Two days before her daughter and oldest child leaves for college, Dr. Sheryl hits record and doesn't clean it up: the grief and the relief showing up in the same moment, the packing-list control spiral, the "boring on purpose" plan for the last 48 hours, and the line she's repeated to a thousand parents that suddenly means something different from the other side of the experience.

If you're in your own version of this countdown — bins taped up, closet half empty, a text you're waiting on — this episode is for you.

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Back to school brings big changes - new routines, new teachers, new challenges. Our Back To School program helps you prepare for day one, navigate tricky moments, and build your kid's resilience.

Thank you to our partners for making this episode possible:

• Yoto: Get 15% off your order with the code DRSHERYL15 at YotoPlay.com. New customers only, ends October 31, offer valid on select products only. Terms apply.
• Girl Scouts: If you have a daughter in kindergarten through 12th grade, visit girlscouts.org to learn more

Good Inside’s Dr. Becky and Dr. Sheryl have a new show on YouTube - Teens & Screens, a bi-weekly video series helping parents navigate today's biggest technology questions. Watch the first episode on youtube.com/@goodinside.

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Somewhere around 9 or 10, your kid starts watching their own body: how it looks, how it compares, whether it's keeping up. And most of us freeze, because nobody handed us a script for that moment.

Dr. Sheryl sits down with pediatrician Dr. Whitney Casares, author of My One of a Kind Body and the new Raising Body Confident Kids, for a conversation every parent of a tween needs. They get specific: the exact three-step self-compassion script Whitney uses when her own daughter climbs in the car saying "I'm ugly, look at my skin." Why "you're so beautiful" is the wrong reflex. How diet culture went from Special K commercials to an algorithm that feeds your kid more of it every scroll, and how Whitney quietly resets that algorithm behind the scenes. What to say when a grandparent comments on your kid's body at the dinner table. And the smallest, most doable practice for parents carrying their own body baggage: slowing down for one minute.

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Thank you to our partners for making this episode possible:

• Girl Scouts: If you have a daughter in kindergarten through 12th grade, visit girlscouts.org to learn more
• Frida: Shop Frida for Kids at Walmart and Amazon today

Good Inside’s Dr. Becky and Dr. Sheryl have a new show on YouTube - Teens & Screens, a bi-weekly video series helping parents navigate today's biggest technology questions. Watch the first episode on youtube.com/@goodinside.

Follow Dr. Sheryl on Instagram

Learn more about Good Inside

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Middle school strips away the training wheels. Elementary school's one teacher becomes six. The hand-holding disappears. For a kid with ADHD, that's when a lot of quiet fear starts, both theirs and their parents'.

Sheryl sits down with Dr. Alex Reed, a clinical psychologist specializing in neurodevelopment, to talk about what ADHD actually looks like as kids move into the teen years, and why so many of them fall through the cracks. They get into the three ADHD subtypes, why hyperfocus (yes, the same kid who can't sit still for homework but plays video games for four hours straight) is actually a strength you can work with instead of against, and "body doubling," an evidence-based strategy that makes starting a hard task dramatically easier just by having someone do it alongside you.

They also get into who gets missed: girls who mask their struggle by overachieving until they burn out, and kids of color who are far more likely to be disciplined for the same behavior their white peers get evaluated for.

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Looking for more support in the in-between years of parenting? Good Inside Teen gives you practical tools, scripts, and expert guidance for the moments that can feel most overwhelming with tweens and teens.

Thank you to our partners for making this episode possible:

• Girl Scouts: If you have a daughter in kindergarten through 12th grade, visit girlscouts.org to learn more
• Frida: Shop Frida for Kids at Walmart and Amazon today

Good Inside’s Dr. Becky and Dr. Sheryl have a new show on YouTube - Teens & Screens, a bi-weekly video series helping parents navigate today's biggest technology questions. Watch the first episode on youtube.com/@goodinside.

Follow Dr. Sheryl on Instagram

Learn more about Good Inside

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Phyllis Fagell has spent years inside a middle school as a counselor, and she's here to make the case that the silence, the friend-group churn, and the sudden need for privacy aren't warning signs. They're the work of growing up. Dr. Sheryl and Phyllis talk through why middle schoolers pull away from their parents (and why it's not rejection), the real numbers on how often friendships shift during these years, and the "superpowers," belonging, security, self-regulation, that actually predict resilience. Also: why the popular kids aren't as happy as you'd think.

Looking for more support in the in-between years of parenting? Good Inside Teen gives you practical tools, scripts, and expert guidance for the moments that can feel most overwhelming with tweens and teens.

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Thank you to our partners for making this episode possible:

• Girl Scouts: If you have a daughter in kindergarten through 12th grade, visit girlscouts.org to learn more

Good Inside’s Dr. Becky and Dr. Sheryl have a new show on YouTube - Teens & Screens, a bi-weekly video series helping parents navigate today's biggest technology questions. Watch the first episode on youtube.com/@goodinside.

Follow Dr. Sheryl on Instagram

Learn more about Good Inside

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Your tween or teen is already using AI. For homework, for image generation, for drafting the text they're too nervous to send, and, more and more, for the human stuff: breakups, mental health, how to ask someone out, how to talk to you.

Dr. Sheryl sits down with Dr. Dana Suskind, a pediatric surgeon, professor of surgery and pediatrics at the University of Chicago, and the author of "Human Raised," to make sense of what kids actually need from us as AI moves into the middle of their lives.

Dana's take is refreshingly un-panicked: she's not anti-AI, and not pro-AI. She's pro-human. She implants technology for a living, she builds AI tools herself, and she's clear that the real risk is what we quietly stop practicing when everything gets easy. AI is frictionless. It never pushes back. But that messy, imperfect back-and-forth between a parent and a kid? As Dana puts it, that's not a bug in the system. It's the curriculum.

Sheryl and Dana get into the questions parents are actually asking: why teens open up to chatbots more than to people, whether that's a problem or a relief, what her waiting room going silent taught her about where we're headed, and why "good enough" parenting is exactly what kids need.

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Thank you to our partners for making this episode possible:

• Kt by Knix: Use the code GOODINSIDE for 15% off period underwear
• Girl Scouts: If you have a daughter in kindergarten through 12th grade, visit girlscouts.org to learn more

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A revisit from the Good Inside archives, hosted by Dr. Becky.

As our kids grow up and pull away, it can feel like they’re breaking up with us. This week, Dr. Becky talks to a mom wondering why her son feels so distant as he begins middle school. He seems to have plenty of time to play video games and talk to his friends but she feels like she doesn’t know anything about his life anymore.

Thank you to our partners for making this episode possible:

• Kt by Knix: Use the code GOODINSIDE for 15% off period underwear
• Girl Scouts: If you have a daughter in kindergarten through 12th grade, visit girlscouts.org to learn more

Follow Dr. Sheryl on Instagram

Learn more about Good Inside

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Boys have body image issues too. They're just harder to spot.

Dr. Kyle Ganson is a researcher at the University of Toronto who studies body image, eating disorders, and masculinity in boys and young men. He's also a dad. And yes, his six-year-old already flexes at him every morning.

In this conversation, Dr. Sheryl and Dr. Kyle get into what's actually happening to boys in a culture built around gym influencers, supplement stacks, looks maxing, and bulking protocols — and why parents keep missing the warning signs. (Spoiler: it looks like discipline and it looks like health. That's the problem.)

You'll hear about the 1-in-7 statistic that most parents have never encountered, what muscle dysmorphia actually is and how it shows up in teenage boys, why the "respectful curiosity" approach matters more than rules, and how Arnold Schwarzenegger was genuinely different from what your son is watching on YouTube right now.

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Looking for more support in the in-between years of parenting? Good Inside Teen gives you practical tools, scripts, and expert guidance for the moments that can feel most overwhelming with tweens and teens.

Thank you to our partners for making this episode possible:

• Kt by Knix: Use the code GOODINSIDE for 15% off period underwear
• Girl Scouts: If you have a daughter in kindergarten through 12th grade, visit girlscouts.org to learn more

Follow Dr. Sheryl on Instagram

Learn more about Good Inside

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Your kid seems fine. Easygoing, no meltdowns. But when you ask how they're doing — nothing. "Fine." "I don't know." A shrug. And then one day you notice something's off, and you spend weeks trying to figure out what.

Sarah comes to Dr. Sheryl with exactly this. Her 10-year-old son is kind, resilient, good at everything — and totally unable to name what he's feeling. She's tried asking directly. She's tried asking sideways. She's modeled emotions, referenced Inside Out, sat on his bed and guessed out loud until something landed. And now, as his school closes and his whole world reshuffles, she can feel him shutting down again.

In this conversation, Dr. Sheryl helps Sarah understand what's actually happening under the surface — why even-keeled kids often pay a silent price for their regulation, how puberty complicates the picture, and why trying to get them to talk isn't always the right first move.

They talk through the "mixed feelings" shorthand, the power of asking about what your kid actually cares about (no agenda, no pivot to the real stuff), and — in one of the most specific pieces of advice you'll hear on this show — why getting your kid physically activated might open more doors than any question you could ask.

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Looking for more support in the in-between years of parenting? Good Inside Teen gives you practical tools, scripts, and expert guidance for the moments that can feel most overwhelming with tweens and teens.

Thank you to our partners for making this episode possible:

• Kt by Knix: Use the code GOODINSIDE for 15% off period underwear
• Girl Scouts: If you have a daughter in kindergarten through 12th grade, visit girlscouts.org to learn more

Follow Dr. Sheryl on Instagram

Learn more about Good Inside

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.