Deep Dive: Tackling Big Transitions With Outschool CEO Amir Nathoo

You're listening to good inside with Dr. Becky. I have so many ideas, strategies, and scripts to share with you right after a word from our sponsor. Hi, I'm Dr. Becky, and this is Good Inside. I'm a clinical psychologist and mom of three on a mission to rethink the way we raise our children. 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 strike struggle and even as we are having a hard time on the outside, we remain Good Inside. Today's episode is a deep dive with Amir Nathoo, 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 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 and 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 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 Nathoo. I grew up in England, but are now based in San Francisco and have 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 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 off parental leave, so I took eight weeks of parental leave and hope 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 Outschool fan. We've used Outschool for a while. We love Outschool and I'm so excited to be connecting 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 schooling as a whole is 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 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 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. We moved to being 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 Cosmo and I returned to work, I was, you know, walking or commuting into the office, and there was this kind of natural gap between. Between home and work, which let me kind of settle into each. And that doesn't exist in this new way of working that made the transition hard, amongst many other things. But now I feel I've just got through that transition into the next kind of phase.

Yeah. One of the 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 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 really have to be. I'M leading this meeting. I have to be on time for this one 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, 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, and sometimes I have to. And that's heartbreaking.

It is. As you're talking about that, I 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 Cosmos, age 2. 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 Outschool, for you or 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 know what your job is. Right? 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 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 this seesaw. I set a boundary, my kid 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 feeling 40 and said, my parents definitely never allowed me to feel anger, but boy, do I manage anger well as a 40 year old. Right? Like, 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, wow, their actual. Their job, their job is to feel these feelings. To me, that gave me a lot of peace 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 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 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 what you think about that or how that might apply to you and Cosmo.

I love that model because it kind of characterizes responsibility for me. And 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 a boundary around this and. And hold to it. I'm not sure it makes it any easier 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 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 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. 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 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 outschool, sometimes you have job, you do a job well done. But still it might not 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 not what my kids do for me. Right. But again, I think 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 sense. So much sense to me. And I think what resonates for me 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. Another reflection I. I had and I've had over the last couple of weeks is that the pain that I feel on setting those boundaries raises the bar for me in how I spend my time and the impact that I want to have on my work. 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. So I'm exploring that and continually finding that 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 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 at work, 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, that actually fortifies me to make tough choices at work, because, you know, I know. I know what I'm giving up in order to. In order to do that. And I've actually, you know, that's part of what's helped me with this transition back to work. Honestly, I just feel. Felt great about some of the work I've done in the past week because I think I'm doing things a little bit differently than I would have before. And both the 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. That is the part of it that I'm really happy about.

Tell me a little bit more about Cosmos transition to being a big Brother. It's a big shift.

Yeah, it is. And we were very mindful of it. You know, my wife bought the. These books to start to talk to Cosmo before Talia 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, and 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 to kind of Talia and kind of rocked the car seats. It was really wonderful to see. And you know, what we feared was kind of resentment or kind of 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 Cosmo's temperament. And so he's really sweet and gets super excited about Talia. He's changed his bedtime routine, so now he insists on going and playing in Talia's room for a little bit and giving her a kiss goodnight. 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 arm 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 I've been trying to figure out and the boundary we've been trying to set is, you know, at times you have to step in and pull him away saying, no, this is two days you're going to 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 it's going from a place he's excited. And so we don't want to kind of create 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 family, 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 here. We, 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 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 three, a little too much excitement. Let's like dial back, right? Just dial it back a little bit because that was a little rough, right? 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 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 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 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 somewhere else. It was not my metaphor at all. So I'll give Fair Faber and Maislish, 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. Amir, 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 gonna be the little husband. You're gonna love every moment, right? And everyone's coming up to you saying, are you so excited? Are you so. And 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, amir, Amir, like, go to your room. You know, you're like, this guy stole my life. Okay? I. I took his pants. Like, what is going on here? Right? And that is a 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 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 need to get our attention, so they catapult out of our body. So I think just sprinkling in here and there. You have a little sister. I bet part of you feels so excited about that. And another part of you might just feel like, that's kind of tricky, right? I don't think you have to say to a kid. And 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 love the word tricky for this. Cause I find it speaks to what happens in that things are uncomfortable. But it doesn't label something that we're not quite sure what it is. And just sprinkling that here and there, you know, you're having breakfast, right? Or it's okay to have so many feelings. I'm sure I said this honestly to my kid. I said, oh, part of me loves being a family of four. And it's just so many more people. People and all the different relationships. And I want to be honest, there are other moments that I kind of miss, 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. 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 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 a two and a half year old, but I kind of don't know how much is really being understood. So I feel like.

I'm so glad you asked that.

That holds me back from, like, just talking like you just did to him. Yeah. How do you think about that?

It's funny, whenever someone says to me, my kid is blank years old, Mike, 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 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 are 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 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 know if I 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 explained to, and the people who are talking to me in a way who just kind of thought I couldn't understand. 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 moment, our kids usually say, okay, dad, can I have those pretzels? Like, can I just have the 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 hypervigilant 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 just kind of alone, trying to, as a 2, 3 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 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, a 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, 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 very young kids, we were reading him kids books without any expectation that he really understood 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 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 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 could imagine 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? 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 outschool 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 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? 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. Me my own. I do, I feel like play. Play is really, it's like a 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 hard time, like, how am I playing with my own baby? Or my niece and nephew? Like, what am I really doing with a 10 week old? Like, it's not, you know, it's not the most 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 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, maybe it's not trucks, it's baby dolls or it's farm animals. And oh, there's one little chicken 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, 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 moose. A moose don't live on the farms. I'm just, I'm not very good at my animals. Right, but again, you're speaking to what happens. But you, 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 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 want to be sat down. Right, by Kirsty and being like, Amir, 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 when Kirsty definitely sits me down like that. Yeah, it's totally easier to be less defensive and more creative when looking at it from a third party perspective. Cosmo has these little frogs and one big frog in his bath. Toys. That gives me an idea for bath time tonight about, say, oh, this one's Talia and this one's Cosmo. Well, how are they, how are they going to play together? Oh, I think the little one might be feeling a little bit, you know, scared. And the big one is, is doing things that might harm her. What could the big one do? And Try this 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 is so safe. Right. We all learn emotion regulation skills, academic skills, any skills, when it's infused with play. So I think it's kind of awesome for us to think about how that is already happening. I think that's what Outschool does, right? Like inspire a love of learning, Right, Absolutely.

That's what we're all about. The idea that learning should feel fun and should be really engaging. And if kids fall in love with learning, then everything else will follow when it comes to development, test results, engagement, and core learning. And it's so interesting to hear that insight reflected when thinking about my own kids at a younger age than we support out of school.

And I've never thought about it this concretely, but there is a powerful framework. 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, or my kid, you know, is. Is hitting this other child on a playdate 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 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 kid struggling with? Oh, they have to learn how to kind of inhibit the urge to get a little more physical when they're 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 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 going to be Cosmo, and you're going to Be dad. You want to do that? I want to be. And. 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. I love to just, like, yell, and I love to 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 too. Like reverse roles 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, wait, I guess I can do my jumping over there. So maybe I'm speaking again to that conflict that probably. Why is a kid 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 fort, 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 model that and kind of allow our kid to reprimand us, if it was me, I'd probably say, oh, dad, 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 full of play and fun. Right. That's. 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, have helping them empathize from my perspective. I absolutely love that. One other thought that came to mind as you were talking about that is the idea that we have to teach our kids to push through hard things or accept hard things sometimes. 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 not just Kind of like pushing through for the sake of it. 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 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. I often think like that. The learning space. I want my kids to love being in the 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 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 as they were kind of starting to do some of those trickier puzzles when they're younger. So what is it? Four piece, eight piece, 12 pieces? Is I do a puzzle next to them when they might be starting, and I, 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 this, meanwhile, would be while 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 is they just see their parents being so capable over and over, over and over 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 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 open about that and show that I get frustrated sometimes and 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 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 the time. I still don't know what I'm gonna 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 3 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, who they can be. 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 and how fast the world is changing, because 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 and there's new professions, there's a new environment they're in. And so that's why I want them to be resilient, be creative, be able to push 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 kids are really lucky then to have. Have you as their parent. You're so reflective and open and clearly so attuned to them and really been just so awesome to. To talk with you.

So thank you so much. Yeah, no, thank you. 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 my kids and not just read the book, but actually do more of that imaginative play.

I'm pretty sure Outschool has some theater and drama classes if you would like to, you know, up your game in the. In the theatrics department.

You know, outschools for kids only. So unfortunately, I can't go and take that. But once Cosmo turns age 3, he'll can take the class and I can just be in the background listening and maybe pick up a few tips.

That's right. You got to supervise.

Exactly. 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.

Was so amazing to talk with a mirror. 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 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. 2. We want to prepare our kids for the feelings they're going to have throughout their lives, not protect them from those feelings 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. 3. 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 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. And for more ideas and tips, check out my Instagram Dr. Becky Oodinside Good Inside is produced by Beth Rowe and Brad Gage and executive produced by Erica Belsky 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 times topics with spouses or extended family members, 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 outer outside, I remain Good Inside.