There’s no such thing as perfect parenting. That’s the big-sigh-of-relief viewpoint of Becky Kennedy, aka Dr. Becky—who considers herself “a clinical psychologist turned disruptor in the parenting support space,” she tells Fortune. There is effective parenting, however. “And the key to effective parenting … is what I call sturdy leadership,” she says.
Her model of sturdy leadership, as taught through her coaching company Good Inside, is all about helping parents understand their role and their kid, and how to then help their kids build the skills they need in life. “Not only to improve behavior, but to actually be fully functioning, successful adults,” says the mom to kids 7, 10, and 13.
A huge element of this type of parenting is setting your child up for a resilient, confident, successful future, stresses Kennedy. And you do that by “optimizing for your child’s long-term resilience,” she says.
Here, Kennedy explains how to keep up this approach in the day to day of parenting.
“There are moments when I optimize for my kids’ short-term happiness,” Kennedy admits. “I’m a human and sometimes I’m like, ‘You know what? Fine, have the ice cream for breakfast.’”
But for some percentage of the time, she stresses, parents need to be “long-term greedy,” meaning it’s important to keep in mind your kids’ future—and that they’ll likely be living away from you for more years than they’ll be with you.
“I believe the stakes only get higher,” she says. “I also believe that the single best gift I could ever give my kid is the ability to handle hard things—to have coping skills for what life throws your way, and to know that you can get through situations that are tricky.”
That’s what Kennedy believes gives kids a “bigger leg up in life” than anything else. “Life is hard … And our kids don’t get skills to work through hard things as a birthday gift. They don’t get them from reading a book. You get them through practicing those skills over and over and over.”
Finding difficult situations that can teach your kids about resilience is not the hard part. “You don’t have to insert hard moments—they can’t do a puzzle, they’re struggling with their math homework, they weren’t invited to the party,” Kennedy says, illustrating how they come at a regular clip, all the time.
What is hard, though, is not jumping in to fix the hard moments for your kids, whom you hate to see struggling or feeling upset.
“If I’m optimizing for short-term comfort, I’m going to fix the situation,” Kennedy says. And by doing that for your kid, she says, “they start to wire struggle with immediate solution.” In other words, “Their body goes, ‘I was left out from a party; my mom threw me a bigger party than that kid’s birthday.’ ‘I can’t do the puzzle; my dad finished it for me.’” And stepping in like that builds a set of expectations for your kid in the world, she explains.