Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - What We're Getting Wrong About Raising Boys and Girls with Dr. Shefali Tsabary

Episode Date: September 23, 2026

Something is happening to our children, and most of us are not paying close enough attention. The algorithm is reaching them. Predators are reaching them. Drugs are reaching them through the phones we thought were keeping them connected and safe. And for many parents, the first time they realize what is happening is when it is already too late. If you are a regular listener, you probably know how my son Sammy died. He bought a counterfeit pill laced with fentanyl from a dealer he met on Snapchat. I thought I had done everything I could to keep my home safe. I never imagined that a drug dealer could reach my son through his phone. But that is the reality parents are facing now. You may be doing everything you can. Monitoring social media. Limiting screen time. Talking to your kids about strangers, drugs, and online safety. But what happens when the algorithm is reaching them anyway? And what happens when it is reaching their friends, the kids they sit beside at school, play sports with, or spend the night with? We cannot monitor every conversation. We cannot see every screen. And while all of this is happening, many of us parents are distracted too. We are busy. We are exhausted. We are scrolling. So how do we raise conscious, grounded daughters and sons in a culture that is constantly competing for their attention? Dr. Shefali Tsabary joins us  on The Language of Love, and this conversation goes straight into the heart of that question. Dr. Shefali is a clinical psychologist, New York Times bestselling author, and founder of the Conscious Parenting Movement. For decades, she has challenged parents to look at themselves before trying to fix their children. Now, she is taking on two of the biggest conversations in parenting today: what is happening to our girls, and what is happening to our boys. Her response came in the form of two books, released at the same time and written in just five and a half months because she believes the moment demands urgency. In this episode, Dr. Shefali explains why the algorithm targets children differently based on sex, and why it is so effective. We talk about why simply banning social media can give parents a false sense of security, why taking a teenager's phone away overnight can backfire, and what parents can do instead. Her answer comes down to something that sounds simple, but is incredibly hard to practice: connection. Real connection. The kind that requires us to put our own phones down, pay attention, and actually be present with our kids. And then the conversation takes us somewhere many parenting discussions avoid. We talk about the impossible messages we are sending our boys. Be strong, but do not be domineering. Be vulnerable, but do not appear weak. Be confident, but never intimidating. Dr. Shefali explains why shaming boys does not teach them to become safer men. It can teach them to hide the very parts of themselves they need to understand. We also talk about masculinity and femininity, and what it could look like to celebrate these qualities without turning them into rigid boxes. There is room for strength and softness, confidence and vulnerability, masculinity and femininity, and for the many ways those qualities can show up in our children. This is a conversation about parenting, technology, identity, connection, and the kind of world we are creating for our kids. And it starts with a question we all need to ask ourselves: Are we really paying attention? In this episode, we talk about: The force shaping your child right now that is not you, not school, and not the app you blocked Why today's girls are the most powerful and the most fragile generation we have ever raised The prison that traps girls before they even know they are in it The impossible rulebook boys are handed, and what happens when they stop trying to follow it The tiny daily act that rebuilds years of disconnection, and it is not talking What mothers may be passing onto their sons without ever knowing it The one thing every parent needs to stop doing tomorrow The one thing Dr. Shefali says every parent needs to stop doing immediately If Dr. Shefali’s work resonates with you, you can learn more about her, her two new books, Raising Conscious Daughters and Raising Conscious Sons, and the Conscious Parenting Movement at her website. Her website also offers resources and tools for parents who want to go deeper, including guidance on conscious parenting, connection, and raising emotionally healthy kids. Whether you have daughters, sons, or both, her work meets you where you are and helps you begin with the most important relationship of all: the one you have with yourself. For more resources, tools, and upcoming events, visit my website. And if something from this conversation stays with you, I’d love to hear from you at [e-mail]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman. And for the past 30 years, I've been helping people just like you learn to love and be loved better. Here on the Language of Love Conversations, I'm talking to some of the world's most influential and revolutionary experts, thought leaders, spiritual teachers, and celebrities about love, sex, and relationships from a mind, body, and spirit perspective. and that way my goal is to awaken your mind body and soul it's time to become fluent in the language of love there is a paradox happening with our kids right now in so many ways they have more

freedom and opportunity more language for mental health and identity than any generation before them. And yet, as we all know, so many of our young people are struggling. Our girls are achieving at extraordinary levels, while anxiety and perfectionism and comparison and self-doubt are all taking a real toll. And our boys are growing up caught between conflicting messages about masculinity and vulnerability and strength and power, and too many are retreating into isolation and anger or indifference, or in most cases, the digital world. So what are we missing? Well, my guest this episode believes that if we really want to help our children, we have to look beyond their behavior and ask some deeper questions, including what we as parents and as a

culture may unconsciously be teaching them about who they need to be in order to be worthy, loved, and accept it. Dr. Shefali is a clinical psychologist, New York Times bestselling author, and the founder of the Conscious Parenting Movement. She has spent decades challenging the traditional ideas of parenting and that it's about molding our children and instead asks us to examine the fears, the expectations, wounds, and conditioning that we're bringing into our relationships with our kids. And now she's taking on the very different crises facing our sons and daughters in two new books that have been released simultaneously, Raising Conscious Daughters and Raising Conscious Sons. In this episode, we're talking about

what's happening to our kids, what they're up against, why boys and girls may be struggling in very different ways, how technology and our culture are shaping them, in many cases without us knowing, and perhaps most importantly, how we can raise children who know who they are without needing the outside world to tell them who they should be. I am so excited to share this conversation with you on the Language of Love. Dr. Shefali, thank you so much for joining us on the Language of love oh I love it I love it I love you I love what you do and I'll do anything with you anytime I feel the same way about you and I'm so excited about these two books I mean who the hell does two books but it's so brilliant and at the same time raising conscious daughters and raising

conscious sons yeah I think it's so fantastic and this whole idea of writing separate books Yeah. What are you seeing happening to girls and boys right now that it really felt urgent enough to have two completely different conversations as much as we want to never reduce ourselves to just our sex? We have to understand that the algorithm doesn't care about progressive politics. They're going for your kid based on their sex, and they understand better than you how their brain works. And there is truth in that. Our boy's brain is wired differently than our girl's in the main. Now, of course, you may find that your girl is more masculine, your boy is more feminine, no problem. But you still have to understand how the algorithm is responding to your particular child according to their sex, according to their hormones. And I wrote both because I wanted to pay homage to how each sex's hormonal development rolls out. There's so much power to that.

And I think in our fear of reducing ourselves, we actually stop celebrating our differences. So these books are about celebrating how different we are, how beautiful that is. Let's not worry about how we're the same. Let's also focus on how we're different and let's not get scared by our differences. Yeah, I think that's so important. And, you know, this idea, the first thing you mentioned, in addition to the hormonal, and they are very unique, you know, even if we, everything is equal, which it never is, because none of us are perfect in society. They're not always in your home. But let's just pretend everything else was equal, right?

The hormonal changes are very different. The biophysiology is very different. But also you mentioned the algorithms and that, you know, the urgency piece that feels so big to me, not only because everyone here knows I lost a child to online harms, but the algorithm online is literally, would you say that that is as big or as bigger an influence over our children's lives than even school is right now? Like how big of a piece is it? Because to me, it is enormous. Yes. And that's why I wrote these books within five and a half months, both of them. I didn't even think about writing these books till last year.

But last year with AI coming in as it did, like a stealthy dark horse into the light, taking away our children's childhoods, basically, that I felt so, you know, pressed. And this was so critical that I write this so fast. and I told my publishers, I need these out in within a year. And we did the unprecedented to get two books out literally within the calendar years from start to finish, because I think it is the most pervasive force today. Why? Because it's shaping culture. And whether your child is on the algorithm or not, it doesn't matter. Their friends are, their friends' brothers are, and we are living now in such fragmented false realities. We're not even, at least before when

we all stared at the same television and we were all listening to the same fake news. At least it was all a collective similar brainwashing. Now we're all being brainwashed in different ways and we can't even talk about it because what you're seeing on your algorithm isn't what I'm seeing. And it's all fake, right? For the most part. So what this is doing is making us distrust our reality. This is the job of the algorithm. It is making us fragmented within our families. It's making us isolated toward each other. And this is its job to zombify us so that we lose our collective power and our individual belief, our trust in who we are.

It is doing a magnificent job at uprooting us from our inner power and our collective power. Yeah, it really is. And when it comes to kids, there are just, I mean, we can talk about the harms, obviously, the things, the predators that are being sent to them, the drugs that are being pushed to them, the bullying that is happening. And there's so many dangers that we need to navigate. And I know you get into all of that, but I just want to put a pin in that and go even deeper because I really do feel that social media, and it's not just social media, like our kids are on technology

at school, they're on technology at home, like everything is AI, as you were saying, is having such a huge influence on them. And I don't believe anyone who has an adolescent, at least, that your child is not on social media. You may prohibit social media in your home, but I guarantee you they probably have a secret social media account and they are being exposed to it. Right, it doesn't matter whether your kid is or not,

your kid's friends are. So it is coming through. That's their reality, yeah. It's there and it's present. And so the more you deny it in your conscience by thinking, oh, I've prohibited my kid, you're still going to be having to confront it. And in my books, I talk about every red flag issue and I give strategies for every one of them because parents are living in a delusion, a fantasy that they are stopping it at home, if they even are. And they don't realize that it's coming through the children's friends now. It is everywhere.

So the more you educate your child and the more you are educated and then you use strategies to counter effect it, that's how you're going to change what your kid is going to experience. But if you just live in a bubble that my kid is not having it at home and that's I need to be OK with it and that's OK, you're really not going to show up the way you need to. Yeah, you're kidding yourself. Yeah. So one of the things that I thought was a fascinating and really important paradox that you get into in the girls book is this idea that girls have arguably never had more power. Right. They're go girls. Right. Empowered on the outside. And yet so many are becoming increasingly fragile, increasingly fragile on the inside. What do you think that's about? Well, think about it, right, Laura? When you and I were growing up, we had enough pressures because we're so relationally sensitive as girls. Our estrogen, our oxytocin makes us so acutely aware of our relationships, of nuance, of

complexity, of tone, of, you know, if somebody clenches their jaw, we probably pick up on it. And we were so just tuned in to our relationships, right? Now, put that same chemistry out on the algorithm where there's strangers telling the girl how to dress, how to look, and they're giving comments and feedback on who she is and her hairstyle. The other day, I got some feedback on, you know, I only have one child. I shouldn't talk. So I kind of tell me when she grows back, how many children should I have before I can start talking? And they're like, at least five or six.

I'm like, oh, if you want to be a teacher, right? So people are judging me, judging you. But you put a vulnerable 14-year-old who doesn't even know who she is, and she's being given all this relational feedback on her body, on her face. She's going to crack under that pressure because she is so wanting to be approved of. She's so wanting to be validated because that's her oxytocin talking. She wants to be in relationship and she wants to feel good about herself and her relationship. And she has these false relationships now out there that she is thinking are real relationships. So they're proxies for real relationships, but she doesn't know the difference yet. She's thinking that somebody who's posting on her algorithm is a real person who cares about her, but she doesn't realize these are trolls.

She's too young to realize the difference between a fake relationship and a real relationship. She's seeing all these feeds of curated images and filtered faces, and she's thinking, that's how I should look. So the bombardment of this false reality is messing up with her brain. And that's why she's cracking under the pressure, the comparison culture, the desire to look perfect, the perception prison, I call it in my book, where it matters more to her how people think about her than how she thinks about herself. So it's way too much for that young female brain to contain. Maybe in her 30s she would do okay, but to put on... this i can see this you know but like and i'm gonna read the book but what do you do how do you counteract that right and the easy answer is like just don't let them get on social media but parents listening to this go maybe thinking oh my god i'm too late for that yeah then that that ship has sailed and now they have no life right now i mean yes they have yes they have because everything including what they're wearing which jersey they're wearing to the soccer game

is discussed on social media. Right. So the answer is not to now make this the enemy that you fight against, because actually you will create this Romeo and Juliet situation where your kid will fight with you and go and marry that even more. So what you want to do is you want to create the antidote of it. And the antidote is always one thing only, it's connection, right? The antidote any addiction is connection. So how do we now raise the volume and turn on the light to your presence in the house? That means you have to get off the phone. You have to engage with your children. You have to bring back analog activities. You have to bring back real life experiences. And that takes energy from the parent. But yes, that's what we need to do even more now than ever

before, because our children are so getting sucked in. They become dopamine junkies and it's really hard for them to get off the phone and to real life embodied experiences. So I give tons of suggestions for how parents need to do that. But yes, also, for parents who have young kids, don't let your kids get on this addictive stuff. Like you're so lucky to benefit from parents like you and me, who have suffered the harm of these addictions, that now you can learn from us. And if you have a kid who's already on it, well, start to engage more, start to be more present. Don't just give your kid up to social media and outsource your influence. Wake up. And I start these books with a wake up call letter, imploring parents to please realize that they have influence,

but they need to exercise their influence and not just give up. Right. There's so much that they can do. Yeah, I think that's so important. I'm curious what you think about this idea, because I've thought about this a lot, as you can imagine, with younger kids, like, you know, once they're, you know, if your kid is in middle school now or already is on the apps, like you said, there's, you know, you just got to work with that. But if you have a young child, like I was thinking, because I get asked this all the time, I have a young kid, like how can I, I don't think it's enough to just proclaim I and maybe my friends are going to have, you know, social media and maybe even smartphone ban, right? But certainly social media ban. What I imagine, like my fantasy,

and if I had it to do over, this is what I would do if I had young kids, I would be going to every after-school club they've touched, every sports team, school, everything, and I would be creating a coalition of 100 families who all agreed, and maybe half of them will keep the pledge or whatever, but who all agree that we are going to be a social media-free community. Because if you just do it with three or four families, your kid is going to end up not liking those kids or they They won't, you know, whatever. But if you have a whole community, even a small one who agrees to this, then they aren't as left out. And so I'm curious what you think about that.

And I just want to applaud this get off your smartphone thing as parents because I was just visiting my college roommate in Colorado in Aspen. This gorgeous, I mean, playground beyond imagination, beautiful place. All these young families, little kids running around, hiking, swimming, whatever. and the parents are sitting there on their freaking phones. Wow. And I'm like, I just wanted to run into each one of them. What, you know, not only what you're missing, because I can tell you, you're going to regret missing this,

but also what you're modeling. Yeah. And that's the thing, you know, kids are ready to be engaged. Kids are still too young to not want to engage. You know, we are the cynical ones. That's why we're on the phones because we're tired of each other, right? We've lived long and now we're like people sucks. but our kids are too young to be that cynical they're ready to engage they have that jaw the

weaver they we just need to tap into it but because we are so disconnected we are so dislocated from our own inner creativity our own mission passion vision this is why our kids are screwed up today it's because we parents have checked out and we found the perfect surrogate and now we're blaming the kids and now we're yelling at the kids but we don't give them the antidote. We don't create the alternative. So, you know, yes, your kid will come to you. Your eight-year-old is going to annoy the hell out of you. Yes, yes, yes. You will have to supervise. You will have to take them out. You will have to drive them here and drive them there. And play stupid games that are boring.

And play stupid-ass games. Yes, it is. But what is parenting? Most of it is that. Yes, it's tedious. It's messy. It's imperfect. It's often boring. It's definitely unstimulating. but this is what parenting entails and you're so right creating that village and creating a coalition and working together is the only way to combat this I mean they can take my books into a book club and everyone can decide together that they are going to go screen free for the next 30 days and let me tell you your kids will come back to life they will come back to power they will come back to motivation this is making parenting so much harder we don't realize we think it's

making parenting easier, but it's not because your kid is going to have greater depression, greater self-harm, greater body issues, anxiety. It's coming. It's just making your life momentarily easier. But in the long run, you're creating a drug addict who won't be able to function on their own. So in the long run, it's going to be worse. Yeah. And any teenager parent who has a kid who's on social media will tell you that if you take their phone away, they go psychotic. Like it is like you have taken a crack away. Right. So you don't want to take it off.

You don't want to take it off in a hurry. You don't want to snatch it because they will come and find you and look to decapitate you. So be careful. Like you don't want to take the drug away. Are you crazy? You don't go to a person and just take away his crack cocaine. Old turkey. Right.

You don't do that. So you do it gently. Right. And the first thing you do is you create islands of connection. First, become the magnet. First, you build the relationship again. If you've been yelling at your kid every day and they've been fighting with you and then you take away their drug, you are committing some sort of, you know, mass.

I don't know what you're doing to yourself. Don't do it. You have to do it incrementally by first creating the positive antidote, right? So become the parent they want to be with. Start being fun. Take a cooking class with them. Learn carpentry with them. Go on a hike with them.

go to their favorite movie with them, play their favorite video game with them, first become the person that they want to come to, right? If you take away the one thing that's giving them significance and joy, which is their video game or their social media, and you are their enemy, why should they get off that, right? Yeah. And there's nothing better to tempt them. Yeah. I think that's such a good point. And you were, I mean, listen, we've known each other for many years. I think this was probably my youngest is 21 now. So this was probably when he was in fourth grade. And I think you had just recently written Conscious Parenting. And we had this conversation and you really coached me on how to connect with them because I was they, you know,

they were acting out and ADB and all over the place. And I was yelling and fighting. And I just started playing with them whenever they started acting out because what they were, I think they were like fourth and fifth grade or third and fourth grade, the two youngest ones I was struggling with. And every time they started acting out, I would just start getting silly or I would start playing with them. And I started like just what I saw it as putting coins in the connection bank and just like really seeking opportunities not to direct them to the next activity or make sure they did their homework or try to get them under control, just being silly and playing with them. And that, Shefali, changed everything. Changed everything. You know, today I was on a podcast.

I literally said putting pennies in the connection bag. I literally did the same phrase. Because people get scared with this idea of connection. Like, what is connection? I don't know. Right? It's so scary. And I go, I swear to you, it's 15 minutes a day.

Yeah. Let's start with 15. Because the kids don't want to be around you that much either. Just start with 15 minutes. It's simple. It's a walk without talking. Don't even talk. Be a dummy mummy.

Important. Important there. Don't talk and don't ask any questions. Yes. And don't give advice and don't fix anything. How easy is that? Right? It's real hard.

But it's not, you know? I know. I know. The other day, my daughter and I went on a walk and she said, can we not talk about my job? Can we not talk about the future? And can you not tell me what to do? I said, oh, my God, let me go back home right now.

you know, this is impossible. What are you talking about? I give really micro strategies in the book because I know parents are terrified. We were never played with. We don't know how to play anymore. You know, children delight in playing. Even your 18 year old, give him a puzzle to play with your job, you know, do something fun and competitive. They will join in a second, but that's how the video games are winning because the video games know that it's not that hard create the levels create the excitement create the competition give them a few risky things to do and you got your kids attention if the algorithm can figure it out so can we yeah such a good point now i just we were talking about girls i don't want to leave boys out

you know one of the things that i thought was so important i mean there were so many things but i call this the snag trap snags are sensitive new age guys right that we want men and boys are now being taught to be strong and assertive, but also vulnerable and to be confident and but also never domineering and, you know, to be sensitive, but definitely not to be weak. Like, how do you even develop a healthy sense of masculinity when the messages around the boys, especially with the manosphere and everything happening there are so contradictory and many of them really dangerous? Yeah, it's not fair. And our boys are being given too many messages. And we women know how that feels like, right? We're given the same kinds of things, right? Be assertive, but don't be a bitch, be this, but don't be that. So what are we talking about? We need to allow our boys to grow up feeling safe in their bodies. boys and except if you have a boy who's really a boy's boy, that is not a bad thing. But I think

many mothers raising boys who are boys, like in and out, all out boys, those boys' energy reminds them of the men in their lives where they have felt overpowered or dominated or abused even. And so when they see big energy showing up in their boy, and most boys are going to have big energy, most of them, you know, not all, but most of them, that is okay. Don't be threatened by that. That masculinity is a beautiful force. You know, we all want the boy who's like the sister and the quiet boy. We love that boy. Why? Because they remind us of the feminine energy. Great. If you have that boy, fantastic. Don't be scared of that boy either. But if you have the more masculine, wild boy, allow him to feel safe in that energy and don't make him a caricature of masculinity

and don't make him like his sister, right? Allow him to feel safe in his wild energy and don't label him as ADD, don't label him as a problem. Allow him to know that his body is a safe place, that he can have big feral energy and still be a healthy, integrated human being. I think we're trying to make boys too much into something else, just like we did girls.

And boys and young men are terrified. Yeah, and they don't understand because they're just, I mean, I remember when my now 21 year old was in high school, he went to a very progressive school and one year he was just like, oh, it's Women's History Month. I don't want to go to school. And I'm like, what are you talking about? What do you have against Women's History Month? He's like, I'm going to be bashed all month long. People are going to tell me how horrible I am to be a man and how horrible men are. And I'm just going to have to listen to how horrible I am for an entire

month from the other students, you know, from the girls in the class and also from the teachers. And it's so depressing. I was like, oh my God. He's right. He's right. Yeah. You know, I think we women have a right to have this anger, but we also need to understand that most men don't want to be bad. And because of a few bad men, and we've all had a few bad men in our lives, we have this real antipathy towards men. And we are justified in many cases, but we have to go deeper for the sake of our daughters. We must heal this within our sons. And the way to heal it is not through shaming them, it's to celebrate them. Men have told me one after the other that they feel embarrassed to be a man. They feel ashamed to be strong and virile and, you know, have a sex drive.

They feel shamed for having a sex drive at all. So if we keep shaming our men, it will come out in perversion towards our daughters. If we want safe men, we need to allow them to feel safe in who they are by allowing them to feel honored, just like we feel honored. So we need to change it.

And I know it's like the women are like, well, we don't want to be the ones who start. They have to start. But when they do start, we shame them, right? If our man starts crying, we're like, please don't cry. Like, don't be a girl. so we have our own internalized misogyny too we really do that's what really you know we're

that men are expected to walk this narrow line it's so narrow yeah you know it's impossible to walk so we want them to initiate but only when they're hot and rich otherwise none of them can initiate right so they don't know right we want them to be leaders and come on to us but then we don't want them to do that and then we call call the me too on them so it's all i'm saying is that it's confusing and we need to cut our men slack and we definitely need to teach our boys that they don't have to be afraid of their masculinity and masculinity is a beautiful energy in the world yes and we're so barraging them with how not to be that we're not telling them how to be right so it's about like giving them room to be themselves and also cultivating empathy and

And kindness and, you know, simply like becoming a good human is not counterintuitive. You know, it doesn't work against being in your healthy masculine. I'll never forget. I was doing some show with Oprah and I mean, maybe she's changed her mind since then, but I was giving her shit because she basically said, I think we were talking about consent and she basically said, if a guy asked if he could kiss me, I would get grossed out. I was like, Oprah, like I, how can you? you say that like because she wanted him to just kiss her yeah yeah yeah like that's because we

were talking about consent and i was trying to talk and she was like as i try that on i wouldn't want someone to ask me before they try to kiss but see this is what i mean we want them to ask right but then you want that's what i'm saying it to be mind readers yeah right but then if they read look if they're the wrong mind reader we're going to call me too on them right so right and Not saying Me Too is not a legitimate thing, and I'm so lucky it happened. It was so amazing we stood up. But then we go so far in everything, right? The men go too far, we go too far.

And if Me Too goes too far, then we're going to cripple the whole initiation in men, right? They're going to be terrified. So some men are just going to behave badly, and we're just going to have to teach them. And it's okay for them to make mistakes, is what I'm saying. so we can't become so rigid where the man feels afraid to make a mistake right because we want them to pursue us but then we don't want them to pursue us I mean so in that they're going to make mistakes they're going to kiss us and they're going to have read the wrong signals and that we're going to have to then correct them without shaming them too much yes because in reverse they

a lot of them just become immobilized because they don't want to do the wrong thing right if George Clooney made a mistake on us. We'd be like, it's okay. It's just okay. It's fine. Make a mistake, you know. We don't want George Clooney to be asking us. We're like, anytime.

Go for it, George. Go for it. Please make a mistake, right? But it's not fair to the guy because he's thinking he's George Clooney. He doesn't know he's not. So we have to be very clear too, you know. Yes, right.

We expect them to read our minds, but we're not clear. Yeah, there's so much here to unpack. I could talk to you forever about this. And I know you guys definitely, you know, if you have boys and girls, get both. Like, I love that it's gender specific, you know, and maybe read both, whether you have this, you know, I think. I think you should read both.

It's fascinating because, I mean, that's why I had so much to say about both. But I'm really bringing back the celebration of masculinity and the celebration of femininity in these books. I am a girl's girl and a boy's girl. I love our men and I love our girls. I feel the same. It isn't that I've separated it. It's because I love who we are so much that I don't want to put us together.

I love our differences. And I think it's time now for us to bridge the fracture we have created between boys and girls and men and women. And come back to loving who each one of us can come to represent while also celebrating that we can be a little bit of both. Yes. And it's through our children that we really raise a society that can do that and celebrate. You know, we can be very different from each other and have equal power. I know. And agency.

It doesn't mean that one has to have no power and the other doesn't. Or one has to be bad and beat down and the other doesn't. And true empathy. We aren't diminishing. Right. But true empathy, Laura, doesn't come from saying be empathic, be empathic. True empathy comes is when you are empathic to that person, they will be empathic. We don't have to teach empathy.

We have to show empathy. You're so right. You have to model it. Everything. They never do what we say. They do what they see. They just do what they see. You know, that's what really makes the difference.

And if you want the world safe for our daughters, then you need to honor the boy. You need to love the boy you have for his boyness and allow him to be the boy he is, either the introverted and shy boy or the real gregarious and outward boy. It doesn't matter. Let him be who he is. He will naturally honor the girl then, you know. So it's giving these false labels to boys, just like we girls were given, be the nice girl, be the good girl. In the same way, when we tell the boy to be this extra masculine boy or this girl kind of boy, these are labels that confine them as well.

Yeah. And I can tell you, as somebody who raised three boys, I mean, two of them are still here. But even for Sammy, when he was here and had girlfriends, I was so, I mean, these, they love their penises and they're playing with them and they're beating each other up and they're climbing up the walls literally and they're fighting with each other and they're impulsive and you know they're in time and I was totally doing what you're saying I mean I wasn't perfect but this piece of that the gender piece I really wanted them to feel comfortable and not

ashamed but also understand consent and under and I can tell you there are lots you know I'm not saying my kids are perfect but they are amazing partners and they all happen to be heterosexual I'm sure it would have been the same if they weren't, but they are, to watch them with the girls and the women that they love, there is so much respect and kindness there. And it isn't because I pounded it into them or tried to, you know, it was a lot, three boys, a lot of testosterone in the house. You know, there were penises drawn everywhere, on every dusty location and on every book. I just recently went through some old paintings I had made, and I had made this portrait of a woman. And one of my kids, I think it was Sammy, was doodling at my desk where I paint, and he drew a penis right by the woman's face. Right. Now, if we didn't understand that that's just a boy being a boy, we would shame him. Yes, I did not. You know, I didn't even know. But when I did find penises drawn places, you know, I was like, I would like if you wouldn't draw it on the thing that I was just painting. Thank you very much. But, you know, draw the penis. Here is another piece of paper to draw all the penises you want.

You didn't get scared by that. No, no, I didn't get scared. That's it. And I think many women are afraid of that because they've been so harmed by that energy. So that's why in these books, I teach the mothers, especially to heal that wounded masculine prototype that they're carrying around if they want to raise healthy sons. And so much of your work, and I know it's imprinted inside this book, these books, too, is that our children are going to trigger our unfinished business and that, you know, this is the conscious parenting thing, right? That it really begins and ends with us doing our own work on our own triggers and our own stuff. And then that allows us to really show up for them. Exactly. So if you could give parents of daughters and of sons one thing to stop doing tomorrow, what would it be? Well, I think they need to stop being on their phones and really get into connection gear, because now more than ever, our children need us. And I've given you in these books, the strategies for how to be there if it's difficult for you to really connect. I'm the person to, you know, to help you connect with your children, because I know it's difficult. So we have to get off our phones and stop being distracted so that we can connect better. Amen.

The books are called Raising Conscious Daughters and Raising Conscious Sons. Dr. Shefali, you are so wonderful. I'm so grateful for the work you do in the world. Thank you so much for spending time with us. Thank you.