September 17, 2026 at 9:56am EDT

Social media is filled with clips of parents explaining why they’ve chosen “gentle parenting” as their child-rearing style, but some experts say kids need a harder push from their parents to build confidence.

Dr. Becky Kennedy, a clinical psychologist and the founder of Good Inside known to her legions of fans as Dr. Becky, recently appeared on the Call Her Daddy podcast. She discussed her own parenting philosophy, which is big on teaching kids the skills they need to control their feelings and setting healthy boundaries in our homes.

“I said OK, if I’m gonna give myself permission to question the pure punishment-time-out version of parenting, what am I left with?” Kennedy said in the interview, explaining how she came to her Good Inside method. “I was left with two things: One was, I think kids are born good inside… And then this other thing I was left with is that kids are born with all of the feelings and none of the skills.”

Kennedy likens more gentle styles of parenting to flying a plane during an emergency and allowing the passengers to have input into how the pilot handles a potential crash. “This is when we don’t have any authority. There’s no boundaries and we look to our passengers to make decisions that really should [be made in] in a closed cockpit,” said Kennedy. “We are not equal decision makers with our kid.”

One of the biggest skills Kennedy thinks parents need to instill in their kids? Confidence. She says there’s a difference between “support and solutions,” explaining that you can support your kids as they solve their age-appropriate problems without solving their problems for them. “I think we’ve been fed this idea that confidence means feeling good about yourself,” said Kennedy, “but I believe confidence is self-trust.”

Building self-trust, according to Kennedy, means helping kids build a belief in their own abilities. “I feel like we’ve started to focus a little too much on the ‘I believe you’ part and not enough on the ‘I believe in you’ part,” she said.

This means instead of jumping to make your kid feel better, try helping them feel better about their ability to handle a tough situation, says Kennedy. Her example? If a kid doesn’t want to go to soccer practice because they’re upset about something happening on the team, instead of telling them they don’t have to go (so they’ll feel better), parents might tell them they have to go, believing in their kid’s ability to show up for their commitments and attend practice, even when things don’t feel great.

“I believe you that soccer practice kind of sucks compared to what it used to be,” she suggested as a script, “but I also want to let you know that you are a kid who can go… and you’re gonna get through a practice that feels awful, and I’ll be there in the car waiting.”

“I want my kid to be able to regulate when they’re older,” Kennedy explained. “And you can’t manage a feeling you believe you’re not supposed to have.”