This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 126 / The Parenting Map with Dr. Shefali

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

Have you ever wished there was an instruction manual that came with your child so you’d understand how they operate and what to do as their parent? We’re here today to have a conversation about parenting… one that’s coming from a place of love and a desire that every mom I know has… how we can be the best mom to our littles. And because I can’t think of a better person to lead that conversation, I’ve invited Dr. Shefali to join me. Acclaimed author of THREE NYT best-sellers, international speaker, clinical psychologist, and wisdom teacher, Dr. Shefali wrote the guide we’ve all been looking for… her new book, The Parenting Map, comes out February 28th and it gives us step by step solutions to create the ultimate parent-child relationship. My greatest takeaway is that doing that, starts with transforming OURSELVES. I don’t have a lot of parenting advice outside of this… heal yourself so you can trust yourself. And get your hands on Dr. Shefali’s book! To learn more about Dr. Shefali and her work go to www.drshefali.com or follow her on IG @doctorshefali Here’s the link to purchase her new book The Parenting Map, and info on her Parenting Mastery Summit. To learn more about what we are up to outside of this podcast, visit us at NicoleKalil.com.

Here's a thought from our guest today, but you're going to have to listen to the full episode to get all the mind-blasting moments. We are humans who are terrifically flawed, raising humans who are terrifically flawed. And once we can surrender to this perception of wholeness versus perfection, we will enter the journey, show up in a different way, and just be less stressed. Because we are not burdened to meet up to this ridiculous fantasy. Have you ever wished there was an instruction manual that came with your child so you'd understand how they operate and what to do as their parent. Like when your kid throws a tantrum, you just flip to the troubleshooting page of your manual and it tells you exactly how to respond. Or when your kid lies to you, there's

a quick 60-second YouTube video that helps you say and do the right things. I am Nicole Kalil, and let me start this episode of This Is Woman's Work by saying that parenting is hard, and I've wished many times for that parenting manual, that parenting roadmap. I can't think of anything or anyone that I care more about than my child that feels more important and consequential, that comes with as much love, joy, gratitude, pride, and responsibility, guilt, pain, and shame. I'm doing the best I can, but most of the time, I don't really know if I'm doing any of it right, as if there's one right way to do it. And saying that is hard because there's no other role out

there that comes with as much comparison and judgment than being a mom does. Judgment of self, as well as judgment from and for others. And I have this belief that most of us are unconsciously parenting our children in reaction to our own childhoods. Good, bad, or indifferent, more often than not, we're repeating or rebelling against the way we were raised. We end up parenting the way we wish we were parented. And we're doing that through and to our children. With the very best of intentions, we end up not giving them what they want and need. Not because we're bad parents, but because we're human beings with unresolved pain and patterns. And I don't know a single mother that wants to, that would consciously choose to parent from fear, hurt, scarcity,

or dysfunction. And yet that's what we default to if we're not mindful, myself included. So we're here today to have a tough conversation about parenting, one that's coming from a place of love and a desire that I know every mom has, how we can be the best mom to our littles. And because I can't think of a better person to lead that conversation, I've invited Dr. Shefali to join me. Acclaimed author of three New York Times bestsellers, international speaker, clinical psychologist, and wisdom teacher, Dr. Shefali wrote The Guide We've All Been Looking For. The Parenting Map, her new book, comes out February 28th, and it gives us step-by-step

solutions to create the ultimate parent-child relationship. And my greatest takeaway is that doing that starts with transforming ourselves. Dr. Shefali, thank you so much for writing this book and for being here today. I'd love to start by focusing on some of those false and mixed messages about what it is to be a good parent or to be a good mom. Can you give us some examples of some of the false messages we're hearing and what it's actually doing to us? Well, I think the biggest message that your readers will realize they have ingrained is this idea that our children should be happy and that it's all responsible to make them happy and that if they're not happy, we've done something wrong.

And therefore, we have to go into this micromanaging overdrive to create this euphoria in our children. And I think this places such a burden on us and actually messes our children up because when they have big emotions or natural emotions to their life experiences, we want to suppress that and tell them that they're wrong for having it. They shouldn't have these feelings.

And then it puts pressure on us to invent new life experiences for them. Like we should go out there into the world and buffer them from any pain. We should micromanage their relationships. We should make sure that their professors love them. And this is, you know, absolutely delusional because we cannot be in our children's lives in that degree. But yet we think we should. And then when we can't, and then they're upset, it really sets us off. And we believe we're failures. They are failures. We don't like ourselves. We don't like them. And we don't like the parenting process. It suddenly feels like a burden when actually it should be a joyful

relationship. So what I'm hearing is sort of this idea that we're trying to prevent our children from having pain. And really our opportunity is to teach them how to live with and through that pain. This idea that any one of us could be happy a hundred percent of the time is crazy, right? Right. And I just look at my own life and reflect. And if we all look at our own lives and reflect, we will see that our greatest courage, our greatest resilience has come from those stormy periods in our lives. And to birth a new self, you have to go through a destruction. So destruction is very important. So if your kid is five years old and is not being invited to the popular kid's birthday party, that's a normal life experience. So you cannot snatch them from their normal life experience. artificial pain in our children's lives, but do not take away the natural pain that is inevitable as part of the life's journey. If our kid gets a C grade, let them experience the pain of that

for themselves, if they have any pain. If their teacher is upset with them for waking up late, don't over micromanage them getting up early, because let them learn from that lesson how it feels. These are valuable lessons. The first heartbreak and the surviving of that heartbreak. I mean, you and I know, wow, if we can survive our first heartbreak, we're strong. So how can we rob our children of that pain? That pain is what teaches them that they are capable of handling pain. I saw a quote in advance of our conversation and I wanted to get your take on it. The quote says, which came first, moms saying their kids are their entire world or kids thinking the world revolves around them. What are your thoughts on that? What are we doing when we

say our kids are our whole world? Yeah. You know, I think we need to be careful that our kids don't really take that literally. And they understand that we just mean that we love them so much. But when we literally make them our whole world, right, that's what we're talking about. When we truly identify their being state, their outcomes, their goals, their life successes and ambitions as if they are our trophies or our disappointments to bear, that's a problem. When our kids senses that our entire identity depends on them, actually it's not a liberating feeling. Yes, they could grow up with some sort of entitlement, but also it's a burden to them to to think that that how they turn out matters so much to another human being they kind of want

to be under the radar and instead if we make them feel like when they're unhappy we're unhappy when they do badly we are unhappy and then when they're happy, we're happy. That's insanity because then that person feels responsible for our moods. That's not healthy. Yeah. Okay. So I said in my intro that I think a lot of us are parenting in reaction to our own childhoods, probably because I've read your previous books. I had that belief. How do we break free of these wounds, these unconscious patterns, the driver's seat? How do we stop living in reaction to our own childhoods? We can't just stop it. We have to heal from it. It's not about pressing the stop button. It's not about willpower or a decision or you're a better parent for having made a decision.

That'll get you nowhere in a sustainable way. The only way to truly evolve out of our childhood pain is to do the hard work of healing. And when we heal, we no longer need to press the stop button because that part of us, that broken part of us stops acting out. stop button because that part of us, that broken part of us stops acting out. It stops being a part of us. So we don't have to use willpower. Healing naturally and organically brings growth and growth brings change. So we don't have to every day tell ourselves to not have the crack cocaine. It's just something we naturally feel aversive towards. We move away from that naturally because our level of vibration, so to speak, or our level of growth doesn't

tolerate that unconsciousness anymore. So what are some of the ways in which we can heal? Therapy, I would imagine is a big one. That's why I wrote this book, The Parenting Map. And I really encourage parents to buy this book because it is a self-help manual for parents to heal and parents to reparent themselves and for parents to parent their children consciously. I mean, it's over 300 pages, small font, because it's packed with so much information. In this one book, it is your therapy journey. So in order to heal, people have to go on a journey. And this book is written like a journey. It takes you from your belief systems to your emotional pain and your baggage and your

crap, and then how to connect with your children. I lay it all out like a journey, and it walks you through with examples and stories and my story so that you learn through metaphor, through symbolism, through resonance with other people. And so going on a journey is imperative to heal. You cannot just heal through a mental decision. You have to go through the stages of a journey. And that's what this book is laid out, like a hero's journey, taking you from the precipice of unconsciousness to the threshold of consciousness. That was one of my favorite things about the book is it felt, so in advance of our conversation, I wanted to read all the way through it. And I had so many moments where I was like, okay, I'm going to need to come back to this part. So the bulk of the book, you lay out 20 steps over

three stages. I'd love if you could give us an overview of the stages first, and then maybe we can dig a little bit deeper into a few of the steps. So share with us about the three stages. So every journey begins first with a change in mindset. So stage one has six steps. It talks about the changes in your belief systems, meaning to undo and deconstruct and unlayer all the lies that we have believed that a good parent should be. A good parent should make their kid happy and successful and be the focus of their lives. And that, you know, we need to control our children. All of these lies, I lay it out in the first step. And although I've touched upon this step in other books,

the way I did it in this book is so much more different, more clear, more palpable. Then stage two is really the new offering of this book. It's a powerful step. It's the inner work where you identify your egoic patterns. I've helped parents in this stage to identify whether they are a fighter parent or a fixer parent or a fainter parent or a freezer parent or a fleer parent. And each parent type has subtypes. So you can identify yourself, your partner,

your parents. And this awareness brings a lot of realizations of how you've been in this robotic cycle in these loops. And I teach in this step how to break out of these loops, how to disrupt these patterns. So very powerful stage. And then stage three is all about how do you create conscious connection with your kids? Like, no, how really? And this is not so much about what to tell your kids or whether you should play a, you know, do a jigsaw puzzle or play a game. It's really about how you change your entire mindset, your energy, your worldview, how you show up so that the connection pours out of you. Right? So my daughter's 20 now. How old are your kids, Nicole? My daughter's nine. Oh, okay. It's a big, big age for girls, I think. Yes. Yes. So you are, and I am always,

you know, looking for ways to show up for them, to witness their growth and celebrate their essence so that they grow up with this inner sense of connection. That's the greatest gift we can offer as conscious parents is the gift of inner connection. So stage three is all about teaching parents how they can show up to create inner connection for their children. I want to dive into that a little bit deeper, but I want to circle back to stage one and hone in on a couple of the steps. You talk about destroying the fantasy. Can you share a little bit more about that?

Well, we walk into the parenting journey with subconscious, but deeply ingrained and every one of us have it had it and continue to have it fantasies of who our kid will be how we will be and how the outcome will be and it all is some sort of version of the the happy perfect successful family right we want happiness we want success and we want success, and we want perfection. So when we walk in with that fantasy, it puts a burden on us to now manifest that fantasy. So we think we need to manifest the fantasy through control. Then we realize, oh, holy cow, we barely have any control. So then we focus on the kid. Okay, let's just fix the kid. And let's blame the kid for us not having control. Then we burden the kid through punishment and what we call

parental discipline and shame and blame. And then even that doesn't work. In fact, it backfires. So now we watch our whole fantasy crumble and we are pissed and we're devastated and we're frustrated and we're feeling like failures. When instead we need to realize that the fantasy was the wrong fantasy in the first place. There's nothing wrong with us. There's nothing wrong with our kids. It is what it is. We are humans who are terrifically flawed, raising humans who are terrifically flawed. And once we can surrender to this perception

of wholeness versus perfection, we will enter the journey, show up in a different way, and just be less stressed because we are not burdened to meet up to this ridiculous fantasy. So I want to hone in a little bit on the perfection part. I know so many women are holding ourselves to perfectionist tendencies. And I believe that creates distance in relationship. You talked about connection earlier. It's really hard to feel connected to a perfectionist because nothing's ever good enough. I'd love your perspective on that. But then the second thing is I see a lot of parents talking about how their children are perfect beings when they're babies, especially. And you just said that we're flawed beings, parenting flawed beings.

Are our children perfect? Or are they flawed beings? Maybe the clarity will come if we put it this way, that all of us are perfectly human. And to be perfect humans means we're perfectly imperfect. So that's what it means, right? We are who we are, and we are just exactly who we're meant to be when we're born, with all the ingredients. And of course, we all evolve, we grow, but our essence is untainted. We don't need to become someone else to get validation, approval, or worth. These things should be given for free. And parents often say, well, my kid needs to earn my trust. And I say, no, they don't. Trust is something you give. It's not something that you have to be proven about before you give it. No one needs to prove to you. Now, of course, if it's somebody who has betrayed you, then you can recalibrate. But our children, they're not in any business transaction with us. They're not in any partnership with us in terms of a commercial partnership. So with them, trust is given in an unequivocal way, in an unrestricted way. And of course, if our kid is, you know,

an obsessive kleptomaniac, maybe we won't want to keep our money around them. But we'd have to look at the deeper problem and ask, why is my kid needing to steal? So with our children, it's not a matter of should I trust them? adults in commercial partnership? Sure. With children, it is how can I show up in a way that honors their essence, that honors that they are allowed to be who they are, flawed, imperfect, limited, if they need to be as they are. You talk about honoring their essence. And also in stage one, there is a section about discarding the labels. Can you talk to us a little bit about why labeling is problematic, especially as it relates to seeing and nurturing their essence?

Thoughts on that? Well, labels are convenient for sure. But when we use labels for our children, we typically use the good and bad label, the lazy and successful label, the pretty and ugly label, the fat and skinny, you know, the very basic rudimentary labels. And those labels are very toxic and dangerous because they're often mostly emitted from the subconscious subjectivity of the person giving the label. It is nothing to do with objective reality. And because of that, it's dangerous because a good kid we know is a kid who complies with their parents' egoic agenda and control. And a bad kid, quote unquote,

is somebody who defies their control. And so I like to remind parents that their ego is working, their ego is in the driver's seat, and that's from where they are creating these labels, not the kid themselves, but how their ego interacts with the kid. And if the ego feels challenged and threatened, then the kid is going to be labeled bad. If the ego feels endorsed and colluded with,

then the kid is good. And I really talk about that a lot in this book, because this book, The Parenting Map, is intended to train parents, it's like a training manual to truly debunk their stagnant dysfunctional patterns because they don't even realize how their unconscious strategies are actually standing in the way of what they want the most, which is a happy connected kid, right? It's actually messing up exactly what they want and they just don't realize it. Yeah. I loved how you shared about the different egos. I identify with the fighter and the fixer. Do you notice in your work that there is one that's more prevalent than the others or any tips there? So in stage two, I help parents identify their ego patterns. I talk about the fighter parent, the fixer parent, the fainter parent, the freezer parent, and the fleer parent.

And I have to say that I'm quite shocked at the wide range of ego patterns I see. There is one pattern that's common. If one was a good kid, like a super good compliant kid, they typically become the fixers. But there's a lot of freezers out there. And of course, the prototypical fighter and then the prototypical feyner. The feyner parent is the stage mom, the sports dad, you know, the one who takes them for those. What are those competitions? Those pageants,

where they're showcasing their kid and it's all about how it looks on the outside. I'm just very, you know, amused and fascinated by the fact that we run the gamut. And this section is not meant to blame or shame parents. There's no one parent better than the other. It's just about uncovering your style, your pattern, and what you typically default to, and then becoming aware and then breaking free of it. So this stage helps parents identify with their core pattern and then helps them to break free of it. Okay. So in stage three of the book, you talk about reframing mistakes. I thought that was really powerful. How do we do that? Well, there's two things we need to do. Number one is realize that children misbehave because of three reasons only. Number one, they have a lack of skill. So

their brain is not developed. Literally, there are large pieces of their brain that are not yet developed all the way to 28. So they don't have the skills that you think they should have. So when they're running late and they're procrastinating and they're avoiding and they're dilly-dallying and they're forgetting, it's because part of it is lack of skill. The next one is lack of life experience. They just haven't practiced it enough. They just don't know the consequences yet enough. They don't yet have enough adult life under their belt. And the third

reason is lack of worth. And that's got to do with something emotional. They're emotionally avoiding the situation because it scares them or they don't want to be a failure. So these are the three reasons. And the next reason why children misbehave is because of something, I call it, what is the sign, S-I-G-N, something inside gone negative. What is happening inside? You know, something is going on emotionally, traumatizing them, that's causing a stagnation of their internal resources that is paralyzing them. So this is why this occurs. And when we have compassion for this through awareness, then we are not losing our shit. Then we are connecting with them. We're understanding them and then we're supporting them. Our children need to feel like we are their allies. We got their back. You know, even when my daughter and she's 20 now, she'll sometimes do

something really foolish like spend a lot of money on something ridiculous or forget something very important and even though my instinct is to correct her I talk about in this book how the fundamental premise of conscious parenting is connection before correction my instinct is to go what the f what's wrong with you you're 20 well what are you thinking oh my goodness my ego wants to go, what the F? What's wrong with you? You're 20. What are you thinking? Oh my goodness. My ego wants to go to town. But I know that that is never a good thing. And it's always gotten me into worse problems.

And it's toxic for our relationship. So I'll always then say, okay, how can I first connect? So I always say, I got your back. I understand. You must have been busy. You must have not realized so I touch upon lack of skill lack of experience lack of worth right something inside gone negative okay maybe you just didn't realize you're not an adult yet maybe you just didn't think about it in a deep way maybe you just thought that this would give you pleasure. I always find a good reason to give benefit of doubt

because that'll show my kid, I got your back. I got your back. And then once she realizes what she did, I go, can you please, please do not duplicate this mistake in the next two days at least. Can you please just absolve from making the same mistake again?

And then she laughed. I laughed. Connection restored. Lesson learned. No shaming, no blaming. Now I've not taken away from her psyche. I've added to her psyche and I've put credit in our emotional bank, right? We're always looking to put credit in our emotional bank. So feel free to push back. I heard connection before correction, but there is a way in which we still correct our children from a place of connection. So sometimes worry that sometimes we might be over-rotating towards connection and not correcting at all. What is your response? That's why I just say one comes before the other, but correction, when it follows connection, it doesn't follow shame, blame, guilt,

punishment, and fear. I love that. So that's the distinction. That's the distinction. What is it following? When it comes at the heels of beautiful connection, you cannot freaking scream at your kid right after you just told them I got your back. So now it's like, hey, can we put this agreement in place? Can you please call me before you make this decision next time? Can you check in with a friend? Can you check in with your coach? We put in buffers to correct, but correction doesn't have to be predicated on fear, shame, blame, guilt, and punishment. And that's the key. So I know the listeners are hoping I'll ask a ton of follow-up questions. So I'm just going to tell you all, you got to get the book and read this, but I would hate myself if I let you go without

asking this question. We have this idea of parenting and it's the parenting map. It's not just for moms. There will be two engaged husband, wife, but that is so not always the case anymore. So if you're parenting as a solo parent, either because you're a single parent or because your partner isn't engaged in parenting, what advice do you have there? Do we play both roles? How does that work? Let me tell you what I tell most parents who have this question. Oh, my partner's not on board with conscious parenting. I always say, you know, we just need one conscious parent. One conscious parent is better than none. This book is written to train one parent at a time, whether you're in a partnership or you're not, whether you have six

children or one, whether you're just wanting to figure out your own parenting from childhood. This is a self-help book for each parent, one at a time. And that is so emboldening. And you have enough resources once you become conscious to even handle, you can't totally do away with the other partner's effects, but you can really mitigate their effects once you're a conscious parent it is that powerful and that's your only hope anyway of getting anyone else on board no one is going to come on board until you first do the work so you might as well start with you okay and my last question one of the things that's wildly different about parenting today than when we were young is social media and technology.

What part does this play and how do we be mindful as parents? Right. So because we have to deal with the competition of social media, taking away our kids' attention, all the more reason that our influence is the best possible, the most conscious possible. And if we consistently show up for our kids, present, regulated, you know, embracing of their essence, celebrating who they are, their safe spot, our children will never turn from us. Why will they turn from us if they know we have

their back? And that's what this book fully teaches parents to do so that their power and influence in, not over, their children's lives is so illuminated, it's so high resolution, that their children will be blinded and will not walk away from them. Okay. Whether you've already read all the parenting books or you're like me and you only read the occasional one, the parenting map is the one to get. Pre-order it on Amazon, go to your local bookstore, buy in bulk for your mom's groups and friends. You can find Dr. Shefali at her website, drshefali.com, or follow her on all the socials, which we'll put into show notes. Dr. Shefali, thank you for writing this book and for your wisdom. Thank you for having me. Go grab a copy of the parenting map. Thank you so much for

listening. I shared this many times on this podcast. The most frequent question I get when I speak about confidence is how do I raise confident kids? And while there are many ways I can answer that, my first response is always to do the work to build your own confidence first. Because the more we heal ourselves, the more you love, care for, and nurture you, the more you're demonstrating that to your children. I don't have a lot of parenting advice outside of this. Heal yourself so you can trust yourself. And when I'm confused, in doubt, feeling fear, or taking risks, I often ask myself, what would I hope JJ would do? Not because I'm deciding for her, but because whatever it is I would want for her, I know without a shadow of a doubt, it's coming from a pure place of deep love and hope and

possibilities. I ask myself, what would I want for JJ? And then I do that. And when I think about if JJ becomes a mom, if she chooses to be a mother, I hope she chooses to parent from love, from hope, from possibilities, from joy, not from fear, doubt, insecurity, and dysfunction. So, because I hope that for her, I do it for myself. I ask myself, what would I want for JJ? And then I do that because that is woman's work.