If You Think You’re Screwing Up Your Kid, ‘Good Enough’ & ‘After Bedtime’ Say You’re Probably Not

If you’ve ever scrolled through parenting TikTok and thought, “Cool, I’ve ruined my kid,” this crossover episode of Good Enough with After Bedtime with Big Little Feelings is probably for you.

Comedians and hosts Natasha Leggero and Sabrina Jalees invite Big Little Feelings cofounder and parenting coach Kristin Gallant, along with her husband Tyler Denham, to reality-check what modern parenting actually looks like. Underneath the chaotic conversation is a calmer message: you don’t have to parent perfectly to raise a secure kid.

When ‘good behavior’ becomes shame instead of guidance

It’s easy for well-meaning parents to slip into language that sounds like motivation but lands like shame. Leggero’s sticker-chart system for her daughter—feed the dogs, earn a stamp, repeat—becomes the perfect setup for Gallant to explain the difference. The issue isn’t the chart; it’s how we talk about it.

Gallant points out that tying privileges to chores is totally fair. Sleepaway camp is a big deal. Feeding the dogs is a real responsibility. What doesn’t work is making those privileges conditional on a child being “good.” Kids can control whether they put a dish away; they can’t always control whether they have a meltdown at 7 p.m. because someone peeled their string cheese wrong. When we blur that line, kids start to connect their worth to performance—something Gallant says follows them long after childhood.

Stick to concrete actions, avoid character labels, and keep consequences rooted in reality, not morality. A kid shouldn’t lose camp because she talked back once. But she can absolutely earn stamps for following through.

Parenting without passing down your own childhood wounds

Gallant talks about her own upbringing—a childhood filled with yelling, chaos, and emotional volatility—and how it shaped the type of parent she became. Not in the neat, inspirational way Instagram likes to package it, but in the messy middle where your past still sneaks into your present.

She explains that she doesn’t yell, not because she’s some perfectly regulated gentle-parenting unicorn, but because she overcorrected. Her childhood was so intense that she swung hard in the other direction, sometimes to the point of being too calm. She jokes that she borders on “toxic positivity,” which lands because every parent has something they overdo out of fear of repeating what hurt them.

Every parent has a wound they’re trying not to pass down—and that effort alone already changes the story. Leggero and Jalees jump in with their own versions, from separation anxiety as a kid to being overly focused on one child because “the aperture is just focused.” And suddenly the conversation becomes less about doing things “right” and more about understanding where your instincts come from.

On letting kids be themselves

When a listener calls in about his 9-year-old daughter wearing her Little Red Riding Hood cape to school every single day, you can practically hear every parent’s internal monologue: Do I let her be quirky…or do I save her from social pain?

Gallant says a cape isn’t a crisis—it’s self-expression. And nine is still young, no matter how grown-up school schedules make these kids seem. “Nine is still really young,” she says. Her point isn’t that teasing doesn’t matter; it’s that shutting down a child’s joy because someone else might not “get it” teaches the wrong lesson. Kids learn resilience by being allowed to like things loudly, not by shrinking themselves to fit in.

She frames it like any other identity moment: a boy wearing nail polish, a girl shaving her head, a kid who loves costumes outside of Halloween. The goal is to help them understand that reactions will happen, and they’ll be okay. So yeah, the cape might turn a few heads in the hallway. But it also might be the first small moment where a kid learns: I’m allowed to be me.

What kids really need is presence

Your kids don’t need flawless parenting—they need you showing up as a human.

Gallant points out that you can bribe a child with Starbursts for a family photo and still be a great parent. You can forget to praise them 462 times a day and they’ll still grow into secure people. What matters more is that kids experience consistent connection—not constant perfection.

That looks like modeling how to calm yourself instead of spiraling. Owning it when you screw up instead of pretending you didn’t. Letting them see you repair after a hard moment. Supporting their quirks, their moods, their growing independence. And doing all of that within the reality of a household that’s loud, busy, and sometimes overwhelming.

The “work” of parenting is not about performing a script. It’s about presence—real, imperfect, tired-but-still-trying presence. And that’s the part kids remember, long after the sticker charts and tantrums fade out.

To hear the full conversation, listen to Good Enough and After Bedtime with Big Little Feelings wherever you get your podcasts.

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