Dr. Shefali Discusses New Parenting Methods | Oprah's Super Soul | OWN Podcasts

[Music] hi there everybody I got to tell you I'm getting a little thrilled to welcome back to Super Soul world renowned clinical psychologist parenting expert New York Times bestselling author Dr chaali now I have to say her life's work is devoted to guiding parents to raise happier more conscious children and her book The conscious parent was first published in 2010 I gave a copy to every mom and dad I know if you were to come downstairs in my house right now you'd see a shelf of all conscious parents go anytime anybody anywhere is having a

baby if I meet them on the street or they're telling me they're having problems with their kids I send them a book so Dr shal's new book is called the parenting map stepbystep solutions to consciously create the ultimate parent child relationship I'm so glad you're here Oprah I just have to say that if it weren't for you conscious parenting would not be on the map you are the ambassador of this message so thank you so much well the reason why I chose to be an ambassador and I wished for every parent I know to experience

it is because from the moment I started reading the first page I said this to you a decade ago I haven't been a parent but I could feel in my spirit ah this is the answer and over the years you know 25 years of the Oprah show I interviewed hundreds of child parenting experts and everybody has their own ideas and their own philosophies but when I read the first pages of the conscious par I went oh this is it this is the answer everybody's been looking for so you believe that your previous books were about

the what and the why and now you have the how well you always told me that I need needed to give parents a real systematic approach that's right to guide their children and I felt like I had to do the first few books just to lay the foundation because this message is so different and it shouldn't be so revolutionary I was going to say it's a revolutionary message that challenges the way parents think about themselves yes and their role and their control and their control and giving up the control yes to them means or has

felt like giving up respect giving up what I'm supposed to be doing yes yes because the traditional parenting model has so indoctrinated the world over uh to believe that the parent is at the hierarchical dogmatic tyrannical head of the family a mini God so to speak so to ask parents to re-examine that pedestal that they've placed themselves and dare to submit to the empowerment of the child in a mutually reciprocal way feels so threatening to them and yeah I was going to say threatening and very scary because they have to look at themselves that's what

conscious parenting says look at yourself the parent needs to raise themselves as much if not more than they rais their children and who wants to look in the mirror no one and and you say that that's the reason it's called parenting otherwise it would be called childing yes yes because we're asked to do the most difficult thing in the world which is to own our own childhood conditioning heal our own emotional baggage and show up for our children in a way that doesn't impose upon them our beliefs our expectations our fantasies because to do that

is to suppress their authentic signature and our role really is to set them to be free to be who it is they are yes and that's an impossible thing for us parents because we think we own them yes and I I I I appreciate in the book where you say finish this sentence I had children because because yes and most parents will say because I love children because I always dreamt of a happy family because I would be a great mother and they don't hear embedded in that the staunch and rigid eye and that's the

ego and parents need to realize oh I know this is shocking for people to hear this is hard for you to accept but that's why I just you know if the ultim My ultimate goal in doing this with you is to get this into the hands of as many parents as possible because we need it now more in our world than ever before a conscious way of looking at our own lives and consciously raising our children so this idea that I wanted to have children because I would be a good mother because I want to

have children who represent my goals my yes right so then when you begin to acknowledge and own and become aware that your parenting is suffused with the prominence of the ego yes now that does a few things to your psychology if you're brave enough yes the first thing it does it makes you realize that you aren't doing your children any favor and you haven't rescued them from the ravages of Hell by having them so end your a delusion of selfless superiority that you are the God complex that you are the Savior you know you don't

have to have this idea this delusion yeah that you rescued them because when you have the delusion that you rescued them then you have this idea this this uh prominent impetus to fix them that you that broken and that they have to become something of your fancy but how does this um reconcile with the fact that you are there to help guide them you are there to nurture and to support them you are there for all those things right and this is the tight Trope of parenting how do you love without smothering how do you

take care without taking over how do you attune without accosting their Spirit how do you love without possession and control this is the dance and the art but when you learn to walk that tight rope and it is a tight RPP and you will fall down and make plenty of mistakes yes what you learn from that is to trust the spirit that comes through your child and that degree of trust is the epitome of unconditional acceptance I love love love this in the preface of the parenting map you are pretty blunt you say our love

for our kids can take our breath away both in its Limitless expansiveness and in its heartbreaking anxiety it is the perfect cocktail of the most piercing adoration and the most excruciating fear this is what our kids do to our souls they expand them as never before but also twist them to a pulp and throw a dagger at them then they walk away without even noticing yes and you're there a pulp on the floor are you finding this passage Rings true for parents who've read the book yes because you see we wrap up our very identity

with our Parenthood our children are an extension of us and that's where the greatest traps lie because we see them as our Representatives we see them as our brand ambassadors so imagine how intertwined we are with their Destiny who they choose how they look whom they marry what career they take what they do what they do is all we think a reflection of us but here is the lie because they are not a reflection of us we are a reflection of ourselves well it's so interesting I was just talking to a parent of grown children

who was telling me that he was visiting one of his um daughters and that the daughter said well they had had lunch and the daughter said well you can come home with me but my house is really messy and that he went to the house and the house was really messy and found that a little disturbing and I said but what does that have to do with you exactly but everything what does that have to do with you everything opra because our very identity our personhood is in meshed and codependent with our children and this

is what conscious parenting teaches and I teach in the book how do you separate your identity and your wholeness your worthiness from your child because if you depend on your child for your worth now you're going to go through the ringer and everything they do is going to matter and what do you care after you've raised your child your child is living in another city they have their own apartment their own space if they want to live messily that's what they do yeah but it's our control it's hard for us to relinquish that so uh

you once told me a profound moment of Awakening that you have that you had uh that that when you were raising your own daughter you had like a meltdown right many many many meltdowns she's now 21 yes so do you feel a sense of Liberation for her and Liberation for yourself also well let me tell you the journey never ends of this ominous ego that keeps showing up so even though my daughter's old and one would think Dr shaali should have a grip on on her ego it just sneaks up onto us so I never

want to give parents the illusion of perfectionism and instead of perfectionism I go for evolution so even today when I see the ego roar I have compassion for myself and I want parents to have compassion and a great sense of humor about this unrelenting ego of theirs and look at it as another moment to evolve so when Maya was 3 years old you were in the park and she didn't want to leave and you wanted to leave and it turned into a thing a debacle a debacle War why why why why so because I was

so wrapped up in my whole agenda for the day and we were going to do this and then go for dinner and sing songs and she was going to tell me I'm the best mother and go to bed so I had the whole agenda like we parents do we have the next 25 years mapped out and then when the child decided to be a child as mine did she dared to have some feelings and shriek and scream like children do I was just a gast as if you know she had uh offended me and insulted

my very essence and morality and um I remember feeling a great deal of shame that I was failing and the shame is the shame is because what I can't control my child I can't control this bloody little thing and everyone's watching me and I'm useless and this child is just not coming under my ownership and look at her how dare she you know and so you feel judgment from others you feel a great sense of inner criticism and shame and then you kind of try to label your child and you make her the bad one

so I did all of that in the short span of a 20 minutes walk of shame as I walked her back home and everyone was looking at me as if I was electrocuting her um and then I couldn't even let it go you know children have a mood and they can move on but we parents keep regurgitating the past over and over so I was whipping myself into shame and that's when I had a big Epiphany to realize how much my ego was wrapped up in this Destiny of a three-year-old and that's a real dangerous

thing when you give your sense of Worth to a three-year-old now you're in trouble and that's when I woke up and I realized that I needed to do a lot of work on myself so that I could stay in my inner alignment and not be Ed by my child's moods by her capricious Thoughts by her nature and therefore liberate her I was scared of her big emotions because to me that meant I was a bad mom and I love this um movie analogy that you do you say I thought this was so good you say

parents unknowingly write scripts and create films for their children yes trilogies trilogies yeah projecting a vision of perfection happiness and great successes what is behind this need for this vision of perfection our own deep sense of unworthiness the greater our inner lack and our own inner misalignment unworthiness a lack of actualization all that lack guess what we do with it we dump it onto our children I couldn't be a success I couldn't live in purpose but I'm going to be hell sure that you do yes and so all that energy instead of taking it back

within ourselves to heal ourselves we dump it on our children and put the burden of fixing that Brokenness onto them the three-year-old that they are reminds us of the three-year-old we were the the lack of control that they have in their lives Echoes the lack of control we had so instead of going within as conscious parenting says we should do and healing what's showing up for us our ego shows up even stronger and we double down even harder and then we manipulate them to become who we need them to be for us to feel Redemption

and it happens over and over on repeat a few times a day so we have several parents across the country who have read the parenting map and they have questions for you Evelyn's a mother of three from Virginia has a question about a Rel reltionship with your young adult children Evelyn hi Oprah hi Dr chaali thank you so much for taking my question my name is Evelyn and I have three children two of which are young adults in college now in your book Dr chaali you identify the unique ego mass that we must break out

of in order to have a healthy relationship with our children now that my daughters are young adults how do I recover from 20 21 years of dysfunctional parenting patterns so that I may build a deeper more Rich relationship with my children now young adults I like that question yes so in the book I help parents identify their typical dysfunctional pattern so I talk about the fighter ego mask the fixer which I have uh the fer the freezer the F so I I typ typify them so that parents can go M that's me that was my

dad yes so she's talking about identifying her ego mask and now she's like oh my goodness what do I do now I've been living with this ego for so long so the first thing we have to do when we look back at our parenting in retrospect is to not engage in guilt and shame because that's again another mask of the ego to put us down you shouldn't have done that so we have to have compassion for us not knowing better so we couldn't do better aren't there times that people shouldn't have done things though but

looking back with the should lens yes is a waste of time for the present moment absolutely so all we can do in the present moment is learn and integrate and hold ourselves accountable going hope hope of the that it's going to be any different it's going to be any different going to be and there is no perfect parent and we've all messed up so just in enjoy the fact that you are having a very Human Experience and be kind and gentle with yourself and the second thing we have to do is now break the pattern

so in the book I outline step by step what that looks like so we identify the mask and remember the mask exists only for one reason to protect us from more pain so we create the mask of the superachiever the high controlling Exploder or the people pleaser because we're hiding behind the mask that that little inner child that is so scared to be rejected so scared scared to be trampled on so when we see the ego Mass your own inner child not your child's yours yes and that's the real child we have to raise the

the child within us that's the core of conscious parenting so when you are willing to be brave enough to go that's my ego that's a signal to go deeper what is my inner child yearning for right now that I'm disguising through the mask of the ego I think you should explain to us for those of you who have not cuz I haven't reached all of you all to give you a copy of the conscious parent uh what is the core of conscious parenting at a very simplistic level it is the parent who dares to raise

themselves first who looks at the dynamic they have with their children as a mirror to all their own unresolved baggage so instead of jumping forth and pouncing on the child when they are feeling any sort of anxiety they look at this moment as an opport opportunity to heal that which has risen from their own past you know when I'm giving the book to people I always say uh particularly people having their first child you're going to love this experience of reading this book because you're going to see that you thought that you were there to

to raise your child but your child is coming to help raise you I say our children are our greatest awakeners yes and our greatest mirrors for all that we have yet to heal but it only takes it takes bravery and only a brave Resolute parent a courageous parent to use this opportunity this Beed opportunity to heal oneself I was going to say and I I think I said this in a decade ago when we were talking yes it takes courage it also takes so much patience because it's so much easier just to say go sit

down you sit down over there and don't you get up don't you move don't you do anything over the years I've thought that every time I give this to a parent there there is some level of resistance particularly with parents who already have children because they've been doing it their way there are lots of aha moments but they also feel like having to give up the control is not something that they really want to do right because most of us parents have been trained to stay in Supremacy and to do things our way so we

don't and also it's so much easier just just to say sit down don't you move it's my way or the highway my way or the Highway long as you living in my house you're going to do what I say so much easier in the moment but so destructive to not only the connection you have with your child but if your goal is to raise an empowered liberated maveric Spirit who's a warrior out in the world how can you then clamp down on their very essence and their independence and expect them to be brave when they

leave the house huge huge huge J Jennifer is a 44 year- Old Mother of seven-year-old twins from Los Angeles Jennifer hi Dr chiali I'm Jennifer and recently my seven-year-old twins got haircuts and I noticed I was having a really strong reaction to one of them having much shorter hair I thought about your book When you mention external Triggers on page 29 and I thought about why I was having such a strong reaction to her hair and then I remembered in kindergarten to save money my mom cut my hair super short and I hated it and

and cried all day so my question to you is how can I keep that mindset throughout my kids' lives so that I don't put my desires onto them interesting how a haircut was triggering for her it could be a cup of coffee that's how quick and deep our wounds get inflamed so the trigger I always say is never the cup of coffee or the haircut it's always how it's being metabolized within us what is happening inside us so she did the work and she looked within herself and realized her own trauma around her own haircut

was triggering her when she observed her child she could do that because she'd read the book she read the book yeah but she did the work and she caught herself before she projected onto her child so this is the power of this internal work that we look at our own internal triggers there is never a trigger on the outside it's always what it inflames on the inside and so she so there's the thing on the outside that reminds you and that's what inflames the inside the thing on the outside is anything it could be anything

the breeze it could be clouds it could be a thunderstorm that's right the thing is neutral so in Buddhism that thing is often called the first Arrow but what we talk about in conscious parenting is ah what is the second Arrow yes and the second arrow is your mind's reaction to what is happening yeah so how is your emotional pain metabolizing the current pain and the two together create the internal trigger well the world is certainly a different place than when you and I and most people who are watching us right now y'all grew up

and Amanda is a single mom of four from California she has a question about modernday parent parenting you agree it's very different right very different yes okay Amanda hi Oprah hi Dr chaali my name is Amanda and I'm a single mom of four kids between the ages of 11 and 16 as we know modern-day kids and parents are dealing with issues that simply didn't exist When We Were Young parenting these days feels like a very heavy lift with social media mass shootings the Mental Health crisis and so much more my question is how do we

navigate these unprecedented times consciously as parents H there so that's a big question it is a big question big question man and what she alluded to our pernicious influences the impact of social media is undeniably harmful to our children yeah you said it's it's it's putting our our ability to connect and influence children's life in grave Jeopardy grave Jeopardy it was already our ability to connect with our children was already under great scrutiny and now it's under peril so uh my alarm systems are all up on high because I see the effects of what she's

talking about but what I do tell tell me how you see them so this world of virtual reality and social media has divested us of what it means to be human it is antisocial disconnected fake superficial artificial materialistic comparative competitive separatist in every every way it is eroding what it means to be a human soul it is teaching our children to be entitled indulgent instantly gratified all the things that we should be walking away from we should be slowing our Pace we should be stilling our spirit we should be soaking in nature we should be

connecting on a human personal level we should not be in goal orientation the way we are oh flick of a button and my food shows up we should be in process process we're missing the process of our creativity of our joy of our hardship what happened to pain we're trying to do away with pain in our thirst for happiness and what we're doing is we're creating greater fragility because we don't have the resilience to tolerate pain because we're wiping away pain yeah nobody wants anybody to have a moment of of uncomfortability and that is why

our children are crumbling our children feel the pressure of this artificial world like like no one else mental health is on the rise as you know in our children more than ever before and parents wonder you know parents are so confused they have everything look if only I had what they have they have ai and they have virtual reality and they can go visit the MoMA in their helmets sitting at home and go to Paris sitting at home and what parents don't realize is that this is not what children need and their Spirits are revolting

against this birth burden of artificiality children want connection that's what their soul needs and we are taking it away and that's why they're suffering we all know the teenage years are some of the most challenging but teenage rebellion is it inevitable is it an inevitable part of life and healthy and delicious and also scary for the parent who wants control and one of the things you write on page 59 is that while we feel they're rebelling against us we need to realize they're finally doing something for themselves they are only rebelling against our tyrannical control

they are only rebelling against our Godlike complex and seeking the God within themselves wow I think that's a very challenging concept for parents of teens yeah they're like forget that yes yes yeah who cares yes right you do as I say you do as I say because they don't want to give up the control and also feel like this is when you need to have more control and on the contrary this is exactly precisely when we need to release them into their own inner empowerment how will they learn how will they practice if we do

not allow them under the safety of our own home to experiment to have adventures and to make mistakes okay so you say one of our greatest superpowers is our capacity to let go Julie a mom of two from Colorado has a question question about letting go hi Oprah and Dr chaali my name is Julie I have a question in regards to relinquishing control we have a 17-year-old daughter who has a pretty big social life and it has recently expressed frustration in regards to our curfew time and up to this point we've set very clear expectations

and boundaries we recognize she wants to go to parties and do things she's 17 and a junior in high school but my question really has to do with it you know we're concerned about her safety and how do we relinquish that control of letting her make these decisions for herself these big decisions of going to these parties and us not sitting by the phone waiting for her knowing where she's at or looking at Life 360 to make sure we know where she's at uh she's a little frustrated that we have to know where she's at

at all times but I really do think that it has to do with her safety more than anything because she is a good kid she does make good choices but but we're looking for some direction and for the season of life thank you well so you've been through this or million times where we parents think it's for the child's well-being for the child's safety but I always tell parents I think it's more for your own inner quelling of anxiety than it is for your child's safety because who is Ever safe you and I could walk

out right now and break a leg you know something could pounce on us something could fall on us life is inherently unsafe and unpredictable and this goes to the core of parenting our desire and need and the delusion that we think we can control it all so what should she do in this instance I mean should there not be curfews should there not be some responsibilities some rules in the house there could be but it is always done in a spirit of negotiation with a 17-year-old who's about to embark on on her own independence anyway

so you want I always say between 15 and 18 to start releasing the reins more and more so that your child can practice holding them more and more so this is the time for practice of letting go so that they can learn how to make a mistake and stand up on their own how are they going to learn this at 18 in a year her child is going to be off on on their own anyway and that's why we see many children who first join College fall apart because they've been so boundaried at home so

constricted that now they don't know how to listen to their inner GPS and follow their own knowing so trusting our children teaching them that they can trust themselves and mistakes are not the end of the world and we don't need to panic mistakes are inevitable but this is the way they develop resilience okay so she should sit down and have a conversation the family should have a conversation right yes yes yes many conversations that are in Dynamic flow and back and forth so you're teaching your child to excavate what matters to them well you just

said something though that I know that parents who are listening are going Oprah who is this woman when you just said you should sit and negotiate yes parents hate that yes I'm not a parent and I heard the word negotiate and go what negotiate yeah who do you think I'm going to negotiate with that little boy that little senseless girl yeah well you know negotiation Tak an inner awareness that we want our children to develop we want our children to practice using their voice showing up at the table speaking up loud even if they're talking

nonsense because that's the very skill they need out in the world to negotiate boundaries with a boss to negotiate rules and uh you know Norms at work how will they learn to speak up for themselves if they don't practice with us see well you know I I know a lot of parents think the best way to show their children love is through tough love and you say uh tough love and punishment is really about possession and control I know a lot of parents might disagree just hold on hold on with us here so what should

parents do instead it's so sad that we have mutated the word love and we actually dare to put the words tough with it and think that's okay that's just become so part of our way of thinking yes yes yes right and I always say that true love is soft true love never hurts true love is accepting understanding celebratory giving yielding we don't really truly love many people in our lives we're deeply attached to them we're in meshed with them we need to control them but we very rarely truly love anyone okay you say one of

the goals of conscious parenting is to become irrelevant what do you mean by that irrelevant to your children I know this is hard for a lot of people cuz nobody wants to feel irrelevant oh on the contrary we want to be the Supreme Being in our children's lives tattoo tattoo my name on your chest we would love the child to do that yes well if our goal is to have children who are unable to honor their own voice then we make ourselves relevant if we want to raise children who are empowered who are resilient who

are gritty who know how to fall back on their own inner opes for strength for courage for inspiration then we raise children who do not need us anymore we're doing the Contrary we're raising our children to need us because it makes us feel valid it gives us significance and keeps our relevance keeps our relevance I'll come to the rescue I love when my daughter calls me secretly I do my ego does but my soul knows better my soul knows that she can find her way and I need to fade into the background and allow my

ego to sit back and fall back and that's hard it's a constant practice because we have this thirst for significance but I will not now or I do it less use my daughter to fulfill my thirst for significance speak the speak here today I love when you also say I had an aha moment actually during our last conversation when you explained that we don't live a life we live a pattern and in the parenting map uh you explain that every dysfunctional pattern starts with a trigger and I love the exercise you share in the book

for recognizing those triggers it's called flip it around walk us through that so the other day a mother came to me and talked about how her child is so shy Dr shaari you know this is ant so you're not just writing books you're still taking impatience yes all the time because that keeps my feet on the ground and keeps me connected to the real issues that parents are struggling with and so she was complaining my child is so shy and it's an extroverted world and if she stays shy then she won't succeed and for her

own well-being I yelled at her the other day so this is the ostensible trigger right it sounds like she's well-meaning like all us parents are we're doing it because because of the child we never yell unless it's for their well-being and then I slowly unpeeled back her own layers of conditioning and within moments she was able to go back to such a painful moment in her childhood where she was the shy one where she was the introverted one and she always felt lesser than do you see how quickly repetitively we regurgitate patterns onto our children

and we don't even know that the real trigger is something that happened way back and is still lying dormant unhealed festering cuz your daughter may be just fine being an introver most of the time they are but it's our negative experience with that that we then project onto our child so that's the you should be more extroverted you should be more outgoing that's the flip it around so that exercise will help so many parents if in the moment of their reactivity they stop and they ask themselves what in the other that I judge that I

defame that I shame do I not like about myself and that's a direct Pathway to your own wound and your own healing say that again what in the other that I defame and shame and judge do I actually defame and shame and judge within myself wow so powerful so I've been saying that I I want everybody to just read the book because there is so much helpful information that we don't act we don't have time to get to it all today I mean this could be a weekl long seminar I can tell you and you

outline in the parenting map six personality types in the book to help parents determine their children's Essence and Ian we were talking about that a little bit earlier a 51-year-old single dad of two from Chicago has a question about parenting children with uh very different Essences hi Dr chaali I'm I have two teenage boys with very different Essences one is an over pleaser the other easy breezy as a single dad who co-parents with their mother I'm solely responsible for them when they're with me do you have any advice or guidance on how one parent can

effectively context switch or stay attuned to two very different Essences at once and related to this can you touch on whether a single set of household boundaries can effectively honor each each child's unique Essence and needs thank you so much well I think that's so great that he actually realizes he has children with different Essences yes because most parents don't even attune to that possibility yeah and I I remember sharing this with you years ago that you know I remember a parent on the show saying I did the same thing for both of them right

look how one turned out yeah look how one turned out and this didn't it's because both of them needed different things absolutely that's why this is the hardest job on Earth it is and you have to if you want to do it well or consciously you have to Endeavor to customize and attune to each Essence but you see some that's work but some Essences a lot of work but but here's the thing if you have a few children yes one kid will be a delicious Essence for your own ego story and you're like oh that

kid is so easy breezy yeah but the other one is stubborn and difficult but actually the other kid may just be as just different but just as much a good kid but they are triggering that parent because their Essence doesn't gel with the story and the movie that the parent has so I always tell parents first check in with yourself what's coming up for you with this kid and what comes up for you with this kid because most of the times the way we label our children as good or bad has very little to do

with them and all to do with how they conform to our movie about how things should be you are saying some powerful things here today you know we've all heard the phrase that kids know how to push our buttons and you say that is a complete lie it is a lie and it's so cruel and lazy and unaccountable of us to say that you know why because when we say oh that Matthew he just knows how to push my buttons look what we're saying that that child is so demonic Dev spawn that it knows how

to be responsible for me so what I'm saying is that it's your fault my buttons are pushed you're the bad one instead of looking at why do I have the button why have I not unwired my own Detonator within why am I such a ticking Time Bomb that's too much work so it's easier to blame the child and go oh there you go pushing my buttons again don't you know that Mommy doesn't like this don't you know that you're making mommy upset or daddy upset no the question to ask is not whether Matthew knows or

not the question to ask yourself is why do I have these buttons some people listening to you or listening to us or watching this or reading this book might feel I think overwhelmed because this is this is a lot and wishing they could turn back the clock on some of their parenting choices how do you then turn the guilt and the the regret or whatever you may have after realizing oh that's where I went wrong and oh I should have done this and how do you how do you reconcile that yeah so to something more

productive here's the thing all these techniques guilting shaming regret blaming are all obfuscations to take accountability for our imperfection we did not know and because we did not know better we couldn't do better and we have to then execute the muscle of compassion and deep self-acceptance for our shadow and then with Vigor and courage and it's difficult we have to enter the present moment yeah you just said something that a lot of people may not be familiar with deep self-acceptance of our shadow articulate that for us we like to believe especially we parents that we

are devoid of of baggage of crap of insecurity and even if you don't believe that you're devoid of it you don't think it's showing up in your parenting definitely not in our parenting cuz you're doing all the things the parent are supposed to do sa and the sacrifice the money and the money look at my body I wrecked my body for you I gave up my career for you I don't even like your father anymore because of this and I'm just willing to do it all because I'm such a good parent so because we parents

and humans like to attached to this delusion of fantas the a fantasy of perfectionism to then see our shadow is so ominous for us because we grew up in shame around that in the first place most of us were shamed when we showed up in our imperfection from our parents our parents yelled at us for being human our parents screamed at us judged us for being ordinary so whenever that ordinariness shows up or dare I say averageness shows up or dare I say imperfection shows up our inner critic goes on you know on on loud

warning like oh so what what do we do with that clanging inner anxiety that our ordinariness brings about we cover it up with this mask of perfectionism so this method does reveal our ordinariness but the beauty of that is that we were always ordinary the m mask was just faking that we were not so this is stripping away the mask and allowing us to be accountable owning celebratory of our intrinsic humanness which is to be ordinary and then we accept our child's ordinariness and then I accept his ordinariness and her ordinariness and now we are

accepting of each other's Humanity oh that's why this book is an offering I think to the world and it starts with you and the work that you've chosen to do or the person you've chosen to be as a parent and I think you know in previous discussions I'm just saying I don't know of a greater responsibility in the world there is no greater responsibility than making this choice and what you've done in both the conscious parent and the parenting map is outlined this road map for how to do it better and how to do it

more consciously you end the book with this beautiful pass message on page 130 would you read it for us I just love that conscious parenting is not just about raising children it is about raising Humanity when we understand its profound and Powerful principles we heal not only our own past wounds but those of others around us such is the tremendous restorative potential of this work it has the capacity to transform trauma into Health the capacity to transform trauma into Health this is the parenting map the road mapap to doing that and as always I thank

you Dr chaali for your LIF shifting advice the parenting map is available everywhere books are so get it for yourself get it for your children who have children get it for everybody you know who has children it is the perfect gift I'm telling you this season for anybody who's going to have a child has a child May one day have a child it's the parenting map you can also listen to Dr chaali uh read the audio version bye everybody