Repeat After Me With Jazmyn Simon & Dulé Hill

You're driving me crazy. What is wrong with you? You're so selfish. The way we talk to our kids becomes the way they talk to themselves. And so it's really important from a young age to affirm that our kids are enough, that they are lovable and that they are good inside. This week I'm talking to actors, authors and activists Jasmine Simon and Dulay Hill about their new children's book Repeat after Me and the importance of affirmations and positive self talk.

When I had Kennedy, I had read somewhere that when you read affirmations in first person that you can rewire your brain. And I thought, well, it didn't happen for me, but it can most certainly happen for her.

I'm Dr. Becky and this is Good inside. We'll be right back. Hi, Dulay and Jasmine, welcome.

How you doing? Becky, Good to see you.

Hi, Becky.

I am really, really excited for the two of you to be here. I'm really excited to talk about your book. But before I launch into questions, can one of you just kind of begin, jump in. Let everyone listening know a little bit about you and a little bit about your book and the types of things that are on your mind.

So I will start. My name is Jasmine Simon and I'm married to that stud Dulay Hill. We are both actors. We met on a TV show eight years ago and we fell in love, got married, started a family. We have one son and one daughter whom is now in college, Kennedy, who Doulay adopted when she was a younger girl. So we have adoption in our family. We have a little boy in our family. And in 2020 we sat on our couch and we essentially watched the world change before our eyes. We saw people dying en masse of COVID and not knowing what was going on. We saw George Floyd get murdered on repeat on every single station on television. And at that time we had a 12 month old and a 15 year old and it was hard to explain to both of them. Obviously Levi was too young for explanation what was happening in the world. And in, you know, a moment of pure heartbreak, I turned to Dulay and I said, we need to write a book. And I will say that it's not just for black children. It's for all children to be reminded the best of themselves and not what people tell them that they are.

And I'm Dulay Hill and I'm the husband of Jasmine Simon.

You are now dismissed from this interview.

Thank you. Thank you all very much. We really think that it's very important though to plant seeds of goodness and self acceptance into young minds. We feel that if you can raise children up just to know the value of themselves, then maybe, and hopefully that will help them appreciate the value in others. And then the domino effect of that could be a more understanding world that we live in, in a more loving place that we get a chance to. To dwell in.

Yeah, we're going to get to the book because I have so many questions about the book and I want you to share a little bit more about it, but if it's okay, I want to kind of rewind and then we'll come back up. I'm curious about your childhoods, like who read to you or who said nice words affirmations to you?

Sure. Zero people. Zero people in my childhood read affirmations to me or really shared the value of who I was. My grandmother raised me. She was born in 1934 in the South. And so her mode of living was to survive naturally. And so she also wasn't able to have someone tell her how lovely she was and how smart she was and that she was light because her father was born in the Jim Crow south as well, was one generation outside of slavery. She did not have the tools to equip herself nor her children with the idea that we are valuable, that we are light, that we are, you know, all the wonderful things that children are, that we explain to our children. And I do think that that had a negative effect on my life growing up, if I'm completely honest, because I did have bad relationships. I did do things that I shouldn't have done. I didn't really know that the value of myself. I think I figured out the value of myself yesterday, in all honesty, because, you know, as a black woman growing up, that is not something that is readily available to us in our nuclear family and in the greater society. I will say that no one did that for me. And when I had Kennedy, who is 18, I had read somewhere that when you read affirmations in first person, that you can rewire your brain. And I thought, well, it didn't happen for me, but it can most certainly happen for her. And so when she started preschool, we did affirmations every day. And once Doulay entered our life and he would take her to school, we would all do the affirmations. She never caught a school bus. So we had a dedicated time every single day before she got out of that car to tell her how valuable she was, how loved she was, how smart she was. I do believe in doing that, that that did change the trajectory of her life. And I'm not saying that to be over dramatic, but I do feel like she loves who she is. And before she graduated from high school, I sat her down and I said, if there was anything about yourself that you would change, what would it be? And she sat in a very reflective space for a moment and thought about it and she said absolutely nothing. And she is 6ft tall, she has a size 12 shoe. She is not like what you would imagine a little tiny 18 year old young woman to be. She stands with her head held high. She loves herself. She went to a predominantly white high school and would wear her hair in a natural. You know, she just really loves who she is. And I do believe that a big part of that is not only the love that we gave her and continue to give her every day that, but because we had the wherewithal to know, oh, we are hundreds of years behind the curve on this. Let's start right now and try to see if we can change her life, that we can see the fruit of our labor in real time with her.

Yeah. And I would say for me, I'm very thankful that I did grow up in an environment where I was supported from a young age to know the value of who I was, to know that I was loved, to know that even though the world may try to come against me, there's a power inside of me to keep on pressing forward. You know, my parents, my mom, my dad, my grandparents had a community. I had a whole village. You know, they say it takes a village to raise a child. And my parents are immigrants, I'm first generation from Jamaica. So we all were pretty much there in New Jersey, New York. And the families were very close on both sides. So I had aunts galore, I had uncles galore, cousins galore. And so it really helps me know that I belonged somewhere if I couldn't find it necessarily because I grew up in a predominantly white township and my brother and I were the first two black students to come into the school system. So even though I didn't always feel like I belonged there, I did have a village around me that allowed me to see myself reflected and see the value of myself in the world that I was walking through.

A couple of different things that are loudest in my mind. One, you were talking about seeing yourself both in terms of representation, people around you in books, but also when I think about kids growing up and the idea of seeing themselves, I really feel like kids develop with their parents and their caregivers, not just their parents. As like a mirror, we take in the version of ourselves that's reflected back to us by our caregivers. And that's how we form our identity through them, as a mirror of us. Like you were saying, Jasmine, Am I good? Am I light? Am I worthy? Am I enough? It's so easy with kids, right? And you have young kids too, you know, to say all types of things. You're the worst. You're so selfish. Why can't you listen? Like this person? You're up to no good. You're crying. I'll give you something to cry about. We think a kid is taking in something in the moment. What they're really asking and answering in that moment is, who am I? Okay, I guess I'm someone who's up to no good, who's selfish. And so we all. First of all, me too. I have to say, with my kids, I say stuff like that to them. Like, we all have a moment where we're not at our best, but a practice of reflecting back goodness and belonging even in your own family. And enoughness and light. At least then you have a practice. And what you said, Jasmine, about every day with your daughter changed the course of her life. Of course. Like, she had all these moments of, oh, this is who I am. My mom sees this in me, and so now I can locate those things in myself. When I get older, I can enter into the world with those things as assumptions. She takes up. Sounds like she takes up space in the world. And she's happy to. She's proud to. Here I am.

Oh, yeah. I don't think anybody can meet Kennedy and not fall in love with her. She really is walking light, you know, she's the kind of person that changes the energy of a room when she walks into it. That's a real powerful thing. But it's something you said that really stuck with me, though, about we form ourselves in what is reflected back to us from our caregivers. I've never really processed it like that, but that really is.

Yeah. And for everyone listening, I always wanted to, like, de shame it. Like, it's easy to be like, oh, no. Like, okay, it's never too late. That's why repair is so important. That's why we say to our kids, it wasn't your fault that I yelled at you. Like, I didn't mean that. I also feel like, especially in hard moments, kids are looking at their parents wondering, am I a bad kid doing bad things, or am I a good kid having a hard time? And the way you respond to me is gonna let me know, and then I'm gonna take that identity with me. And this is where maybe this is a good connection to your book. The way we talk to our kids becomes the way they talk to themselves, which travels with them in their body throughout life, which then also becomes the way they see and talk to other people, maybe one day how they talk to their own kids. And, Jasmine, you were saying that there's that generational legacy or. And I can speak honestly about my own childhood. My parents, I mean, they were definitely far from perfect. But in general, I feel like they made me feel very valuable and loved and worthy and good inside. That's a massive privilege and generational privilege. Cause I think they actually probably felt that from their parents also. I don't think they were cycle breakers in that way that you're Jasmine talking about. Like, every moment you said that to your daughter, I feel like you're like, I am doing something different here. Like, literally every moment.

I completely agree. I think that sometimes we overlook what, you know, you call it generational legacy. On the positive side, some people call it generational curses. On the other side, you know, we are, as black people, Black Americans are behind the eight ball in a lot of things. And, like, having the space and the freedom to love who we are, having the space and the freedom to tell our children that you are safe, that you can be anything that you want to be. You know, that you are loved, that you are beautiful, especially when it's not reflected in the things that they see. I've spent a lot of time in therapy, in my life, sorting through my life, trying to better myself so I can be a better wife, a better mother, and just a better person to myself, love myself better. In all of those steps that I've taken, my number one goal is to break generational curses is so when my children leave this house that they know that they are absolutely perfect, that they don't owe the world anything, that the world indeed owes them something, that they have goodness inside of them, and the world will notice that and they will encourage and they will pay it forward for their goodness. You know, I've been doing this for 19 years. It's a long time. I've had a lot of. That's not the right way to do things. Now, let me course correct this, because anytime that I would feel like I was sounding like my mother or sounding like my grandmother, that was frightening enough to me that I would go the other direction. With Levi, he has the benefit of having one older parents, Kennedy Got me when I was, you know, fresh out of college and I learned everything with her and I thought, I'm going to make sure that I'm the best mother, so you can be the best version of yourself. But with Levi, it's already tried and tested. It's already like, I know not to yell at him like that. I know not to spank him. I know to look at him in his face and tell him how much I love him and to spend at least 10 minutes of focused, dedicated time with him all the time. I know when he makes a mistake for me to tell him. And I love you. You. Yes, you did that. And I love you. Not a but or nor but. I know all these things because I've already done it. So all the new parents out there, don't be hard on yourself. And I still mess up. And I've been doing it so long, you know, but it is really a muscle that we work every day to just get stronger at.

Yes, the parenting gig, it never ends, right? It never ends.

And I will say, though wikia as far safety Jasmine feels like she has gone a certain way. This is what I've known over the years. She will course correct just as hard, if not way harder. If she does yell, she's going to love that much more. If she does say something that she feels is not positive, she's going to come back with I love you and you're great and all the positive things that much more. I didn't necessarily even have that growing up where my parents would sit down there, admit that I handled that wrong. But I think it affects our children in a really positive way to realize that I can make mistakes and I can do things wrong and I can own that. And it doesn't make me a bad person. I can still. It makes me someone who is growing and learning and learning how to do things better.

So question kind of connecting this conversation to the book. So just for everyone listening, this book is. It's a set of affirmations through a story and then you kind of develop that theme, like, how do you see a family using this book? Could you share a little bit about that?

Sure. I think because I had started it with Kennedy when she was 3, and then we together continued it with Kennedy until she got her own car when she was 16. Then she drove herself to school, then we'd find different moments to say them with her. I knew that it could take five minutes or 30 seconds. And so when we wrote the book or we sat down to write it, I knew That I wanted to give an explanation to little people what it means to be important, like in action. What does it mean to be light. I knew that I didn't want to just say a list of affirmations because that gives no context. And not just little minds, people that haven't heard affirmations before. And so we made a list of affirmations that we wanted to use. And we did try to stay away from pretty smart. Those words that can't really be held down by anything because those are subjective words. We try to use words that someone can hold on to within their heart. And then at the end I said, listen, how many times are we running late, sleepy, tired, don't feel like going through the whole book? So you can turn the directly to the end of the book and just say, repeat after me. And then have your children go through 10 affirmations. And that will take as long as it takes you to read those 10. I just think that we see so much hurt and pain in the world. Young people are committing suicide at a really scary high rate. Kids have anxiety and depression. Our daughter had anxiety too. No matter how hard we loved her, we couldn't combat what was going on in the world. And we just really wanted a tool to help kids know before the mind monster started to come in, before outside influences started to tell them who they were, that parents and care givers had to had an opportunity to lay a foundation of who you are. Because now if Kennedy, she's had a boyfriend for three years, we love him, he's the best. But if she broke up with him and she started dating a knucklehead, she would say, but my dad taught me better than this. My mom taught me better than this. So no matter what you say to me, I know that I'm gifted. I know that I'm deserving. I know that I'm important.

I love that. So obviously, in the course of a day when we're parenting, you can have all these moments that you don't want to happen and that they happen. Like you yell or you react or you told yourself you'd be calm and then you weren't. And there's all these moments we're reacting. One of my favorite parts of children's books is it allows me as a parent to be very proactive instead of being reactive. I say, you know what? I'm going to insert a nice moment into my day. I can control this. I can pick a book that speaks to me. I can pick a book that I feel like both connects us now and build something for the future. I can kind of play around with how I read it. I could even ask questions, share stories from my own background, or even, as you said, Jasmine, just some days I'm like, I'm just gonna rush through it and like, it is what it is. Of course. And to me, this book, it really allows parents to insert a meaningful moment into their day with their kid. And there's no tool as important as a tool that's kind of like under your control to generate a meaningful connection, given how hard it is for that to happen naturally in the course of our very busy lives. You know, when I think about hard moments that my kids might have in their day, right. My kids are 5, 8 and 11. We think about, you know, what's said to a kid at a playground. Or we think about, oh, you find out you're in the lowest reading group. Or when my kids get older, you know, they're on social media and the world just moves so fast and really nasty things can happen. I think a lot of parents, you know, what we focus on in hard times is, well, what do you say to that person? What should you say back to that bully? What do you say back? And I always tell parents, it literally doesn't matter. That's the wrong focus. The focus is like, what do I say to myself? And what words are already in myself. Because the words we say to ourselves, like you were saying, they're boundaries. They're a way of saying. Those words you said about me, I hear them, but I am not letting them infiltrate my body. And the only way I can keep them out is not what I say to you. You're not even worth my fricking time. It's what I say to myself. And, and all of these affirmations. I think for some parents it can feel like a little like, oh, like, does this matter? What does this do? If we wanna build our kids self esteem and kind of quote, bullyproof them and think about what can we do today to help our kids down the line? Building up confident self talk. There's like nothing where you get as much bang for your buck as that. And so you have these moments you can insert reading and having a connected moment while you're future proofing your kid. I mean, there's just, there's nothing better than that.

They're like the white blood cells of life.

Exactly.

Future proofing. You know, 16 years ago when this all started, when I read it, I was like, oh, I can do my own clinical trial to see if this works. To see, if I say all these things to her and she repeats them, will this make her a different person? And I will say you haven't met her. Like Julie said, she is just really a fantastic human being. But that didn't come by happenstance. It came because we really worked at it, because we wanted her to know all of these things about herself.

She's so caring too, you know, And I think that's something that is at least the hope of the domino effect that will happen because she owns who she is. That also translates into her being so kind to other people and being aware of other people. Because I think a lot of what goes on is people don't feel seen, they don't feel heard, they don't feel valued.

Yeah. So if you had to pick one of the affirmations, only one that you feel like you could have really used as a kid, what would you land on?

I am deserving. For myself, just growing up, I just didn't feel like that I deserved the good things. Like when Dulay and I, eight years ago, when we embarked on our relationship, it was confusing to me that someone would love me so much. And it was like a aha moment. I deserve this not only because I'm me, but I also give it to him. So of course I deserve it back in return. Of course. And so I just wish that if I can go back and talk to little Jasmine, I'd say you deserve every good thing in the world.

I am deserving, Dulay. What about you?

For myself, it's. I am enough. I am perfect exactly the way that I am. And everything that I need is right, is right inside of me. You know, growing up, you always. There's so many influences. You always looking at other people to see what they're doing and thinking you might need that to be cool or you might need that to be liked. And it's not until I started to get older that I start to embrace myself more. I don't need to be anything more than me. And I think even when I say that to Levi now, it really always.

Resonates to me, you know, that's the one I would choose for myself too. And what's so interesting is I have different context for it. Right. So I. Many stories and yet the same three words can resonate. I feel like for me, I was so hard driving as a kid, so perfectionistic, doing more and more and more. And of course, the things we needed to hear as kids are still the things we need to hear today. So someone's listening to this who knows me well, they're like, I feel like you still struggle with that. But okay, I guess I can in some ways think about enoughness related to like stillness, to not producing, to being. And I think that like would have been a really powerful kind of affirmation.

Mantra, especially for high functioning people. Right. Our daughter is like you in a lot of ways. She's very high functioning. She like, is a perfectionist. She feels like she has to have the highest grade. And we often tell her, you are enough.

I love it. Any last, any last words or thoughts?

You know, I do have one, one thought. Growing up, we only had books with white characters on them. And as a black person, it was like, of course we do. We read the book and the book is for everybody. And I would just like to remind all your listeners that when you see a book that has a black child on the COVID or a brown child on the COVID or an Asian child on the COVID and you don't identify with that group, that the book is still for you, that you can still find value in that book, that your children still need that book. Just like my children needed every book that was ever written for the last 30 plus years. That you give everybody a shot that it doesn't matter that there's a little brown boy on the COVID It's a book for all children that want to know that they are enough. And so that's just the reminder that I would like to give that keep an open mind when you're buying dolls and books and you know, have things that don't mirror copy the way that you look and know that your children can find value in that.

Now just, I'm very honored to be on this book with Jasmine. I mean, it's very easy to be an author of a book when you are married to a dynamic writer such as Jasmine Simon.

It's like you guys like each other. Well, thank you. There's so many more really important themes that you just named that are really worthy of a deeper dive. I just know everyone listening here is excited to get this book on their shelf. It's really important. So thank you for your work. Thank you for sharing so much and hopefully it won't be too long before we connect soon.

I look Forward to it.

Dr. Becky, or just Becky, we love you. Thank you for all the things that you are doing. Really trying to help us raise a generation of children that are better than we were.

Well, cheers to that. Thank you. Repeat after me is out now. Wherever you get your books, click on the link in the show Notes to watch. Order your copy today. Thanks for listening. To share a story or ask me a question, go to goodinside.com podcast. You could also write me@podcastoodinside.com parenting is the hardest and most important job in the world and parents deserve resources and support so they feel empowered, confident and connected. I'm so excited to share Good Good Inside Membership, the first platform that brings together content and experts you trust with a global community of like valued parents. It's totally game changing. Good inside with Dr. Becky is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Newsome at Magnificent Noise. Our production staff includes Sabrina Farhee, Julia Natt and Kristen Muller. I would also like to thank Eric, Erica Kabelski, Mary Panico, Ashley Valenzuela and the rest of the Good Inside team. And 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.