3 Things Your Strong-Willed Kid Needs to Hear
After Bedtime with Big Little Feelings
Dear Media and Big Little Feelings
4.5 • 5.8K Ratings
🗓️ 3 June 2026
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
If you’re raising a strong-willed kid, this episode could change the trajectory of their entire life. In this revisit of one of our favorite episodes, Kristin pulls back the curtain on what it was like to be that so-called “bad kid” herself - and shares the exact 3 messages every strong-willed child needs to hear on repeat.
Strong-willed kids get mislabeled as “bad” all the time. They push back. They melt down big. They leave you wondering if you’re failing - or if they’ll ever fit into the world. But here’s the truth: they’re not broken. They’re brilliant. And how you parent them determines whether that brilliance gets buried in shame or unleashed as their superpower.
When you start saying these words, everything changes:
- Your child will begin to see themselves as worthy, not “bad.”
- You’ll stop parenting from fear and start parenting from belief.
- You’ll shift from daily power struggles to raising a child who knows they are loved, gifted, and celebrated exactly as they are.
These aren’t just words. They’re lifelines. And they can change the way your child shows up in the world - and how you show up as their parent. If you’ve ever thought, I don’t know if I can keep doing this, this episode is for you
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast is a Dear Media production. |
| 0:05.1 | Today on After Bedtime, we're talking about strong-willed kids. |
| 0:11.1 | The ones who push back. |
| 0:13.8 | Question everything. |
| 0:15.7 | Meltdown big and leave you wondering if you're totally failing as a parent. |
| 0:22.3 | Maybe you have one of these kids, or maybe you were one of these kids. |
| 0:27.2 | I was one of these kids. |
| 0:28.8 | And here's the truth. |
| 0:31.1 | There are no bad kids. |
| 0:32.9 | There are only misunderstood kids. |
| 0:36.7 | And strong-willed kids especially get mislabeled as bad. |
| 0:42.1 | In this episode, I'm going to share the three things every strong-willed kid needs to hear. |
| 0:49.3 | These words can rewire how your child sees themselves, how you see them, and maybe even how you see yourself. |
| 0:59.1 | This is all coming from a person who was a strong-willed kid, a bad kid. |
| 1:05.8 | This is coming from someone who is parenting a strong-willed kid who has been labeled as a bad kid before. |
| 1:12.9 | And this is coming from research and neuroscience. I am really excited about this episode. |
| 1:19.8 | It's so meaningful to me and I feel like is such important work for these misunderstood kids. |
| 1:26.8 | Welcome to after bedtime, where the house is finally quiet, but the real noise begins. |
| 1:33.2 | The thoughts, the questions, the wondering if you're doing any of this right. |
| 1:37.3 | We're Kristen and Dina, child behavior experts, moms, and co-founders of big little feelings, |
| 1:43.2 | and we're not here to give you more pressure or perfect |
| 1:45.6 | parenting energy. Nope, we're here to tell the truth, the unfiltered, beautiful, brutal truth about |
... |
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