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Dr. Becky Kennedy, a New York City-based clinical psychologist who coaches parents through difficult moments with their kids, has created a booming business centered on the notion that kids are, essentially, good people. The idea sounds simple, but to Kennedy, it’s profoundthe key to unlocking healthy parent-child relationships. And that insight, which Kennedy has developed into the Good Inside method, has turned “Dr. Becky” from prominent psychologist into a celebrity-status parenting guru. [Image: Dr. Becky] Early in her career, Kennedy embraced what she calls a behavior-first, reward-and-punishment” approach to parenting. But she came to understand that the method, which emphasizes discipline and consequences, doesn’t help children develop the skills they need to handle complicated emotional situations. So, Kennedy came up with an entirely new framework. The basic idea of Good Inside is that children act out when they feel misunderstood or their needs aren’t being metthat their bad behavior doesn’t reflect their inherent character. And parents who approach them through this perspective are better able to set boundaries and develop healthy relationships with their children. When COVID-19 hit in 2020, Kennedy joined Instagram to dispense advice to parents struggling with their suddenly trapped-at-home children. Dr. Becky soon became a social media sensation: She currently has more than 3 million Instagram followers and a growing presence on TikTok. In the meantime, she’s spun her Good Inside brand into a bestselling book, a podcast, and a subscription-based app, which launched last year and uses generative AI trained on Kennedy’s writing and videos to give parents personalized, specific advice to deal with situations in real time. The Good Inside app, which costs $276 a year, now counts more than 50,000 members. Fast Company spoke to Kennedy about her approach to empowering parents, using generative AI and social media to spread her message, and growing the Good Inside brand. What made you join Instagram in 2020? I started to see that we create issues in childhood and then we try to solve them in adulthood. When I noticed this, I couldn’t unthink it. I’m always focused on efficiency. I think what led me to Instagram was the thought that more people need to know this. More people need access to the type of education that you get in every other job. Parenting is the hardest job in the world, and we are sold this bullshit narrative that we should have a maternal instinct and that it should come naturally. The only thing that comes naturally in parenting is how you were parented. Technology is now being used to solve a lot of the world’s struggles and make certain things easier. Where’s the education and the technology for parents? I want parents to say, I feel like I have the best parenting coach in the world in my pocket. I shouldn’t spiral after I yell at my kid. It shouldn’t be a mystery what to say when my kid comes home after getting in trouble at school. [Image: Dr. Becky] Is that why you developed the Good Inside app? We grew completely organically on Instagram. Parents have basically told us along the way what they want, and we’re just serving it up for them. They want education. They want access to experts and access to each other so they know theyre not alone. With that kind of insight we’re like, okay, we are going to create this ongoing experience. The app has a subscription model because if you’re a parent with kids, they are often living in your home for 18 years. We just want to be with people on their journey. We have more than 50,000 members in over 108 countries, even though we’re still just English-speaking. We heard from parents during [the pandemic] that they wanted longer content. But now they are on the go and need advice for very specific situations, so it needs to be personalized. So when someone only has five minutes, they can feel productive. This is really a digital product, just like Duolingo. We want parents to have a way to learn the language of parenting. Parents can type in a specific situation, and get practical advice on what they can do tailored to them using generative AI. They can also delve deeper and learn more if they want to. What is the overarching theory behind Good Inside, and how did you come to it? This all came together in my private practice. I’d work with adults, and I felt like there was one thing that was true about everyone, regardless of what they came to talk about. It’s that the patterns and the circuitry that were put in our bodies to protect us and help us adapt early on in life start to work against us in adulthood. A lot of our early childhood adaptations ironically become symptoms in adulthood. [People wonder], Why don’t I trust people? I’m so hypervigilant. I don’t think I was born that way. So what did I learn early on that made me untrusting? I used to tell adults that the circuits that were put in place to protect us are hard to unwind because our body thinks it’s helping us. So I’d work with adults in helping them understand why they do things they do. That’s the first step, because we can’t intervene before we understand. How does this theory apply to parenting? I’d see parents of a four-year-old, they’d be like, My kid is hitting, and I don’t know what to do. I’d say to them what I was taught, which was to tell their kid, “We’re going to do a timeout.” Then take away their dessert and give them a sticker every time they don’t hit their friend. But then I pictured doing this with the adults I’d see in my practice: Them saying, I yelled at someone at work, and me being like, Give me your phone, and by the way, you didn’t hit someone yesterday, so here’s a sticker. In that scenario, they’d reply, Why would taking away my phone help me stay calm? I think you just made me feel worse. Nobody would come back to my office. No good CEOs make employees better by punishing them. But weÙve been doing this to kids for generations. We think, I’m punishing my kid and I tell myself that’s being in charge. But punishing is a sign of desperation, not authority. Good Inside is an approach for someone who can say, “I need to own my parental authority. What do you advise parents to do in this scenario instead? First, I have to set a true boundary. I would go to my kid and say, I’m not going to let you hit. When I did that, I’d actually hold their wrist or get in between them and the other kid. This is the opposite of what a lot of us do as parents. Many parents might say, Okay, stop hitting, or we do something weird and say, I’m going to count to three. It doesn’t make any sense. I would never say, I’m going to count to three and I hope you don’t run into oncoming traffic. I would just not let my kid run into oncoming traffic. That is what I call setting a boundary and embodying your authority. After I set a boundary, I’d say something to stay connected to my kid and see the good inside them. Something like, “Hey, you’re allowed to be mad. Your sister’s playing with your favorite truck. But let’s figure out another way you can communicate that. [Image: Dr. Becky] What does this method teach kids? Big picture: Nobody learns skills for better behavior by going to their room. I don’t know a four-year-old who’s like, Oh, let me search on the internet what to do the next time I’m mad so I don’t hit. A four-year-old is feeling ashamed. They feel like a bad kid. Ironically, their feelings are going to be harder to manage and they’re more likely to hit tomorrow. Good Inside separates who you are from what you donot to let you off the hook, but to provide a foundation to build skills and to improve behavior. What if parents say, I have a four-year-old, theyre not going to understand that? They will understand. They’ll understand that you set a boundary to stop them from acting out. They finally feel like they have an adult in the room keeping them safe. And they’ll understand that you’re looking at them. They’re a good person having a hard time, not a bad kid doing bad things. That difference is massive. People often use the word “boundary” to express something that others should react to. But in your definition, it sounds like a boundary is something that requires nothing of the other person. Often we say we’re setting a boundary when in fact we’re just making a request. Parents say, I set a boundary, and my kid’s not respecting it. Whenever I hear that, I think someone has an incorrect definition of a boundary. My definition of a boundary, whether you’re a parent or not, is something you tell someone you will do. It requires the other person to do nothing. A boundary might look like you saying to your kid, Hey, I’m going to walk over to you, and if things aren’t calm by the time I get there, I’m picking you up and I’m carrying you to your room. Because my No. 1 job is to keep you safe, and hitting isn’t safe and you’re clearly not capable of making good decisions right now. When a parent says, I’m going to literally hold you to stop hitting your friend, other parents on the playground might watch that and think, what the hell are they doing? What’s the best way to respond in that scenario? I think you’re asking a bigger question: How much of my time do I spend in other people’s brains thinking about what they think about me? And how much of my time do I spend in my own brain gazing in and thinking about what I want and need? What’s really sadand this is what happens to a lot of women because were trained to gaze out before we gaze inis we don’t even really know what we want to do anymore. One of the biggest things we do at Good Inside is empower parents to be the sturdiest, most healed version of themselves, which is the most important thing they can do to help their kids. [Image: Dr. Becky] So how do parents use the app? For instance, what if I had a kid, and they spilled a glass or water and screamed about it for an hour. How would the app help me? Let’s do it right now. I’m typing the scenario into the app. Want me to read to you what it said? That sounds really intense. Kids often have big reactions to small accidents because they feel overwhelmed, and don’t know how to manage that. Your kid probably felt a mix of surprise, frustration, and maybe even fear of the mess, which led to that hour-long scream fest. In moments like this, start by just acknowledging what’s happening, acknowledge the surprise, not just the feeling, wow, that was a surprise. Then they’ll probably start to calm down and you can guide them through cleaning up together. This not only helps them learn to manage the situation, it also reinforces that mistakes happen and it’s okay to feel upset. Remember, you’re really helping your kid learn how to navigate big feelings. Then we have the next step for you if you want it. We have a primer to kids who are overly emotional. It’s a little bit longer, but it’ll take you one level deeper if that’s what you’re looking for. How did you develop AI tools that can deliver these kinds of responses? It took a year. I worked with an amazing clinical team of people who are trained in the Good Inside approach and our amazing machine-learning engineers. In terms of the content itself, I have a produced a lot, so it’s trained on that. The app costs almost $25 a month. How did you think about that pricing strategy? We think about things as expensive or cheap relative to what we’re comparing it to. If people compare our app to free reels on Instagram, they’d think it’s expensive. We have a lot of members who say, This is transforming my life at $25 a month. I pay way more than that in copays for my in-network therapist. My copays add up to over a hundred dollars a month.” So, this actually feels ncredibly reasonable. Nobody values their own mental health or their kids’ mental health as low on their list, and yet sometimes I think when we look at where we invest money, there’s a lot of other things we place above that. When you compare the price point to anything else that involves mental wellness, I think the value you get far exceeds the value you’re investing. Is it ever too late for someone to change their parenting style? Everything in our app, in our membership, in our company is based on the belief that it is not too late. We underestimate how much our bodies accept repair. We are all looking for the compassion and understanding that we never got. I think when parents say, Is it too late? They’re kind of saying, “Have I lost the ability to stay calm, to feel good about myself, to feel confident that I can handle hard challenges with uncertainty?” I want to give that person a hug. I know it sounds cheesy, but I want them to feel the strength of my conviction in saying, “No.” Will the journey be easy? Will everything change tomorrow? No way. But as long as it takes for our circuitry to build, it doesn’t take that same amount of time for it to unwind. We need a guide, we need some powerful ideas. We definitely need some practical, actionable strategies and many experiments. I think that’s what I’m most proud of. At Good Inside, we change a parent even more than their parenting.
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E-Commerce
Continuing its adherence to the tech industrys motto of move fast and break things, the current administration has recently put the U.S. Department of Education (DoE) on the chopping block. This 46-year-old institution (yes, it really is younger than the original Star Wars) oversees federal education policy, ensures equal access to education, and administers the federal student loan program. As a recovering high school English teacher, I would argue that all of the DoEs responsibilities are vital to our nation and shouldnt be part of the Taxes Chainsaw Massacre. And Im glad our executive branch cannot dismantle the Department of Education without Congressional approval. But that doesnt change the fact that the Secretary of Education has slashed the DoE workforce, and the president has floated the idea of moving student loan responsibilities to a different department, like the Small Business Administration (SBA). So, where does the proposed dismantling of the Department of Education leave federal student loan borrowers? Borrowers are subject to the legal loan contracts they signed with the DoE. This means the potential chaos could cause some localized chaos in the vicinity of your bank account. To help borrowers understand what to expect and how to protect themselves while the dust settles around the DoE, I spoke to student loan experts Kat Tretina and Mark Kantrowitz. Heres what you need to know. The SBA probably wont take over your student loans Although the president has been treating all government agencies as if they can be changed on a whim, it isn’t that simple. If you remember your more obscure Schoolhouse Rock songs, youll recall that we have a three-ring government and no one part can be more powerful than any other is. In this situation, “changing the location of the current federal student loan program, creating a new program, or even resurrecting an old guaranteed loan program, would require an act of Congress, Kantrowitz says. Thats because the Higher Education Act of 1965 mandates that all federal student aid programs are located and managed by Federal Student Aid (FSA), Kantrowitz says. It’s right there in the statute. They can’t really interpret the law as the secretary of Education can delegate the authority to the Small Business Administration. If the current administration decides to try it anyway, they would have to flout the law and face lawsuits to dismantle the DoE and move your student loans to another agency. This may be cold comfort, considering how little lawsuits seem to phase the president. But Kantrowitz offers some logistical comfort, as well: “Keep in mind that the SBA is cutting something like 43% of its staff, he says. So, how are they gonna do all this new federal loan stuff with fewer staff? Let alone what they currently do? It’s a recipe for chaos. You may struggle to get personalized answers about your loans Even though your loans are likely to stay right where they are, you may still experience some turbulence during repayment. Specifically, the DoE layoffs means the department has lost years of institutional knowledge as well as the necessary labor force to maintain the FSA website and provide call center support. These mass firings may affect borrowers sooner rather than later. Tretina, who has been reporting on student loans for nine years, stated on March 12, 2025, that all of my contacts with the Department of Education were laid off, and getting a hold of anyone for information about the latest changes is near impossible. Kantrowitz does offer a recommendation for how current borrowers can get the answers they need in the wake of this DoE reduction in force: Make friends with your student loan servicer. Federal student loans are serviced by contractor organizations that manage loan repayment. While the DoE owns your federal student loan, a separate loan servicer is the organization you deal with directly when making payments, requesting forbearance or deferment, or changing your repayment plan. Loan servicers have to keep up-to-date with DoE changes and can typically answer questions about your specific loan situation. But there are other calls you can make if youre confused about your loans and cant reach the DoE. Your college financial aid administrator is a good source of information, Kantrowitz says. Even if youve already graduated and you are repaying your loans, they can still provide you with useful information. This is also true for any borrowers who are repaying loans but didnt finish their degree. Get organized to keep the chaos at bay Any changes to federal student loans will only affect new borrowers. Current borrowers can count on their loan agreements remaining the same as they were when they signed them. But very few of us can recite the specifics of the loan agreements they signed in collegewhich is why you should protect yourself by hunting down those documents and keeping them handy. To be clear, it is exceedingly unlikely that the U.S. government will start playing a shell game with your current federal student loan. Locating, downloading, and printing out your loan agreement is a way to protect yourself from misinformation or misunderstandings about your loan. Heres how: If you have your documents available, they can provide you with a starting point for understanding how a proposed change might affect you. If you dont have your loan agreement and an understanding of your borrower rights and responsibilities, its a lot easier to panic if you hear a rumor that the WWE is now in charge of the DoE. That said, Tretina also recommends keeping hard copies of your payments, just in case. If you have student loans, download all of your statements, particularly records of past payments, she says. Having these records will ensure you get credit for all of your payments, even if the overworked remaining DoE employees make an oopsie or experience an IT glitch. Be the order you want to see in the world Its easy to feel overwhelmed by the chaotic news cycle, especially when it starts affecting things that were already overwhelming, lke student loans. In addition to breathing into a paper bag, you can help calm your concerns by remembering that moving your student loans to another agency would require an Act of Congress. While the recent staff cuts at the DoE may make it difficult to get personalized answers about your loans, you can always reach out to your loan servicer or your alma maters financial aid office for assistance. And downloading and printing copies of your loan agreement and statements will help protect you from both misinformation and potential mistakes.
Category:
E-Commerce
When Todd Willing was 15, he entered a high school work experience program at Fords Australian Design Studio. His father owned a garage, and hed always been around cars. I had a loose understanding of what went into them because of that exposure, and I always had a creative bent I guess, says Willing. I would be drawing cars most of the time, to the frustration of my teachers. The experience is still so vivid in Willings mind: the plane ride to Melbourne, the energy and feel of a space devoted to creativity, the culture and environment of a creative team. That was it for me, he says. I wasnt going to be doing anything else.Now, 22 years later and still at Ford (though this time in Michigan), Willing is Head of Design, leading the design practice for Ford and Lincoln brand vehicles worldwide. Having been the chief exterior designer on the 2017 Ford GT and leading teams responsible for the F-150, Ranger, Bronco, Explorer, Expedition, and more, Willing has been a key part of shaping Ford vehicles around the world. And while his role is fairly big-picture, Willing says he feels a deep responsibility that ties back to his industrial design education: to create something new or improve on something, making peoples lives and experiences better. Willing says so much of that work is creative and connected with various disciplines across the design studio. Turns out, to prepare for that kind of work, Willing still somehow manages to hang around cars. When he isnt working, he races vintage race cars. When youre in a race car, your safety depends on 101% concentration. It pushes everything else aside. Right after that, I feel freer to be creative. As designers we make thousands of decisions on behalf of our customers . . . we need to be armed with deep insights. In our case, it’s motor vehicles and services. It should be done to make lives better in some waywith thoughtful design, desirability, and being straightforward. Thats really important. We have research groups that help us do that. We have ethnographic research, where we spend time with customers. You need to take that and apply a lot of care and attention to get it right. To solve for unmet needs. In many cases, its doing this before our customers or users even realize they are working around something, or that problem exists to solve. Thats where the real magic happens for me. Im part of a bigger industrial systemmarket trends, legislation; these are constraints to pure creativity. Sometimes that might seem limiting, but also its an opportunity to innovate with purpose. You have something very specific to solve and there are obstacles in the way that forces innovation in a lot of cases. Sometimes when I need to clear my mind, I race vintage cars. Thats super helpful when I want to be creative. I did go karting as a kid, and later on, once I could afford to, I got back into racing cars. I have a few now and it’s definitely therapy for me. The 2017 Ford GT [Photo: Ford] I like things to be optimized. When things have a clear purpose, you can go deep into that purpose and make sure that the product delivers on that. Its not enough to be visually appealing. If you look at our industry, theres been a heavy bias toward styling and that chemical reaction people have in their brain when they see something thats appealing. Thats critical, but doing it with more meaning and purpose and delivering on the function is critical to me. My personal philosophy, I like to edit things to the point where theres nothing extraneous without function. It allows you to put more content or money into the things that mean something. I surround myself with creative talent as much as I can. This role requires me to be available for different aspects of the business. I make sure I build in the right amount of time to have conversations around creativity, and be with the creative team. I find it helpful to have some specific creative reviews where there is no hierarchy. The person with the most knowledge or the best idea holds the floor, and we park our stripes at the door. Being face-to-face with the team, and giving attention to the designers with the least experiencethey are the ones faced with the challenges of design the most, too. Its a catalyst for fresh and interesting design. I believe good design plays a prominent and positive role in daily life. It should talk to you. Good design should telegraph purpose, capability, proper use, and of course be highly attractive to those whom it is intended to serve. I encourage our teams to avoid false adornment. Having a clear and differentiated mission at the start of a project is a big enabler for success. When we were creating the latest generation of Ford GT, the ambition to race and win at Le Mans was the mission. Using this as a guide for decisions, if a proposed design element had a negative impact on the performance, then it wasnt allowed on the car. Automotive design is part of a complicated ecosystem. The investment required for new products is very high, and the product cycles are much longer than most industries. This means that creating products that are meaningful and have longevity are important. There are many factors that influence our approach: different market trends, global politics, legislation, etc. Although on the surface constraints can seem limiting, they often drive innovation. Affordability is becoming ever more critical in the face of new competition and economic factors. This comes back to my point about the criticality of making the right choices on behalf of prospective customers. Our CEO talks about there being no space at Ford for Vanilla Cars. This means that everything needs to have a clear purpose that is attractive and useful to our customers. Our products should be focused and be the best at what they do. Ideas, until they are proven, can be fragile. But, its important to make sure we draw them out even if they are not obvious home runs. Making sure the ideas have time to breathe a little bit . . . usually that leads to a spark that has potential and it will invariably inspire the rest of the team to grow off of that initial idea. If the inspiration in the team is low, look at what you have and try to flesh it out. Then usually that inspires something in others. I have a motto for my team: Design is not an attribute. There is always a trade to be hada way of spending moneywhat choices you make along the way. Its an intentional product creation that marries purpose, function, and desirabilitynot necessarily in that order, but it needs to consider all of those things. I am frustrated when I hear design being referred to as the darling department. If we turn up around that motto, that perception disappears.
Category:
E-Commerce
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