control behavior. Clearly we know reprimanding our kids is not correct because âthey are good insideâ. To stop the kid’s aggressive tantrums effectively, parents should assert their authority. Parents should show the confidence that they are in charge of the situation. Then, the next critical step is to maintain the kid’s safety. Regardless of how the kid feels, the parent should stop the dangerous behavior the kid is engaging in, which Dr Becky calls containment. She says it best: âkids donât feel good when they are out of controlâ. That we assert our authority and contain even though kids are not happy on the surface is an act of love, maturity, and responsibility. If we don’t, not only will it cause injury, it will make children think we evade responsibility, thus making them feel more overwhelmed.
To conclude, as parents we need to know our roles and our kidsâ roles. Our job is to keep our children safe, both physically and psychologically. We need to remember that a gap exists between kidsâ abilities to feel and their abilities to regulate their feelings, and the gap manifests as deregulated behavior. While it is childrenâs job to explore and express their feelings, it is our job to help them regulate them by setting physical boundaries, validating their emotions, and being empathetic to their feelings. We are our kidsâ role models. We are demonstrating to our kids the emotion regulation skills. As our kids are allowed to shout and protest because they are doing their jobs, we are also allowed to upset them when we set boundaries. We just need to remember that to do our job well, we must learn to connect with and understand them more because after all, children are good inside.
MLoHo –
Game changer
Things felt wrong to me that were âbest practicesâ when my kids were little. Time outs, rewards and withdrawals. Dr Becky first helped me forgive myself for past âmistakes.â I did the best I could with what I knew then. Now I know more. My children and I are both good inside and that is the most important thing. Boundaries and empathy. Not permissiveness and unsureness. I am working very hard to build back my relationship with my 14 year old son. I have repaired with him things I knew were incongruous to him that whittled away his trust in me. I also joined her parenting group online that supports and augments everything in the book. If I only ever read one parenting book, this would be it.
Saad Mohammed –
Eye opening for a parent
This is a great book for parents of kids of any age.
Helps to see into a child’s world and their behaviors.
Easy to read and understand.
Deb McWHirter –
Love, love, love this book! Tons of useful information without feeling terrible as a parent. There are multiple common scenarios we run into as parents that are discussed and split out into an easy to find sections with practical information on how to approach these situations. I reference this book weekly and can’t recommend this book enough!
Ximena –
I often read parenting books and find stuff applicable to the work environment. This book explains the connection on childhood and adulthood an how they correlate.
It goes over how two things are true when talking about feelings, which is so important to understand.
Its such a good book it became my favorite parenting book and I want it on audible to listen to it yearly and refresh the concepts.
Sabrina Lima –
Ãtimo livro para quem quer ter ferramentas para educação respeitosa.
Hrideta –
Gives me a lot of tools and understanding to be the parent I want to be.
From food to emotional talk.
I like that there are a lot of examples that make it interesting to read
LeGall –
Au début on se remet beaucoup en question, et puis on trouve un nouvel équilibre et ça marche mieux. Je recommande