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In a world that’s constantly telling young people that they’re not good enough, pretty enough, or smart enough, how do we break the cycle and raise kids who genuinely *like* themselves?

To dive into this crucial topic, I’m joined by Kasey Edwards, author of ‘Raising Girls Who Like Themselves’ and ‘Bringing Up Boys Who Like Themselves’.

In this conversation, Kasey shares powerful, research-backed techniques to help us raise kids with healthy self-esteem and a strong sense of self. 

Tune in to discover: how to teach body ownership to children, why fostering independence from an early age is essential, the surprising influence of grandparents on kids’ body image, critical mindset shifts that develop strength of character, practical ways to approach kids when they resist activities, why self-acceptance truly begins at home, and how to empower the next generation to grow up confident, resilient, and unapologetically themselves.

This conversation could be one of the most important episodes I’ve ever recorded. It’s packed with the kind of actionable, impactful advice that can *literally* change the course of your child’s future, and allow you to better support ALL the young people in your life.

So if you want to learn how to raise a generation of empowered, self-assured kids, then please, do yourself a favor: press play now — this unmissable episode is for you.

About Kasey Edwards

Kasey is a researcher and international best-selling author of 9 books, including ‘Raising Girls Who Like Themselves’ and ‘Bringing Up Boys Who Like Themselves’. Her work has been read by over 10 million people worldwide, and she is a passionate champion for women and children.

In this episode we chat about:

• The powerful moment that inspired her to help kids build self-esteem (2:58)
• The unique perspective shift that can transform how kids see themselves (6:32)
• Rethinking praise — and the surprising approach that builds real confidence (10:24)
• How to teach kids “body ownership” — and why this matters more than you think (21:36)
• How to foster true strength of character in kids, starting today (32:08)
• Why mastering independence early on is a game-changer (41:54)
• The unexpected role grandparents play in shaping body image (47:26)
• Why a child who genuinely likes themselves is free to BE themselves (50:14)
• A smart approach for when kids resist activities — no battles needed! (54:13)
• The critical role of acceptance at home and how it shapes young lives (60:49)

Episode resources:

• SheLaunch (join here)
• Mastering Your Mean Girl by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Open Wide by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Comparisonitis by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Time Magic by Melissa Ambrosini and Nick Broadhurst (book)
• Emotion Wheel (here)
• Body Confidence Family Health Check (here)
• Raising Girls Who Like Themselves by Kasey Edwards (book)
• Bringing Up Boys Who Like Themselves by Kasey Edwards (book)
• Thrivers: The Surprising Reasons Why Some Kids Struggle and Others Shine by Michele Borba Ed D. (book)
• Kasey Ewards (Instagram)

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The following transcript has been automatically generated and not checked for accuracy.

Melissa: [00:00:00] In episode 629 with Casey Edwards, she is teaching us how to raise girls and boys who love themselves. This is such a powerful episode. You’re going to love it. Welcome to the Melissa Ambrosini Show. I’m your host, Melissa, bestselling author of Mastering Your Mean Girl, Open Wide, Comparisonitis, and Time Magic.

And I’m here to remind you that love is sexy, healthy is liberating, and wealthy isn’t a dirty word. Each week, I’ll be getting up close and personal with thought leaders from around the globe, as well as your weekly dose of So that you can create epic change in your own life and become the best version of yourself possible.

Are you ready? Beautiful. Hey, beautiful. Welcome back to the show. I’m so excited about this episode because I am a student for life. I am always open, [00:01:00] willing, and eager to learn and grow in business, in my relationships, in my health, and in parenting, which is why I’m so excited to have Casey on the show today.

And for those of you that have never heard of Casey, she is a researcher and international bestselling author of nine books, including Raising Girls Who Like Themselves, which I’m currently reading, and it is blowing my mind, and Bringing Up Boys Who Like Themselves. Now, her work has been read by over 10, 000 people.

million people worldwide. And she is a passionate champion for women and children. Now, like I mentioned, raising girls who like themselves, which I’m reading right now is just mind blowing and bringing up boys who like themselves. These are essential reading for all parents. And for everything that we mentioned in today’s episode, you can check out in the show notes and that’s over at MelissaRambrosini.

com forward slash six, two, nine. Now if you have children or one day you want to have children, you are going to want to listen to this episode. Let’s dive [00:02:00] in.

Casey, welcome to the show. I’m so excited to have you here, but before we dive in, can you tell us what you had for breakfast this morning? What’s it? Do you know? I 

Kasey: almost thought about having something different because. What I have for breakfast is so boring and I didn’t want to tell you, but we’re going for authenticity, right?

So I just had peanut butter on toast. It’s the same thing I have every day. I’m like a dog. I will eat the same breakfast for my whole life. 

Melissa: Yeah. I’m a creature of habit too. I kind of rotate between two different things, oats or a smoothie. So I get it. It’s simple and it doesn’t take any decision. You just get up and you do it.

So you know what you’re doing. I love that. What have your guests? They have amazing breakfast. So I had a bit of like breakfast inadequacy. Some people do. It’s pretty amazing. I love it. And makes me want to go over for breakfast. It sounds delicious. Now, I’m so [00:03:00] excited to have you here. Your books, Raising Girls Who Like Themselves and Bringing Up Boys Who Like Themselves have resonated with millions of parents worldwide.

What inspired you to focus on self esteem and self love in children? And what was the turning point that had led you to write these amazing, important books? Very powerful books. Thank 

Kasey: you. Thank you for saying that. So these books I co wrote with my husband, Dr. Christopher Scanlon, and we are researchers and writers and along came our first daughter, Violet.

So that was in 2009. And we felt so ill equipped to be parents. Like I remember being in the hospital, not knowing how to put a nappy on and Chris was there trying to read the nappy box and there’s no instructions on the box. So that just gives you an insight into how unprepared we were to be parents.

And when we bought this precious bundle home [00:04:00] with us, Violet, I really, like all parents, all mothers wanted to be the best mother I could possibly be for her. And I didn’t know how to do that. And my deep underlying feeling, my goal for Violet was I wanted her to grow up liking herself more than I did when I was growing up.

So I had a life where I should have liked myself. I ticked the boxes. I did well at school. I had friends, but I never felt enough. And I took that feeling of inadequacy into adulthood with me, and I wanted to free my little girl from that. And I didn’t know how, because I thought, well, if I raise my children, I’ve now got two daughters, the way I was parented, well, then the same thing would happen.

So what Chris and I did was, it was a 10 year project. We focused first on girls because we had girls and I just wanted them to be robust. So the, where we came from was that. We [00:05:00] can’t even imagine what our children are going to be facing. We don’t know the threats and we don’t know the opportunities because the world is changing so fast.

So instead of focusing on little individual problems or opportunities that we want in that moment, we wanted to work out how to build a strong enough foundation so that they would be ready for anything and so that they would be Secure enough to thrive and reach their potential, but also secure enough to weather the storms.

And so we wrote Raising Girls Who Like Themselves, and we came up with seven foundational pillars that if you get this right and your child will grow up liking themselves and then absolutely everything that you hope and dream for your child will become easier when they like themselves. And then when Raising Girls came out, the very first day it came out, we got, well, what about boys?

Don’t boys deserve to like themselves too? And I was like, [00:06:00] yes, they do. And a lot of boy parents were buying our girl book. And there’s a lot of crossover, of course, and for non binary children as well. But because the world does treat boys and girls differently. You know, soon, even if you parent gender neutrally in your home, as soon as they walk out the front door, they’re going to be treated differently.

We then researched how to build that same foundation in boys so they can grow up liking themselves too. 

Melissa: Beautiful. Thank you for doing this work. I’m so grateful. Can you share those seven foundations with us? Yeah. So as I said, this, they are slightly 

Kasey: different, but the, one of the pillars that is so important for both boys and girls is what we call a power perspective.

And so this is the idea that you can’t always control what the events that happen in your life, but you can control how you respond to those events. Yes. And we can teach our [00:07:00] children to respond in ways that work for them rather than work against them. And it is absolutely a skill. And I have seen this with my kids now, cause my old, Violet’s now 14.

And I can see the way that she just goes through life and life is just so much easier because she has this power perspective. And I’ll just give you an example. So this was many years ago. It was Violet’s birthday. She’d just come home from her birthday party and she was unwrapping her presents. And her little sister was helping unwrap the presents and one broke.

And so Violet got very upset by that. And as a parent. It’s so hard to watch your children struggle, right? So we wanted to rush in and, and fix it and say, don’t worry, honey, we’ll buy you another one. But that would have done nothing to build her power perspective because that would have told her, you’re right, you can’t handle that.

So we said to her. Look, it’s really disappointing that your [00:08:00] present is broken, and it is totally fine and understandable that you’re upset right now, but you have a choice to make. You can focus on that broken toy and you can be upset for the rest of the day, or you can choose to think about all the good things that happened today, your party, all the people who came and loved you or your other presents, and you can have a good day.

That is the choice that you get to make. And so that’s just one little example. One technique that we teach to parents is it’s called the giraffe. And this is the idea that you get to decide who you are and if you’re enough. And it works like this. So if somebody, what’s your daughter’s name? Bambi. Bambi.

Okay. So say Bambi takes her, uh, doll to kinder and someone says, Bambi, you’re a baby because you’ve got a doll and Bambi comes home and tells you, and you say to Bambi, well, if she [00:09:00] said that you’re a giraffe, would that make you a giraffe? And even at three and a half, Bambi knows that she is not a giraffe, right?

And so that is just a way to. Follow up with your child and say, you get to decide who you are. That is your superpower. Don’t give it to someone else. And we’ve been using that technique with our girls, their whole lives. And the other day, my daughter was coming home from school, my younger daughter, and she was kicking her shoes on the ground.

And I was like, Oh, what happened, honey? What happened today? And she goes, Oh, well, it was a bit tricky. And I said, Oh, what happened? And she said, well, Renee told all the girls I was dumb. And in that moment, it was like, Oh my God. Like I was back in that schoolyard. I was feeling her pain. I wanted to tell Renee a few things myself.

But then my daughter, she puts her hands on her hips and goes, so I’m going to have to sort that out tomorrow. Because she knows [00:10:00] she’s not a giraffe because we have been teaching that her whole life. When you get to those more tricky things in primary school, in high school, and even as an adult, I’m sure you get your fair share of criticism the way I do online.

I actually say to myself, I’m not a giraffe. I decide if I’m okay. 

Melissa: Yep. Yep. I love that. That’s so sweet. So, what are the seven foundations that we can help? So that, 

Kasey: that’s the power perspective. And oh, just one other technique I really like to share, so I know I’m taking a lot of time on the power perspective, but it really is the foundation for everything, is flipping praise.

So between the age of two and 10, your child will come to you about 6, 000 times asking for praise. Do you like my drawing? Do you like my outfit? Do you like my somersaults, right? Thanks. Every time we give that praise freely, we are essentially telling them that we get to decide if that’s good or [00:11:00] not. If we take a moment, it takes the same amount of time, right?

Because I know we’re all busy. And we stop and we give them our attention and say, you know what? It’s your drawing. So I’m really interested in what you think. You tell me what you think about your drawing. And if they like it, you go, well, that’s great because it’s your work. So what you think matters the most.

And if they don’t like it, well, then you say, well, let’s just talk about what you might like to do differently next time. That is 6, 000 times we get to tell our child that what they think matters the most. 

Melissa: And that’s, that’s empowering. That’s allowing them to trust themselves. Yeah. That’s so interesting because often, yeah, I praise, I’m like, wow, that’s beautiful.

Or wow, that’s wonderful. Like the Play Doh, you just, you know, the drawing, whatever it is, she’s three and a half, so it’s still Play Doh and different drawings and stuff. But I can see how That flip would be so [00:12:00] powerful because it’s empowering her to subtly start to trust herself and remember that her opinion is the most important opinion on this earth.

That’s right. Because at the 

Kasey: moment, you, the person giving Bambi feedback, you and all the other people in her life. Love her and have her best interests at heart, right? But there will come a time when she goes into the world and then she will face people who do not have her best interests at heart.

Don’t remind me. You can do the work now to prepare her for that by teaching her that she gets to decide who she is. And this is a real problem, particularly with girls. There are all these little micro moments where we teach girls that other people get to decide if they’re okay. And then by the age of 10, it really peaks.

And, you know, we spoke to girls who didn’t want to go to school because they were worried about what someone would think about their drink bottle. And [00:13:00] parents will say, you know, my daughter’s so insecure. I don’t know where it came from, but if we are continually teaching our daughters through all these little interactions that other people get to decide if she’s okay, she will by definition be insecure because you can’t control all the different responses that you’re going to get in the world.

Some people are going to be cruel. Some people are just going to be careless. Some people are going to have different values. So if your daughter’s going to like herself, she has to listen to her voice 

Melissa: first and foremost. One hundred percent. One hundred percent. 

Kasey: And so actually part of that is I really loved mastering the mean girl.

And I love that because what you did was put a name to that. And so we say to our girls, you know, we’re not mean to anyone, but we also don’t let anyone be mean to us. And when that happens. We can come back to our power [00:14:00] perspective. I am not a giraffe. I get to choose what I think about me and stand up to the people who are being mean to us, but also to that inner voice as well.

Okay. So that’s the power perspective. So the next one is body image, body confidence. And this used to just be a girl problem and boy parents didn’t used to have to worry about it. We don’t have the luxury of not worrying about boys body image anymore. Poor body image and eating disorders in boys is growing at an alarming rate.

It is still not being treated seriously the way girls are. Often if boys go to the doctor and present with symptoms of an eating disorder, doctors will not pick it up because we’re still biased on thinking it’s a girl problem. Or what can happen is that often they’re body image problems. present as healthy because they’re always at the gym, you know, [00:15:00] it’s an exercise problem, you know, that, you know, body dysmorphia, you know, you’re constantly bulking up, then you think, Oh, well that’s good.

Right. But it’s not good if it totally occupies the space in your brain and affects the way that you interact with the world and your balance with everything else. But so when we, we talk about body confidence, unfortunately, the message that parents get on how to build particularly their girl’s body image.

Is often part of the problem. And so, cause we tell parents and what society tells parents that the way you build your daughter’s body image is to tell her over and over again, that she’s beautiful. And I’m talking about physical beauty here. I love the way that you have reclaimed beauty to inner beauty.

So I’m talking about physical beauty, right? Tell your daughter that she’s pretty and gorgeous and cute over and over again. And then one day she will believe it. And that was what was done to us. Our parents told us we were beautiful, our [00:16:00] friends comment on our beauty, our attractiveness, doves told us thousands of times that we should all love the skin we’re in.

But if you look at women, most of our body image is, images are terrible, right? So that strategy did not work for us. So it’s crazy to think that it’s going to work for our children. And the reason it doesn’t work is firstly, if you comment on your daughter’s physical beauty over and over again, and we know that’s true, girls are more likely to receive more comments about their physical appearance than everything else combined, right?

So if they grow up when everyone only cares about their beauty, they will naturally assume that their physical beauty is the most important thing about them. That’s the thing that defines their worth in the world. And then they go into a world where they can never be beautiful and not. And that is just a fact.

No woman in the world is beautiful enough. [00:17:00] As you know, you can be a dancer at the Moulin Rouge and you can still think that, you know, there’s things that you can change about yourself, right? But what we’ve done is we’ve set girls up to fail. We’ve told them, this is the most important thing about you and you’re never going to get there, right?

So. The secret to real body confidence is to help our girls build their identity on things other than their physical beauty. See, beauty is an external measure. It’s something that someone else bestows on you and it’s something that someone else takes away. And every single one of us knows what it feels like to have beauty taken away from us.

It’s one of the world’s first weapons against women, isn’t it? To criticize our physical beauty. So we need to build their identities on things that they can control, things that the world can’t take away from them. Like their character, their kind, exactly, their creativity, their persistence. So [00:18:00] we actually found women, believe it or not, they do exist in the world who have really sturdy body images.

They just don’t care about how, what other people think about how they look and. And this blew my mind because when I was growing up and even as a young woman, I would not go out at night because I was having a fat day. I would sit in a meeting at work, not paying attention because I was looking at the way my thighs spread out on the chair.

You know, it, it took up all this space in my brain. So it really blew my mind to think that there were people out there that didn’t have to deal with that. So then Chris and I looked at that research and Really had a good look at all of those people’s stories. And some of them met the traditional definition of beauty, others didn’t.

The one thing they all had in common was they grew up in families that did not care about [00:19:00] physical beauty. It wasn’t talked about. It was something that it was just not valued. So what we say to parents is, I’m 

Melissa: not saying never tell your daughter that she’s beautiful. Oh my gosh. I know, like when she comes out, she’s like started picking her own outfits and like she comes out and my husband and I, like, cause we know this.

And I’m like, don’t comment, don’t comment. But I’m like, look how freaking cute she looks. We do it like silently. I’m like, far out. She’s so cute. But yeah, I’ve always said to her, you’re so beautiful inside and out. And then I say, I love your heart. I love how kind your heart is. I love how you share. You’re such a beautiful, kind, sharing person.

And yes, I think she’s so beautiful. I’m like, you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Of course. You know, and then when, you know, sometimes she’ll put a tutu on and she’ll be like, look, Papa, and I’m like, Oh, wow. That’s, you know, we try [00:20:00] not to make a big deal about it. So yeah, I get it.

And it’s so important. It’s really important. Yeah. And so just 

Kasey: an example is, you know, if someone told me that I suck at chess, right, I wouldn’t care. It wouldn’t ruin my day because it’s not important to me. I don’t define my worth by that. And that’s what we need to be aiming for with physical beauty for our girls, because the only way, the only way we win the beauty game is to just refuse to play it.

Okay. So that’s body, body confidence. The next one is body ownership. And this is the idea. It sounds really straightforward, but it is surprisingly controversial in our culture. And this again is focused for boys too, but mostly for girls. There are definitely different set of rules for boys and girls.

Okay. That a girl actually owns her body and that means she always gets to decide what [00:21:00] happens to her body and what she does with that. And so we have a rule that if it’s not permanent and it’s not harmful, she gets to decide, even if we don’t agree, in fact, especially if we don’t agree. Because girls grow up believing that if they don’t do what other people want them to do with their bodies, they will not be loved.

And I’ll give you an example of that. Just the difference between boys and girls. So this is Chris, my husband’s childhood, kissing grandma. Now, there is nothing wrong with kids giving affection. My children are affectionate and I think it’s wonderful when they choose it. When they don’t choose it, they don’t have to be affectionate, right?

And I support that decision. It is always up to them whether or not they want to kiss or hug a relative. And so Chris, when he was growing up and he was asked to kiss granny and he’d run off As a boy, that was funny. [00:22:00] Girl, your sister did not have that option. 

Melissa: No, and that was me because my dad is very Italian Catholic and it was always go and hug and kiss your nonna.

And I’m like, let me do it when I want to do it. Like, you know, she’s going now, go and hug and kiss her. And like it always felt forced. I’m like, let me do it because I want to and in my time. Yes. And so 

Kasey: people 

Melissa: say, Oh, well, 

Kasey: that’s just family and that’s what we do. But family is where we learn to be adults.

And so in my research, I spoke to girls, teenage girls, 14 year old girls from actually the most elite girl school in Melbourne, two of them, all of these 14 year old girls were giving oral sex. All of them. And I said to these girls, do you like it? No. Why do you do it? Well, because we have to. And then I explained to them, you don’t have to do that.

And one girl burst into [00:23:00] tears and she said, nobody told me I didn’t have to do that. And so then you look at the stats about girls sending nudes. The vast majority of girls who send a nude picture do not want to send it. Why do they do it? Because they didn’t know that they didn’t have to. Because their whole life they have been taught that making someone else feel comfortable, not embarrassing someone else, doing things with their body to please other people was more important than what they wanted, more important than their own boundaries.

And just a really innocuous example is, you know, how many women go to the hairdresser and sit there while someone cuts our hair in a way we don’t like and not say anything, right? Why do we do that? Again, because we have been taught that someone else’s comfort, someone else’s feelings are more important than ours.[00:24:00] 

And if we want our girls to be able to stand up for themselves when they’re older, to reject the unwanted sexual advances, to not send a nude if they don’t want to, then we need to teach them when they’re young, that they get to decide what happens to their even if the adults around them Don’t agree.

Melissa: It’s interesting. Cause I have never said to Bambi, cause I knew how that felt for me. Like go and kiss your Nana or whatever. I do say sometimes to her, blow a kiss. I’m like, blow a kiss. And then I’m like, Oh, even that, like, should I not even say that to her? And maybe I should just do it myself and she’ll watch.

You know what I mean? Because 

Kasey: you also want to teach them social graces, right? And so we encourage high fives in our family. Do have to interact with people. There’s a politeness. And so I would put blowing a kiss in the same category as a high five or a handshake. Right. That’s just [00:25:00] a social convention.

Melissa: Yeah, but I’ve never, ever said to her go and hug so and so like never. And she’s not, she doesn’t want to like, she doesn’t want to. And so I’ve like, I’ve never forced it on her. Even me sometimes like, I’m like, can I have a cuddle? And she’s like, no. I’m like inside, I’m like crying, but I’m like, okay, I need to respect that.

Kasey: Yeah. And so something that dads can do to build that body autonomy is killing games, right? Cause the rough and tumble play, if your daughter or your son is saying, stop, you stop. Because very often in that game, stop means continue. And so, but what they’re learning is that it’s okay for someone to overpower them and they don’t actually get a say.

Whereas if you’re playing that game and your daughter’s saying stop, that is a great opportunity for you to stop and say, I’m stopping now because you told me to. You get to decide. 

Melissa: Yeah. Yeah. We go, okay, okay, okay. And then I’m like, can I go [00:26:00] again? And then she usually says yes. As soon as she says, stop, mama, stop, I’m like, okay, okay, okay.

And always listen to her. 

Kasey: Yes, it’s just another small little parenting tweak that can really change her life. And so body ownership also relates to what we do with our bodies. So in terms of clothes we put on them, what we do with our hair. Makeup, you know, the same rule applies. If it’s not permanent and it’s not harmful, she gets to decide.

Melissa: I know some of the outfits that she picks, I’m like, Oh, really? Do we have to wear that out? Nick and I just look at each other, but we’re like, We just need to let her choose what she wants to wear. I have an 18 year old stepson as well. And we’ve always said to him, like, your body, your rules, you know, that’s your mantra, my body, my rules, and you get to decide, like, this is your vessel.

So this starts from birth. Like we’re teaching [00:27:00] them that they matter and their rules, they get to decide. So, yeah. And I get it. I’m sure lots of parents are listening going. Yeah, the outfit choices sometimes. Yes, but that’s also an 

Kasey: opportunity. So my daughter will put on something hideous. And she’ll say, do you like it?

And I’ll go, well, not really, but it’s not up to me. It’s up to you. You can wear that. Even if it’s, you know, like the oldest, daggiest dress to go and see grandma. And, and people respond to that and say, well, that’s not acceptable. And that it’s embarrassing as a parent. And yeah, there’s been times I’ve felt quite embarrassed for my daughter’s outfit choices.

That is a very small inconvenience compared with them growing up feeling like they don’t get to decide what they put on their bodies. We often hear this from dads, this culturally, there’s this expectation that a good dad actually [00:28:00] polices his daughter’s body. Good dads say, you’re not going out of the house looking like that, right?

And it’s very old school, but it still really exists today. And underlying that is the assumption. That if a girl wears skimpy clothing, she is inviting sexual hassle. That really, when you pare it back, that’s what we’re all worried about. But I just want to reassure everyone who listens, that is a complete myth.

You know, any woman knows that when we, we’ve all been sexually harassed in our life and it has not mattered what we were wearing, but the research shows the girls who are most likely to be sexually harassed and sexually assaulted, are the Are not the sexy girls. They’re not the ones in skimpy clothing.

They are the vulnerable girls, right? They’re the girls who are easy targets, who are unlikely to stand up for themselves, who have not been taught body ownership. [00:29:00] And when you police your daughter’s body to such an extent that she is not even allowed to decide what clothes she puts on it, I would say you are risking raising a vulnerable girl.

So what you’re trying to protect her. But it could actually be doing more harm than good because what you want your daughter to have, what you want to instill in your daughter is, am I allowed to swear? All right, you want her to have don’t fuck with me vibes, right? And the women who, and the girls who have those vibes are the ones who own their bodies.

And they are the ones who will do whatever they want with their bodies and not care what someone else thinks. And every time we say to our daughters, you can’t wear that. You’re not going out of the house looking like that. We are implicitly teaching her that what someone else thinks matters more than what she 

Melissa: thinks.

Yeah. Yeah. My parents never ever said that to me, even though I wore the skimpiest things. To the school [00:30:00] dancers and discos. They never ever told me that I can’t wear that, ever. But I had friends parents who did. 

Kasey: Yeah, and it’s really hard for parents because we all want to do the right things. And so now my daughter is a teenager and I’m seeing her make decisions.

That I wouldn’t make. I’m putting the context around it, but I’m still letting her make the decision. So for example, there’s a trend at school to wear, make your skirt the shortest it can possibly be, right? I think it’s very common, but I said to my daughter, you can do that. It’s your body, it’s your uniform.

You can do that, but I want you to understand the consequences of that decision. And the consequences are that there will be adults in authority who judge your character based on the length of your skirt. It is totally wrong. I do not agree with that judgment, but there are people who will make that judgment.

And that will mean that if you want to do this, [00:31:00] continue to do the school pooers at your school, she has some leadership roles. You won’t be asked to do that. I said, think about all the kids who are going to the special events, all the kids who are ambassadors to the school, do any of them have skirts so short you can see your undies?

No. That’s not a coincidence, right? So you need to decide, are you prepared to wear your skirt the way you want it? Knowing that that’s going to happen, or are you going to roll it down? It’s your choice, but that’s the world that we live in. 

Melissa: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. I love these tips. They’re all just little subtle tweaks that we can make that will really make such a huge impact on our children’s life.

And I would highly recommend anyone listening to this to listen to this with your partner, but let’s keep going. What else? 

Kasey: Yes, because that’s actually the focus of our book. Cause we’re parents, we’re busy. We work. And we wanted evidence based strategies. Every single [00:32:00] strategy is based in evidence.

There’s no, I reckons in our books, but there are all things that you can actually do in busy, complicated lives. Okay. The next one, I’m going to jump to the boys book now, and this is called, we call this strength of character. And when we wrote the boys book, because we don’t have boys, we needed to do more research more quickly.

So we asked 15, 000 parents what their biggest concern was in raising their boys. And the responses were remarkably similar across all of them. And the biggest one was. That they didn’t want to raise their boy to be tough, but they didn’t want him to be weak. And they feared that if they didn’t raise him to be tough, he would be weak.

And nobody wants their kid to be the one that gets pushed up against the locker at lunchtime or kicked in the guts at soccer training or whatever. Right? So we had parents with the very best [00:33:00] intentions, encouraging their boys to punch back or trying to toughen up their boys. And just, I just want to say I’m encouraging your boys to punch.

I can see why parents do that because they’re frustrated. And it’s like, defend yourself. Exactly. But it doesn’t work out. Okay. So first of all, the research shows that boys who punch back end up getting bullied more and they are in more fights. So it does not stop the bullying. Secondly, we should not be encouraging our boys to do something as children that could put them in jail as adults, right?

If he’s 18 in a bar and he punches back because that’s the lesson he has learned his whole life, he could go to jail, right? So we should not be teaching a lesson that’s okay for childhood and not okay for adulthood, right? So the most effective strategy for a boy and a girl to stand [00:34:00] up for herself. or himself, is what’s called Friendship experts call it a clever comeback and it is a short, sharp statement that says I’ve seen what you’ve done, I’m not okay with it, right?

Because we tell boys to punch back and we tell girls to ignore it. Just ignore it, honey, go walk away. Now when you ignore bad behavior, you accept it and that is not great if you want to like yourself, right? You need to stand up for yourself and we should have the expectation that both our boys and our girls stand up for themselves.

So when someone is mean on purpose, get your child to say their quick comeback, practice at home, work out what it is. So when my children were three, their quick comeback was, stop it, I don’t like it. And we practiced it and it, because you need to say it with authority. And that was just their thing. When someone did something they didn’t like, stop it, I don’t like it.

As they got older, my daughters became seriously, you know, [00:35:00] when someone would say something Just saying that statement to say, I’ve seen your bad behavior. I’m not okay with it is the most effective way to reduce the likelihood and the severity of bullying happening again. And I’ve heard just the other day, there was this little boy who got elbowed in the stomach every time he lined up for class.

Cause they had to line up in alphabetical order. And so three times a day, he was standing behind this kid who’d go, Hmm. And his mom didn’t know what to do. And she, her dad, the dad wanted to teach the boy to punch back. And anyway, she taught her son a quick comeback. In the morning he used it and the bully stopped and was a bit shocked.

At morning tea, he used it again. The bully elbowed him again. The boy used the quick comeback. That was the end of it. It stopped. Twice he used his quick comeback. And something that had been happening all year, [00:36:00] stop. And the last thing I heard from the mother is that the boys are now being really nice to her son, right?

So it’s a really effective strategy, obviously for really severe bullying. Parents do need to get involved, but in most cases, our job as parents is to empower our kids to stand up for themselves, and that is a way to do that. Okay, so first of all, getting back to strength of character, the strong versus weak.

The good news is that you don’t have to choose between a tough boy and a weak boy, okay? Because weak is actually a consequence of tough, right? So when we raise our boy to be tough, we’re actually raising him to be weak. What do I mean by that? A tough boy has to dominate and control other people to feel okay about himself, right?

What happens when he’s in a situation where he can’t dominate and can’t control? He’s brittle. He falls apart. [00:37:00] And an example, when you go into adult life is if you have to be the man in your family and earn more money than your female partner and she gets a pay rise, well, how do you get to cope with that, right?

So that toughness makes him brittle, tough, never back away from a fight. We know that the boys who engage in fights do worse by every measure, physically, mentally, their mental well being, they’re more likely to, uh, have suicidal thoughts, they do worse in relationships, worse at work, right? So that makes them brittle.

Tough is the idea of never showing vulnerability, never making a mistake, right? And so we heard stories from women who their husbands hadn’t, they’d never heard them apologize. They’d never heard their dad apologize. So we’ve got these boys growing up with no role model for apologizing. And the thing about life and being human is we all have reasons to [00:38:00] apologize from time to time, right?

We all make mistakes. We’re all careless. If you raise your boy to be unable to own the impact of his actions and to say, I’m sorry, I made a mistake. How can I fix it? You are denying him the opportunity of having an intimate, meaningful relationship because you cannot connect with someone and have a really emotionally nurturing relationship.

If you can’t ever admit that you’ve done the wrong thing, right? And another part of strength of character. is to actually have the courage to endure your difficult feelings. And so we see this with boys and men because they’re not allowed to show weakness. First of all, they avoid situations where they might fail.

And so we hear a lot from parents, my boy’s lazy. There is no such thing as a male laziness gene. Often what looks as to be laziness. Is boys avoiding situations where they might fail because they [00:39:00] cannot handle the feeling of failure? Right? And if your boy can’t handle the feeling of failure, he will never reach his potential because we all need feedback.

That doesn’t feel good in order to reach our potential in life. Or we have boys who, because they can’t handle their emotions, they offload them onto other people. And we’ve all heard stories of don’t tell your father, right? Why do mothers and kids conspire to keep things from dad? Because he can’t handle his emotions.

Right? So that’s also brittle. So what we see as tough things. Being a tough man or a tough boy makes them really brittle. And so what we need to do instead is to raise strong boys and strong men. And to be strong, the foundation of that is emotional bravery. It is being able to carry your own emotions rather than avoid them, [00:40:00] avoid situations, distract yourself from them with addiction and other dysfunctional behavior, or offloading them on something onto someone else.

And the really good news about emotional bravery, Melissa, is that it’s actually not that hard to build in your boy or your husband or your daughter. The research shows that just by naming, accurately naming what you are feeling, you go most of the way to resolving that feeling. Now, we as women do that all the time, right?

When we have a bad day or a fight with our partner, what do we do? We call up a friend. We accurately name how we’re feeling and then we go away feeling so much better, right? So what our boys need is first of all, a safe person. They need a safe person to talk to who will be okay with whatever they say.

He does not shame them. And we need to help them learn to name the emotions. The research shows that most people can only name [00:41:00] three emotions, happy, sad, or angry. That is not enough. So I will actually, I’ll give you for the show notes, an emotion wheel, print it out everyone, put it on your fridge. And when your boy says he’s angry, have a look at that emotion wheel.

And maybe he’s jealous. Maybe he’s lonely. Maybe he’s ashamed. Get him to accurately name it. And then he will feel much better. And that is how you shortcut anger too, because a lot of concern with boys is my boy so angry. Often they’re angry because. That’s the only emotion they feel like they’re allowed to express.

If you can get in first and say, yeah, I would really feel lonely too if that happened to me, or I’d feel left out as well, or that, and, and make it okay for them to articulate what they’re actually feeling, then you don’t get to the anger. Okay. Another one is mastery and independence, and this applies to both boys and girls.[00:42:00] 

And so my generation, when we were growing up, my parents and that generation of parents got it wrong. They were told that the way that you build self esteem in children is by telling them over and over again that they’re clever, you’re so clever. It’s right. And then one day they’ll believe it and they’ll have high self esteem.

Well that has been proven to not be the case. It is not word presence that makes a child believe in themselves. It is mastery and independence. And what I mean by that is being able to do life. So you don’t have to excel. You don’t need a cabinet full of trophies. You don’t need A pluses. You just need to know that you can do things in life.

And so our rule is that only do for your child what they cannot do for themselves. And that is easier said than done. So when Chris and I were first parents, before we’d actually got to this part of [00:43:00] the research, we didn’t like to see our sweet little Violet struggle. We didn’t like to see her be frustrated or bored and we thought it was our job to create the perfect childhood.

It is not our job to create perfect childhoods where our children never struggle or are never unhappy. Our job is to create well functioning adults who do not need us. Right? And so when Violet was in the playground and something was hard for her, and she’d get and we’d run over and we’d pick her up and we’d put her on the climbing frame.

Every time we did that, we said, yeah, you’re right. You can’t do it yourself. You need us to do it. And we actually trained her to be helpless. There was this one moment I remember, she was just, she didn’t even try to climb. She was standing at the bottom of the climbing frame with her arms like this. Just expecting us to come and do it for her.

Right. And then Ivy came along, five years later, and [00:44:00] we’d done all this research and we’d done what we’d learnt what we’d done wrong. And she had just the same frustrations as Violet in the playground, but our rule was only do for them what they can’t do for themselves. So when Ivy struggled on the climbing frame, we would go yeah yeah it’s really, really tricky.

It’s really frustrating, isn’t it? You try to get up another way. And she’d struggle and she’d cry and she’d, but we just left her to it. And then I remember this day, it was amazing. She, she climbed up on the frame by herself and the look of satisfaction and pride on her face. We could not have given that to her.

You cannot give self esteem to your child. It, it blooms from within. And it only comes from them being able to do things for themselves. And we realized that every time we rushed in and saved Violet, because we didn’t want her to struggle, we were denying her that priceless [00:45:00] feeling of accomplishment and self esteem.

Melissa: Yep. I can see as well how sometimes in the kitchen, I’m like, I’ll just do it for you because I’m like, I don’t want to deal with the mess or like, you know, she wants to pour her own nut milk and I’m like, she can do it, but like most of the time it goes all over the floor and all the bench. And I’m like.

I’ll do it. I’ll do it. So I can see how even there, like in the kitchen and like little things like that can really not be supportive. So yeah, I love this so much. It’s such a little quick tweak that will really make an impact. 

Kasey: When 

Melissa: it’s all 

Kasey: within reason, like sometimes you might not want to feel, you don’t feel like cleaning up the oat milk, right?

Or sometimes you don’t have an hour in the morning for them to tie their own shoelaces, right? But wherever possible. We should let them develop the skills to cope with life. And when you project into the future and you look at anxiety and kids saying, [00:46:00] being anxious, going on camp. So you’ve got two kids, they’re going to exactly the same camp, right?

They’re going to do exactly the same things with the same people. One kid bounds on the bus. So excited, barely says goodbye to mom and dad. The other one has been crying and having panic attacks for a week, clinging to mom and dad. Why? Because they don’t feel like they have the inner strength to cope with what’s going to happen on camp.

And one of the ways that we can help our children feel like they can cope with life is by letting them learn to do life. The other day, a parent who’d read our book, a boy parent, her son had, he left his bag in Coles and he’s now a teenager and 14, and she drove him to Coles. And he said, she said, you have to go in and get it yourself.

Oh, no, I can’t do that. Right. And so she said, no, no, it’s your bag. You have to go and get it yourself. And he. Really [00:47:00] resisted, really didn’t want to go because, you know, it was out of his comfort zone. Anyway, he goes in, he gets his bag and she said he skipped out. A 14 year old boy skipping out of Coles.

Why? Because he had that feeling, that feeling of mastery, independence and self esteem that our kids can only get through doing things for themselves. 

Melissa: Absolutely. I love that. 

Kasey: Is there any more? What else have we got? There is more and I know I’m taking up a lot of time, so do you want me to just jump to the big one?

Yes. Go to 

Melissa: the big one, babe. And then everyone can read your books, which I highly recommend everyone get a copy, boy and girl, whatever you’ve got, get a copy, listen to this with your partner, read the books with your partner. And I mean, even the nanny, getting her on board with this stuff. So, yeah, I love that.

But yeah, whatever else you want to share, I’d love to hear. And just add one more thing. 

Kasey: Grandparents, [00:48:00] grandparents are so important, particularly. for body image. So I, when I was interviewing a psychologist about poor, she specialized in poor body image and eating disorders, she said there is almost a grandparent story in almost every one of her clients.

So grandparents, if they are focused on the wrong things with body image, they can be really damaging, but if they’re focused on the right thing, they can be so protective. If you have a grandparent that wants to spend time with you because you’re awesome, because you do. fun things because you’re funny and you’re courageous and they don’t care what you look like.

That is such a precious gift. So if you can get your grandparents on the same parenting page, it will be hugely beneficial. 

Melissa: Yeah. My mum is a little bit probably too focused on the clothing of Bambi and she loves buying her The cutest little tutus [00:49:00] and, you know, little outfits. She absolutely loves buying her all of those things, but she’s a little bit too focused on put this on.

Oh, you’re so cute. And it comes from a good place. It comes from a good place, but I can see how this piece would be really beneficial for my mom. 

Kasey: Yeah, particularly that generation for a lot of them, if they’re not talking about how someone looks, they’re not talking. Just that’s how they were raised, you know.

Oh, they’re looking good for their age or they’re put on a few or whatever. We actually have a rule in our house that we don’t talk about how bodies look, good or bad. You know, there are lots of things we don’t talk about in front of the kids. As adults, we just decide that. Well, we added one and it was that.

So, we only talk about what bodies do. And so I’ve had to talk to the grandparents on both sides of the family saying, please do not talk about people’s appearance, good or bad in front of my girls. And look, I’ll be honest, that conversation did not go well. [00:50:00] They don’t agree with me. My mom does not agree with me.

She thinks complimenting someone on losing weight is the highest form of compliment. And so I’ve said to her, look, you don’t have to agree with me, but can you please just respect my wishes and do it. Okay, moving on to, this is our seventh pillar. So I’ve jumped over a couple in the interest of time. And this is a girl or boy who likes themselves, is themselves.

And what I mean by that is we talk about two different types of parenting and both of them come from places of love. There are stone parents and there are seed parents. And there is an awful lot of pressure on parents to be stone parents. Thanks. And the idea is that we have this preconceived notion of what a perfect child should be.

It could be ours personally, it could be in our family, it could be in our society. And we think that if we chisel away at that kid, and we make them into our [00:51:00] vision of what our child should be, Then they’ll like themselves and they’ll have high self esteem and they’ll be successful. But the thing about stone parenting is that if your child is going to like themselves, genuinely like who they are, they have to grow into the best version of the person that they choose to be, not the person who is chosen for them, no matter how well intentioned.

So we encourage parents to be seed parents. And this is the idea that your child is a precious seed. We don’t know how they’re going to bloom. That’s up to them. Our job is to provide the right environment. We provide the nurturing family. We provide the supports, the boundaries, the encouragement, the guidance, but it is ultimately up to them to bloom in their own way and in their own time.

And part of that is for us to love the [00:52:00] child, the beautiful, unique child that we have, not the one we thought we were going to get. And depending how far away your child is from what you’re Expectation of what you were going to get, depending on how far that is, you could be grieving as a parent, and this is rarely talked about in parenting, but it is absolutely normal to grieve for the child you didn’t get.

Maybe you thought you were going to get the sporty kid and your kid has no interest in sport at all. Maybe you’re going to thought you were going to get the academic kid, but they’re not right. What we need to do as parents is deal with that grief that is on us. It is our work to do so that we can truly love and support the child that we have.

Because what our children need most, most of all in life, it’s actually what we all need is we want to be seen, loved, and accepted for who we are [00:53:00] in this moment. You don’t want to have to. Win a race, pass a test, lose weight, hang out with the popular kids, whatever it is. We want to be enough right now. And if your child feels like they are enough right now.

They will be more successful. They will, because they’re being themselves. You’re working with them to grow into what they’re always meant to be, rather than fighting against them, trying to create them to be something that they’re not. And that is the most precious gift we can give our children. But it’s also a precious gift for ourselves because parenting is so much easier when you go with the flow of your child and accept them for who they are.

And we hear a lot from parents that they’re really worried about the teenage years. But someone wrote to me a few weeks ago saying they used to be really scared about the teenage years, but now they’re excited because it’s not their job to control what the child is going to be. Their job is [00:54:00] to support and stand back in wonder and watch their child bloom.

It makes family life so much more fun for everybody and it gives your child what they need most. 

Melissa: Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s interesting. I’d love your perspective on this situation. So Bambi does ballet and the first time she was a bit apprehensive, she just kind of sat on my lap and was just like, observing the second time she got involved and she’s been doing it now for this whole year.

And then recently we went and she just sat on my lap the whole time. And at the start, I was so frustrated because I’m like, I’m paying for this and you’re just sitting on my lap. Like what is going on? And internally I was like, what is going on? And then I’m like, do I say anything or do I just leave? And I did say to her, Is everything okay?

Like, how come you don’t want to do it? Do you not like ballet anymore? She’s like, yes, I like ballet. And I was like, obviously something [00:55:00] is going on for her. Like clearly, how would you approach that situation for a three and a half year old? 

Kasey: Yeah. Okay. So I think it is really important for our kids to sometimes have to do things they don’t want to do.

Right. And also honor commitments. So I would do the, well, we’re paid up for the term. So we’re going to keep coming for the term because that’s what we’re committed to do. But if you’re not going to dance, then we’re not going to do it next term. And give her that choice. Because also at three and a half, she’s not really able to articulate why she doesn’t like something.

But clearly she’s not into ballet if she’s not jumping off your knee and dancing, right? Maybe it’s not the right thing for her, or it’s not the right thing for her yet. 

Melissa: Yes, exactly. And I think, yeah, Nick said the same thing cause he came last week and he was like, why is she not doing it? Like he said it privately to [00:56:00] me.

I was like Babe, I don’t know. Like, I asked her if she likes it and she said yes. And, you know, but yeah, I think we’ve got one more week left in this term. So if she does it again this week coming up, I might just say, if you don’t like doing this, we don’t have to come next term. But she’s very observant.

Like in new situations, like whenever we go somewhere new, whether it’s a play group or whatever, She’ll kind of like stay with me and she just likes observing. And then the next time she’ll get really involved because there’s some kids that are just run off. They’re like, see ya, bye mom, see ya later. But she’s more observant and her older brother, who’s 18, who’s my stepson, he was like that as well as a child.

And he’s a very well adapted, incredible human being. So I’m like, it’s okay. So I’d love your thoughts. Yeah, well, that’s also a good quality, 

Kasey: right? When, when she’s 15 and kids are jumping in a car [00:57:00] with a drunk driver and she goes, I’m just going to stay back and watch how this turns out. That’s behavior you want to encourage, right?

I mean, it’s a judgment call, isn’t it? And often we don’t know, right? Yeah. So maybe she needs more time. Maybe it’s not right for her. Something else to think about is. Kids have a lot of adult led time in their lives. I mean, probably not at three and a half, but as, as they get older, they’re at kinder or school all day or childcare where they’re following adult rules.

Then they go to an extracurricular activity and they’re following adult rules. Then they come home and when they’re older, they’re doing homework and they’re following adult rules. They can have no moment in their whole day where they actually control the time. And we know that one of the risk factors for both anxiety and depression is a feeling like you have no control over your life.

So it is really important that kids get to control some of the time in their [00:58:00] life and actually play. And play is initiated by the child. It has no defined outcome and no winning or competitive edge to it. So play is dancing around in your lounge room, singing into a hairbrush compared with going to a ballet class, right?

And so yeah, classes are great, but sometimes our kids just need a little bit more play. 

Melissa: A hundred percent. I like to incorporate into my day with her Bambi led time. So that’s where I’m like, I will say to her, what would you like to do? And maybe I’ll present a couple of options. I’m like, do you want to go to the trampoline?

Do you want to do Play Doh? Do you want to read books? Like I might present a couple of options or I just sit back and wait until she leads to something and let her lead. Let me follow her because yeah, you know, there’s so much of the day where it’s like [00:59:00] on what we’re doing. What about what she wants to do?

And like, I really, like if there’s any moments where she’s just on her own, playing on her own in her own world, I do not interrupt her. I do not say a single thing. I just let her for as long as she wants to be in that world. And sometimes it’s only a little bit. And then sometimes it’s a long time. But, you know, she’s still three and a half.

And so any moment where she’s in her own world, I just really allow her to do that. 

Kasey: Oh, absolutely. We should encourage that as much as possible because we’re raising a generation of kids who cannot cope with their own time. It’s everything is externally measured and managed. So to give them the gift of learning to entertain themselves and to follow their own passions and curiosity is, is fantastic.

The other thing about what you said, Melissa, is that is really great advice for dads because often what we see with dads. Particularly with girls is that the daughter [01:00:00] hangs out and spends time with dad when she does what he likes. Dad’s out fixing the car. If the daughter can go and like hold the spanner or dad will only go to a sporting event that his daughter’s doing.

If it’s a sport that he likes. One of the most important things you can do for your daughter to grow up liking herself is to let her know that you like spending time with her because she is her, not because she’s doing an activity that you also like doing. And so for dads, you need to be led by your daughter.

That might be sitting down, having a tea party and letting her paint your fingernails, right? That’s a gift to enter into their world. Give them your time. Just because you want to be with them. 

Melissa: Yeah. My husband’s so good at that. Like he lets her lead. Sometimes he’ll present a couple of options to like books or painting or trampoline, [01:01:00] but he’s very good at that.

Like just following what she wants to do. They have, you know, Papa daughter time and it’s so beautiful. Like he’ll say, do you want to go to the park or do you want to go to the beach and lets her choose, which is so nice. I love all of this. Is there anything else, my love, that would be really supportive besides reading your books?

Is there anything else? 

Kasey: Yes. Sure. Just on that with the dad and daughter time is that this factors into peer pressure in the future. If your daughter gets acceptance at home or your son gets acceptance at home for who they are, genuinely who they are. They will be less likely to seek it outside of the home.

So you are laying the groundwork now for the teenage years, right? If they, they’re getting their needs met at home, they’re less likely to be doing the risk taking dangerous behavior for acceptance when they’re teenagers. 

Melissa: Yes, exactly. And it all starts at home, [01:02:00] all starts at home. This is where they get their schooling.

So I love that you have written both of these books and they’re so powerful and transformational to how we raise our children. So I highly, highly recommend everyone getting a copy, reading it, sharing this episode with your partner. And speaking of books, if you had a magic wand and you could put one book in the school curriculum of every high school around the world, what book would you choose?

It could be on any topic and it’s for boys and girls. You know that 16 or 17 year old, what 

Kasey: book would it be? One of my favorite books at the moment is Thrivers by Michelle Borba. And she looks at the kids who thrive compared with the kids who strive. And what it does is it really challenges a lot of our ideas about how to make successful kids.

We put too much pressure on our kids. [01:03:00] We overschedule them. We make them feel like every tiny decision that they make now will affect their life forever. We see kids vomiting before their NAPLAN test in grade three. You know, when I would say to parents, what did you get on your grade three maths exam, right?

We don’t remember because we don’t know, right? Because, and the reason we don’t know is because it wasn’t important. It hasn’t affected our lives. But our generation of parents, we see everything that gets done at school. We treat everything as if it’s such high stakes. And so much pressure on outcomes rather than actually just letting our kids be kids.

We fear that our kids are growing up too soon. Well, we’re part of that problem because we are giving them, forcing them into adult lives with overscheduling and a constant focus on achievement. And that leads to stressed out kids with mental health problems who do not know who they are because they’ve never played.

And time [01:04:00] is how you work out who you are in the world. But the other thing They end up resenting us. The studies into tiger parenting, where you put lots of pressure on your kids to get an overachieving kid. First of all, they don’t end up overachievers, but they also end up resenting their parents. So we try so hard to do the right thing, but often the right thing is just to back off and let our kids be kids.

Melissa: Beautiful advice. And. Yeah, I look at my 18 year old stepson who is at university studying space engineering. He is incredibly intelligent and a well adjusted, beautiful human being, kind, compassionate. Like I’ve never heard him yell. I’ve never heard him like swear. Like he’s just such a beautiful person.

We’ve never pushed him academically ever and look at how well he did, you know, he, he just did so well. So that’s a real testament to [01:05:00] what you’re saying. And I just love the work that you’re doing and I think it is so important and so powerful and I’m so glad there’s people out there like you who are doing this because if we don’t know this information, we just parent the way that we were parented by default.

And often that’s not the most ideal situation, so thank you for showing us that there are other ways, there are tools, there are techniques that we can do. And that will really make our children like themselves. Like, you know, if I think about, you know, my goal for my daughter, I want her as well to grow up loving who she is and confident in her own skin and in her decisions.

So I just want to thank you so much. This has been so beautiful. You are helping, you are serving not only so many parents all over the world, but children, because Your work is creating the next generation. So I want [01:06:00] to know how I and the listeners can give back and help and serve you today. Like, what can we do for you?

Kasey: Oh, that’s so lovely. Read my book. Because everything, our books, everything in there is evidence based and you can do it. We have seen our strategies change lives. We’ve, we’ve worked with kids who have said that they don’t feel like they should. Um, and we’ve seen them now grow up to be really thriving, happy kids.

We’ve seen kids who are being bullied every day at school, and now they’re standing up for themselves and they’ve chosen really good friends for themselves. So that’s another thing we didn’t really talk about today, but a fundamental pillar is friendship skills, learning how to choose people who are good for you and how to be a good friend yourself.

So you can. Through everyday parenting tweaks, change your child’s life, but you can also apply it to yourself. I started off by saying that I didn’t like myself growing up. I’ve applied all that [01:07:00] research to myself and I, and I do like myself so much more now and life is so much easier. When you like yourself, 

Melissa: so beautiful guys, go out, get her books.

If you’ve got boys, get the boys one. If you’ve got girls, get the girls one and share it with your partner. Nick and I often will read a parenting book at the same time and then decide. it and then implement the strategies because it’s just so much easier that way. So I’ll link to everything in the show notes, all of your amazing work.

Thank you so much for coming on and sharing. I hope everyone got so much out of this. I know I definitely did. There’s lots of little tweaks. I always want to be better and I want to continue to grow and evolve on my parenting journey. So thank you so much for sharing with us today. It’s been such a delight and.

I am so grateful that you are out there sharing this work with everybody. So thank you. Thank you, Melissa.[01:08:00] 

Is your mind not blown? Like we only really scratched the surface in this episode. So I highly recommend that you grab her books, read them, digest them. Mine has highlights all over it. And everything that I learn, I share with Nick. It’s just so powerful. So I really hope you got a lot out of this. And if you did, please subscribe and follow my show.

And leave me a review on Apple podcasts if you haven’t already, because that means I can keep getting on these amazing guests for you. And it also means all of my episodes will just pop up in your feed. So you never have to go searching for a new episode and you’ll never miss an episode. Now come and tell me on Instagram at Melissa Rambrosini.

What was your biggest key takeaway from this episode? I love hearing from you. I love connecting with you and I love knowing what your nugget of wisdom is that you walk away with. So come and share that with me. And before I go, I just wanted to say thank you so much for being here, for wanting to be the best, the healthiest, and the happiest version of yourself, and for showing up today for you.

[01:09:00] You rock. Now, if there’s someone in your life that you can think of that would really benefit from this episode. Maybe your partner or a friend. There are so many people that will benefit from this episode. So please share it with them right now. You can take a screenshot, share it on your social media, email it to them, text it to them, do whatever you’ve got to do to get this in their ears.

And until next time, don’t forget that love is sexy, healthy is liberating, and wealthy isn’t a dirty word.

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Thank you so much for listening. I’m so honored that you’re here and would be SO grateful if you could leave me a review on Apple podcasts, that way we can inspire and educate even more people together.

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