Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast. I’m Amanda. I’m Laura. And I'm Kendra. And today we’re going to talk about something very important, which is repairs. Specifically, we’ll talk about repairs with children, but this applies to all of our relationships. We’ll do a separate podcast on repairs in adult relationships.
Today, we’re going to discuss a TED talk by Dr. Becky Kennedy. She calls it the single most important parenting strategy. She’s a clinical psychologist, a mom of three, and the founder of Good Inside, which is both a parenting podcast and an online parenting membership that we’ll link to. Her specialty is helping people become better parents. The crux of her talk is about repairs between a parent and a child after things haven’t gone so smoothly.
Being able to make repairs is a critical skill for any relationship because every relationship will encounter bumps in the road. Luckily for parents, there’s no such thing as perfect parenting, just as there’s no such thing as a perfect relationship. But knowing how to come back together after we’ve messed up is one of the most important things we can learn—and it’s also something important we can model for our kids, so they learn it, too. No one tells us what to do next when things go wrong. Do we just move on and pretend it didn’t happen? What do we do? Enter repair.
Repair is the act of going back to the moment of disconnection, taking responsibility for your actions, and acknowledging the impact it had on the other person. This is different from an apology, which often aims to shut the conversation down. A good repair opens the conversation up. A repair assumes there’s been a rupture—there’s no denial—but it has baked-in hope. To repair means something must have been broken, but rather than berating yourself over it, you get busy doing something positive about it.
I think it’s so interesting how she talks about how just apologizing for something doesn’t repair it. Sometimes we think, "Well, I’ve said I’m sorry, so isn’t that enough?" But it’s like trying to shut the conversation down because you want to move on. Yeah, which, you know, we’ve been taught that saying you’re sorry is important, and it is. But it’s not enough to create a repair.
So then she goes on to talk about what happens if you don’t repair. When there’s been a rupture, meaning something happened that caused emotional distress, the other person usually feels alone, distressed, or overwhelmed. For example, if someone does something that really hurts me and they just say, “Well, yeah, I’m sorry,” and then blow it off, I might feel kind of alone. And especially for kids, who are in a power dynamic where their parents are much more powerful, being told to just “suck it up” can feel very disempowering. We’re familiar with the old “suck it up,” right? That’s going to be hard and won’t lead to connection in the relationship.
Interestingly, kids tend to self-blame in these situations. For a young kid, it actually feels safer to believe they did something wrong rather than that the people responsible for their well-being might have done something wrong, or that they might be bad. This is why kids in horribly abusive situations often believe it’s their fault. It helps them feel a sense of control, like there’s something they can do about it, rather than facing the idea that their parents are just being horrible parents. So it’s safer for them to blame themselves because they need to believe their caregivers and the world around them are safe and good.
I know—it’s really sad. It’s heartbreaking to think about, especially if we reflect on our own childhoods and realize we might have focused blame on ourselves in order to feel a little safer. So, that self-blame can be adaptive for survival in childhood, but as adults, it leads to incredibly destructive core beliefs like: “I’m not lovable,” “I’m not worthy,” “I make bad things happen,” “I’m not good enough,” or even “I need to behave a certain way for people to treat me kindly.” These are the stories we create for ourselves when we’re left alone and distressing events go unrepaired. We definitely don’t want that for our kids.
When we get good at repairs, we add safety, connection, love, and goodness. While it doesn’t change the event that happened, it can help remove the self-blame from your child’s or loved one’s future. The story around that event can change.
So, step one is acknowledging that something happened and there was a rupture—and ruptures are inevitable in relationships; they will happen all the time. That’s okay, as long as we move on to the next step: repair.
First, you need to repair with yourself. This includes separating your identity from what you did. You can be a good parent who had a hard day and snapped at your kids. This doesn’t mean what you did was right, and it doesn’t mean you’re excusing it. But it frees up your energy from self-loathing so you can use it for something more useful, like making a repair and planning to do better next time. It’s hard to help someone else when you’re hating yourself and not grounded in your own self-worth.
Next, you repair with the child or whoever the rupture was with. Say, for example, you’re out at Target with your kid, and they’re grabbing things and being disruptive. You become annoyed and yell at them. First, repair with yourself: “I’m not a horrible parent. I was just having a bad day and didn’t show up the way I wanted to.” Then, repair with the child by saying what happened in objective words—not, “You were being so annoying,” but “You were picking up candy when I asked you not to.” Then, take responsibility: “I became very annoyed and frustrated, and I lost control of my temper and yelled at you.” Finally, explain what you’ll do differently next time: “Next time, I’ll take a deep breath and keep my cool.”
Also, acknowledge the child’s feelings: “It must have felt scary for me to yell at you, because I don’t yell very often, and I’m sorry for that.”
Examples of *not* repair would be, “I’m sorry I yelled, but I wouldn’t have yelled if you hadn’t been so annoying.” That doesn’t repair the situation at all. Or, “You really need to be more grateful, and then you won’t get yelled at.” Telling people they need to be more grateful doesn’t create repair.
It's like when someone tells me I need to smile more. Oh, you mean homicidal rage? Yes! Exactly. So, if you learn anything from this, it’s that your thoughts about the situation—plus the fact that you probably had no emotional reserve left—are what triggered your reaction. It wasn’t the child or the partner that made you act that way. And, listen, I love Taylor Swift as much as the next person, but “Look What You Made Me Do” is not a thing. No one makes you do anything. You got up out of your seat and did whatever it was you did.
Instead of blaming the other person, attempt to have a repair that increases your connection rather than drives you apart. When you say, “Listen, kiddo, I blew up because you were being such a little turd,” do you think that brings you closer? No. You could have skipped that “apology” because it only makes things worse.
When we blame other people for our behavior, it’s not accurate—and it can even be a form of gaslighting. Instead of blaming others, when you start making repairs that increase your connection, the result is a person who grows into an adult that doesn’t automatically spiral into self-blame. It also results in an adult who knows how to take responsibility for their behavior because you’ve modeled it.
The worst part about being a parent is that kids don’t do what you say—they do what you do. You can tell them all the great things about themselves, but if you don’t act that way toward yourself, guess what they pick up? It’s the behavior you model, not the words you say.
Once you’ve reconnected and cooled off, you can teach a life skill. For example, in the TED Talk, Dr. Kennedy talks about how she was stressed out while cooking dinner, and her kid came in and said, “Chicken again? Ew, disgusting.” She lost it. But once she made the repair and reconnected, she could then teach her child: “Instead of saying what I made for dinner is disgusting, you can simply say something more neutral, like, ‘That’s not my favorite.’ Disappointment is understandable, but you still need to be respectful.” That teaching moment wouldn’t work well if you were still disconnected; it would just cause more rebellion or resentment.
Dr. Kennedy ends her talk by addressing concerns that it might be too late to start making repairs—like, maybe your kids are older or adults now. But she reassures us that it’s never too late. To illustrate this, she says to imagine getting a call from your parents, or finding a letter they wrote to you, saying:
“Hey, I know this is kind of out of the blue, but I’ve been thinking about your childhood, and I bet there were a lot of moments that felt really bad to you—and you were right to feel that way. Those moments weren’t your fault. There were times I was struggling, and if I could go back, I would have stepped aside, calmed myself down, and found you afterward to help with whatever you were struggling with. I’m so sorry. If you’re ever willing to talk to me about any of those moments, I’ll listen—without offering a rebuttal
. I’ll listen to understand. I love you.”
And most people would tear up reading or hearing something like that. You might even think, “It wouldn’t have fixed everything, but it might have made some things better.” And with your child, their life story is still being written. So, it’s not too late to get to work on editing that story and making a positive impact.
What a powerful talk!
Yes, definitely a lot to reflect on. I think we could all get better at this skill—it’s just practice, practice, practice. No matter what age your child is, it can make a difference.
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