Episode 221: Dr. Shefali: A No-BS Approach to Parenting
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Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits & Hustle. Crush it!

Today on the podcast, we have Dr. Shivali. She is an expert in family dynamics and personal development, teaching courses around the globe. She has written four books, three of which are New York Times bestsellers, including her two landmark books, The Conscious Parent and The Awakened Family. Her newest book, The Parenting Map, is a step-by-step guide of a parent-child dynamic relationship and...

I just read it. It is really good. If you are somebody who is a parent, who is wanting to be a parent, it's a really easy way to learn step-by-step how to do it properly, I suppose, if there is a way.

I really enjoyed having this conversation. I love the way Dr. Shabali breaks things down. She's also a no BS type of psychologist where she doesn't mince her words and she tells you how she sees it. Like I said, I really enjoyed this podcast. I learned a lot.

Hopefully you do too. Please leave me as usual, guys. Leave me a review. Let me know what you think after listening, but I really think you're going to get a lot out of it. Enjoy.

I want to know where you came from because you're honestly one of these people that I had no idea, no clue that you even existed. And then, like I was saying, all of a sudden, out of the blue, I see you everywhere on my social media. Like you come up every four and a half seconds with an IG live with somebody or some type of clip.

or some type of like information, like in the last six months, am I just crazy? Or in the last six months or a year, did you kind of just explode in terms of popularity, in terms of being such an amazing thought leader in the parenting or otherwise, or just in terms of relationship in general space? Like, where did you come from?

Well, you know, I stay away from social media. So I've only recently allowed myself to indulge in it. So that's that's why I've been kind of hidden. But when I first blasted onto the scene was when Oprah did her first my first super soul.

Around my first book and then she called me again around my second book which you know very few people get called on twice and so in the parenting realm I've been quite well known as the sort of creator of this movement on conscious parenting

And then I wrote my best book, I think, on relationships called Radical Awakening. And that came out during the pandemic. So it was underground, but it's a big bestseller. And it's really about transforming women's lives. And now I should say this is my best parenting book. It's called The Parenting Map.

The Parenting Map is your most current book. I feel the book to be extremely valuable because it teaches you so much about who you are as a person. And it's not what people expect it to be, which is what I was really pleasantly surprised about. You actually say it like it is. There's no holding back. There's no mincing words. There's no like trying to like step properly.

You say it was underground from COVID, but I don't think it was so underground because like I said, like every day, even like today alone, you came up like 4,000 times on my algorithm. So...

Right, right. Well, thank you. So yeah, my work is provocative and I do say it in a way that perhaps people haven't heard before, but as a therapist, having worked over decades with client after client, I understand the reason why we suffer and I want to help people to suffer less. But in order to help them suffer less, we have to tell them about their insufferable parts. And no one wants to hear about

our ego, no one, you know, and least of all the parent, because the parent has been put on this almighty pedestal of superiority. So to tell the parent that they may not know best, which is something we were told, right? You know best. So when I shock them with the truth of that, they are very upset because their identity, our identity as parents is based on

knowing our children, controlling our children, and then creating these supersonic beings, right? 100%. So I like, because you also say very close in the beginning of the book, like parenting, if it was about, if it was about the child, it would be called childing, but it's, it's called parenting because it should be about the parent.

which was, I thought, such a funny and yet profound line. Why don't we start by just for people who don't know, right, who are still maybe living under a rock or two, what is Conscious Parenting, how you define that, and what is the first step to becoming a conscious parent? Okay, perfect. I promise I'm going to answer it. But before I answer it, I have to tell people that consciousness

Conscious parenting is a new, it's a revolution. It's a new model in parenting from the traditional parenting model. So let me talk about the traditional parenting model, how you and I were typically raised. We were raised under this model that said the parent is the

on the pedestal of all knowing. The parent has superior control and the parent is mandated to create the perfect, super successful and happy child. So that was our parents' model, how we were raised.

And if the child wasn't falling into line in that model, then the parent had the ultimate unquestioned, unlicensed and unsupervised authority to basically beat the child into submission. You could beat them through shame, through guilt, through fear, through punishment, through control, whatever you wanted to pick out of your toolbox. These were your strategies, right? Fear and more fear. So it was a fear-based model.

Conscious parenting is revolutionary in the aspect that it does away with control. It debunks control. It eviscerates it and instead speaks to something

far more profound, which is number one, the evolution of the parent. You are parenting yourself first and foremost. Second, you are leaving behind fear and you're entering an abundance-based model, a strength-based model. And you're doing away with control and you're focusing on connection. So this is how this model is so different. And then in this book, The Parenting Map, I lay out 20 steps to

how the parent can get from unconsciousness, conflict, chaos, confusion to clarity and connection.

That's a great way of putting it. So let's start with then you break it down also into three stages of how to get to this place. Now, I'm going to kind of start with the end to get to the beginning. But in this form of conscious parenting, which is so far from what we've all been taught in the norms, what is the ultimate goal? Like, what is the ultimate goal? You have a 20-year-old kid, right? Like a 20-year-old girl. Right.

I would imagine you've been conscious parenting for a while. Is it for our kids to be self-assured, self-esteem? If we do this practice and use your module, how do we hope our kids will turn out?

Sure. So in this model, we're not focused on the outcome in terms of anything external. And we're focused on all outcomes having to do with the internal connection of our children. Because in my therapy practice, patient after patient, client after client is suffering because they are not connected to their own authentic self. That is the ultimate connection.

outcome we're looking for in terms of internal well-being for our children. How settled are they in their own being? How much do they know themselves? Do they trust themselves? Do they allow themselves to be themselves? And how much do they honor themselves? These are the key ingredients. And if a person has these key inner ingredients in motion, I can guarantee you they will not

be quote-unquote failures. They may not be supersonic achievers, but they will not be failures, right? They will find a way to manifest the love of themselves out into the world because they so love and honor themselves, they will find a way to express that in the world. But we've been doing it

We've been so focused on their hobbies and their activities and their career and their achievements and the medals and the trophies that we are literally missing the whole entire point of mental well-being, which is deep and abiding inner connection. I agree. And so much of this stuff hits home, especially in a very competitive environment.

environment that I'm in, that a lot of people are in. In our heads, everyone thinks that their kid is the best. They're the smartest or the fastest or the best athlete. It's because we ourselves have a void that we're then putting on our children, right? We all want our kids to be, as you put, superstars, right?

And so it's not because we have malice or bad intention, but it's just is it how we've been conditioned? Is it because we're just we are the parent itself has so many deep rooted issues and insecurities? Like what is it and how do we stop it? Because it's so part of who it's part of human nature.

Absolutely. It's part of the conditioned human nature. We were all conditioned in childhood to be puppets to our parents' movies, to be actors in their script, in their fantasies. And because of that, most of us, to some degree or the other, gave up.

We bartered and exchanged our authentic self for the crumbs of connection. We said to ourselves, of course, without realizing, you know, I'll do anything for mom and dad to really see me as whole and worthy. And because our parents were raised by their parents to be puppets in their parents' movie, they just used us wisely.

without realizing that they were molding and sculpting us according to their fantasy. And that means by nature that we had to do and achieve and focus on the external in order to get that internal connection that we were so craving. So because our focus has been on the external, that's what we do to our kids. We don't realize that our children already have work.

They don't need to do to gain our self-esteem.

self-recognition of who it is they are. They don't need to perform in order for us to trust them and to consider them valid. But that's how we've set up the dynamic. And if you see on Instagram or social media today, everybody's trying to outdo the other and be more perfect because our validation comes from external, from how we look, from what people say about us, how many followers we have, how many downloads of our podcast, how many likes we

And that is really dangerous. And we are seeing a high correlation between social media usage and low self-esteem because the more you impinge your worth on how many people follow you and most of our children are growing up in that reality. Now they're very, very fragile because the moment they get somebody who cancels them, they feel like they have been canceled.

So this is a really treacherous territory that we are now embarking on because we are giving that power more and more to strangers, to virtual people out there in the universe who have nothing to do with our lives. Yet they hold the power over us. At that point, you don't have control, right? Because your kids are now being...

They're being persuaded by their peers, by the outside, and all these other ancillary, silly external things are giving people self-worth. What's the age, in your opinion, where doing the way that you're talking about is the most important? Is there a time frame? They can take that information and really take it in and be the most susceptible to it, or is it just throughout?

Well, you know, there's definitely a period in childhood that we need to protect. And that is, say, from zero to 13, 14. We need to protect that particularly.

because they are so vulnerable to being defined by their caregivers. And if their caregivers are these surrogate caregivers on social media, then they're going to be defined by those caregivers because their self-esteem, their self-worth is so impinged on how others see them because they haven't yet fully formed and they won't fully formed until they're like

45, not even 28, right? So we want to be careful to protect our children from these external influences and believing that they need to contour themselves according to external standards, at least for the first 14 years of their lives. So, you know, when you and I were growing up, we wanted TV time. And now the TV is no one's even watching TV, right? We're all on these media apps.

Well, let's go back to the TV. The TV was actually more benign because it didn't have algorithms built in. It didn't have constant streaming. It had a remote control with an off button that the parent could control. It was in the communal area so everyone could watch it together. So there was bonding. And now we're just going into these insular isolated pods, which is creating more disconnection. And with more disconnection, guaranteed comes more dysfunction. Absolutely.

Because we humans are connected beings. We need direct, interpersonal, in-life contact. And the more we're moving away from that, the more dysfunction is being created. Well, I think that, but what do we do about it? Because there's theory and there's practice, right? I mean, theoretically, this sounds great. Like keep your kids off of social media because they are for...

be raised like how I was raised. I went, I went with my friends and we biked around the neighborhood and we played outside and we did all these things. Now it is literally like a fight and an argument and a bra. You've got to like blackmail your kids basically or bribe your kids to like do these things because it's,

They are so addicted to video games and to YouTube and all of these things that like it's a it's an uphill losing battle. Right. So when at what age do you think it's appropriate? How long can you hold back on even giving your child a device? And number two, how do you fight that? Because, Mike, it's and I speak for every parent I know. It's because it's it changed the neuroplasticity in their brain already. They're so addicted.

It becomes really hard. You can put a lot of effort into like trying to do all these other things to navigate away from it, but it always comes back to technology.

I know. And I really do not envy parents with young kids. So let me just say that it's incredibly difficult. I'm not here to sound sanctimonious, but I am here to forewarn parents that you are giving them a loaded gun, so to speak, because their brains cannot process this information. And these video games are, you know, created based on this addictive purpose.

potential within us all. So it's inflaming our addiction, you know, by creating games that create all these levels and you can talk to your friends and then you can collect stars and you can collect all these incentives. So it's like a gambler. You want to keep going back because you want to take risks because you're feeling successful.

but they don't realize how they're creating an enmeshment and a dependency. So if parents understand that it's a loaded gun, it's a drug, then maybe they will at least hold off as much as possible and talk to other parents who their kids hang out with, the parents of the kids your kids hang out with, because we need to come to a consensus. It's not fair that you have to fight this on your

own. And then when your kid goes to the other person's house, to Tom's house, Tom's parents are so liberal, so to speak. But no, Tom's parents are not understanding that this is just a very dangerous thing that we are giving our children. If we really understood how dangerous it was, I'm telling you, we would stop. We are not yet seeing the effects, you see, but studies are now coming out to show the effects.

And what it takes is great discipline from the parent, parents showing up and parents understanding, no, I'm not going to give you this drug. I understand I'm unpopular, but this is where I draw the line. And after that 13 or 14, you can start giving it more and more. But again, with a lot of boundaries and a lot of licenses in place before they just earn the unmitigated right to go unsupervised on these screenings.

Yeah, I mean, it's a it's a real that's a real epidemic, in my opinion. With prices being so insane these days, I'm thrilled to be telling you guys about EveryPlate, which is America's best value meal kit. And I will tell you, I've used it and I concur. If you really want to cut down on your food expenses, EveryPlate is the way to go.

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So let's get back to conscious parenting, because I like to get into the nitty gritty, like what would be considered conscious parenting versus what we would be doing? Sure. So in this book, The Parenting Map, I give 20 steps and I give practice exercises for how we can implement new strategies. So first, the mindset of a conscious parent is change.

Interpersonal direct contact is the panacea, is the elixir for my children's well-being. So the more I put in their bank in terms of emotional connection, the more my kid will suffer less as they grow older.

I have to really dedicate myself to the practice of showing up for my kids and creating an environment where they are playing, where they're taking risks, where they're being with their friends, where I'm present as a parent and

much less time on artificial contact, which is created by the virtual world. So we just have to understand what it takes to make a child healthy. And the most key, the biggest key ingredient to making a child healthy on the emotional level is the parental presence, parental interpersonal connection. And it's a dedication. Listen, it's not easy. And

And today, even harder than before, because these addictions are in every back pocket. So we have to really step up to the plate and understand that these screens and the lack of interpersonal connection will ultimately be to our children's demise in terms of emotional well-being. And if we get, quote unquote, scared, then we'll be alert. You know, we all know not to give our kids nicotine.

marijuana, alcohol before a certain age, it's the same thing. These things should not be given before a certain age. So we just have to change our mindset and not give in to the tide.

And be very resolute. But that means that we have to show up as present and connected. And tell me, like, give me an example of how to show up. Because let's say you're a working parent, like I am, a lot of people are. What happens if you can't be around as much as you'd like? Or is there an amount that we should be around? Like, what is your...

like recipe, so to speak? Great question. You don't have to be, you know, physically around if you're not emotionally around. So it's, and nobody can be physically present 24 seven. So it's not about being there all day. And it's about the developmental level of your kid. If your kid is three years old, you may need to be there more than if your kid is seven or 17. It's really about at least

giving them chunks of time where you are available, where you are focused on them, where you're attentive. So whether it is cooking together, eating together, going on a walk together, going for a drive together, where you, the parent, puts down your devices and truly turns your attention to what's going on with your child and just being available. You know, as they grow older, now my daughter's 20.

She doesn't want to spend physical time with me. I don't take it personally. That's a great thing. She has her friends. But I'm physically and emotionally available. So I'm in the house and I'm around. And whenever I get those five minutes and I get it every few hours where she let me hug her or she let me just stroke her or she let me just rub her back, that's

That's what connection looks like as they grow older. But when they're young, and if we haven't cleared our plate, and if we are rushed, and if we're stressed, our children are going to absorb that they are not as important as, say, mommy's phone or mommy's work. So we have to kind of have a...

a semi-devoted time just to our children. Every day, an hour or two every day where we're devoted to giving them our emotional and physical presence. Is there a place where it's too much, like these helicopter parents who are so involved and they control everything that the kid does? And is that considered to be also...

like too extreme of being present? Yes, yes. Helicopter parents are not being present to the kid. They're being present to their own anxiety and they're really operating from ego. I talk about the helicopter parent in this book and where that comes from and what to do to control that in oneself.

It really comes from a lack of fulfillment and purpose in one's own life. It comes from making the child the product of your fantasy now. It comes from making your child the next project that you showcase to the world so that you can get significance. It comes from an emptiness within yourself because children do not need our interference.

They need our availability for when they need our help. That doesn't mean they need our help all the time. And actually our interference and over-parenting will cripple them and will actually create in them this deep sense of insecurity because we're constantly, you know, putting our fingers where we shouldn't and managing things when instead they need to develop their own resilience and their own practice at becoming themselves.

You know, I went to visit my daughter recently and, you know, I saw lots of things that I wanted to fix in her house and, you know, clean out the garbage, fold the clothes, put away the dishes. I just wanted to fix it all. But I was so proud because I didn't do one thing because all I said to myself was I have no business. I have no right to touch her stuff. I have no right to interfere and presume that she's not capable. And.

She needs to come to it when she's ready to do it. When she's ready to fold the clothes, it's up to her. It's now her jurisdiction. But in all sorts of ways, from the time they are three to the time they're 33, we can begin to attune to what is developmentally appropriate for our children to do themselves. For example, a three-year-old can...

pick out their own clothes to a certain degree. They can, you know, put their dolls into bed and put themselves into bed. Of course, you can help them, but they can begin to initiate their own development. And that's where we parents need to attune. And I talk about attunement a lot in this book because that is the key. You know, the other day, a parent came to me and said, basically, what should I do? Tell me what to do. And I

I realized that the reason that parent was feeling so helpless is because they had been missing all the milestones and all the signs. And they really did not know their child well. They were asking me if their child was happy or if their child was stressed.

And I understood that with great compassion. It's just that the parent is so wrapped up in their own fears that they stop paying attention. Our children are always telling us how they're feeling. We don't even have to ask them a single question. I can, my daughter can walk in and I can tell what her level of stress is because I observe her. I'm attuned to her. I know how she carries her stress. I know how she looks when she's happy. So attunement is the key. And

Every parent needs to train themselves to attune to their kids so that they find the answers in their own wisdom without feeling like they have to go to 10,000 experts. So I teach that in the book, in this book, The Parenting Map. Electrolyte deficiency or imbalances can cause symptoms like headaches, cramps and fatigue.

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element.com slash habits and hustle. You can receive a free element sample pack with any order, but only when you go through drink element.com that's drink L M N T.com slash habits and hustle. I feel like what we get caught up in and we, we kind of talked to us, we talked about the surface of it.

is the shoulds, right? Like what we should be doing based on what our society or culture, our neighbors are doing. And then we don't even have like, we go on autopilot or we're like robots where we don't even check in with ourselves to be like, well, is this something that I really believe? Is this really authentic to me? Or am I just now doing it because everybody else around says that's the way it should be, which I think is what most people do, to be honest.

How do you, and, and, and so therefore you're, how do you stop that? And like, I feel like that's been the trap that we've all been placed in. And then we end up parenting based on all of these like disassociations and, and, and, and how do we stop that? Because we are so, we are living in a culture where everyone is so in everybody's business and it's like what you learn. And it's really, it's, I think it's really toxic.

Yes, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. We are so living in this comparative culture, comparison culture, that we have imbued our own parenting culture.

by other people's standards, by other people's values and what we see out there as something that is a standard to aspire to. But it may have nothing to do with your kid or your capacity or your financial well-being or not. So we are basing our life and our joy really on other people's social constructs or religious constructs or political constructs without realizing that we're selling our soul.

And this is all about coming back to a deep grounded sense of who we are. Because if we are swaying in the wind of the tides of change and the tides of what culture says is the latest fashion, is the latest trend, is the latest activity, is the latest hotspot for skiing. I mean, really? Children do not need to enter that comparison culture. And we cannot use our children to develop that sense of belonging because we want to fit in.

So we need to really be strong and courageous and all my work empowers people, really all humans, to go against the matrix, to go against the tide, to not fall into the shoulds and really parent from a deep grounded sense of who is it that I am, what am I capable of, and what can I do for my kid. So even if all the parents on the block are going on this travel team,

all around the country. But I cannot, because of my financial well-being or not, or because of my stress level, or because I have three other children to take care of, or because I'm just not that energetic.

I'm allowed to say it doesn't work for my family. It doesn't work for me. You're allowed to say that as a parent and we do not give ourselves the permission. And instead what we do is we sell our soul. We go ahead and we become inauthentic. We do what all the other parents are doing. And then we're yelling, we're screaming, we're resentful because it was out of our capacity in the first place. And we don't give ourselves the permission to know what our capacity is. In the first six years of my daughter's life,

I barely sent her to any activity because A, I was dirt poor. I was in debt. I was doing a PhD at Columbia University. I was an immigrant. I am an immigrant. And I didn't have any support. No parents here, no cousins, nobody immediate close by to help me. I didn't have my village. So I was like, I have no time now to take this kid here and there when she's anyway going to be, you know, just dawdling and wasting my money. Let's just wait for her to develop and then I'll put my money somewhere. And I...

And as a result, I was way behind the curve. And parents would come to me and push me to answer this ridiculous question, which is, what does your kid do? What does your kid want to do in life? And I go, what does my kid do? My kid is just being a kid. My child is just a child. What, now she's supposed to have a career?

I didn't know children were supposed to have careers. I was just playing in the backyard or in my kitchen. And that's great. But you immediately feel shame for that because there's all these activities are all the rage. And if a kid just is strumming their fingers on the table, we buy them a drum set or a piano. You know, the kid is like, I don't want to play the piano. I was just, you know, just begging them.

I was just banging sticks on the utensils. Why have you got me on the drum set? Because we're trying to create these maestros and these, you know, next Olympians. And it's coming from our own inner craziness, our own inner lack of grounding and our own inner insecurities. But we don't want to see that. We want to pretend we're doing it for our children. No, we're not. We're doing it for our own ego to feel satisfied. Right.

But don't we need that? Doesn't the parent need to have some sense of self-awareness to even know that they're even doing this? Because you don't know what you don't know. Right. Well, you can't teach it until and unless the person comes to the precipice of the teaching. Right. The student has to come to the threshold of the teacher. Right. So they have to wake up enough to go, you know what, this doesn't feel good.

I don't feel good. My kid doesn't feel good. I'm stressed out. What the F am I doing? And be courageous enough to ask for a different way of living. So that's what my work teaches people is an entirely new way of living. But it does take a whole lot of courage because my work demands and mandates that you move away from the mainstream world.

and you go on this journey to discover yourself. So even this book, "The Parenting Map," I've laid it out as a journey. So if the parent reads the 20 steps,

They will go from frustration and confusion and all the shoulds and all the guilt. But at the end of the 20 steps, guaranteed, because this is how I do therapy with my clients. I put it all out in this book. At the end of the 20 steps, they will be more aware and they're going to have epiphany after epiphany, not just about their own children, but about how they were as children. Do conscious parent differently with a boy and a girl? Is it different?

Yes, we consciously parent the child differently. And guess what? Every bloody moment. That's what conscious parenting is. It's moment by moment attunement to who is this being in front of me? Am I truly connecting and seeing and raising the child in front of me?

Or am I raising the child of my fantasies or my neighbor's child or the child I wish I had or the child I wish I had been? Who am I really raising? So it's a very modulated approach based on each different person as it should be. What if two parents are not on the same page? Like my parenting style is one way and my husband's another way. Where do you connect in that way?

way? What do people do? Yeah, it's a problem. You know, in all my courses, I should put a little warning, you know, this may cause marital disputes. You should definitely, definitely. Yes, this may lead to marital conflict. Or divorce. Or divorce. When one person wakes up,

and does conscious parenting or conscious living, and the other person doesn't wake up. Now, the one who's woken up realizes, wow, you need to tell, they tell the other person, you need to heal yourself. You need to grow. I've done all this work and I'm evolving and you're just staying stuck. And then if the other person doesn't evolve,

Then we kind of have an abyss being created. However, when we learn conscious parenting, we also learn how to parent ourselves. So then we don't need the other person so much to be on the same page. We can do it alone. We grow up and we have compassion for the other person because then, you know, we see their parents, right? We know our mother-in-law, we know our father-in-law. We're like, okay, I get it. So

So we have compassion and we actually don't enmesh ourselves with them. But it does cause some problems, definitely. You know what's interesting? I know that you do get pushback a little bit, right, about this would be considered passive parenting. I'm surprised because this seems way less passive than the other way.

Like I would think passive parenting would be considered doing it the normal old fashioned way. Right. Because everyone's doing it. This is a different approach that you would think is it doesn't seem passive.

Oh my goodness, that's what I say. I say it's the antithesis of passivity. You're so present. The other approach is passive, it's dogmatic, it's lazy, it's passive-aggressive, it's toxic. I mean, talk about the other approach where you're just willy-nilly, arbitrarily shaming, punishing your kid because you think you know best and never calling yourself to question.

And being lazy, when you yell and scream at your kid or you slap and spank your kid or you punish and control your kid, that is lazy parenting.

Real hard work means how can I connect with what's going on in my child? And I talk about using the acronym SIGN, S-I-G-N, something inside gone negative. When you see, quote unquote, bad behavior, instead of pouncing on your child's throat, which is the lazy way, which is the blind reactive way, which is the controlling way, you pause.

You begin to investigate what is going on inside my kid that has gone negative sign SIGN something inside gone wrong. So that takes work and

That takes maturity. That takes great understanding and patience and respect for our children. It's not about just fixing external behaviors. It's about understanding what our children are struggling with and helping them to realign within themselves, not align with us, align with themselves. So if a child is slamming the doors and saying, I hate you,

Instead of reacting and taking it personally, you begin to go deeper and go, well, obviously my kid is struggling. What can I help my kid with? Why is my kid struggling so much? And that takes so much compassion, so much dedication. And when our children receive that understanding from us, they feel like, wow.

I'm so worthy of this understanding. My parent is caring so deeply about me. They know I'm a good kid. They see my essence and they're not getting fooled by my behavior because they trust me.

Wouldn't you and I like that when we misbehave that people don't just castigate us as bad and punish us? Imagine if you and I were being punished for being late, for dropping our phone, for losing our keys, which we do at least once a month. Imagine if our partners went like, now you have to go on probation. I'm going to take away your phone.

We would feel so infantilized and so degraded. You're right, but we don't see our kids as equals. You see your child as less than. That's because they're small and because they are as a belonging, as something that's a possession versus an equal. That's more or less...

And that's the problem. You know, we don't talk about childism. We talk about racism, ageism, sexism, but there's childism, which is we really misunderstand who children are. We don't understand their language. We don't care to attune with them, with their sovereign being. Yeah, they're small, but they're still mighty in their wanting to be empowered. They still are, you know, just because they're small doesn't mean they're senseless.

They have a very clear wisdom. It's just about things that we don't care about anymore. It's about shoes and carrots and toothpaste and balloons. We don't care. We don't. But so because we because we don't care about it, we undermine it and we minimize it. But they care. That's their world. I mean, the reality is like you still want your kids to grow up, to be resilient, to be self-confident, to be, you

you know, be like a citizen in the world that's not just like loafing around. How do you then teach a kid resilience and work ethic if you don't give them a lot of structure and some type of, I don't know, program, for the lack of a better word, to kind of work to feel that way?

Structure is really important to stay consistent is really important in that structure. Structures are amazing. But what we're doing is not creating structure only. We're telling them how to be in that structure. So, you know, it's really simple. You know, we five things in the day. You get up, you brush your teeth, you go to school, you come back, you play games.

You have a shower, you eat some food, you do your homework, you go to bed. Okay, nine things I said. Keep it simple. If they like one or two things, add that in. And that is a lot of structure. But we are overwhelming our children with structured activities.

where they're just commanded from one activity to the other, as if they're going to become pros at everything they touch. To me, I think it's unbelievable. Like the kids, my, like my, and I'm at fall too. My kids are overscheduled because again, all their friends are over, they have, they're doing the baseball and the soccer. And then they're also doing the basketball and don't forget the art. And then they're also doing the guitar. Like literally it's,

it's beyond, I, I, I get really upset about this. And then I get pushed back because they're like, well, how can you, how are you depriving your children of all these things that their friends are getting? So the parents get peer pressure, even if you, I don't care about the peer pressure, but I think that other people around, they make my kid feel bad. And so as a parent, you want to protect that, right? How do you, how do you. Right. So as a,

As a parent, you have to know that more than two, maximum three activities a week is a lot. So you have to then say, you know what, you can do this now and next year we do the other things. You cannot do all of this because you need to rest.

You need to have unstructured, unsupervised time to be connected to yourself. You need to go outside and just walk around, be bored, play with your friends, because we're robbing play out of childhood. We are robbing quiet out of childhood. We're robbing solo time out of childhood. We're robbing boredom out of childhood. God forbid they're bored. And these are the ingredients.

Because there's no creativity anymore. God forbid the kids get with nothing to do for five minutes. I mean, it's unbelievable. Right. So we have to stop being addicted to this endless need of having this Rolodex of activities that our kids are spiraling through and simplify childhood. Childhood needs to be simplified. I'm telling you, children cannot handle it.

adult pressure in childhood. Does this mean they should not pick up their dishes? No, of course. When they're four and five, they can learn to pick up the dishes and help you. Does it mean they shouldn't put their clothes in the laundry? No. But again, there's a lot to do if you keep it simple. On top of that, we're doing all these extra things to take them on top of Mount Everest, which is absolutely going to undermine their resilience and their power because there's no rest. There

There's no internal resources. Everything is being shoved into their life from the external world. Let the kid come up with what they want to do and structure their time. And that's where resilience gets born. The whole doing versus being, you talk about that in the book as well. What do you mean by doing versus being? So we parents have this misunderstanding that the more we do for our kids and the more our kids do in life,

The more gritty, the more risk-taking, the more successful they will be. Nothing could be more wrong. The more we be with our kids and allow our kids to be with themselves, reading a book, painting in their room, quiet, playing with their friends, and simplifying all the extraneous activities, that is the route to not only our connection with them, but to them really sowing the seeds for

of a foundation that will be resilient and emotionally integrated. When you rush kids around and there's stress in the house and they are exhausted and they're not tending to their bodies, they're actually learning lack of self-care, lack of boundaries, lack of internal resources because everything is being scheduled for them. And I see this so much that by the time they leave college, that is the witching years or the witching hours when they're 21

22, 23, when they're graduating from college and finally there is no supervised activity and they have to go out there on their own, they don't know what to do with themselves because they've been so on the drug of filling their time, one party to the next, one activity to the next, one social event to the next, that they do not know how to rely on their internal resources. And that's when most kids feel anxious because they just don't know how to mobilize their self-inner direction.

I mean, I think all of this is so resonates, right? I'm sure every parent who's listening to this can resonate and it's about doing it. I guess also just the beginning of it. I keep on going back to the same thing, though. It's like you can have all the knowledge, but yet like even stuff like brushing your teeth or the screaming and yelling that happens. Is it that's not really control, though. Like, I feel like you want the kids to brush their teeth and take a bath and do all of these things.

It's and you get into these screaming matches, you know, like you're saying those are things that are that's different. Right. That type of screaming match and that type of, you know, control. Is that is that considered to be a bad thing then as well? Or that's OK, because it's it's like kind of like it's kind of hygiene or it's kind of like what you have to do with life, life, you know?

Yes, yes, it does have to do with life. And those are good boundaries to have in stone. But we don't have to scream about it, right? The reason we're in screaming matches is because there's a disconnection. The moment you're screaming with your kids more than, I don't know, two times a week, right?

I'm being liberal that we are having a problem here. We are having a problem of disconnection. The parent is unregulated. The child is not in rhythm. And that's why we should create these rhythms of brushing, bathing, sleeping as a routine from early childhood. Right. So then by the by the time they're five and six, we're not screaming about it anymore. We need to be stopping the screaming as they grow older, not increasing the screaming.

But if we're increasing screaming, that means we haven't done our job to create that consistent routine where the kid is now self-mobilized. We still feel we have to tell them. And let me tell you, every teenager, when your kids become teenagers, they will stop, you know, the hygiene a little bit. Many kids go off the hygiene train. You know, my kid was the best bath taker. And then suddenly for like a whole year, a whole year, I was mortified. Like she was like bathing every three days.

But I just knew it was a phase. And now she's back to waiting like all the time. But I was scared and I was panicking like, oh, my God, my kid cannot even have a shower. Right. So they go through phases. But but if we're screaming, it's a problem. So just right there, we should not be in a match. Right. It's not winning or losing. Who's going to get their way on the highway? There needs to be an understanding. And that's.

To get to that understanding, we need to have connection with our children because connection begins to create influence. And influence creates, quote unquote, compliance. Kids will not comply with you if they don't feel connected to you. 100%, that is the truth. So I give parents a lot of tools and strategies. It's got 20 steps. It's called, it's glistening too much. It's called the Parenting Map. So grab a copy of this book. It is my how to become a...

and like a conscious parent. How do people find more information about it? If they want to even delve deeper, you have another book before the parenting trap. What was that book called? What was that one called? The Conscious Parent. But this one is a standalone book, but I have lots of courses so they can go to my website. I have an institute where I train people to become conscious parenting coaches if you want that. Oh,

People can join that. But I have lots of courses online. They can go to drshifali.com and grab this book. If you want to be a better parent, then this is the book for you. And even if you want to learn about yourself, it's a good book for you. It definitely delves deep into like where you kind of are, you know, your trauma or your void. So thank you so much. I really loved having this conversation. Thank you for having me. And thank you for listening.

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