Dr. Becky is becoming a household name for parents with children under the age of 10 these days.
The 38-year-old clinical psychologist has become a very popular parenting expert who is known for giving counseling through Instagram. However, until February 2020, Becky Kennedy, Ph.D., didn’t even have an Instagram account.
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And now, she has over 600,000 followers on the platform, 95% of whom are women and 78% of whom are ages 25 to 44. She has sold more than 35,000 workshops—on topics ranging from potty training to how to deal with “deeply feeling kids”—at $54 each or up to $275 for a “bundle,” meaning that, conservatively, she has brought in more than $1.8 million in a year from her workshops alone.
Her podcast, Good Inside With Dr. Becky, almost instantly went to No. 1 on the Apple Podcasts Kids & Family chart when it launched in April. She also publishes a weekly newsletter and an upcoming (and most-likely bestselling) book. In addition, she offers a Dr. Becky method for mental health professionals to be certified in.
So why is she so popular? Maybe because her Instagram advice is not about kids but about the kid inside each parent. Her biggest rule of thumb is to soothe the parent and the child will follow.
Kennedy likes to tell a story that she frequents in workshops and on her Instagram about being on a plane with turbulence.
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“I think about these three announcements and which one we’d all want to hear,” she says.
“The first announcement is like, ‘STOP YELLING! YOU’RE RUINING MY FOCUS! YOU’RE THE WORST PASSENGERS EVER!’ Another version that would feel awful is somebody being like, ‘I don’t know what you’re freaking out about. This is a perfectly fine flight. You have nothing to worry about.’ The pilot I would want would be someone who says, ‘I know what I’m doing, I’ve done this before, there is turbulence, it’s scary, and I know where we’re going and where we’re gonna land.’”
This allegory is a reminder that Kennedy urges to adhere to: be like the third pilot.
“There’s such a sturdy boundary in there of saying, like, That’s your feeling and I can recognize it in you, but it’s not contagious to me. When kids feel like their feelings are contagious to their parents, it’s just double dysregulation.”
Be sure to follow her and more of her brilliant tips and parenting tricks here.
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