How to Raise a Kid Who Can Survive Failure | Challenge Accepted

Dr. Becky introduces Kellie Gerardi, who grew up near Florida’s Kennedy Space Center and dreamed of space despite having no military, test-pilot, or predetermined astronaut path. Gerardi eventually built her own route and flew in November 2023 as a researcher on a Virgin Galactic science mission. The episode asks what early experiences help someone think, “I can figure this out,” and keep moving through uncertainty. Dr. Becky frames the central parenting question as whether confidence is the belief that success is guaranteed—or the belief that even after struggling or failing, a child can survive, recover, and try again.

At eight, Gerardi describes herself as curious, imaginative, and deeply absorbed in her own world. As an only child growing up in the early 1990s, before smartphones, home internet, or tablets, books were her main gateway to information; taking one away was the most effective punishment. She read in the car and immersed herself in fictional worlds, dressing up as Harry Potter and attending midnight book releases. Her interests were never casual: she wanted to understand the entire world around a subject, join its community, and experience it firsthand. Dr. Becky notes that traits inconvenient day-to-day can look like extraordinary strengths from a wider perspective.

Gerardi credits her parents with nurturing her passions without deciding where those passions had to lead. Whether she was focused on books, space, science, Barbies, or Beanie Babies, they met her where she was, even though they did not buy everything she wanted. She now does the same with her daughters’ Squishmallow obsession, learning the difference between “crunchy” and “slushy” Squishmallows and even taking a dumpling on a microgravity flight for her child. Dr. Becky and Gerardi distinguish the interest from the requested purchase: parents can validate a child’s enthusiasm and curiosity while still setting financial or scheduling boundaries.

Dr. Becky argues that children’s temporary obsessions build durable skills: learning it is acceptable to want to know more, pursue an interest, take action, and participate in a community. Gerardi agrees that fandoms taught her to seek and build community, a trait that continued into adulthood. When a store-bought Squishmallow is impossible, she and her daughter make homemade versions from balloons, Vaseline, water, shaving cream, and beads. They acknowledge that the homemade object is not identical to the desired one; the useful parenting move is to say so honestly, then explore what lies between the ideal outcome and doing nothing.

Growing up in Jupiter, Florida, near Cape Canaveral, Gerardi regularly saw human spaceflight woven into local life; students were taken onto the football field to watch shuttle launches. The proximity gave her exposure to people living and working off Earth, but her parents had no science or space background, and her father never attended college. Instead of presenting a specific career track, they gave her a combination of humility and confidence: extraordinary dreams are not guaranteed, but if someone works hard enough for long enough, “why not?” Because no one told her space was not for someone like her, she never installed that limitation.

Gerardi says her childhood image of an astronaut was narrowly defined by government astronauts with military or test-pilot backgrounds. As she examined her ambition more closely, she realized she did not necessarily want that career path; she wanted to use space as a laboratory to benefit humanity and support science and research. That insight eventually led her toward a different route and helped open space access to scientists as a civilian researcher. She applies the same layered questioning to her daughter’s desire to be Taylor Swift: instead of dismissing the goal or promising it, she asks whether the child loves singing, writing, performing, communicating emotions, or connecting with an audience.

Gerardi recalls an early, unhealthy relationship with failure. In kindergarten, she could not read analog clocks but stayed silent because admitting confusion felt embarrassing; when a quiz approached, she became anxious and had to stay in during recess for individual help. The next year, she had the same pattern with reading a treble clef: she did not understand it, said nothing, and eventually broke down at home. Her mother made a pun about “facing the music,” which felt terrible in the moment, but the solution turned out to be simple memorization—F-A-C-E. These experiences helped break the belief that not understanding something immediately meant she could never do it.

As an adult, Gerardi deliberately began announcing dreams publicly and allowing people to see when they failed. She describes this as learning that she could survive being seen not reaching a goal, including her ambition to fly to space as a civilian scientist and her years-long experience with secondary infertility and IVF. Publicly stating a dream created both momentum and serendipity because listeners could suggest contacts or opportunities, while also building a community that could offer empathy when things went badly. Asked whether confidence is preparation for success or trust in surviving failure, she chooses the latter: she believes more in her ability to get through an outcome than in any guaranteed outcome.

Gerardi believes children should watch parents attempt activities they are not naturally good at. After voicing herself on an episode of “Phineas and Ferb,” she pursued more STEM-related media and children’s television opportunities, sending auditions that usually received silence or rejection. A Disney casting director recommended improv, so Gerardi now attends a weekly community-center improv class despite finding it vulnerable and difficult. She wants her daughters to see that skills are built rather than simply inherited, and that being bad at something is often the price of becoming good at it. Dr. Becky adds that children need to see adults struggle and find enjoyment without requiring an achievement payoff.

Gerardi says her scientific training helped her approach secondary infertility and IVF by examining data, adjusting protocols, and trying again, but it never removed the grief or emotional pain. She describes herself as an “exhausting patient” who arrived with peer-reviewed studies and ideas for her medical providers. The process ultimately led to the birth of her younger daughter, Max, in April. Dr. Becky distinguishes between the unavoidable feeling—“this is hard” and “this sucks”—and the story attached to it, such as “something is wrong with me” or “it will never happen.” Gerardi’s more functional hope was not certainty of success; it was believing she could survive even if she did not get what she wanted.

Gerardi wrote “Luna Muna,” a children’s book about a girl dreaming of space, even though writing was not part of the original science-and-space career plan. Publishers initially rejected it, but she eventually found one; she says she would have self-published if necessary because she wanted the story to exist. She and Dr. Becky use this as a model for finding options between a perfect outcome and giving up entirely. Gerardi defines “challenge accepted” as staying loyal to the core of a dream while remaining flexible about the details. She also says quitting can be appropriate when someone genuinely changes their mind, but frustration, embarrassment, or impatience alone may not be sufficient reasons to stop.

After recording, Dr. Becky decided to ask each child privately what they are interested in, promising not to judge the answer and to spend the next month helping them learn more about it. She contrasts “reaction mode,” in which children and adults respond to whatever social media presents, with “origin mode,” in which an interest originates inside the child and can be developed. She invites listeners to try the same experiment and share what happens. The episode closes with her reminder that people can struggle externally while remaining “good inside.”