The Parenting Map con Dr. Shefali - Vida Contigo Podcast

Vida Gaviria
Hello and welcome to this episode, to this special episode that I'm having here with Doctor Shefali Taveri, someone that you probably know. She is a reference. She is an institution herself, a best selling author, a clinical psychologist, a mother of a teenager herself too, the founder of the Coaching Institute and she invites us to approach a different view on raising kids, it is a conscious parenting. Very welcome and thank you very much for accepting this invitation, Dr. Shefali.

Dr. Shefali Taveri
Thank you. Thank you for having me. You know, I'm trying to reach the Spanish audience and I have a coaching institute like you said, where I train people to do what I do from their home and it's in Spanish as well. So if people are interested in finding out, they can go to my website, it's offered twice a year and they can join my institute and do the Spanish part. And I have a Spanish speaking coach who trains them as well. So, it's a wonderful program for people who want to do this for a career.

Vida Gaviria
Great, because I know there are many parents who will listen and see this episode, but they're also mothers who do this as a service, and they offer this for community. So they'll be very glad to to know about the Institute. So we're going to talk about your book, your latest book, which is The Parenting Map. See, I have it all marked here, and to start from the beginning, Doctor Shefali, what would be, in your words, conscious parenting? What are we talking about?

Dr. Shefali Taveri
So conscious parenting is a new model from the old model. And what is the old model? The old model is how you and I were raised. With control, the parents knew best, fear and domination. And you as a child had to obey and follow, otherwise you would not get the love. So it was very conditional. If you want love, you have to follow the family's traditions. So the conscious parenting approach is radical. It's transformational. It's about the parent understanding that they have to be conscious of how they are imposing, putting their own expectations and dreams on the child. And it's all about connection, not about control, not about fear. And there's a whole model that teaches this. So if you are a parent who wants to raise their children differently, then this is the different model to do that.

Vida Gaviria
Why would a parent do that? Because many parents, especially in Latin America, would say probably from a resistive way, would say "it worked out fine with me. Why should I change? Why should I embrace another approach if it worked with me? I'm a good person. I'm a healthy person."

Dr. Shefali Taveri
So you think you're good and healthy, but you've definitely had to suffer the old way, and if you're honest with yourself, you would realize that there were many other ways for you to become good and and who you are. You did not have to do it through that fear, through that pain, through all that shame. There was another way to do it, and this is the new way. So why do it the hard way when there's a better way to do it?

Vida Gaviria
Exactly. What is the transformation the caregiver goes through when they embrace conscious parenting?

Dr. Shefali Taveri
So in conscious parenting, the parent is challenged to raise themselves. And the amazing thing that happens when you do that is you begin to see your own patterns, your own baggage, and you begin to heal that. And you have a wonderful opportunity to heal that broken part inside you which is such an amazing invitation for your growth. So that when you grow, you don't have to block your child's growth anymore or your happiness is not based on your child's happiness anymore. You get to not pass down all the negative dysfunctional patterns from your family. You break the negative cycles and that is such an important thing for your children to experience; a freedom to live their own life as they need to live it.

Vida Gaviria
In the book you mentioned something about control. You talk about control a lot. I get a lot of mothers especially, who say "I'm a controller, I'm a control freak, I need to control everything." What's the difference between being in charge and being in control, as you mentioned in the book?

Dr. Shefali Taveri
So we're always in charge of our children. They are helpless when they're young. They need us. They depend on us. We are in charge of their safety. We have to make sure that they are not living in a chaotic environment, that they are safe and loved and seen. They get an education. That's our responsibility. But we go too far with that and we want to control how they think, what they feel, their opinions, their beliefs, their choices, their career, how well they do in life. We go beyond just taking care to the point of taking over the entire psychology of our children. We think we own them and we want to possess them, and that's not correct.

Vida Gaviria
From that point of view, many parents would say "I know what's best because I'm the adult. I already walked up the path. I know what's best for you. So follow my lead. Obey."

Vida Gaviria
What would you say about that?

Dr. Shefali Taveri
That you don't know what's best. You just may know what is dangerous, like drugs and alcohol and touching the stove and crossing the street without looking. But you don't know what's best for your child. So yes, we want to save our children from danger, but that doesn't mean we know what's best in terms of their life choices.

Dr. Shefali Taveri
And I'm talking about their life choices. I'm not talking about keeping your children safe from danger and from dying. You know, we we go too far. And most of the choices we make for them is because we are coming from our own unmet needs and fear. And we don't own that. We just dump it on our children.

Vida Gaviria
Exactly. You describe adolescence in the book, which is a stage that I love, that I'm very interested more as a mother too, because my kids are three teenagers right now. You describe it as a natural rebellion. I can confirm, definitely. How do traditional parenting versus conscious parenting approach these delicate years?

Dr. Shefali Taveri
So. Can you just repeat that question again? I want to make sure.

Vida Gaviria
Teenagers, you describe it as a natural rebellion. How do we approach it from the conscious parenting view?

Dr. Shefali Taveri
So many of us don't understand that the teenage years are supposed to be years where the child defies you, breaks free, goes away. This is what they are supposed to do. This is normal. But because we are so obsessed with control, when this happens, we get very threatened that our children are abandoning us and we don't have so much control. So this is where we need to realize that what is normal needs to be encouraged and we don't have to feel threatened. Many times we look at it as disrespect.

Dr. Shefali Taveri
You don't realize that it's normal for them to to be disrespectful because they are trying to break away. They are trying to find themselves and they don't know how to do it beautifully. So they rebel and the more control you had, the more they will shut down. So they will either rebel against you or they will rebel against themselves through depression. Typically girls go inward and they become depressed and anxious and boys go outward typically. But these are signs that the child is wanting freedom and autonomy, and they are feeling blocked and caged and suffocated. These are signals, but we take everything personally and we don't realize that these are signs.

Vida Gaviria
I think you've said something that's very important that we have to to put light on it. It's not against you. I think once parents embrace that and have that clear, the tension between parents and children, Teenagers especially, lightens up, right?

Dr. Shefali Taveri
Yes, yeah. If we realize that it's not against us, see because we are, see it all starts like this. We want control because we think we own them. So then we control them. We think it's our right to control them. They feel controlled, they want to fight back. When they fight back, we think they are disrespectful and we are angry and when they fight back, they are angry and they are disrespectful. It's like, you know, in America when black people get angry, then the white people go, why are they so angry? Well, they're angry because they were controlled for 400 years. So, we don't see that. So yes, our children will behave badly. They'll say fuck off, they'll bang the door, they'll go inside their hood and they are rude on paper, but we don't see all the things we've done till that moment. So then we get angry, then we yell at them, then they yell at us. And then it's some chaos instead of us seeing from the start. I get it. I get it, I get it. And you see, we don't remember our own childhood.

Vida Gaviria
Exactly.

Dr. Shefali Taveri
We did the same things, so why wouldn't our children also go through the same things?

Vida Gaviria
And I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel that traditional parenting is very much about behavior and conscious parenting is much more about the roots of behavior, right?

Dr. Shefali Taveri
Beautiful. Very well said. Very well said. The traditional parenting is about the behavior and the symptoms and what you see on the surface.

Vida Gaviria
Yeah, the visible, visible.

Dr. Shefali Taveri
Conscious parenting is going inward and looking at the root and traditional parenting is about fixing the outside. That's child, and conscious parenting is about fixing the self.

Vida Gaviria
You also mentioned in the book the conscious parents need to be more focused on presence and experience than happiness and success. Because today we are, we're raising children to be perfect and we pretend to be perfect parents and social media pushes us to be supposed to be perfect. Can you explain why and how do we shift this mindset, this old paradigm, that we're not looking anymore for happy and successful children, but we are looking for present and, yeah, present, present parenting?

Dr. Shefali Taveri
So traditional parenting had a focus, and the focus was to create the perfect child. How do I create a super successful, super achieving, happy child so that I feel good about myself? And when we focus on that, we really limit our possibilities. Because success is so narrow. It's so, you know, rigid. And what is happiness anyway? So we do all that because we want to feel better about ourselves. So conscious parenting does away with that, and it focuses on connection. How can I connect to my child? How can I see my child as authentic, as unique, as different? And how can I create the conditions for my child to be powerful, to rise above the normal?

Vida Gaviria
You know that sometimes I see mothers, especially mothers who say that their couples, they're not on the same page. Yes. When it has to do with parenting. How do we approach this difference? Because there's a there's a difference that's normal, right? But sometimes the difference it's opposite points of view about raising children. And this happens a lot. What would you say to these couples, the few that are on different pages?

Dr. Shefali Taveri
We can understand that it's very hard for two people to be on the same page. Like you said, it's normal. And when two people are not on the same page, it creates anxiety and we make it worse.

Dr. Shefali Taveri
What's the best model for couples is that one person takes the lead in the parenting and one person is the help. But if both want to be the leader, then it's becomes a relationship issue because both have ego. Somebody has to take the lead, somebody has to go back. Two people cannot be the leader and want their way. If they both are in absolutely the same, then it works, but most of the time it doesn't work and most of the time one is conscious, typically the woman who's trying a new way and the man is very traditional.

Dr. Shefali Taveri
In the traditional couple. So it becomes a relationship problem rather than a parenting problem. It's a marital problem rather than a parenting problem. And we have to, you know, decide. Do I want to be a good wife, a good husband, or do I want to be a good parent? And it depends on the level of abuse. It depends on the level of disconnect. It's complex, but I always tell parents that, don't wait for the other person to give you permission. You can do this on yourself. The child needs one conscious parent. Even one conscious parent is better than 0, and it's so important to allow your children to have that, to see that it's okay to have conflict. We don't have to have war. But it's OK to have conflict, and it's OK to stand up for yourself and speak up for yourself and not be scared.

Vida Gaviria
And it also will depend on the childhood that each member of the couple had right? Because.

Dr. Shefali Taveri
Exactly.

Vida Gaviria
Because we become parents from the children that we were.

Dr. Shefali Taveri
Very good. So it depends on each person's childhood. It depends on the interaction with each child. Each child is different, each age is different.

Dr. Shefali Taveri
So it's a lot. It's a lot to ask of the couple. And plus, the couple doesn't have support. They're often just the two of them managing. The wife is working, the husband is working. So it's a lot of pressure. I always tell people who have not yet had children that, you know, don't think this is some easy thing to do. It's very hard to do these days, especially these days.

Vida Gaviria
That's why you need to read the book before you become a parent, Yes. Definitely, definitely yes.

Vida Gaviria
You talk a lot about the process, the work that we do as parents with ourselves. It's almost like reparenting ourselves. And I am very aware of the job that mom did before raising us through her work, inner work to, you know, to go through her own childhood.

Vida Gaviria
And I think I'm doing my best too. But it seems like there's a cycle that we repeat, right? And I'm positive that my kids will also do their part to become better parents themselves. Do you think there's a moment where when this cycle breaks? Or are we always evolving to better, better selves, better generations?

Dr. Shefali Taveri
I think we're always evolving, not every generation, but there's often every few generations, like you and me, we break the pattern. We change the tide, we do something different, and then it'll last for the next few generations and then again. So I think it's amazing when that happens, and it's scary for the person who is deciding to be that person in their family system. But I think it's so necessary, and it does happen every few generations where somebody will break the pattern.

Vida Gaviria
Once a mother told me that she felt unemployed because her children were leaving to college life. Whatever. How do we prepare for that so-called empty nest, which I think it's full of opportunities. But okay, let's go with a cliche, right? How do we prepare from conscious parenting to embrace that moment where children don't need us that much and they leave and we encounter ourselves?

Dr. Shefali Taveri
So we have to always be planning this from the age of two, right? Our goal is to keep backing off. Yes, the goal is for the child to keep stepping in, but we don't want that, like I said, because we want to live through our children. But if you start planning it from 2 and you start letting them go, go with their friends, take a risk, go outside, learn their own body habits, make their own mistakes, don't over control, of course. Be there and help them and guide them. But your goal is always how can I get them to do it on their own? OK, I'll help you today. I'll help you even for the next year. But my goal is to release and I have to keep releasing. And if I'm not releasing, something is going on and our goal is to really become irrelevant to them.

Vida Gaviria
As you said in the book. Suppose we have a child who's being raised through conscious parenting. How will this child look as an adult?

Dr. Shefali Taveri
Well, you know, people always want to know what the end result is, and again, they get caught in the "how should the child look". This is not about the child. How the parent will look is more aware, more connected, more healed, more able to be the right support with the right boundaries, with the right connection, and the child will feel that connection. But that doesn't mean the child will still not mess up or screw up or drop out of college. It's not what the child does. It's the connection the child feels. And we are hoping that through consistent conscious parenting, like my child is 20, nd she's not necessarily a superstar, but but she's a superstar in self connection and she's a superstar in connection to me. So that's what I wanted. That's what I got. But I'm not focused on how she looks, what she dresses like, what is her sexuality, what is her career, how much she earns. So the focus is very clear in conscious parenting. And that really is our only real need as parents, is to make sure that the child feels connected and feels whole and worthy as they are. That's our only goal. And we tend to mess that main goal up.

Vida Gaviria
You talk in the book about kids speak, right? So, I remember one time my eldest who's now 20, like Maya, said to me because I was understanding what his little sister, who was three at the time, was saying. But she wasn't speaking clearly. She was, you know, babbling this baby language. And he asked me, how do you speak and understand baby language? I understand when you talk about kids speak. It's like tuning into what my kids' interests are. How do we transform kids speak into teen speak, which is the face that I love the most, that I'm most interested in?

Dr. Shefali Taveri
Right. So both kids and teenagers have their own language. Kids are more about playing and tantruming. But even teenagers are the same. Teenagers just do it more risky behavior. You know, their sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. But it's really the same thing. It's just they're finding themselves, they're expressing their fears, they don't want to be punished, they don't want to be yelled at, they want to be understood, they want to be connected with and they want to be made to feel that they're OK.

Dr. Shefali Taveri
I mean, you know, with your teenagers, you can't say one thing to them. If you say one thing to them, they're going to punch you back. So they're trying to assert their right in the world and they want to be honored. They want to be empowered. And if you disempower a teenager, you are going to pay for that.

Vida Gaviria
Definitely. What about guilt, Mom guilt? What do moms tell you about this feeling, that horrible feeling that nobody wants to feel, but it's normal, too, and it has a message for us. What do you what do you bring to the table from Conscious Parenting?

Dr. Shefali Taveri
Well, mom guilt is real, and I get it. I'm so guilty all the time because we are so caring about this relationship, so it makes sense. But guilt can block us from growth, and guilt is about what we should have done differently in the past.

Dr. Shefali Taveri
And what we should have done is silly because we were not that person that we are today, so we can keep beating ourselves up, you know? Guilt is anger towards the self. But at the end of the day, we have to have compassion, forgive ourselves, let go. And instead of focusing on what we did not do in the past, we have to focus on what we can do in the present.

Vida Gaviria
As you teach your coaching institute, you write your books, you give conferences, you're a parent as well. What has been the most challenging thing you've faced through your own path as a mom?

Dr. Shefali Taveri
I think just fighting what culture says we should do. Culture is so about ambition and comparison and competition, that fighting that has been difficult, you know? And finding your own path is so important. And that's been the challenge, but it's also the reward when you do break free and do it your way. Like I teach Conscious Parenting, which is very not the mainstream, so people have resisted that, but I'm glad I stuck through because there's been so much benefit to that. But I always tell parents to find their own way. Don't follow the crowd. Find your own knowing and your own system and trust yourself. It's OK.

Dr. Shefali Taveri
You know, there is no right or wrong way at the end of the day, but there is a better way to do it, a more conscious way to do it.

Vida Gaviria
Definitely. Definitely, yes. Well, Doctor Shefali, it's been such an honor and a pleasure to have you here at the podcast. I'm looking forward to the Spanish edition, which I know will be out soon. And please remind us of the coaching institute. How do we apply? Where do we look up the information if we want to take the course?

Dr. Shefali Taveri
So I have a Spanish section of the coaching institute where I train people to become coaches like me. They can go to my website and look at institute. It's open twice a year. We just started cohort 9, so the next one is cohort 10, is in September I think. And it's an amazing online institute. I think maybe September or November. I don't remember, it keeps moving.

Dr. Shefali Taveri
It's five months. It's online. It's amazing. It gives you a career to do from home. I train you to be the best coach. You begin to help parents. You begin to change people's lives. I also have an annual summit I do every year. People are invited. It's called Evolve. It's in Atlanta this year. It's the first weekend of October, tickets are going on sale soon, and I have lots of courses online that people can take advantage of.

Vida Gaviria
Thank you very much. I know that your Spanish community will be very glad to know you were here, and I know the word will be spreading because the light that you bring to parents is necessary and so healthy. Thank you very much.

Dr. Shefali Taveri
Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Thank.

Vida Gaviria
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.