Daughters Are Struggling. Here's What They Need From Us with Psychologist Dr. Shefali

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:01)
This episode of the Oprah Podcast is presented by our partner, Geico. Today we're talking about the specific difficulties in raising daughters in today's world.

**Dr. Shefali Tsabary** (0:12)
Parents are in a new era now.

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:13)
It's not the same.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:15)
It's not the same.

**Dr. Shefali Tsabary** (0:15)
We have to become humble and begin listening to what our children are telling us. And they are in pain, they're feeling the pressure of knowing too much too soon, of being too overexposed and too over-sexualized. Your daughter now is on a platform where it's a global curation of over-perfection, being presented to her as an ideal, right? Now with the filters, now with the like button. She's living disconnected, disembodied, dislocated, and that girl is easy prey for predation.

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:50)
Instead of wanting your daughters to be good, you want your daughters to be heard. You want to train them to use their voice and not just be good.

**Dr. Shefali Tsabary** (0:58)
Yes. So their voice that speaks to them first. We must allow our daughters to lead the way for their own self-direction, for their own destiny. Hello.

**Oprah Winfrey** (1:12)
It is just my pleasure to welcome you once again to The Oprah Podcast. I'm so glad to be back on my front porch with one of my favorite parenting experts, spiritual leader, teacher, world-renowned clinical psychologist, and New York Times best-selling author, Dr. Shefali. On a prior episode, we talked about the new challenges that so many of you as parents are facing raising children in this modern era, and we focused on Dr. Shefali's book called Raising Conscious Sons, Cultivating Purpose, Connection and Inner Power in a Chaotic World. We can all feel how necessary that book is. Check out that episode if you have not already.
Now, today we're talking about the specific difficulties in raising daughters in today's world. Dr. Shefali's book is called Raising Conscious Daughters, Building Confidence, Courage and Inner Power in an Anxious World. I think we can feel how much this book is needed also for our girls in the world.
You had to do two. Why?

**Dr. Shefali Tsabary** (2:18)
I had to write two books because we are in a very unique, unprecedented cultural turning point and our children are being raised in a world that is increasingly misaligned to provide them the nourishment for their neurological, developmental, psychological, spiritual needs. I felt I had to write two books because boys and girls, and this is not about gender dichotomy, this is not about a binary. Of course, you can read one book and see more of your son and the daughters and vice versa. But I wrote two books because boys and girls go through very specific, precise, and different developmental trajectories, hormonal landscapes, and culture exploits them very differently.

**Oprah Winfrey** (3:09)
Wow.
I asked you this on the other episode before. Give us a quick refresher for those who are not familiar with what it means to be a conscious parent. Because we first became friends. I was introduced to your book, Conscious Parenting, and I was so struck by that because I'd done so much work with Eckhart Tolle. And you to me seem like the Eckhart Tolle for parenting. And turns out that's what you'd said to your publisher when you presented that book.

**Dr. Shefali Tsabary** (3:42)
Yes, Eckhart talks about presence, attunement, stillness, and recognizing the projections from our own wounds. Well, who does that more than parents? We constantly project onto our children our unmet needs, our unfulfilled expectations, our fantasies, and we cast our children into our movie as if they were our object because they are ours. And so Conscious Parenting is a movement that is my answer to the toxicity of the traditional parenting model, which treats children as our objects.

**Oprah Winfrey** (4:18)
Yeah. And parents are doing it. And sometimes, you know, you hear those words. It feels like I'm sure a lot of parents didn't take it well at first when they were reading this about themselves and the conscious parent.
And they don't see themselves as creating a problem because they're doing it out of love. I, who never had my own children, did this with, I remember one of my girls from South Africa came to the United States. I remember the night, I might have shared this with you before. I remember the night that she got into Wellesley and I always wanted to go to Wellesley.
She didn't want to go to Wellesley, but I wanted to go to Wellesley. And I talked her into going to Wellesley. And she ended up having a miserable time, feeling isolated and disconnected and never felt like she belonged. And that was a huge turning point lesson for me in projecting what I wanted onto her. And I learned, because I've now put over 800 girls through college, is to let them live their lives and have their own will about whatever it is they choose. And I have literally released it. I have surrendered whatever anyone becomes. I try to provide an opportunity, an open door. And so I learned that from you. I learned that from conscious parenting.