Had a surreal moment this week—Dr. Becky Kennedy, an incredible parenting coach with millions of followers, mentioned me on Lenny's Podcast, a tech podcast with millions of downloads. It came up during a section about AI. As someone who wrote about how transformative her Good Inside app was for our family's bedtime struggles, it was quite a moment.
But while really fun, that's not why you should listen to this episode.
You should listen because Dr. Becky is talking to a tech/product audience, applying parenting frameworks to workplace leadership. And, I think if you work and have kids, you'll recognize yourself in both halves of the conversation.
A few moments with exceptional resonance:
"Connect before you correct" - You'd never ask a coworker to context-switch mid-flow and then blame them for not listening. But at home with your kid at 7pm? Different story.
"Default to the most generous interpretation" - When someone belabors their point in a meeting: are they being difficult, or do they not feel heard? Same question applies when your kid melts down about something that seems trivial.
"Sturdy leadership" - You can see someone else's emotional experience as real without being overwhelmed by it yourself. You do this when people at work are in a hard spot. But when your toddler has a meltdown? Being the calm, sturdy pilot is harder.
"Optimizing for short-term happiness builds fragility" - If you remove all friction and tough interactions, teams will struggle down the road. Same with kids—if every discomfort gets removed, they never learn to work through it.
Why this matters for technology and parenting:
The principles that make teams effective are the same ones that help kids develop resilience. Dr. Becky's frameworks can help you with your tough parenting moments and the ones you’re less sure about how to approach.
If you're a working parent trying to figure out the hard questions—phones, social media, AI, screen time—this episode is worth your time. Not because it gives you rules, but because it gives you ways of thinking that actually transfer between the contexts you're already living in.
And here’s the Andrew Hogan shoutout:
