E212 - Dr. Shefali: How To Raise Conscious Children (It Starts With You)

André Duqum (0:00)

How do you become a conscious parent?

Shefali Tsabary (0:02)

Have no illusion that you're going to do this perfectly. Most parents are a raving lunatic once a week. And that's the problem, because you can control the living daylights out of your child. The child doesn't know. They're innocent. You are God for them. So how you play God is really a testament to your wisdom or your ego.

Follow my script, be in my movie. We're trying to literally put our chip of who we are into them. And then we're very upset when they discard the trip or the trip malfunctions. We don't realize that we parent the child outside based on how we have parented or unparented the child within us. We're passing down generational bullshit.

And that's why we have the world we have today.

André Duqum (0:46)

If you had to tell every parent one message, what would it be?

Shefali Tsabary (0:49)

Have you seen yourself? Have you lived with yourself? Having that humility allows you to let go of parts of you that may not be serving your children or yourself. Children are our greatest awakeners. It takes just one conscious parent to change the world. Conscious parenting is not a strategy. It is the embodiment of your own awakening.

André Duqum (1:12)

BODY AND SOUTH Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Know Thyself Podcast. Our guest today is a clinical psychologist trained at Columbia. She's a multiple times best-selling author and the founder of the Conscious Parenting Movement. For over two decades, she's really been bridging Western psychology and Eastern philosophy all around what it means to be a conscious parent. Dr. Shefali, thank you for being here.

Shefali Tsabary (1:38)

Of course, I'm so happy to be here.

André Duqum (1:40)

Yeah, I've been looking forward to connecting for a while. For people that are new to the term conscious parenting, I think most of us could assume what that's alluding to, but how do you define that phrase?

Shefali Tsabary (1:51)

Well, it means all things conscious, right? But in a nutshell, it really speaks to the parent understanding that their sacred obligation is to raise their own inner self, to raise their own inner child, the child within them that could be hurt or wounded or unprocessed that's carrying all this pain from their childhood. And that's their primary responsibility. And from that place of healing, then they can parent the child outside of them, right? So it kind of turns the spotlight away from the real child outside to the real child inside. And so often we don't realize that we parent the child outside based on how we have parented or unparented the child within us.

You know, I tell parents the degree to which you judge your children, the degree to which you're critical of your children, the degree to which you accept or don't accept your children.

You punish or don't punish. All of it is a mirror of your own relationship with yourself.

André Duqum (3:04)

There are so many avenues I'm excited to dive into that I think will really support people. We had community from our audience and in questions as well, people that are parents. I'm yet to be one, although very intrigued. Before we do that, to set the stage, I think becoming a parent can feel quite daunting. You're stepping into this great unknown, and it can feel burdensome and very challenging at times to realize that you have this responsibility in this physical child, and then you also have your unprocessed inner child.

So how do you like to invite Grace into the picture, you know, to have people frame this conversation and the place they listen to it from, not like another task or thing to do add on to their to-do list, but rather a place to come from that is actually embracing more of self.

Shefali Tsabary (3:50)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think what I often say to parents that can be very relieving is have no illusion that you're going to do this perfectly. Like have no, like kill it, kill your ego, that's your ego, that you have this idea. You know, I had this vision that my child and I would do yoga in tandem and the sun would dapple through the windows and we would be in sync and we would meditate together and none of it ever happened. Like not even close, right? But I had visions of grandeur based on myself and my own expectation, my own movie. So I often tell parents like that is all your own ego, that's your own projection of who this child will be and who you will be with this child. No one ever expects that they will be a raving lunatic. But most parents are raving lunatic once a week, right? So I teach parents to lean into the grace that you will screw it up, you will fuck it up, you will be spending money on therapy, you will look at yourself and go, how did I become worse than my parents? And that is part of the humbling of the ego. That is the invitation to look at your unprocessed self, your unhealed self. If you think you're going to be perfect, imagine that there's such a thing and that you are actually perfect, which doesn't exist, but say that happened, what you will be missing in that, say you were the most perfect parent with the most perfect kid, which is no kid, no parent ever, what you don't realize is you will be missing the most profound invitation to look at yourself.