No Such Thing As Good or Bad Kids: Dr. Shefali on Conscious Parenting

Jen: All right, everybody. Welcome to the show. Happy to see you. 

Amy: Welcome. 

Jen: I guess. Happy to see you is I’m happy to see you. 

Amy: Happy to see you. 

Jen: Yeah. What we see in the podcast studio is a screen with our own faces looking back and our guest. And this is such a great episode. You may remember as part of our, For the Love of the Middle series, we brought on the incomparable Dr. Shefali, one of my favorite people to follow on social media. She is just a really rare voice that doesn’t just talk about change, which can actually be debilitating. She calls us out gently, but firmly, as you will see to actually live it with a lot of practical pragmatism around it, around her instruction.

And so today we are revisiting this brilliant, truly conversation about parenting, self awareness as a parent, and how to rewrite old, unhelpful narratives that most of us have carried to some degree for too long. Um, this conversation with Dr. Shefali is really all about finding freedom. And it was one of my favorite conversations of the entire year.

And so before we bring her back on, we’re going to do a little Bless and Release.

This is an interesting conversation that I am still working on releasing, you know, bless and release are these things that Amy and I have decided we send it on with our blessings. We, we, this no longer serves us off. You go, we wish you well in your journey. And I, I am in process of blessing and releasing this: the avoiding difficult conversations. Oh boy. Where are you at on that? 

Amy: Um, 

Jen: And this could be anything, mental health, addiction, finances, relationships, hurt feelings. This can be inside a marriage. It can be inside a friendship. It can be with a kid, like it’s a broad umbrella. 

Amy: I think, uh, all those things you mentioned, mental health, addiction, finances, like family secrets. Yeah. 

Jen: Yeah. 

Amy: I’m comfortable and see the huge benefit of talking about all of those things. And we started young enough with our kids, like not as soon as I wish in retrospect, but it’s been part of our nuclear family conversations. So, I think I have the muscle memory and the language to talk about it with my kids, um, even with our parents. We’ll talk about some of the harder things. I am still avoiding things, I think, with adult relationships, adult friendships. It seems harder. We talk about all these things to each other about our kids, about ourselves. But when it’s, when you’re navigating your own adult friendships, we don’t have the muscle memory for conflict resolution.

Jen: Yeah. 

Amy: Um, because when all of this sort of came on the forefront and we incorporated it into our lives, a lot of us had littler kids. They were our focus and our friendship sort of ran on all the things we had in common in that stage of parenting. 

Jen: Meet you at the park. Meet you at Chick fil A. 

Amy: Right. So now, if there is a conflict. We just aren’t as experienced in it. It’s true. But I, I do release, um, this idea of you can’t talk about it. Totally. You need to. Yes. We’re just not as practiced. 

Jen: You’re right. I mean, I think generations before us would have said overtly, you don’t talk about it. 

Amy: Right. 

Jen: Ours is more like avoidance. It’s not like a direct instruction. Like that is not polite. You know, or that, that discomfort’s not worth the conversation. I think we’re beyond that, but without the muscle memory, without the practice, I am historically an avoider. Nobody who knows me doesn’t know that I’m an avoider of hard things. And that, that runs the gamut for me.

I actually have a really hard time having hard conversations in business. Very hard, as you know, and I have, I will just eat my feelings about a business relationship or a business practice or the direction of something or other for so long, years, years, literally, before I will finally face it because I am so of, I’m so averse to the relational tension.

So I guess instead I’ll just feel terrible for five years. Yeah. It’s so dumb. It is. It’s so dumb. And I did not have a good, um, uh, rhythm in my marriage about talking about hard things. And so I notice now divorce, and of course, post divorce, I did a billion hours therapy. And so I’m, I mean, that rose up immediately as one of my issues.

Amy: Yeah. 

Jen: You know, because therapists don’t take any of your shit. And, so I’ve learned so many things about how to have a hard conversation, but I’m, I am not good at it yet. So even with Tyler, there will be something I want to talk to him about and I will just talk myself out of the conversation for weeks, weeks and weeks and weeks.

It’s not even like a big, big deal. 

Amy: Yeah. 

Jen: It’s just a conversation. 

Amy: But we, we are making headway. Progress. I can’t imagine a situation where in our friend group, like, something happens and we’re like, well I don’t know, Martha’s just never going to come to Bridge again. 

Jen: That’s so true. 

Amy: Nobody say a word.

Jen: You’re right. 

Amy: Like, we’ve progressed from there. 

Jen: The trajectory is up. Yes. That is so true. And our kids are going to do even better. Yeah. I watch them do it. 

Amy: Oh, mine are so good with their friends. And with me solving things. 

Jen: I know they’re, they’re doing better too, but you’re right. We’re doing better. So I want to, I want to say that I have fully released that, but I know that that would not be fully true, but I am working on it and I want to. Good job. 

This episode is so good and I am so delighted to put it back in front of you. So for those of you who don’t know, Dr. Shefali, here is the very, the quick rundown.

She’s a New York Times bestselling author. Obviously she’s a, she’s a world renowned clinical psychologist. That’s her, that’s her primary uplink. She’s a speaker and she’s genuinely reshaping the way that we think about relationships, primarily parenting. Dr. Shafali, um, earned her doctorate from Columbia and she has just built this incredible career helping parents and women reclaim their personal power. She’s been everywhere. Um, she’s Oprah’s coach. So no big deal. Um, she’s been on stages around the globe. And of course this podcast, lucky us. Her book, The Parenting Map is just an ultimate guide to building deep conscious connections with your kids, breaking toxic cycles that we maybe grew up with. Um, and then most importantly, really growing yourself in the process, not just as a parent. Um, because as she says, the evolution of the planet depends on the evolution of the parent. I love that actually. So since we recorded this episode, she has launched the Parenting and You with Dr. Shafali podcast, and it’s not your typical show. It’s a podcast about raising the parent as much as it is about raising the child. So if you are a parent or if you plan to be, it’s going to light your brain on fire. You’re going to love it. So delighted to put in front of you, Dr. Shefali.

Dr. Shefali. Welcome back. I, you are one of the people that I most admire and respect. And I listened to you for a million reasons. But maybe. the lead of which is you say new and hard things that I haven’t heard. And you have consistently over just this enormous body of work that you’ve created, you push, you push us on traditions and institutions and narratives that we digested so completely that now it’s just all we see the, the mere idea of reimagining them or reinventing them is disruptive and you’re a bit of a disruptor in every good way. And so I’m so happy to have you back on. Thanks for coming. 

Dr. Shefali: Thank you, my dear friend, sister. Um, thank you because I don’t see myself as a disruptor, but I do see myself as a revisionist trying to create a new tomorrow. And in order to do that, right, everyone wants a new tomorrow. But what we don’t realize that that new future comes with an absolute willingness to disrupt, destruct the past. So it, every new beginning has to have a destruction. So in order to evolve, we must crumble the old. And that’s where people get tripped up.

Everyone wants the new hope and the new future, but they don’t want to do the work to disrupt and dismantle that, which has been holding them back. And that’s what I’m trying to do in, in all of my work, but especially the parenting paradigm, because that is the most sacred institution of all, because our children are, you know, literally to use the cliche, the future.

So if, if that journey is set a foot on the wrong setting, then that’s it. We’re, we’re casting generations forward, catapulting them into shadows of their unworthiness without realizing. This journey to me is really the beginning of the footprint, and that’s why I focus so much on it. I always say that the evolution of the planet depends on the evolution of the parent.

It’s a good place to start, right? When we think of big problems like poverty and climate change, we often don’t know where to start. Imagine the power we could harness if we just embodied the role of the parent and its influence in a more conscious way. 

Jen: Would you be willing to walk us through just the highest level maybe of what you mean by “conscious parenting” and then to set us up for the rest of the conversation as we begin to dive a little deeper into the parenting map?

Dr. Shefali: Okay, just quickly, conscious parenting is a revolutionarily different way to parent your kids. Traditional parenting talks about the kid being the one you have to fix, curate, and take into adulthood– such a burden on the kid and the parent don’t realize, but the conscious parenting paradigm solely and wholly focuses on the raising of the parent and then the raising of the child, and it’s a game changer! It sounds like a simple shift of focus and pivot, but it’s really a game changer. Just that slight focus away from the kid to the parent will change your parenting journey forever.

Jen: I mean, I cannot imagine that you are still not getting daily responses from that one. Cause it’s, it’s just not how anybody has coached us through parenting. It’s a, it really is revolutionary. It’s a different approach. Um, and it makes all the difference in the world. I, the first time I was kind of exposed to, to your work in that book, I can’t tell you how many times I would just sit there and go, huh, never heard that. Never thought of that. I never examined that here. I, everything was kid centric. And so, um, I love that that was where you started and so let’s talk about the parenting map because you literally map out different stages of parenting. And so stage 1, you say, is about moving from frustration to clarity in our parenting style.

And so you are encouraging your reader, those of us who are parents to let go of the, I just love this, of the lies surrounding what it means to be a good parent. Oh, gosh. Oh, I could talk about that for a million years. Um, so a couple of the steps that you focus on are relinquishing control and discarding labels.

I’d like to hear you share more about all of this. Why do we start here? Why does this matter? Why is this sort of stage one? Um, and what do you mean by all of these terms? 

Dr. Shefali: Beautiful. So I wrote this fourth parenting book called The Parenting Map because people were bothering me so much with the question why and how and they wanted a real practical guide.

This is really that how- to manual. So I broke it down into three stages. We always in any self evolving journey have to start with the mindset. So stage one is mindset change. Stage two is psychological disruption stage. And stage three is emotional connection with your kids. You can’t even arrive at emotional connection with your kids until you do the first two steps, right? It’s the first two steps is clean up your mind, clean up your heart, understand your emotional patterns. If you don’t, you know, everyone wants to hug that kid and have that kid hug them back, but you can’t arrive there with consciousness unless you’ve done the inner work. 

So stage one is about changing mindset and that involves a true deconstruction of the bullshit really that the traditional parenting paradigm has set us up for. So the common lies are number one, the traditional parenting paradigm has told us the parent that we have unmitigated, unlicensed, unsupervised, control over these beings. Now, included and embedded in that is this notion that because we have supreme control, we are allowed, permitted, to do as we wish for the supreme outcome of creating a happy, perfect super human.

So this is the control we are bestowed. But with that control, we are also told now you have the control, go ahead and create the super magnetic, super achievers, right? Everything that we may never be, but we have to create that in the children. So it’s this double edged sword. We get all the control. We are to hold all the power.

But we have a great Herculean task ahead of us, create these superhuman beings. So we keep scrambling for control. And therein comes parental discipline. We actually created this whole institution called parental discipline and allowed ourselves to have this unmitigated tyranny over our children should we choose.

Literally, we can do anything to our children, right? And now we couch it in the name of love that we’re only doing it because we want to create you into perfection. So imagine then the burden it puts on the child. So this is the toxic dynamic that is set up when the child is in utero. This is all happening pre birth and this is how we enter the parenting journey. And we do not realize how insidiously this toxifies our mentality. It is so ingrained. 

Jen: That rings so familiar. It’s just as if you’ve just been spying on the house. Everything you said, that’s what I thought parenting was. That’s what I thought, um, outcomes were and meant. That’s where I thought failure entered the chat because they didn’t do the thing. They didn’t do it. I’m like, but this is the formula. It didn’t do it. It didn’t work. And then I’m not only felt like a failure. I felt like my kid is a failure. Like, why aren’t you following the script? I, I put all the ingredients in the soup pot as prescribed, stirred it real good, like diligently, just a diligent stir.

Um, and so what you are saying is the truth. This is the truth. Every parent who’s telling the truth will be like, Oh yeah. Occasionally we get a kid that trots their little way right through the formula. And that’s just luck of the draw. Cause that’s how that kid was going to do anyway. Okay. That’s just that kid, 

Dr. Shefali: But let’s talk about that quote unquote, good kid, right? Talking about labels. Oh, we love that kid, right? I didn’t have that kid, but my friend had that kid and I used to envy her. But let me tell you that good kid, that poor good kid. And maybe you and I would though that kid… 

Jen: I was the good kid. 

Dr. Shefali: I was a good kid. Guess what happens to the good kid. The good kid literally gets marauded invaded and destroyed to the, because the parent goes, wow, she’s so good. He’s so good. Let’s make them even better. There’s no end to the parental ego and the thirst for satiating that ego. So then that good kid becomes the perfect kid. And I can tell you through my clinical work, that good kid crashes. One out of 100 may not crash, but I’ve seen 99 of them crash and burn by their mid adulthood, like by their thirties, forties, they’re crashing because it’s just too much a cross to bear because they’re good temperament was taken to the extreme, right? The good girl taken to the extreme becomes self-sacrificial and she begins to lose her sense of self. It typically happens with girls, and then she’s destroyed, and then she’s mid forties and she’s like, who am I? Uh, that’s why I wrote that book, a Radical Awakening. . So, so prototypically, that good girl is screwed, or the good boy is screwed because they will be pushed by culture to be the nth degree of the Zenith of goodness, but the bad kid, the quote unquote, bad kid. I love quote unquote, the bad kid, because that kid is the awakener. That kid is going to challenge the F out of you. And you will only have two choices: to try to destroy them. I tried to destroy my daughter, but she was too strong for me. And so by the age of her being two, I had to wake up. And that’s why I began doing all this work. So she’s my awakener because she was quote unquote, so bad. Why was she bad? Because she refused to comply. Her spirit was indomitable to my ego’s glare, right? And my ego’s force and the other choice of the, for the bad kid, so A, we’ll destroy them. If we can’t destroy them, then we will constantly berate, degrade, and they will then be the rebel, the outcast, the outlier. There is, guess what? There is no such thing as a good kid or a bad kid. There is none. We put these labels based on our egoic agenda. So then parents asked me, so then what kind of kids are there? And I go, just kids, just humans who are terribly, flawed like we are and terribly, but amazingly blissful like we are. And then just this unique combo and they defy labels. So again, whenever a parent says, Oh, I have, Oh my goodness, my Sally, she’s such a good kid. I cringe because I know what that means that that kid is simply endorsing and stroking the parents, you know, relentless ego.

Jen: Oh my gosh. These are such deep waters. It’s interesting to hear you talk because it’s both a relief and a comfort and it’s also a challenge because on one hand, it’s such a relief to not not be forced into this narrow space where we have to think of one or all of our kids or whatever it is as the bad kids. It’s a bummer. And we know, like, I know deeper in my heart, that’s not true. You can see that they’re just full of gifts and life and they’re special and rare, like all kids are. And, um, but the challenge is though, then what instead? And that’s why you wrote this book because too many parents came to you and said, but what instead, what do we do?

So you talk about in stage two, moving from dysfunctional patterns, which probably almost all of us have, right? Uh, there’s the very rare conscious parent who just came by honestly. Yeah. Okay. 

Dr. Shefali: Right. Never met. I always say just parenting is not something you are. Or it’s something you’ve become. I believe you, you simply cannot be born a conscious parent, please. No. 

Jen: Yeah. We have too much coming at us. Too many labels, too many ideas about what’s good, bad, fail, success. I, I, I believe you. 

So in stage two, you are saying, let’s move from that to more like conscious choice and you advise the parent, catch your ego, and discover your two eyes.

I wonder if you could walk us through what is it that you are teaching parents to do in these steps? 

Dr. Shefali: Okay. So now we’re getting down and dirty into the parents emotional crap. And when, when we read this section, the tendency will be to feel shame and guilt and blame. And I have great compassion in this stage for parents because I’m challenging them.

Don’t, don’t enter this self absorption of, Oh my God, I’m such a bad person because those feelings may come up, but instead use this section as an invitation to heal your own patterns because they’re showing up everywhere. If they’re showing up with your kid, they’re showing up all over the place. So the first step is to, you have to even know that you are an ego, right?

We parents have so much ego. We don’t even think we have ego. Like, literally, we’re so delusional that we think everything out of our mouth is the holy grail. And it’s all for the selfless intention of raising these amazing children. We, it doesn’t even occur to us that it is imbued and infused with a raging ego.

So that’s why I’m very compassionate because I was like that too. I couldn’t believe. I was literally controlling this child out of my own helplessness, out of my own lack. 

So the, the five ego patterns that I expose parents to consider having are one of these five. So the first one is the parent who is quick to anger and they have the ego pattern of being the fighter parent. So I talk about the fighter parent, the one who explodes, the one who everyone has to tippy toe around, snip, snap my way or the highway. That tendency, if that’s you, it’s good for you to recognize it, identify it. And then I talk about how to break it. 

The second ego pattern is someone who’s kind of filled with anxiety. Typically the good girl is the one filled with anxiety, perfectionism, and that is the fixer parent. And the fixer parent is the classic savior, rescuer, enabler. Overdoer, over pleaser. I bet you and I are that kind of parent. 

And then we have the feigner parent, the one who feigns that that’s the attention seeking parent, the one for whom appearances matter more than authenticity. The one who’s typically, uh, you know, the stage mom, the sports dad, you know, these stereotypes or someone who’s very heavily into traditions, religious traditions, who care more about how the family appears. Keeping up with the Joneses, you know, everything should look good on the outside, but it could be a wreck on the inside.

The fourth kind of parent is ruled by avoidance and big emotions, scare them. They get paralyzed. That is the freezer parent. And many, many men surprisingly have told me how they freeze. They actually get threatened by conflict and they want to act. It seems odd because you would think men would go for conflict, but they first actually freeze and then they fight. I mean, it’s just a stereotype of a lot of fathers I’ve talked to.

And then the last kind of parent is the one who’s kind of abandoned to their own, uh, emotions, abandoned to their own authenticity in a very traumatic way. So people who come from severe trauma where they have experienced abandonment, they are the fleer parent.

So I give this typology kind of a fun way to identify, but a profound way to identify yourself, your partner, your sisters, your brothers, your parents so that you can see how they came to be. And it’s really enlightening when you begin to become aware with compassion that damn, you know what? She’s right. I’m always anxious and I’m always rushing in to fix my kids lives. I am always rescuing them because I’m terrified of their unhappiness. It burdens me when I see my kid unhappy. And if they’re unhappy with me, oh my goodness, then I’m dying. Right? I cannot tolerate it. 

So recognizing these patterns allows us to see them playing out. And then I give ways in this section to break these loops. And the way we break these loops is through the identification of the I’s. So I talk about three I’s, first the two, and then one more. The two I’s are, everything comes from this deep place of unworthiness. And each one of us metaphorically have this inner child within us that wasn’t recognized, celebrated for who it is we ordinarily are, ordinarily are, meaning in our essence, not for our grades, not for our skinniness, not for our achievements, not for our body, for who we are. 

You know, I’m always training parents, you know, can you not focus on the doing? Can you just be with your kid and not talk about their grades, their hobbies, what they did at school? Don’t bring it up, because whenever you bring it up, You’re showing your kids that that is where you’re invested. Instead, true authentic connection is simply about being with them wherever they are. So, our inner child, each one of us has an inner child now that feels this longing for worth. In order to get our worth, as children, we created these ego patterns. Some of us became fighters. Some of us became fixers. Some of us became, you know, the go getters and the super achievers, the ones who got the attention. Some of us just froze and some of us ran away emotionally or physically. And these ego patterns get calcified.

So those are the first two I’s. I talk about discovery or two I’s: the inner child and your imposter ego. The imposter ego is the mask we wear. And then the way to resolve this is to break this pattern. Uh, is to, uh, develop the third I, which I call the insightful self, your adult self, which begins to mediate between these two.

Let me tell you, this section of the book, stage two is literally therapy in motion. If you, if you do it yourself, you don’t even need to hire a therapist, but this is the deep work that I offer people in a very tangible, simple way. It’s what every good therapist will teach you how to do, but I teach it in this section of the book.

Jen: I can see how if that was all anyone did, just that, just that piece alone, it would change our homes. It was changed to the dynamics with ourselves first, and then obviously everybody around us as a result of it. 

Dr. Shefali: Let me ask you, you think you’re a fixer? 

Jen: I saw a little bit of myself in everything you said, is that possible?

Dr. Shefali: Yes, what do you think your, your first gear is though? 

Jen: I think my first gear is a fixer and, and it’s weirdly and embarrassingly tied to that to the third one which was kind of like, how does it all seem, how, you know, how does it because I, I derive a sense of, like, um, well, I guess, like, parental success from that. Like, this kid ran through all the traps and they did it. And now they’re on the other side of it and they’re successful because I have young adults. My oldest is almost 25. And so I am, I’m attaching now a sense of like parenting success to what kind of adults they’re turning out to be. And so it’s something between those two. 

Um, but I also have a really strong freeze mechanism and I saw that play out, I feel like even more so in my marriage, because you said, however you are, it’s how you are. If you’re this way with your kids, you’re this way everywhere. So pay attention because this is your own, this is your pattern everywhere. And so I, I had a really strong freeze mechanism and that just disintegrates connection. It just breaks it. 

Dr. Shefali: I think that freezer is so common, it’s almost the underlying, you know, we all get terrified and then we, we move into some, we galvanize, but some people stay stuck in freezer mode and they simply avoid.

Yes, you, you saw yourself in all of these. And then I don’t know whether you can in your own time, but you can then contemplate your partners, your parents, right? So that’s what this stage offers people, not only an insight into your patterns, but an insight into other people’s patterns. And then guess what?

In stage three, I talk about how then our kids, our damn kids develop these patterns too. 

Jen: Let’s talk about stage three. Cause at that point you’re, you’re moving us from conflict to connection. And in one part of that section, you discuss reframing mistakes and you actually give three reasons why, why like kids might misbehave as we see it, as we perceive it so I’d love, I’d love to hear you talk more about that and how we can better understand what it is that our kids are doing and choosing and how it is that they’re behaving and why. 

Dr. Shefali: Okay, beautiful. So just to give you an overview, stage three is about conscious connection in the conscious parenting model as I espouse it, we begin by looking at our children as whole humans, meaning they are, as I said before, limited, and unlimited beings. But it’s okay, you know, in this new world, we feel afraid to say we are limited. Apparently we’re not allowed to be limited anymore. 

Jen: Gosh, that’s true. 

Dr. Shefali: I mean this, what the hell? No, I have limitations and I’m okay with them. I’m happy to call them limitations. I’m comfortable calling them limitations. I feel free. I feel free saying, no, that’s sorry. That’s not me. That’s my limitation. Can’t do that. And I’m allowed to have them as a human. Suddenly it’s not so sexy to have limitations. I don’t know when, when that happened, but similarly, our kids can have limitations too, but that’s part of being a whole human being. You’re not just a super human being and not just a perfect person. So when we come with that and we embrace this ideology of wholeness, not perfection, wholeness, not perfection, then when our kid makes a mistake, for example, or when our kid is acting out first, because we’ve done the work in stage two, we now see, damn, my kid has an ego. That means my, that means my kid’s inner child is hungry for some attention. My kid’s inner child is feeling unworthy. Let me tell you, when I began to see my child as having an inner child and an ego, I cannot tell you how many wars I saved in the house because I had so much compassion.

So even when she was this obnoxious 16 year old banging the door one day, she banged it so hard. It unhinged from the frame, but I saw her as just a hurt in a child. That’s why that those teachings in stage two will change your approach to everybody, to every human on earth, but anyway. 

So we begin to see our children as having egos, having inner children, and then the three reasons why children misbehave are so simple. They’re the same reasons we may misbehave. They are, and especially in children, number one, children have a lack of skill, rightly so. Their brains are not developed to that. I don’t know, 65, at least 28, at least 28, right? At least 28. So whenever my child forgets things, misplaces things, gets up late, sets the alarm for PM instead of AM and makes human mistakes, if I can keep reminding myself, ah, a big chunk of her brain hasn’t even developed. Ah, she just has a lack of skill, lack of executive functioning. I get it. That’s who these children are. They’re not bad. They’re not defective. That’s just who they are. 

The next reason why children misbehave is genuinely because of a lack of life experience. You and I went through that phase too. We thought we were invincible. So we have to remember this age group called childhood all the way to 28, by the way, is an age where they just don’t have enough life experience. So you have to give them grace. You just have to. Just like being parents and being parents of young adults for the first time, like now you’re a parent of like 30 year olds, you need grace because you don’t know how to deal with them. You’ve never dealt with them before. So in the same way, they’ve never been that age before either. So they need grace. 

And the last reason why children misbehave is due to a lack of self worth. 

Right. So now if you combine all these three, which is typically the deadly cocktail, lack of skill, lack of experience and lack of worth. Now you have a real misbehaving kid. So the moment we take the route of the traditional parenting model, which is to fear them, fear monger them, shame them, guilt them, blame them and punish them. We may get immediate reward of them suppressing their misbehavior, but in the long run, it’s never sustainable.

Jen: Let me ask you this. You’ve kind of mentioned the sort of span of brain development reaching all the way up into a kid’s upper twenties. This interview is in the, in a series called For the Love of the Middle. And we’re talking about a lot of things that we’re dealing with kind of at my age. So our kids are getting older, so we don’t have kindergartners anymore. They’re getting older. Our parents are getting older. We’re in this middle part of life that has a little bit less scaffolding than I expected it to have. Um, there was a ton of people to tell me what to do as a young adult, as a young parent, um, as a young person building a career. There’s just so much about how to get started.

I find less structure around this middle part when life is looks different. And so I want to, I want to think about this in terms of parenting for just a second. How do you think, and just if we’re just outside the conversation, just be like, this doesn’t apply. But how do these steps work when our kids are older or getting older? They’re late teens and even young adults. So our role as a parent looks different, obviously. Um, but what I’m learning with five kids between 17 and 24, there’s still a lot of parenting happening. Young adults still need parents, but just differently. And so, can you talk about what this might look like for those of us who’ve got the bigger kids? And the young adult kids. 

Dr. Shefali: Absolutely. My own daughter is 20. So we move energetically from center stage to backstage. So first we have to be comfortable letting our kids now be in the center stage of their life. So first it’s an energetic, and it’s a falling back. And it’s a pulling away, not because of a replacement of power necessarily, but because of a necessity of letting these children now practice adulthood.

So they must practice, which means they’re going to perhaps spend too much or mess up too much or forget too much because now with the safe haven of us being right behind them, but no longer leading the way they get to full throttle practice. And that’s what I believe the college years are about. They are a preparatory phase for adulthood.

So it is essential if you want your children to be autonomous, sovereign adults, that you let them do this middle phase. And I believe it starts from like 10 all the way till 30. With you inching your way back to backstage and of course gradually when they’re 10 a little bit more when they’re 16 definitely when they’re 18 20 and in a very big way in their 20s.

Even being unavailable to answer them right away, even going, I don’t know the answer to that right now and stalling on giving your opinion, stalling on the sermon, stalling on the reminders, letting them fumble because that’s the fledgling stage they must endure, but you must endure it. And again, like you said, if you’re invested in what kind of adult they grow up to be, then we’re going to be in hot waters.

Like personally for me, of course I want my kid to be, you know, sane, healthy, and happy, of course, but I’m not so invested in how that looks anymore. Because, you know, you and I have been through a divorce because you and I now know that 25 year old marriages, both of us had long marriages and how life changes and pivots, would you and I have ever imagined being where we are in this moment? Not in a million years, you and I will even go as far to say, even from two years ago.

Jen: You’re right. 

Dr. Shefali: We would never imagine today. So if we can’t imagine in our own lives what two years brings about, how can we ever fantasize how the outcome of our children’s life? So we have to let it go. Let it go. Don’t be attached to how it looks anymore. 

Jen: That’s good.

Dr. Shefali: Just be attached to how, what I’m attached to and what I encourage parents to do. How am I showing up right now? It is delicious to have less control. It is amazing to not be involved in every single detail. Can you, as a parent relish that you have arrived? Now, enjoy this arrival. And actually the degree of your release is directly proportionate to the degree you trust yourself as a parent, right? How have you, did you trust what you did for the last 17 years? I know I did good enough as much as I could do. And now the child has to parent themselves. I gave them the tools. They must activate their own parenting. And here’s the mistake I think, because we over parent all the way into the late twenties. Guess what, then, when they find their first significant partner, and this probably happened to you and me, we fall into that same enmeshment. Because we don’t give them enough of a window of inner authority and independence and sovereignty and autonomy. Like singular autonomy for a good 5- 7 years, the enmeshment continues, and then they take that enmeshment into their first, second love affairs, and then end up marrying the person enmeshed, and carrying all that baggage.

So, allowing our children to parent themselves is actually a phase of development. 

Jen: Interesting to see the older kids respond to that. Um, that distancing in different ways and they don’t always like it. They don’t like it. They’ve suggested to me, like, you’ve just kind of, you’re just hands off. You’re just done, I guess, with us.

And I’m like, well, I mean, in some way, in some way I am like, you live in an apartment. They don’t love it. 

Dr. Shefali: They don’t want the interference, but they want the constant presence. I will literally text my daughter all day on a particular day. Say it’s a Tuesday and she’ll tell me to not bother her.

Then I’ll listen. So I won’t bother her all day Wednesday. And then at night, she’ll tell me, where have you been all day? Right. So it’s so fascinating. Yeah. But I think the lesson for us is, how do we constantly show our presence and unequivocal cheerleading? I’m thinking of you, I miss you, I’m remembering you, I adore you, letting them know they are on our mind, never too far from our heart, but I’m not involved in your day to day. Right. 

Jen: That’s good. That’s that’s it. That’s it. And the thing is, it’s not their fault, even that they are craving. We over parented. I did. I for sure did. So I did not set them up to have this, this feeling of autonomy in a great way. So they’re just like, well, this is a real big swing. So I, I see the outcome though, the connectedness is what matters. 

And that brings me to my last question for you. And this is really broad and maybe a complex answer, um, when you think about this new book that you’re just about to put in the hands of readers, I’m going to go back to the very first question. So at the beginning, we talked about, these are the lies. These are the narratives. This would, these were the stories that we were told and then told ourselves about what parenting means, what good parenting means, what a good kid means, what a bad kid means. When somebody closes the last page of this book. What are you, what’s your goal here? If it’s not just to churn out a bunch of kids with their master’s degrees, who, you know, live in whatever, what is the goal? What are you saying, here, come with me and this is where I would love to walk with you toward this, what this relationship could look like. 

Dr. Shefali: Yeah, I love that question. I always say conscious parenting is, has nothing to do with the child. It has to do with changing humanity. So at the end of this journey, the parent will not only experience a release and a liberation of all the unnecessary burdens of parenting put by culture, all the anxieties, the stressors. This book was shed all of that because so much of it was unnecessary and not only experienced that liberation, but also they will have grown themselves.

They would have evolved. They would have released their own parents from the resentment or the blame or the anger perhaps that they were stuck in. Their own childhood patterns would come undone at the end of this book, and then they will enter into a new authentic relationship with themselves. And literally, I’ve had parents tell me who read this book already, uh, they will see their children in such a new way that they will just have marveled. Where has this child been all this time? Because the veils of our delusion will get stripped and the ego will crumble and relax a little bit, and the heart just opens. When the, when the ego crumbles, proportionately, the heart expands, and you then are just this heart-centered, being able to connect to other people in a very attuned, compassionate, genuine way. And then your children feel it and they come toward you like a flower to the sun. 

Jen: Oh man, that is so good. What a good, what a good journey. And I think that is what we want. Like, as you describe it, I think, that’s what I want. That that’s who I want to be in the world. That’s definitely who I want to be as a mom and with, and for, and to my kids. And I can just see all the places that I am just, I’ve only got one kid left in the house. And I can just see right as, as recent as one hour ago in this living room where I’m just white knuckling the thing, like just do it this way, like, just do it this way. Why can’t you? And why won’t you? And this isn’t my job and it isn’t. So. Yes. Turns out it isn’t, so I just, your way’s better, it’s better, and I’m so grateful to you, I’m so happy that you are just coaching us collectively and communally, as parents toward a better way and toward really ultimately a better world, uh, that’s cause that’s what this will produce is just better humans in general. And then how we relate to each other is like a natural outcropping of that. So it’s wonderful. 

All right. Um, before I ask you the final question that I’ve asked you before, I ask all my guests, will you just– the books coming out? So will you just remind my listeners. What it is, where it is, where they can get it, where they can find you, all of this important information?

Dr. Shefali: Thank you. So the book is called The Parenting Map, buy it for your friends, your, your parents, anyone you know who wants to evolve. And I appreciate your support because I tell people, everyone who buys this book now becomes an ambassador of conscious parenting. I also have lots of free meditations, videos, courses on my website so they can access that.

Yep. And, uh, my website is dr shefali.com . 

Jen: Yep. You guys will have all of that for you. I’ll round up every single link, every single thing. And if you’re not following Dr. Shefali on socials, do that first. Just right away. This sort of constant sort of little soundbite input just keeps me, just pulls me back to center, pulls me back to center every time. So I’ll, I’ll make sure everybody has that.

Finally. And I would love for you to answer this however you feel like today. The answer for me would change probably by the hour. Uh, but this is a question everybody gets and you’ve answered it before. What is saving your life right now? 

Dr. Shefali: Just the sense of community, the sense that we’re walking this journey together and I get to lighten someone’s load, uh, that is such a gratifying feeling. So that’s my, my greatest purpose. 

Jen: I love it. I love it. That is so lovely and so indicative of exactly who you are in the world.

Thanks for sharing that. Thanks for being on the show today. I, um, I’m so excited. I don’t know if it’s a strange thing to say, but I’m just excited for everyone who’s going to read this and it’s going to change their families. It’s just going to change their families. It’s consequential. You know, this will matter. This will, this will fundamentally change a lot of relationships, the ones that we care about the very most in the world. And so what a wonderful place to be to get to watch that like roll out in your community. And so I’m excited to bang the drum for it. And until next time!

All right. You guys, thank you so much for joining today. I hope that podcast served you as much as it did me. Um, that’s one of those that you can listen to like 10 times. And get something new out of it every single time.

So, um, per usual, if you go to jenhatmaker. com under the podcast tab, I’ll have everything you need over there, the link to this episode and all the show notes, and then a link to all of Dr. Shefali’s incredible work, because she is a really trustworthy guide through the landscape of parenting and just growth and development.

So I, I love conversations like that and I hope that you did too. All right, you guys, um, thanks for being here. Thanks for subscribing and being an incredible loyal listener and we’ll see you next week.

 

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

 

The Conscious Parent by Dr. Shefali Tsabary

The Parenting Map by Dr. Shefali Tsabary

Dr. Shefali’s previous interview on For the Love:Releasing The Fantasy of “The Good Girl” with Dr. Shefali Tsabary