Dr. Becky Intro: One and done. But sometimes what you’re not done with are people’s comments. “Really? You don’t want him to have a sibling?” “Isn’t she going to be lonely?” Or your own self doubt.

Sunita: So I think maybe there’s uncertainty about I know what it looks like when you have siblings, I don’t know what it looks like when you don’t. So that’s kind of scary to think. So I think, and in the uncertainty, people saying things of like, spoiled, no social skills, lonely. I’m like, shit, is that true? What is? I don’t know. I’ve never had that experience before so is there something I’m actually missing here that I need to be clued in on? And if it is, I don’t like what you guys are saying anyway.

Dr. Becky Intro: Only children get a bad rap… They’re spoiled. They don’t know how to share. They lack social skills. They’re too dependent. And while these are gross generalizations, if you grew up in a big family with siblings it can be daunting to imagine being a parent to an only child. Especially, if the road to your parenting journey wasn’t an easy one and the family you initially envisioned is different than the one you have now.

I’m Dr. Becky and this is Good Inside. We’ll be right back.

Dr. Becky: Hi, Sunita. Nice to meet you. Welcome.

Sunita: Thank you. Thank you. I’m so excited to be here.

Dr. Becky: Tell me a little bit what’s going on for you and what’s on your mind for this conversation today?

Sunita: Yeah, so I have a two year old daughter, almost two. She’ll be two in April, and I have loved your podcast the whole time I found it so helpful and just being able to navigate even at such a young age, all the things that are already coming up. Like helping her with the big feelings. Trying to support myself as I support her at the same time. Trying to deal with other people’s reactions. And that’s kinda what made me wanna ask this question today is so my husband and I made a decision to have just one child, and that came after a lot of just challenges and surprises in our fertility experience and having miscarriages and after that deciding “okay, our family looks different than we ever envisioned it was going to but we love the family that we have the way it is now”. But for both of us, we come from having a lot of siblings and it’s just so crazy seeing what it’s like having a child and telling people like “yes, this is our only child we’re gonna have”. The reactions that we get. The characterization of her at such a young age already. Where she’s being called certain things of “and like, oh, you know, she could be spoiled or selfish or have poor social skills or be lonely”. It’s like, she’s not even two yet how? How can we already think this about her? So I think it’s just been wondering like how to support a kid when people make these kind of comments about her. Both knowing, that’s gonna happen when I’m there and when I’m not there as well. And yeah, just how to help her.

Dr. Becky: So how do I deal with these kind of unwelcome, unsolicited comments about the type of person my kid is going to be. Maybe based on our family composition, but also maybe we stop right there. Like how do we deal with comments people make about our children, about the type of people they’re going to be.

Sunita: Yes. Yes. That would be so helpful.

Dr. Becky: Okay. And just to add a little more context to this…Do you come in with any concerns? Right? Sometimes the comments people make about our kids that irk us the most are the ones that some are deep down we’re like “oh man, I kind of worry about that too. And you bringing it up, making it that much bigger. Am I responding to your comment? Am I responding to my own anxiety? I don’t even know”. So just like, help me understand what you come in with. And I know you mentioned, so maybe we could flush it out a little. Um, I didn’t expect my family to look exactly maybe like this. So my guess is there’s some more details there that might even be relevant if, if you’re willing to share.

Sunita: Yeah. You know, I think coming from a family with siblings. So I have a younger sister and an older brother and I’m incredibly close with both of them. Particularly my sister, like she is truly like my best friend. We spent so much time together and I always imagined in my head when we would have kids, we would have kids plural, and then, you know, plans all completely went out the window once we actually started trying to conceive and we had miscarriage and then another miscarriage. And then we just kept having to revision our future over and over again.

Dr. Becky: Yeah. It is interesting when we find ourselves as adults, like we’re like living a life that you’re like, I didn’t know I’d be living this life. And other people seem to have a lot of certainty…

Sunita: Yes.

Dr. Becky: …about what that version of a life is gonna look like now and down the road. And it does bring up like “okay, well I know, I don’t know. This person seems pretty sure and they’re pretty bold, like, telling me this, right? Do I wanna take that in? Is there any part of that that is a concern I should look out for? Or do I just really need to work on kind of like pushing that stuff away from me”.

Sunita: Exactly. That’s the thing is, I don’t wanna lose the truth of that cause it’s true. Yes. Based on the family that we have, we do need to be more intentional and making sure that she’s around other kids that she’s getting to learn some of the things that maybe when you have a sibling, it’s different, it’s more built in and all that kind of different stuff. So I wanna stay tuned to that. And at the same time, I don’t want to, I guess I don’t want her to hear those things too. I mean, she’s only only gonna be two here soon, but she just picks up so much I worry about what’s she going to hear in those messages.

Dr. Becky: Yeah. First, I’m thinking about this really concretely right now. I’m gonna say three things that I think we can do today. And let me know if that speaks to you or if you feel like we’ve missed something or if one of those things is like not really relevant. Okay. One, I wanna spend a little bit of time hearing your feelings about this journey of having one child, as if nothing has ever been said to you about it. But if, again, if there’s feelings of, of loss or there’s other feelings that sometimes come up when our family journeys don’t look the same, I wanna do that. Step two is I wanna talk with you about what part of people’s comments does kind of hit a concern you might have. And then what can we do with that? And then step three, like what do you say to people in the moment? Like, what are our zingers we come back with?

Sunita: Yes.

Dr. Becky: Or, you know, what are some scripts for what we can say to respond, or if possible, it’s not always is, to like keep that out. To keep it from never being said. So those are the three things I’m thinking about. Does that resonate? Any of them feel like “No. Becky, that that doesn’t really, you know, strike me as important”.

Sunita: I like all of them. I had immediate thoughts and reactions to all of them.

Dr. Becky: Great.

Sunita: Yes.

Dr. Becky: Can you share a little bit about your fertility journey and what that was like for you?

Sunita: Yeah. You know, I think it was, it was so many things. It was devastating, confusing, sad, surprising at the same time too. I think there was a lot that I didn’t expect. There were even conversations that my husband and I had that I don’t think we would’ve had, had we not experienced all of those. Really trying to be intentional about what we want our family to look like. What does family even mean to us? I think had our first pregnancy been successful, we would’ve just kind of kept going. We wouldn’t have questioned the story that we always grew up with. But because we had to do that again and again, it made us just realize things that we didn’t, we didn’t realize we wanted. I think that’s the piece when I think about even just having one child, there’s, there’s a loss of the story that we have, but there’s also almost excitement and relief and definitely a lot of surprise of like “I didn’t know I wanted this”. But now that we have it, I’m like, “oh, I actually really, really want this”. It’s been a huge surprise to us that both of us want only… We want this family that we have.

Dr. Becky: Yeah, so it sounds a little bit like there was like a lack of intentionality. Like we each kind of came from bigger families.

Sunita: Yeah.

Dr. Becky: So that version of a family just kind of, you know, was the one we filled in.

Sunita: Yes.

Dr. Becky: Like somehow that was colored into the, the book. And then it sounds like that still was on your mind early on.

Sunita: Yes.

Dr. Becky: What did it take to bring this child into the world? Like, was it, was it miscarriages? Was it in vitro? Was it just month after month? Was it like, what, what did it take?

Sunita: Yeah, so we, after we had our miscarriages, we had gone and then we’d gotten the advice that it could be helpful to consider IVF and for us, at that point I was like I don’t know if I want to necessarily do that. I think there’s something about, like you mentioned, the story felt I had been colored in and we just kind of went along with it and this felt like kind of another piece would be kind of going along with, okay, we’ll just do the next thing that someone else says, but instead realizing, oh, I think we have actually some, maybe some limits on what we want to do, but we’re willing to do. Financially, emotionally, physically just feel able to do so we, we took a break for a couple of years and then we got a second opinion who said that “you know what, you may actually not need to do IVF. I’d say just go ahead and start trying, see what happens.” And that’s, that’s how we ended up having our daughter. We had, I had like some like progesterone and other things just to help just knowing that I’d had the miscarriage history in the past. But that’s what happened for us when we…. and there she was. Yeah, it was crazy. During that pause time, I mean, we had conversations about what would it be like to not even have kids at all, which was a kind of wild thing to think about. But at the same time, there was something that almost felt kind of liberating in that I’d be like, oh…

Dr. Becky: Yeah. Yeah. And I’m guessing that’s a theme that will come up again, this idea of are we locked into like one story of like, we have miscarriages, we couldn’t have babies and it’s awful. And my whole life is, you know, over. And it sounds like even in that moment you were able to widen from that story. Like maybe there’s a world where we like each other and we don’t have kids. Or, or maybe maybe there’s different versions of happiness, you know, that, that we could find. Is that right?

Sunita: Yes.

Dr. Becky: I mean, it sounds like your journey to having your daughter, you know, involved tough moments, involved surprises and then also involved a lot of intentionality around having her like, we really wanna do this, we’re trying this again, there was kind of like active decision making to make that happen.

Sunita: Yes, definitely. A lot of conversations. Yeah, a lot of thinking and rethinking things.

Dr. Becky: Yeah. Which I wanna pause on because it is interesting. You know, someone once asked me in an interview like, did you always know you wanted to be a mom? And I was like, you know,I don’t know if I’d say yes to that. I also don’t think I’d say no to that. Like maybe it was the book that was given to me colored in a certain way so it’s hard to feel like you’re making an active decision either way. And whenever we make decisions that way, kind of like, oh, this story was just kind of given to me. A lot of things can happen after. It’s like, oh wow, I just kind of found myself in this story. I found myself having this number of kids, or I found myself living in this area, or I found myself leaving my job or not leaving my job. And I do think kind of being an adult, in some ways, involves always untangling like, what was the story given to me? What’s the story I wanna write? Are those two things the same? And where they’re not like, what do I wanna do about it? And it sounds like the story that was given to you and your husband, were like you’re gonna have a family with lots of kids and then you two actively made a decision of our story that we are going to write involves having one child. We are authoring that story.

Sunita: Yes. Yes. Completely.

Dr. Becky: And so while it sounds like maybe there was sadness and loss along the journey, just in those moments, which are always hard, right, when we’re trying to get pregnant, tell me if this is right… It sounds like that’s not a very big part of your experience right now.

Sunita: Yeah, it really is. I think I talked about it with my husband a lot and sometimes he, I think worries that because I talk about how, how she’s like amazing and confident and good, I feel about the decision for sure. There’s moments of loss that is still there. I can feel both of those things at the same time. I think he worries it like, “oh, are you sure about this?” I’m like, ‘actually, I just keep talking to this. I’m so surprised by I really good about this. It just feels so right for our family, and I don’t think I would’ve known that until I met our daughter”. I think that was part of it too, is I don’t know how to plan our family until I actually met our family. Now I met our family. I’m like “oh, this is it. This looks great”.

Dr. Becky: And maybe it sounds like sillier concrete, but I actually recommend like writing that down even either as a reminder on your phone that goes off or as opposed to somewhere, some version, there’s no magic to these words, but something like, “I feel good about our family. I feel good about having one child. Right now, in this moment, looking at our family, which is me, my husband, and our one daughter, I feel very good and complete”. Actually writing that down, Sunita, I feel like would be truly like grounding for you.

Sunita: It feels calming to me just hearing it.

Dr. Becky: Because there’s such a swirl around us all the time. There’s so many, like I always call this like a lot of chirping, always right? All of that chirping has so much more to do with people’s struggles in their own story than any of us. But it’s hard to remember that. And so being grounded in our own story, right? And someone might be listening to this thinking, I have one kid and I’m not as confident as Sunita is. I, I actually still have a much bigger piece of my experience that involves loss. That’s okay. That’s not better or worse. It just is. I would still write that down. Me looking at, you know, my family with our one kid or my one kid. You know, maybe your story is, I’m grateful for my child and I do still have a longing for another, like, if that’s your story, that’s just as good to write down, but knowing what your story is, is really key in separating out what’s going on for me and what are kind of the other chirpings all around me. So maybe let’s move to those chirping, right? That’s kind of step two, we said. What about what people say, maybe does, you know, kind of click into a concern or worry you have? So when people say “you know, she’s never gonna learn to share, you know, she’s never gonna have anyone to play with. She’s gonna be really selfish”. Right? These are maybe some of the chirping people say. I’m just curious. If we just take those comments, Sunita, and we say, okay, those are all different comments. But if comments from other people bother us because they tap into some concern or worry we have. Looking at that part of it is really, really important and actually really empowering. Cuz again, we’re just separating you from me. So which of those, even right away, they’re never gonna have anyone to play with, they’re never gonna learn how to share. They’re gonna be really selfish. Which would you identify as “Ooh, Becky. That’s the, that’s the loudest one in my body.”

Sunita: I think it’s the play with part. Especially because I think about…. So I’m Indian and my husband is white, and so our daughter is interracial. So I think there’s something about when people say like “oh, she shouldn’t be lonely.” There’s the loneliness that the loneliness of being interracial, that we are not, both of her parents are not. So being able to, like, if she has a sibling, there would be someone else who has somewhat similar experience. That we can’t replicate that ourselves. Like we will never be that we won’t have her lived experience, even if there was of the siblings, they wouldn’t necessarily have her experience anyway. But I think that’s the piece that that hits me of like, Ooh, is she gonna be a different kind of lonely than either of us have ever experienced?

Dr. Becky: So there’s this story in general of only kids don’t have someone to play with, right? They could feel a little lonely sometimes, but what you’re adding is. And tell me if this is right, neither you nor your husband is interracial. Is that correct?

Sunita: Yes. Yes. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Becky: So my child won’t have someone else in the family who’s living through that with her?

Sunita: Yes. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Becky: And so there might be times she wishes she had someone to play magnatiles with or throw football with. There also might be moments, right where she’s looking at both of you and I’m just gonna say it’s like “you don’t know what this is like”.

Sunita: Yes. Yes.

Dr. Becky: And what does that bring up for you? “You don’t know what this is like, mom, dad, you don’t know what it’s like. You know I’m part, you know, white, I’m part Indian. That is so hard. You don’t know what that’s like to navigate that.”

Sunita: I think the first reaction is like “yeah, you’re exactly right. You are so right. I know.” And that’s the thing I think I try to pull to my own experience of I’ve known what it feels like to be not Indian enough, too Indian to be in certain circles. But that’s just even as someone who is fully in this group. So I think that’s saying, I’m like “yeah, you’re exactly right. I don’t know that, I don’t know anything about that, and that’s scary.”

Dr. Becky: What I love about your response is when our kids come at us for anything, for you, it may be, you know, you don’t know what it’s like to be interracial or for someone else, you know, in their family and might be, “you don’t know what it’s like to be the only kid without TikTok.” That reaction of like “you’re right, I don’t know.” You and I, Sunita, right are both psychologists and probably all the time we hear people’s stories that we’re curious about. Want to help them kind of figure out their struggles. But inherently, we’ve never walked in their shoes, ever. Does that ever come up in your private or, um, do you have a private practice? Do you see people individually or you work in a different capacity?

Sunita: Yeah, I work at a group practice with adults and you know, right as you were saying that, I think I was like, yeah, you’re right. I, there’s so many stories that I don’t know, and I think I’m expecting to go into this not knowing the stories, so I can just come in and be like, yeah, I’m curious. I wanna know all the stories. And I think already as a parent, I have this expectation. I’m like, oh, I should know how you do this, so that I can tell you how to do it. If I don’t know how to tell you to do it, then how do I help you?

Dr. Becky: Yeah. You know, for every family structure, someone has one kid, someone has three kids, all, you know, 10 months apart. Someone has kids who are eight years apart and they wish they were closer. Like no matter what your family structure is, there’s gonna be parts of that that feel easy and natural, and there’s gonna be parts of that that are tricky. Every single one. And one of the moments that you seem to identify with your daughter that will be tricky are those moments of “you don’t understand”. Or even some kids will say, “I, I wish, I wish you had another kid. Why didn’t you give me a sister? Why didn’t you give me a brother?” Kids say that, right? I mean, kids also with a million brothers and sisters will say “I wish you didn’t have these brothers and sisters”, right? Like they, they both happen. And your stance, I feel like that will just leave you so prepared is it’s a different version of “you’re right”, but just like, “I’m so glad you’re talking to me about this” feels to me like the number one line parents need to memorize. Like especially when their kids come at them with like feeling upset with them. “You don’t understand”. “I’m so glad you’re talking to me about this”. “Why didn’t you give me a sibling?” “I’m so glad you’re talking to me about that. You seem to, you know, have thoughts and feelings about that. You’re right to have those thoughts and feelings. I’d love to hear more.”

Sunita: Yes. It’s such a good point. It’s funny, even though my daughter’s so young, I feel like saying that in the language that she can understand now, about “I’m so glad you’re talking about this.” Right now like, she’s been getting so upset that she wears bangles, like which is the Indian, you know, bracelets, and she loves wearing them at night. I’m like, “you cannot wear these at night to bed.” But she like wants us to sit there and we just like talk about, we talk about it. I’m like, “you wanna wear the bangles? You want to wear the bangles? Yeah. Tell me about that.” We’re gonna take them off eventually. But just having that is all that she needs to, I was like shocked the other day she handed, like she put her arm out for me to take them off. I’m like “oh my gosh, that worked? You’re letting me take them off without a full meltdown?”

Dr. Becky: Yeah, right? that worked. I know those are like the most, you’re like, wow, there’s something to this. Yeah. You know, and I use that line with a lot with my kids when they’re younger. When they were younger, like they’d have a meltdown about something and saying to them “I’m so glad I know how important this is to you”, which is another version of “I’m so glad you’re talking to me about this.” Now again, that doesn’t mean knowing how important it is for them to have, I don’t know, the 15th oreo they’re eating doesn’t mean I’m giving that 16th oreo. Like, actually those are two totally separate things, but there’s something about responding to a kid’s big emotional expression to us by saying like “I’m so glad I know about this.” Again, I think like if I was really mad at my husband and I kind of raged at him and he was like “wow, that’s a lot. But also I’m so glad I know about how important this is.” I would just melt, I’d be like, “oh, you’re right. It is important”, you know?

Sunita: Oh, that’s so true.

Dr. Becky: And so I think when it comes to that worry you have or that fear, right? The worries and fears we have about our kids as they get older. Ugh. What if they’re lonely? What if they come at me one day saying, “Ugh, I wish I had a sibling”. Like in general, I find the things that we worry about with our kids if we turn it to ourselves and say, okay, lemme just tell myself that will happen. Oh, I worry that one day my kid’s gonna say you don’t understand. One day my kid will say, you don’t understand. I worry one day my kid’s gonna say, yeah, I wish you gave me a sibling. One day my kid will say, I wish you gave me a sibling. Right? Like making it into a fact and then telling myself, and I will be able to deal with that and that will be a point of learning and probably connection between us. And that will actually probably be a really important, hard, painful, have my own stuff come up, and important moment, really changes things from a worry that’s swirling around me and making me feel overwhelmed to something I can picture and actually kind of feel competent about. Tell me if that resonates at all.

Sunita: It really does, and you know, even hearing it that way, just taking a second, this is going to happen. I feel it would take me away from spending so much time having a thought just circulate, circulate, circulate. Cause the number of times I’ve talked to my husband, I’m like, “God, what are we gonna do when she, you know, ask about if she can have another sibling?” I spend so much time worrying about that, that I miss things that are actually happening right now even.

Dr. Becky: I think that’s so right. And I’m sure there’s people listening and you’re thinking like, oh, this issue doesn’t apply to me. And on the surface, you know, we all have different issues, but underneath, probably one of the things all of us do as parents at times, is we lose a lot of time and energy to worries we have about the future. And one of the things about worries and our own anxiety is that, we often think we can make anxiety and worry better by kind of like going down a rabbit hole and like thinking about it forever or game planning about it. But actually one of the best things we can do for anxiety is just remind ourselves that we’re capable. Cuz anxiety kind of pauses or de-escalates when you remind yourself, wait, like I’m a capable person. And if and when that thing happens, I’ll be able to deal with it. And so what about when my kid, you know, asks for a phone and I don’t wanna give it to them? It’s such a swirl. Versus one day my kid’s gonna ask for a phone. I’m not gonna wanna give it to them and I’m gonna be able to cope with that. I will, when that moment comes, I will get through it. I’m a good, strong, capable parent and I can do it. And all of a sudden the nervous, spiraling energy transitions into like, wow. Like I’m kind of a badass energy.

Sunita: Yes, it really does. It feels like it gives me somewhere else to go, whether it is like I’m gonna handle it and I just love learning. So it’s like, let me learn about how to handle it. Or it’s like, yeah, I’m gonna handle that. So let me focus on things that are actually happening right now in my life.

Dr. Becky: I love that. I love that decision tree. I’m gonna handle it. Do I wanna spend my time now thinking about how to handle it or I’m gonna handle it so actually, what else do I wanna put energy toward in the meantime? Those are great. So, okay, so here’s the third category of things we said we were gonna talk about. What do we do in that moment? What do you do when you’re in the grocery store and random person X behind you is like waxing poetic about, you know, your family structure. Or maybe it’s not there, maybe it’s at a family gathering, and you have the aunts and uncles and grandparents and great grandparents, you know, telling you about this decision you made. Where does it come up that’s most bothersome or most frequent for you?

Sunita: I think where it comes up the most probably is within like family gatherings and things like that. I can think of a time recently where we were at some extended family and a cousin asked like “oh, so are you gonna have another, another child?” I was like,” no, you know, we’re just gonna have one and we love her.” And she’s like, “oh, do you wanna give, give her another sister. Give her like…Sheila’s my sister’s name. She’s like “you don’t wanna give her a Sheila?” And I’m like “I don’t really wanna recreate my… trying to have to recreate the same relationship I had with my sister” was my immediate response, which landed awkwardly, and then it kind of fizzled away from that. And I think that’s what I usually do. People say something, I just snap back quickly with the first response that comes to my mind and it doesn’t usually go well.

Dr. Becky: Yeah. Well, I guess we, we have to figure out what going well means, right? One of the things that happens a lot in conversations is people do say, or ask really inappropriate things. Like things that are not their business, things that have more to do with their own stuff than anything to do with us. I always feel like sometimes they’re just like a pawn in their game and that never feels good. And the visual I always think about Sunita is like that person puts this like awkwardness on us. And one of the things you’re saying you do is like you just kind of give it back to them. The awkwardness. Which I can say I think especially like women are socialized against that. I think in general, societally people give women a lot of awkwardness, and worse than that, they give a lot of aggression or you know, a lot of like really inappropriate, really uncomfortable statements. And then as women, somehow societally we’ve been taught like our job is to just like digest that for them. And, and I actually think it’s a really powerful thing to think, you know what, like that wasn’t mine to begin with. I’m not taking that, like I’m, I’m giving it back to its owner. So when you say back things like “Yeah. This isn’t really a conversation I wanna have” or “you know, that doesn’t really sound like a curious question. It sounds more like a judgment” or “no, I’m not looking to recreate the exact family I have. I’m kind of excited as an adult to make my own decisions.” It can feel like, “oh, that didn’t go well”. But I think a different interpretation could be someone gave me something pretty inappropriate and I just said something to give it back that wasn’t mine in the first place.

Sunita: You know, that’s such a good point. It’s actually making me think something I used to love that my husband would do after we had our miscarriage, whenever people would ask of like “oh, why aren’t you guys having kids?” Or “when are you gonna have kids?” And he would just respond immediately. “We had two miscarriages, so we’re just taking our time grieving right now and thinking about what we want as a family”. And it would just usually be a pretty conversation ender at that point. But I always remember loving that response too, of like, I’m glad you made it awkward right now, because that they made it awkward actually, and you’re just responding with our truth. And it felt like he was advocating for me. And I think that’s something that I think about is I want my daughter to know that I’m looking out for her. And I think I would’ve loved it if someone made it awkward for me growing up, but make it awkward. That feels nice. That feels true.

Dr. Becky: I love. I love that and I do think the image of I didn’t start the awkwardness, I didn’t really make it awkward. It was made awkward for me. And so I can like hit that ball back to the tennis court side where it initiated like I didn’t serve this ball, you know, I’m just giving it back. And then often I think as women, again, it’s a, a bigger discussion. We’re like “oh, you’re so sensitive” or “oh, like you don’t have to say it so aggressively”. And, um, it’s really a perversion of the truth. If you look at it, you’re like, I did not begin it. I just, you know, hit it back over. That’s an act of self-protection. That’s really not an act of aggression.

Sunita: Yeah, that’s, that’s so interesting with that idea of like, I didn’t make it awkward. You made it awkward. And I think my impulse is to almost like somehow contort it to make it feel nice and pleasant and not uncomfortable for either of us anymore. But I’m just gonna return it just like I received it.

Dr. Becky: That’s exactly right. Like serves in tennis that are hit hard. Even if you just put a racket up, it tends to go back hard. That’s because it was served hard, you know? So… Um, now I think there’s a couple other nuances here. Whenever I think about comments that are said to us that are inappropriate, or often I’m asked like, what am I supposed to tell my kid to do when they’re kind of bullied or when you know, someone says something inappropriate?” I think often we really do focus on what do we say back, but my take here is what’s way more important is what we say to ourselves. And I think that’s something none of us were taught. Like when someone says something inappropriate to us, the answer isn’t coming up with a good zinger to them. The answer is actually trying to self protect. And so when someone says to you “you know, oh, just one kid, do you worry she’s gonna be like kind of lonely and selfish, “right? Like, okay, there’s the tennis ball. You’re allowed to say whatever you want back. But I feel like more important Sunita, is what might you say to yourself in that moment?

Sunita: Yeah, I feel good about the family that I’ve created. I feel proud of it.

Dr. Becky: I just wanna pause on that. I actually have the chills. Like it’s really interesting visually, I think, to see that ball coming your way. Like “oh, do you ever worry she’s gonna be lonely? You know? I don’t know. You’re gonna think about having another kid” and just like, I don’t know why in the movie of this moment, I picture like a pause button and then you’re on your side just saying to yourself like, “I felt really good about my family. I feel really proud of my family and the decisions that led to this family”, like maybe bolstering that a little more. Just saying like “I know that, and no one can take away my knowing that.” And then if we played the movie from there, you know, the irony is when we bolster ourself in that way, we create a little barrier. We’re like, yeah, this comment now is no longer infiltrating me. It just kind of lives in the ether outside of me. And then the irony is whether we wanna come back with a, like hitting that ball back or like a zinger or whether we just decide at that moment like, I just actually think I’m gonna kind of get up and get a glass of water and or just say “like, yeah, great question. Anyway, tell me about work.” Like, you know, like it actually becomes so much less important because we no longer use the comment we have to someone else as a way of validating ourselves. We’ve already done that. And so what happens next is like kind of neither here nor there, which feels very freeing.

Sunita: It really does. When you said that visual of standing there, you know, saying that and saying like, none of this other stuff, it really matters. It’s almost my mind went to thinking, what was anyone….What did you even say? Like, I don’t even remember your comments anymore. I’m kind of into this moment now.

Dr. Becky: That’s exactly right. And then I can tell you in my own life, there are moments I’m like, I’m feeling kind of spicy today. I’m just gonna like, I just, and, and I know this person and I just, I’m in the mood. Like I’m gonna like kind of give it back, you know? And then there’s other moments with the same person or someone else, and I’m like, you know what? It’s not that it’s quote not worth it, I just don’t wanna do it. So I’ll say something like “it seems like you have a lot of thoughts about how many kids I have. If you’re ever coming at that from a place of like actually wanting to be curious about my journey, I’m happy to talk to you about that. If it’s coming from a place of feeling like there’s one right way, that’s not a conversation I’m interested in having. I just wanted to lay out those two options for you”, or I feel like saying, “yeah, I don’t really. That’s not really on my mind right now, but I really heard that you’re reading this book and I wanna hear it.” Like I just give myself freedom to say any of it because I’ve already done for myself what I needed to do for myself.

Sunita: Yes. Yeah. That’s also grounding to know that regardless of what they do, I know what I’m going to do and know when the mood hits me. Cause it does sometimes I do feel like giving back like a zinger or something like that to them. And the satisfaction of seeing it land feels nice, but sometimes I don’t feel like doing that.

Dr. Becky: That’s exactly right. It’s not like you have nothing to prove. You’re just like, might be in the mood, you know,

Sunita: Yes, yes. I feel like playing this way of tennis right now.

Dr. Becky: Exactly. One day when your daughter faces these things, whether it’s, “oh, you don’t have a brother or sister. Is that so sad?” Or, or maybe it’s not that. Maybe it is something much more, in some ways, aggressive. Maybe someone makes a comment about the color of her skin or you know, or it’s just like “you’re no good at soccer, no one likes you, we don’t wanna play with you.” That idea of like, I always find it powerful, like, what if we teach that to the next generation? Like it’s not about what you say to someone else. It’s really about what you say to yourself, and maybe one day I can see a moment with your daughter where you’re like “look, actually, there are times people say things to me about having one kid, and this is how I kind of pause and talk to myself” and then you’re like really in that process together. So powerful.

Sunita: Yeah. I think that’s what I would really want. And I think that’s so helpful to hear cause I think it’s part of my fear of how do I coach her in those moments. I don’t, I have no idea what the script is gonna be so I can tell her what her line should be in this, but what I do know is how we can talk about what she’s feeling afterwards, what that was like for her.

Dr. Becky: That’s exactly right. You can talk about that. You can teach her, like I think kids learning the idea of a mantra. So a mantra is something you say to yourself when everything feels really big. A mantra is something really simple and small, and sometimes it’s nice to have something simple and small to say to yourself when things feel really big. Right? I dunno. Something like that, that’s so something we can teach our kids, they’ll take that with them to the playground or to that sleepover or to the math class or wherever they feel vulnerable. We don’t have to change what everyone says to them if we’re focused on like kind of what they do and say for themselves.

Sunita: Yeah. We don’t have to change what people say to them. We focus on what’s going on with them, and I love the idea of if she’s ever feeling spicy, she, you know, serves out some whatever serves she would like to that day, I, I just have an image of someone asking her dumb question. Her coming back with like, oh, do you ever get a sad thing? I’m like, “yes. Very sad. Now, what would you like to do with this? Where, where’s the conversation gonna go?” I think there’s something that I, I hope she gets to do both.

Dr. Becky: I do too. I feel like I will go on record saying I feel like we need some more women, like throwing out some spicy comments.

Sunita: Yes.

Dr. Becky: Serving the awkwardness back to, you know, to where it originated. So I will, I will go on record, you know, with you saying we, we sign, we sign our names to that.

Sunita: More spiciness. Yes, agreed.

Dr. Becky Outro: Thanks to Airbnb, remember your home could be worth more than you think, find out more at Airbnb.com/Host and thanks to Mommy’s Bliss, check out their new Pain & Fever medicine at mommysbliss.com.

Thank you for listening. To share a story or ask me a question, go to good inside.com/podcast. Or you could write me at podcast@goodinside.com.

Parenting is the hardest and most important job in the world, and you deserve resources and support so you feel empowered, confident, for this very important job you hold. I’m so excited to share Good Inside Membership. It’s the first platform that brings together content and experts you trust with a global community of like valued parents. It’s game changing and built for a busy parent who wants to make the most out of the few minutes they have.

Good Inside with Dr. Becky is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Nuzum at Magnificent Noise. Our production staff includes Sabrina Farhi, Julia Natt, and Kristin Mueller.

I would also like to thank Erica Belsky, Mary Panico, Brooke Zant 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.