The Bossticks - Dr. Shefali Tsabary On Raising Emotionally Strong Kids, Breaking Generational Cycles & The Parenting Mistakes We Don't Realize We're Making

Episode Date: August 10, 2026

#996: Join us as we sit down with Dr. Shefali – clinical psychologist, New York Times bestselling author, and the founder of the Conscious Parenting movement, who's changing the way we think about parenting, childhood, and family dynamics. In this episode, Dr. Shefali explains why the greatest gift you can give your children is healing yourself first, how unconscious patterns and parental ego shape the next generation, and why resilience should be the goal. Dr. Shefali shares practical tools for raising confident, authentic children, helping daughters develop their inner voice, supporting sons through healthy masculinity and physical expression, navigating screen time, conflict, and modern parenting challenges, and creating the kind of family environment where children can truly become who they were meant to be.   For Detailed Show Notes visit TheBossticks.com   To connect with Dr. Shefali click HERE   To connect with Lauryn Bosstick click HERE   To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE   Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE   Head to our ShopMy page HERE and LTK page HERE to find all of the products mentioned in each episode.   To learn more about Dr. Shefali and raising conscious children visit https://bit.ly/raisingconscious.    This episode is sponsored by The Skinny Confidential  Reduce puffiness and boost radiance with The Skinny Confidential Mint Roller, now available at http://shopskinnyconfidential.com.    This episode is sponsored by Chilipad by Sleepme Visit http://sleep.me/skinny to get your Chilipad and save up to $255 off a new Chilipad2.0 with code skinny.   This episode is sponsored by ThirdLove Use code BOSSTICKS15 for $15 off your first purchase at http://thirdlove.com.   This episode is sponsored by Ritual Save 25% on your first month at http://Ritual.com/SKINNY.   This episode is sponsored by Opill You can find Opill at most major retailers, in-stores and online.   This episode is sponsored by Caldera + Lab Go to http://calderalab.com/SKINNY and use code SKINNY for 20% off your first order.   This episode is sponsored by Beekeepers Naturals Go to http://beekeepersnaturals.com/SKINNY or enter code SKINNY to get 20% off your order.   This episode is sponsored by egglife Find egglife wraps chillin' in the fridge at Aldi, Whole Foods, Kroger, Target, Walmart & more.     Visit http://www.egglifefoods.com to find a retailer near you. Produced by Dear Media

Attention all parents. Today, we are joined by Dr. Chafali. She is the founder of the Conscious Parenting Movement. And in this episode, you are going to learn about how to raise children who feel confident, authentic, and emotionally resilient. Let's welcome Dr. Shafali to the Bostics. Welcome to the Bostics, starring Lauren Bostic and Michael Bostic. Together, they are the Bostics. Welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. So we're so excited to have you. I was perusing Instagram and I get served all the parenting content because that's what I like to focus on on Instagram. Because if I'm going to be on there, I have to be learning. Feel purposeful. Right. Yes. And you popped up and I was like, oh my gosh, I have to have this woman on the show.

Screenshotted you to my team, sent it in, and here you are. Sent clips around. Yeah, I sent the clips. I'm sending. So I like to do the thing that everyone likes to do is I like to passively, aggressively. I know. Suggest to your partner to take a look. Yes. Okay, let's just start with this to kick it off. What has been your most viral clip about parenting where people just went wild? I think one of them, I mean, quite a few, but one of them was when I said I regretted giving my daughter a phone at the age of 12.

Now, my daughter's 23. So when I gave her a phone, we were like so excited. We're like, oh my God, this is an amazing thing to give your kids. and their mind is going to explode. We didn't realize what we now realize about social media. And so I talked about my deep regret. And, you know, I kind of co-created an addict. And I felt so bad about it. And so many parents resonated, especially parents of my generation,

because we truly were the first generation of parents who were doing analog and then we did digital. We had Jonathan Haid on the show or Hyde on the show. And I feel sorry for your generation, for that perspective because you guys had, you were the first ones that had to figure out and none of us knew. None of you knew and now we are rallying, you know,

the wake-up call and that's why I've written my new books because we went into it so innocently, so excitedly, you know, thinking we're giving our children a gift. We didn't realize what was behind, you know, the trap. And I feel so taken and played in a way that now I've made it a mission, just like Jonathan had. to educate and make parents aware. You know, it's one thing for parents to feel nervous and anxious,

but it's another thing for them to know what to do instead. And that's why I decided to write these two new books, to give them a play-by-play, to give them a blueprint to raise conscious children. But if it's not the phone, it's something else. And what do I mean by that? I mean, I'll give you an example. When I just learned that putting a baby in a walker, like one of those walker things is horrible for their hips.

And I'm like, fuck, I did it. that with my first born daughter. I put her in one of those Walker things. I feel guilty for that. Another example is, you know, my grandma smoked when my dad was in his stomach. She feels guilty for that. So my point is, is it's like sometimes it feels as parents that were constantly guilty for something. Yeah. Do you not feel like that? Yeah. So it's not about being guilty or trying to get it perfect. It's trying to just understand the forces that are playing your kid as much as you can. But it does feel like playing catch up. And it's. does feel like you can't take a breath and it does feel like you should be you know

teaching them how to ski backwards right now and a seventh language right now doesn't it it just it's this insane perfectionistic culture we're living in where we're never going to get it right it's impossible but that's why I teach conscious parenting because I teach parents don't fall for the BS that the Matrix tells you that your kid needs to be happy and polite and obedient and pretty and fit in and be at the Ivy Leagues don't fall for it it's a trap that will keep you swirling and keep you disconnected. So what are the things that you push parents towards instead?

What are the things you say they should care about? Yeah. So when I started the conscious parenting movement, you know, 13 years ago, I began to teach parents that they need to heal their own crap, right? They need to work on their own shit. And then they won't pass that on to their children. And when you begin to live from a state of authenticity and joy and really, real self, you won't push your child into false self.

See, most of us were raised by our parents to be in false self. To be the people pleaser, to be the puppet, to be the family mascot, to be the ambassador, to be the trophy. And we put that on to our children. It's so insidious and unconscious, we don't realize. So I wanted unconscious parenting for us to break that. You know, de novo, like start from scratch and begin to see your children as the essence that they are and not as the product you want them to be.

So what does that mean? Parents have to heal themselves, watch themselves, show up for themselves, and be conscious of the messaging and the patterns that they're passing on. So super consciousness. This doesn't mean perfection. It just means I have an ego and here's my ego. Oh, here's my ego again. And being able to be honest to look in the mirror as a parent, which is the hardest thing,

because our parental ego is bigger than anything. thing possible. Is an easy basic example, the parent that maybe pushes their kid to achieve straight A's Ivy League because they didn't have it and it says something about the family, but the kid is not a good student and doesn't want it. Is that a good? That's an easy, simple example. But it's happening in the subtlest of ways in all the things we say to our children to do and push them toward, be the doctor, be the engineer, be the successful person. And all the things we tell them not to do, right? Because we're actually doing it for our own comfort and we don't realize it. And the moment you begin to realize it, you become humble and you step back from that ego and now you can truly connect and listen to your

child. Your child already comes with a blueprint and a GPS that knows where it needs to go. If you allow it, the space and the safety and the freedom to express it, but we don't trust our children's inner governance and in a GPS. You know why? because we were never trusted with our own. And we spent our whole life looking for it. Right? That's why we're all in therapy. Because we're looking for the GPS that we should have kept.

We had it, but we were abducted from it. I feel this is so, I'm noticing this is not normal, that my parents did let me be who I was. Did or did not? Did. And I'm noticing how rare this is as I talked to more and more people. My parents gave me space to spread out and be authentically who I was my entire childhood. I don't, the only thing that I can really point to is like they put me in school, which I mean, everyone put everyone in school back then.

Some sort of school. Right. And I don't know. I feel like there's maybe ways nowadays where I could have been homeschooled or different. But my parents did a really good job. I hope my dad's listening of letting me just be myself and zoning in onto what I liked and doubling down on that. So I have to shout them out for that because I hear so you just said so many people are sort of like choke-holded to be these people that they don't want to be.

Yes, but let's talk about what do you think your parents did to allow that? I'm talking about in their own lives because there was something happening in their own lives that allowed them to show up for you. It's not about the technique they used with you. It's the technique they used in their own life for themselves that allowed them to step out of your way. They want to twisted in abducting you because they were living authentically. So maybe you can reflect on that and tell us what was the formula that they were operating with in their own lives that you saw that may have led to them not needing to sabotage your childhood? I think that both of them beat to the tune of their own drum and didn't listen to outside noise and they did things the

way they wanted to. And I think that was the example and the blueprint to your point at home. Yes. And I remember doing things like, like, you know, scrapbooking. I'll take scrapbooking. I love scrapbooking, which is so random. Yeah. And my mom would just take me to the scrapbook store and let me stay there for five hours. And she just gave me space to just explore and do what I wanted to do without strangling me.

It was never activity after activity after activity. But sometimes my dad did want me to step into that trophy roll. Sorry, Daddy. But you saw that. You saw when he was doing it. And now as an adult, do you see how? how that immunized you against so much emotional catastrophe? Yes.

You can see that you have a sturdiness about you, a resilience about you. You can handle Michael. I know, it's a lot. Barely, barely. That takes a lot of resilience. But, you know, as you were talking and saying working through your own shit, so my dad, when he had me was 42. And now, obviously, he's a little, he was like an older.

I mean, now I guess that's more common, but back then it wasn't as common. Right. But I think it was really great for me now in hindsight because he had largely worked through a lot of his adolescence shit and worked on himself and had gotten really patient and stable. So I always felt like I wasn't dealing with somebody who had a bunch of shit. Wow, that's amazing. But I didn't start to think about that until I became because I had my first kid at 32, which was a decade earlier and I'm still working through shit. Your mom would have preferred you to be a straight-A student. But so my mom was a lot younger that 18 years.

My dad's a dirty dog, I guess. Like, but they're still together, just joking while if she hears this. But the, but she was a little bit more like, get straight A's, go to school. And it was a struggle for her because I was a terrible student. I was always in trouble. But I think he provided the perspective of like, hey, let him do his thing. He'll figure it out, calm down because he had largely worked through a lot of his issues. And I try to think about that now as a parent myself, which is the perspective of of that. Because I had a lot of friends who had younger parents who were like kids when they had them essentially in their 20s. And they, and they They hadn't figured out how to take care of themselves yet. And I think it affected the children. Who do you feel you are more like, you're driven like your mother or your lazy affair like your father? That's be interesting for Lauren to observe. I think that I'm more like probably a little bit more wired like my mother, but have a little

bit more of my dad's mindset. A little bit more like, my dad's an entrepreneur. I'm like, I'm a little bit more, I'm not scared of risk. I think I got that for him, but I also am kind of like probably personally wired more like my mom. Tell me about saber tooth. Yeah, I mean, my mom's like a little bit more stressed than my dad. I feel like I. He's always looking for the saber tooth tiger.

I'm wired a little bit more that way. Right. And I think that's common. Right. But his mom's, both his parents are amazing. Yeah. I think I took elements from each of them. I mean, I also had the benefit and I'm aware that not everybody has this.

Like my parents stayed together my whole childhood and are still together. Yeah. You know, Lauren's parents, there's nothing wrong. Like a lot of parents, so I kind of have both elements because it was in the same household. Right. Where I imagine sometimes if you don't have that, you're splitting time between and then maybe one rubs off more than the other. Right, right, right.

But as a parent, you can know what style you're adopting when you're triggered. So that's when it shows up. It doesn't show up in the calm moments. It shows up when you're triggered by your child. And then you get to see in the mirror, what does this say about me? What's showing up for me right now? And that's why I always tell parents, it's those bottleneck moments with your children, where you actually provided the most deep reflection into your core wounds.

And your children give you that on a platter day after day. So when you look into the mirror and reflect, you're given a real front row seat into the theatrics of your unconscious. I want to give the audience and Michael and I the blueprint to being a conscious, or to raising a conscious child. the first question that I have for you is what is the biggest mistake that you see parents making where you're like this needs to be fixed and then maybe some small mistakes that you see. Okay, so the overarching, I think, error or misguided perception we have of parenting

is that how my child turns out is a very personal endeavor, very personal identity of mine. And when you identify with how your child turns out, out as something about you and your well-being and your status in life, you're screwed. Because now every quote-unquote wild turn they take, every time they fall down, you're very personally invested. Rather than understanding with wisdom that your child is here on this wild ride called life and they're here to manifest their own journey and figure out who it is.

They are through the falls and the failures. But if you begin to take everything very personally, you will strangulate them and really kill your own joy. So that's like the overarching misperception. Like we start the journey wrong thinking this is all about me. So then we push them to do this or we impose these expectations on them or we make them live out our fantasies because they are a reflection of us. We got to decimate that way of thinking. We have to separate who it is we are from who our children are. then the tinier offshoots of that are one of them, which parents make a mistake we make all the time,

is that we want to make our children happy. We believe that a good parent raises happy children. And we get caught up in wanting our children to be happy. And we get so invested in, but are you happy? But did I make you happy? At least be happy, you know, let's be happy. And it sends the message to our children that they are to be ashamed or that they are to feel defective if their life is kind of in the hole right now and they're feeling in the gutter.

Another mistake we make is that success needs to look like how the matrix defines it, which is rich, right? Really, let's be honest. So if my child is not rich or not going to be rich, I will feel like they have failed and I have failed. So these three elements chokehold us and kind of squeeze childhood out of our children's lives. We have, I think now with technology effectively killed childhood. We have... Terrible. Yeah, we've suffocated our children to such a degree with so much pressure and stimulation

that we've robbed them of what childhood essentially is. How do we raise strong daughters? For time eternal, girls have learned from culture that we need to shape shift in order to be worthy, to feel valid, to feel like we belong. Now, men won't even understand what we're talking about. But all women know for all generations that the mandate to shape shift shift has been on us. What this means is that we have been raised to be the compliant ones, the obedient ones, the ones who compromise and give up our authenticity for the sake of others.

Where of the hell were you raised then, Lauren? I know. She has it. She has it maybe just deeper down. You know, I have my own stuff. Don't worry, everyone. I have my own shit. It might not be this, different area.

It will show up differently. I have not met a single woman who has not, who doesn't, you just have to dig deeper, perhaps, but it'll come. I'm just kidding with her. It'll come. No, I can think of something funny in my head, but keep going. Yeah. So I think the most important thing we have to understand for our daughters is that we train them to tune in, listen to their body, learn to cultivate that inner voice. And we don't take that away from them.

It starts with tiny things with your toddler girl, you know, asking you, what can I eat, mommy? and you give her the choices, the two choices, right, you get to create the choices. But you activate her inner voice and you don't force her and you don't override her voice just because she's sweet and hesitant. You don't jump in and fill the vacuum. You wait and you test her to cultivate that inner voice. Give us an example of specifically what you're talking about. Well, it starts really young.

So if your girl, you know, is shy and sweet just because that's her nature, you train her and teach her that. her inner voice and her inner authority is around the corner and now you wait for it. So if she says, Mommy, I don't know what to eat. You don't go, oh, okay, let's just eat eggs. You wait for it. No, you do know. Here are your three things and wait till you tell me, I'm going to wait till you tell me what the choice is. And we wait longer for our girls to discover the inner voice.

We wait harder. Why? Because culture is waiting at the door to wolf her down, to eat her up. Give us other little tiny examples. So you mentioned food. What else? What else do you mean? From her socks to her outfit, to her class choices, to her friend choices, we don't rush in.

We deliberately and intentionally wait. We stand by her and we guide her, but we wait for her to access her inner voice. And I say this with such highlight and emphasis is, but it sounds like such a simple thing. Let her listen to her inner voice. but we have to do it as a strategy. And I say that, and it's one of the first pillars I talk about in my book, for the girls, is because culture is waiting to swallow her. I also think sometimes, like, with a toddler, you can be impatient.

So, like, if it takes 45 minutes to pick out a dress, you're like, just wear this one. Yeah, of course. Now, if you're in a hurry and... But I get what you're saying. You want her to listen to her intuition. Yeah. The goal is not to get... her to be great at grades or at school or to have lots of friends. The goal is to raise her

with her inner voice. Now, when you have that goal, everything shifts, right? Right. So the whole map has shifted now. The GPS is not about, which school do we send her to? And how is she doing with her friends? And how is she feeling about her school? It's, is she listening to her voice? Am I hearing her authentic spirit? Am I letting her defy me? You're listening for different things when you have a different intention. So if they have a personality trait that's a person, personality trait that you don't want them to have. You have to give space for that personality trait for them to intuitively figure it out. Give me an example of a personality trait you don't want a child to have. This is not like specific. I'm just giving a random one. Like let's say

they cry over the littlest thing. Or let's say they're really shy. You should just give that space, give that air. So look, I'm just going to challenge, okay? Yeah, please. So we call that for example, you said, personality traits we may not like. And both the things you said, crying over the littlest thing and shy, those are automatic judgments we're making. Right. Because both of them are absolutely normal behaviors to be celebrated and honored, right? But look, it's not just you. We all do that. Oh, my kid is too shy. What can I do, Dr. Sheffali, to make my kid more extroverted? You see how implicit and insidious and quick these judgments are? Both those things you said, absolutely normal, nonchalant behaviors that we should treat as ordinary. But we have an alarm

system within us because culture has trained us who a good child should be. A good child is extroverted and outgoing and dominant but also kind and compliant. And, you know, we have these impossible expectations for this perfect mother Teresa slash Julia Robert slash Michael Feltz slash Einstein, you know, without the hair. But, you know, we have this impossible idea. We all have it as parents, your generation, my generation. And silently, we're contouring our children to please show up as something spectacular. So even in a subtle way, if we say we're not judgmental, you have the judge, everybody has a judgment is what you're saying. If a person says they're not judgmental, and even if you're dating someone and they're like, oh, I'm not judgmental, red flag.

There's no such thing. Wait, so you're saying, though, if you have any kind of personality trait, you just need to step back and let it take shape. Let it take shape. And I'm I'm not saying it doesn't need contouring or guidance or encouragement. But the essence is the essence. I can tell you my daughter, 23 today, showed the same traits she did on year two. And what were those traits? I mean, she may not appreciate me saying these. But right away, by the age of two, I saw she was slow to warm up.

She took her time. She was cautious. She tested people. She was not so trusting. Same girl. Same damn girl. But to me, even when you say, those back to me, kind of challenging you as you did to me, those are good traits.

No, but I'm saying it was the same. It's cool. Like you almost are like those, those have so many pros too, right? Absolutely. And I, I recognized them early and I was like, oh, I could feel myself because I was the opposite kid. Right. I was the kid who jumped in and was cheerful and optimistic. I say, I tell this story all the time at my daughter's two-year-old birthday party. the photographer I hired came to me and said, listen, you cannot blame me, but I can't get your kid to smile. And I was like, why do I have that kid?

Like, what the hell I paid, you know, whatever, a thousand dollars back then. She's not smiling. She's ruined my whole event. And like, how could she do this? And why do I have this daughter? And how come this only happens to me? And I went on this crazy carousel of guilt

and martyrdom and victimhood. When it had nothing to, my kid was just, like, for her, she was like, what's the big deal? Why are these people here? I don't even understand. Why are you bothering me? And the kid that jumps in that's super optimistic, that comes with cons too. Absolutely.

You know, they're walking out with a stranger. It's all, there's all pros and cons of all of it, isn't there? Correct. So what I talk about is recognizing the essence of your child. And every kid comes with that blueprint essence. And it's our job to let them feel the strength of that essence and let them feel the burning of that essence. meaning if you're this extroverted gregarious kid, you're going to burn.

If you're the shy introverted kid, you're going to burn. But we're here to help you manage your essence. Whoever you are, whatever your blueprint is, whoever Michael is in his essence, your parents, their task was to just manage you as you are and make you flourish in the container of your essence, not make you somebody else. Well, I think it's so interesting because as you're talking,

we meet so many people doing this show and so many people over the years that have written in. And I think so many people are confused about what they should be doing in life because they've gotten so far disconnected from who they actually are and what they actually want to do because of what people think they should be doing or what they think society thinks they should be, that they can't even listen anymore to who they are and what they actually want to do.

Absolutely. I had a parent come in the other day of a 25-year-old, 25-year-old. You would think it was a 5-year-old's parent, okay? So the parent of a 25-year-old upset with the child, the adult child, I cannot believe she's dropping out of her postgraduate education. I paid for this. I cannot believe it. I'm so upset with her. I'm going to cut her off my inheritance.

She should follow what she was doing something in chemistry. She should become her whatever biotech researcher. And he was besides himself that his child dared to at 25. to follow her calling or try something different. Now, that was an example. But we see it on the sports field. We see it in the theater club. We see it in the dance.

It's everywhere for the two-year-old to the 25-year-old. Parents so invested in what their child is doing. That's why I said that is the first mistake you make is you identify so heavily with your child as your product that you think that you're investing all this money, time, and effort for a payout. It's almost like because the identity is a reflection of the parent that they need to get their money's worth. Absolutely. I need to get my time, money, look at my body, I've wrecked my marriage. I need a payout for this. But then does it go back to, again, the parents' issues of why do they care what other people think of them in the first place? Exactly. Exactly. But their whole identity, because they were raised with unconsciousness, is to wear the mask.

Parenthood is another mask or can be another mask. Your children can be another mask. Your children can be another form of your ego. But if you look at it through the lens of you caring about what other people think of you as a parent is affecting your child, absolutely. Then I think it creates a situation where like, do you really need to care that much because it's at the detriment of your child's? Oh, yes. But they are clueless to the fact that they're using their child to feel good about themselves. We are all clueless. And parenthood, until recently, you know, has been shrouded in this pedantic, of parents know best and of course parents love their children in the purest way. Look how much parents sacrifice, right?

So when I poked that, you know, 13 years ago, parents used to get pissed with me. You know, how dare you tell me how to raise my child? How can you tell me I don't love my child? Because I used to always tell parents, you know, love your child less, because that may be better. Like, let's not call everything love. Because when you call everything love, it's defenseless, right? You cannot defend, like, you will not be able to, you will not be able to,

to call that into scrutiny because the parent is defenseless. Like, no, it's love. That's it. I will not be looked at. I will not be challenged. But we do so many things in the name of love in parenthood and partnerhood that are really not expressions of love. They're expressions of control and narcissism.

And I know my message is not, you know, roses and sprinkles. But it calls parents to the challenge of being so whole within themselves. that they dare to set their children free. Lauren and I have this debate all the time. She came from a household with a ton of praise. I came from a household with reserved praise, right? And I'm not commenting on one but in the other. Are you sure you're not commenting on one or the other?

I feel like there's an undertone. No, no. But I... There's an undertone. What I worry about with constant praise, sometimes without validity, is that it trains the individual, not just the child, but any individual,

to constantly seek outside validation. I could burn the house down and my dad would be like, the way you lit that match was phenomenal. You burnt the whole house down. You didn't do a half. On the reverse of that is sometimes,

on the reverse end of that is, I could build the house and somebody would say, hey, well, you missed a shingle up there. You know what I mean? But you're talking about too drastic extremes. I'm talking about two extremes. Yes.

But I, I think to your point, there's this idea that your kids have to be so happy all the time and you have to praise them for everything and build their confidence. But I worry, and we talk about this all the time, at what point do you create a system where that person now or that child will be constantly seeking external validation and not able to validate themselves? Yeah, I think instead of doing a 180 pivot, so if the kid drop the egg and instead of saying, oh, but you at least try. to make the scramble, now we can just pick it up and do it again instead of trying to make it a positive. I think that's the mistake we make. We don't need to make everything a positive. We need to just sit wherever it is, wherever the moment landed.

Oh, we drop the egg. I drop everything too. We're both droppers with the isness. Like don't add a layer of like, oh, now let's make eggs always after dropping them. You know, don't add a twist. you're making a movie out of the isness. Stay with the isness. Oops, we drop the eggs.

I drop eggs too. Boom. I do that. Do not look at me like I don't do that. Yesterday, the art cart dropped all over the thing and I said, whoops, we made a mistake. Mistakes happen. Yeah, you didn't clean it up and add a big.

Nope, they cleaned it up. I said, no. You didn't add a ribbon and a bow. No, Michael. See? I'm not saying, I'm not attacking you all the time. I just, but I think. That's what you do, though.

But I like what you're saying, I think a lot, I mean, I think, especially if you're a parent, a lot of us are. you try to wrap it in a bow. That's what I'm saying. You don't have to spend so much effort, use your brain so much. Just stay with the isness. And that's what I try to do myself now,

after 23 years of having done this, just stay with where they are, stay with the isness. And if at all, you want to push them, you push them a few degrees more. Like what? Like so if the kid says, you know, I don't want to go skiing tomorrow.

And the car is packed. We've got the skis. We've got the instructor. we're ready to go. Okay. And now the kid is like, I don't want to go tomorrow. What do you do? So instead of like cheering them and go, you just go, okay, just sit in the car.

Just come into the car. And then when he's in the car, then when we get there, okay, just come out. We just go one level more and keep trying. So you're not pushing them towards it or pushing them against it. You're just giving up either and going, okay, we don't have to go. Okay. So if they're enrolled in drama classes and now it's been only two weeks and now they want to drop out, right? You're like, should I push or should I let go?

like he's crying and they're like looking traumatized. So we say it's okay, we just go watch. And then we just go there and we just go another level. But you always want to try and test how far can you go before giving up. But you don't push them like, no, you have to go. You just go one ladder up because what usually happens is that the child gets stuck in fear. He thinks it's a, you know, tiger in the bush. So he's thinking it's not just the wind, it's a tiger.

Right? and that fear is kicking in and survival is kicking in and now he's paralyzed. So you just want to keep nudging and pushing, but just a little. The mistake parents make is either they push too hard or they give up.

Where is my child right now or this child right now? Let me go a little bit. That's smart. Because they feel competent but challenge. Let's talk about the ChiliPad 2.0. We love this product and that's because in our household we prioritize sleep over everything. We've talked on this show for years

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It was like, this is what we're doing, right? And then I think the pendulum, so many people came out of that, shell-shocked. And a lot of millennials are like, what was that in previous? I mean, my dad's generation of God. But then what happened is it swung so far to the other side. Which is now everybody needs to feel comfortable and happy and coddled. Yes. And I think that there's a middle ground that we got to get back.

Because we have people come on the show and they talk about, I don't know what all the terms are, gentle parenting and all this. And I'm like, no, I think really what it is is we swung so far from fear. Yes. And this is fear too. Yeah, but a different side. And a different side. Exactly.

So when I talk about conscious parenting, I talk about the underlying pattern beneath my behavior. So if it's still fear, it doesn't matter what disguise it's wearing. So this is the deep work that we are not doing when we attach to strategies. Oh, I'm a gentle parent, or I'm an attachment parent. I'm not knocking those strategies, but those are strategies. Conscious parenting is not a strategy. It is a complete life philosophy. It is the way you have to live your life.

Well, you're either conscious or you're unconscious. Well, you're never going to be supremely, perfectly conscious, but you're either on the path or you're not. And the path is to look at what does conscious parent, really mean is you don't pass down your baggage. But this means in every relationship, and you look at every relationship as a mirror to yourself. But you see in the parenting journey, the reason why parents have gotten away with Blue Murder is because it's so asymmetrical, right? It's so hierarchical. The child is a child. Their brain is not yet developed. They cannot

push back. They cannot tell you no with any authority. They're going to be scared of you. Now, because of that asymmetry, parents have gotten away with murder, right? They've used their power and their tyranny without anyone calling them to question. It is the only job in the world, no supervision, no restriction, no follow-up continuing education, no license. You're sent home with your crazy and no one follows you for a mental health status examination ever. Think about that, right? So it's given parents unbridled authority and sovereignty to. to do whatever they want.

Now, why conscious parenting is so powerful in the relationship with your child is because it gives you the challenge, the brutal challenge of looking in the mirror when your ego, and nobody is asking you to check your ego, is in full force, and now you check your ego. Imagine checking your ego with a two-year-old when no one cares.

Like everyone would say, go ahead, do what you want with your child. child, but you check your ego, now that is growth, that is spiritual awakening, because you're willing to not tamper with the essence of this child. That doesn't mean you allow it to be rude or allow it to be disrespectful. No, of course, you teach it, but you're not tampering with their essence. How do you explain in the most positive way that you work to a little child? sometimes when I have to leave and I have to go to work like today my kids want me to stay it's summer they're doing bubbles they want me to stay and play with them what do you say what would you recommend you say so I use this four letter acronym that may help you it's V-E-N-T so it's

validate empathize normalize and transform okay if anyone wants to remember so first you validate you know oh my goodness you want me to stay i i want to stay everyone wants to stay here and blow bubbles i want to stay with you and blow bubbles so you validate that they're right that you want me to stay and they want to blow bubbles with me then you empathize i know you're sad that mommy's going and you're not going to have her to blow bubbles with you i get it i know so you kind of mirror their feeling underneath and then you normalize it listen i understand but here's the thing And now you go to tea, which is transforming it. Every grown-up kind of has to work.

You know, you see this one? The one who did the fence, he was somebody who worked. The one who made our roof, somebody who worked. You see that man mowing the lawn? He's working. What's the tea? Transform. Now you're transforming their frame of mind.

You don't do the transformation right away. See? First you validate. Then you empathize. And you normalize. And now once their nervous system is regulated, you're ready to give them the intellectual kind of analogies. You see everybody works.

I'll be back in two hours. Now they can receive it because their nervous system is regulated. What is the normalized, though? I didn't hear the normalize. That everybody would feel like you. Everybody would feel like you. Okay. You know, and everybody would want to.

You're not unique feelings. You're not bad for crying. Okay, got it. I get it. You're normal. Don't worry. It could be with anything that they're anxious to jump off a high diving board into the pool.

Okay. Right? you use the same strategy. The V-E-N takes a long time. But most people go to T. Oh, if you do it, you're going to be brave and amazing. And, you know, they jump to T too fast out of their own cheerleading anxiety. You know, let's do this.

I jump right to the T. You do? Most men jump right to the T. Right to the T. Absolutely. They just throw the kid into the pool. I think I do too much of the V and the E. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, you can't get stuck. You don't ever get to the T. No, I never get to the T. But this is, you have to move it along, okay? Like, I got to move it along. You got to move it along. I will say, though, on that subject, which is so funny, and this is maybe just a commentary on society in general, there's, I don't think men in particular feel as much guilt around just say I'm going to work.

I think maybe like, culture has endorsed it, but culture will look at a woman and ask her like, oh, where are your children? Right? They will look at a female pilot, for example, and inwardly or outwardly judge. her like what is she doing here in Cyprus when her children are in Boston? We had a woman with a big platform and the audience will know who were talking I don't want to put the thing on blast again but she got a whole Wall Street Journal article written about her working and it was a really like nasty piece and what I told her during when we were talking I was that would have never been written about a man exactly it just wouldn't have like even

if it was nobody would have cared it wouldn't have been any news but she was judged and she was ridiculed and people were mean to her on social and I just thought like you could write that article about me all day, and nobody would even care. It would be like, what a dumb article. But because it was written about a woman, it was bad. Right, right. Now women are trying to break out and trying to do a lot of things, but also there's a whiplash to that, that they feel the pressure to do a lot of things.

So I've seen many women who don't want to be career women and want to be mothers, but feeling like they're cop-outs and losers, all women who are career women and not so much at home and happy that way, feeling like cop-out and lose cop-outs and losers. You lose both ways. It's like a losing battle. Let me tell the audience something. No one gets out alive.

I know. We all feel something. For the women, the women mostly. If I was a stay-at-home mom, I can see how they feel like that. Exactly. If I'm a career woman, I can see it. You're fucked either way. Right.

You're fucked either way. So the golden answer, the golden rule, is do what gives you true joy and present so that when you are with your children, you're going to be present. you're going to be there fully. Let's talk about being present. Yeah. I see a lot of parents on their phone in front of their children not present. Yeah, big mistake. Big mistake. Let's go over that because I think a lot of people can relate to this subject. Look, it's really hard parenting today. I cannot imagine because when I parented my daughter and wrote the conscious parent 13 years ago, I couldn't focus. And I didn't carry a phone with me. And I couldn't focus. I don't know what I was doing,

but I couldn't focus back then. So imagine when you have dopamine in your pocket. I don't judge parents for constantly picking up their phone in any boredom, in any moment that feels ordinary and dull. And you know with children, it is boring. It is repetitive. It's like, oh, again, we have to say the same, you know, story and the lullaby. It's freaking mind-numbing.

It's boring as hell. But this is the thing. You're excited. So excited to parents. It is, I mean, it's, I remember, you know, going when is this going to end? And who said that this goes by fast? You know, the years may go by fast,

but the minutes take forever, okay? I'm like, it's still 9 or 2, 8.45 at night and 9.30 at night? Oh my goodness. That's when you lose it. That's when you lose it. I think at that time, another person has to come in and, like, do that shift because it's just exhausting.

So I think that for parents today, it's even harder having the dopamine and having their work on their phone and justification that it's work, right? It's work, right? We're working. So the reason why we need to be very careful is because children develop their sense of self

from you. So if you're always looking away and you're not making eye contact and they're looking at you to get feedback about themselves, but you're always looking distracted, they're not building that consistent sense of self of being seen, of being mirrored,

of being attuned. So every time the child cries and you hand them the toy or the phone, you are robbing them of your attunement to their emotional state, which is how they learn to stay regulated. But if you're using dopamine to regulate them, not the relationship, they will not use their inner relationship to regulate themselves. It is that crucial. So when is it important that people are off their phone?

Like give us some like some pillars. Like, I'm just giving an example, dinner time. It would be a good pillar. I mean, it sounds like it's a good idea to be off at all the time. And not to make it, it sounds like it's important to make them not think they're secondary to the phone. Right. It's better that you just chunk it. If you're on your phone, go be on your bloody phone and just tell them, moms out.

Don't do it 50-50. And then now you lock your phone away and be present. Do it for 30 minutes. Go back and get your addiction. Then come back and do it for 30 minutes and then go back. But when you're there, especially. when they're under the age of 12, give them your attention. My daughter's 23 and she tells me, Mom, you're not looking at me. And I go, you need me at this age to look at you? Yes, every human being

wants to be seen when they're talking to you and I'm checking out. You can see this with babies, too. We have a little baby right now and like that's how the baby, the way they connected before they communicate. It's the eyes. It's the eyes and your sound and your presence and your availability, your emotional availability. But if you're on your phone all the time and bothered or scrolling or in the middle of something, you're not emotionally available. You're half available.

Let's talk about marriage. When you're in front of your children, like Michael and I are, we have three kids. What are some things that are important for us to be doing as a married couple in front of our children? Married or not, right? It doesn't matter. Okay, you could be dating. Yeah, they don't need to see.

I'm talking about a female and a male, in a household, what do they need to see from us? Well, it doesn't have to be fancy. You don't have to be showing them how much you make out and love each other. And be real and be safe. If you're real and safe and ordinary and human and safe, you're good. Because too much stimulation is not, they're not capable of absorbing too much making out. I mean, they're like, okay.

That's too much. It may be too stimulating for them, you know, and depends on their age. And the reason why the parents are needing to do it, like what is the reason for you? to make out right now, right? What are you trying to prove? What are you trying to do? And if you're doing too much, you're not paying attention to the children. But the healthy model is from just safety and authenticity and being relaxed. What if you fight in front of your kids? Yeah, don't fight too much. Again, it could be too overstimulating. Go take it outside, take it elsewhere, take it later. You can do a little bit of healthy disagreement. It's good for

them to hear like, no, oh, mommy and I are disagreeing, okay, that's good. It's because it's authentic. It's normal. It's healthy. But when it goes beyond, it's a lot. It's healthy. But when it goes beyond, the point where it becomes catastrophically distracting to the child, now you're robbing their life, their energy to give you energy. And that's not fair. Is there a word that, is there a word or a phrase that you would use if it's like, if it's getting a little too much? Like if someone's in a fight in front of their children. You just say time out. We're not doing this right now. One of the couple has to be the parent and the adult. Okay. So I'll be the parent that says time up. When you're in a bad mood.

You weren't a bad mood last night. Take it somewhere else. I'm going to say time out. I'll be the parent in the relationship. I can be the bigger person. I can see that. Put on the laugh track, Carson. No, no.

That's true. Now we're telling tall tales on the show. And as much as you want to be in defiance and win the battle, you're going to lose the war. So let the battle go. Okay. So my word is time out. I'm going to refer to this episode.

I read this study the other day. that men in relationships end up just saying, yes, I agree just to get out of the... I have told him since we got together, all he has to say for the rest of his life is yes, dear. I have a question before Lauren moves on to... And I guess we can have these conversations again these days. What is the differences between raising conscious sons and daughters? I guess the main difference from your perspective. If daughters, you know, how do you see them be different?

Huge difference. And yes, I wrote two books and I was a little bit... you know, nervous for the backlash, but they needed to be written because each child, each sex, has a different hormonal development. But isn't that crazy that you were nervous about that at one point? I know. Different. I know.

And it's okay. It's good to celebrate differences. Just like it's good to not reduce everyone. Oh, because you're a boy, you're going to act like this. We shouldn't reduce. Yeah, but I have a girl and I have two boys and they're very different. Beyond different. Because they're just hormonally different.

Look at us, you know, look at as adult men and women. So what I found is that daughters today are experiencing a crisis of selfhood like we have never seen before because they are in the hurricane of so much self-surveillance and people watching them and constantly being exposed and getting feedback. And for the girls' nervous system that develops safety in relationship, girls develop a sense of self typically in relationship. We are more relationally attuned, more relationally sensitive, our oxytocin from our estrogen, is more amped up. We care about the we, not the men don't, but we care more. For that girl to

grow up in this fish bowl of constant surveillance and feedback is crushing her. So she may look amazing on the outside, but on the inside she's suffering herself is falling apart. That's why she's more anxious, lonely, suicidal, self-harming than ever before. And for our boys, my goodness, our boys are really lost. And we see our adult men, lost. And instead of constantly being angry with our adult men, which they give us a lot to be angry about, we have to go deeper to the root and go, what happened to that man when he lost his childhood? What happened to him in boyhood? And that's why I wrote the book Raising Conscious Sons, because our sons are being neglected. Believe it or not, they are being unserved in the

way that they need. In what ways? They're not being given a true blueprint for conscious masculinity. They're being told, don't be like the girls, because we're all misogynistic, and we believe being a girl is the worst thing. So we tell our boys, don't be like the girls, and don't be an asshole. So he's like, okay, I don't know who to be like then, because most of the men around me that I see are toxicly masculine, and they're not showing me a blueprint. And because there's a void of conscious masculinity, the manosphere, you've heard of the manosphere, has come right in and has taken over, providing our boys with the, brotherhood that the fathers in their life, the uncles in their life should have provided. But the fathers didn't grow up with conscious masculinity either. So in my book, I give a blueprint for conscious masculinity and helping mothers step out of the

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dot com to shop the limited color way now yeah you see this rise of i guess the manosphere of what i guess they now call real toxic masculinity words like these got, I think like largely misogynistic, overly aggressive, kind of like maybe values in the toilet kind of guys are taking people that are kind of young guys that are lost and pointing them into direction to chase things that are largely material and don't matter. Yes. But the only reason that void exists to your point is because there's the other side of that which has shifted them so far to the feminine side where they're like, I don't know how to be that. And I being told not to be that, but I don't even know how to be that. I could not.

never be that. So the boy is lost. And many boys growing up in single homes with single mothers especially are the most in trouble because the mother absolutely cannot understand what a boy in puberty is going through and what he needs. That's when the brotherhood needs to step in in a positive way. Scott Galloway, do you follow him at all? Yeah. Of course. He talks about this. He talks about this. He got a lot a shit for talking about it. There's a lot of, especially I think from a lot of women that were like, don't give these guys a cop out. But what he was saying as a guy with young sons is that there's, a lot of these young men have been punished in a way that they've never asked for, right? Like, they're scared to approach women. They're scared to voice their desires. They're scared to say the

wrong thing. Right. It's not about not holding anybody accountable. This is not about lack of accountability. This is about going underneath the covers to go, okay, how do we fix the problem? And we have to, as parents, ask ourselves, how am I raising my son today that is going to lead him to become a disconnected male, that I'm going to be terrified. My daughter brings home. I have a responsibility as the mother or father of a son to make sure that our daughters tomorrow are safe. So I wrote the raising conscious sons because I care about the women. I care about my daughter and I care, of course I care about the man he will be. So it's integrated. It's the both these books are a conversation. Most of the women that wrote in after we've talked on this topic,

it's, I think they don't really get the shift until they have a son of their own. Yes. Right. And then you start to think like, wait a minute, I have a boy. Listen, and many women who are raising boys, whether in a couple or alone, carry their own baggage of their abuse at the hands of men. I've seen it in real life. What do you mean? So as a mother, if you have a boy. Two boys. You are going to at some point come up against your own past with men in your life, positive or negative. So like if they're being a player? If they're being a player or they're, again, you don't even know whether they're really being a player, but you're going to put on them, you're being a player. Or if they're super aggressive and super wild and you remember moments

where your past male relationship was wild and uncontrolled male energy, you may be terrified of pure raw male energy. Raw male energy can be terrifying to women who've been traumatized at the hands of raw male energy which is not contained. So you'll try to put your boy into a box. Like, shh, be quiet.

Why aren't you quiet? Why don't you quieten down? And boys in their raw male testosterone may not need to quieten down or may need to quieten or may need to be harnessed, not quietened. But because of our trauma, because of the men we've been with

that did not have harnessed male energy, we take it out on our boys. I see it all the time. You need to have, and it's deeply unconscious. As a man, you need to have outlets where that kind of aggression can escape. Because if it doesn't and it stays in, it gets. It gets festered and perverted. And that is the problem in modern boyhood today. Boys are sitting too much, sitting still too much in front of a screen too much. That testosterone, if it's not harnessed and channeled appropriately, will be a pressure cooker which will explode. Yeah, like when I think about myself when I was, I mean, You know, she know me forever, like, much more aggressive.

But I start to think, like, well, if I wasn't that way and I didn't get that out, like, as an adult, I think it would manifest in really terrible and unhealthy ways. And it's not because you were a crazy kid or a bad kid. It's your hormonal blueprint. Testosterone is that urge to pursue and to explore and to take risks and to have adventure. So if you're raising boys today, make everything an adventure. Hide the toothbrush, hide the toothpaste, hide everything. Make them find it.

Scavenger hunt, everything. I can see it with my son right now. He wants to, he's at this age, he's four. He wants to wrestle sometimes. He wants to fight. He watches a show. He wants to move. It's not a mean thing.

He just wants it out. No, his energy is bottom up. Boys are bottom up, girls are top down. It's interesting. We do cranial sacral, which I'm so passionate about everyone trying. I like love it. It's changed my life. But my boy does it.

And he, after he's done, he has to throw himself across the couch and get it, like get all the energy. From the cranial sacral, it just gets it out, whereas my daughter's more calm. Of course, because her left and right hemispheres are joining together and talking to each other way earlier and faster than his are. His are like so disconnected. He's just all raw physical energy and he's just, afoul and wild. And we need to allow our boys a safe space to be that raw energy. What's something from your book? Give us one example on your blueprint for raising conscious sons.

Okay, so a group of mothers came to me in Manhattan. their boys were 12 to 14. They were leaving the house in the middle of the night because they are part of a group called urban explorers. Okay? They created their own brotherhood of risk adventure dopamine and testosterone harnessing.

They're like, if you don't give me a channel, I'll go find it. So they were in deserted subways on top of trains, top of high-rise buildings, freaking the hell out of these poor parents. I would do that tomorrow. I would join this group. Sounds cool.

So cool, right? But so dangerous. in an urban city unsupervised in the early hours sneaking out. And the mothers, most of them, got super angry and so did the father. So their instinct was to ground them, punish them, medicate them, therapistsize them, like, what the F is wrong with my kid? He's like a junkie. He's going to be part of a cult, a group, a gang.

And then when we understood, right, I helped them understand, wow, your kids are geniuses. Like they found the missing element of boyhood today. which is their brotherhood, their tribe. You know, when we were growing up, I'm sure you remember. It's normal. Kids were wild packs in the neighborhood till the dark of the night. Nobody called them home because the world was to be explored. The world was to be experienced and felt,

and boys need to feel and experience their bodies in space and time. They make movies about, remember the sandlot? That's what it was. Exactly. The outsiders? Yeah, that's what it was. So when you confine a boy and restrict his energy in front of a screen with headphones in a virtual world, where does that lived experience go? So these boys went to find their own lived experience.

So what did you tell him to do? I told them the first thing is to understand, have compassion, and then try to fix it in some other ways. Replace that wild, dangerous energy into wild, safe energy. and park four, go for long runs, take him on a marathon, take him on hikes, go into the wild, go into, yeah, whatever takes out that energy in a wild way, not in a pruned, restricted way, because boys need to test themselves physically. It's why sports are good, to be honest. They are good, except now we've so curated and tailored them that we've taken the wild out. If they're left unfettered, then sports are the best way. I guess my last question is how can we raise resilient chubes? children, like not a pussy willow.

Yeah. Strong children to go into the next generation, into the workforce. Yeah. I think the key is to expose them to friction as it naturally shows up in their life. So we are taking away friction at every turn. There's DoorDash and Uber eats and Uber and ACs and remotes and everything done on your phone with a click of a button. There is no friction.

our generation, my generation and above, decided that we were too tired for doing everything, walking too close, put off the TV. So we have now created such luxury and such an abundance of ease that we are going to raise children who are completely fragile. We are raising children who are fragile

because they don't know how to wait. My girlfriend says they need measured adversity. They need measured friction. Friction as it shows up. Friction as it shows up. So if something is lost, make them find it. If something's lost, don't replace it immediately.

If your child falls down and cries, let them cry. If your child watches you having a meltdown, it's okay. Create some, even artificial friction, if you happen to live with 15 people in your home that are at your children's beck and call. The other day I was with a mother from India. She's like, you know, I literally don't lift a finger. My children don't lift a finger because in India you have, you know,

people to help you. And they were affluent. And I said, well, then your children are going. going to grow up fragile, not healthy, because they are not having a real life experience. So wherever real life shows up, be grateful. If your kid doesn't get called to the birthday party, go, thank you. You know, let's have some friction. Friction. And friction in the household, let's say you do have a nanny or a housekeeper. What are little ways that you can create that friction in the household? Well, try. You know, try to have the nanny not do things that that child can do

for themselves in small ways, just little ways. You don't have to, you know, give up everything just because now you're trying to create friction, you know, like, no, we will not fly in planes. We will walk everywhere, you know. You don't have to be so ridiculous. But wherever you can, you create competence through exposure, right? When a child is exposed to things they can do for themselves, you're actually building competence and competence builds confidence.

But you're taking it away. One off the top of my head that we could both do. So we take a morning walk and a night walk every single day. Yeah. With the kids. With the kids. And they halfway through are like, I'm so tired. I can't walk.

Can I get on the stroller? Can you carry my scooter? Whatever? I think that from now on we should be like, you bring your, you bring your shit, you bring your bike, you bring your scooter, you walk. That's a you problem. What do you think I've been doing? Yes.

And within measure and within, you know, limits of their age, you can push them a little bit. I'm like, pick up that backpack with the rocks in it and let's go. What do you mean? You can push them what? I mean, Lauren, it is a long walk for two little kids. Yeah, if it's too long, it's a little bit of a long walk. It's a little bit of a long walk. It's an adult walk.

I don't think she would agree with me. It's an adult walk. It's not that long. Yeah. So you figure it out, you know. It's a 15 minute walk, but for small four. With small kids, it's a six-mile walk. Yeah.

It's a little measured adversity, a little friction. A little bit. A little bit. Where can everyone find you and consume your content and buy your book? Yeah. Books. Books. So these two books, raising conscious sons and raising conscious daughters.

If you want all my free stuff that comes with it, go to my website, Dr. Shafali.com, but otherwise available everywhere. I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much. Thank you for making the trip. Thank you. Absolutely.