How to Raise Strong, Unshakable Boys in Today's Culture, with Dr. Shefali Tsabary

All right, Dr. Shefali, welcome to the ManTalks Show. How are you doing today?

I'm doing great. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, I feel like we've been in one another's orbit for a while, and I'm excited to have this conversation. Your latest book, Raising Conscious Sons, has done very well, and you and I had a chance to talk a little bit about it on Instagram.

Yeah, there are 2 of them. So also Raising Conscious Daughters. But yeah, today we can focus on Raising Conscious Sons.

Yeah, we probably should have a conversation about raising conscious daughters. I have a 2-year-old daughter, and so, you know, right now I'm in— I'm in— it's on easy mode. It feels like all I got to do is love her. She can't— she doesn't talk a lot, you know. She's in the no phase. It's like, no, me. No, don't. I don't. No, I do it. I'm like, okay. And yeah, I think it's just adorable. She's just like— they make them cute for a reason, right?

They make them cute for a reason.

Yeah. But tell me what prompted this endeavor and just raising conscious sons? What prompted you to want to write that book?

Well, I could see in my male clients and friends and my partner and father and sons all around me that there is a pain there. There is a misunderstanding there. And, men are very casually categorized as toxic or as uncaring. But I was seeing that that is not the case. Many, many, many men are so caring and so loving. But yet, they are often misunderstood, misattuned with. And also, the men that represent these so-called ordinary men like you, my brother, my father, are represented by men in the, in the positions of power falsely. And those men, because they are mostly toxic, kind of stain the entire perception of masculinity, of men. And it's not fair. And because we don't like the toxic masculine parts of the patriarchy, we have thrown out All of it. Like, let's throw out masculinity, period. And I know that this kind of all-or-nothing thinking, this kind of antipathy towards men, is not healthy for our women and our daughters. And in order to heal our women and daughters and to make it a safe place for women and daughters, we have to make it a safe place for men. You know, there are too many wounded men walking around. And I'm not saying to condone their behavior. I'm not saying to give them a pass. We must hold them accountable. But more than that, let's look deeper into their childhood and examine what are the missing pieces of boyhood that we can fill in for so that we less raise assholes and less raise toxic masculinity. So in my book, Raising Conscious Sons, I help parents to understand the nature of the boy and to consciously roll out an integrated masculinity for their sons. And I can't tell you how many parents, fathers, and mothers have already come to me saying, I see my son differently now.

Mm-hmm.

I see the boy that I couldn't be. I see how my father couldn't meet me. And now you've given me language. You've given me a map. And I think it's one of my most important books because if we get boyhood right— and when I say right doesn't mean perfect— we could heal the planet. Because when men are healed and whole, they will take care of the women and the daughters.

Yeah.

And women and daughters will be able to receive that and enter their own masculinity without fear of backlash. So I think there's so much talk on women's healing, as there should be, because we have been so cast aside and so hurt and so wounded. But there hasn't been much talk— I mean, you do it— but there hasn't been much talk on healing boyhood and raising conscious masculinity. And that's what my book is about.

It seems like— I mean, I— it's interesting because I get a lot of messages from fathers, from mothers, especially single mothers. It's probably the most messages that I get are from single mothers talking about their sons and what, you know, what to do and how to navigate raising a boy in today's environment. But a lot of men have the same questions, you know, how do I raise a good son in a culture that is very angry at men and that sort of has a perspective that the masculine is, is bad and is dangerous and, you know, all that type of stuff. And so I think it's tough because it does feel like young boys are really put in a lot of double binds and that they're in this sort of tug of war. within the culture. And I would love for you to speak to that. Like, what binds do you see young boys really being put in? Because it does feel like they're being pulled in, in 2 very different directions.

Yeah, definitely. These ends of these polarities that make it very difficult for them to feel integrated, and they feel like they have to pick or choose one. So on one hand, we have the extreme caricature now posed by the manosphere, where men are being told that in order to be who they are. They need to be these ultra alpha, ultra dominant, you know, 666, 6 feet tall, 6-pack abs, 6-figure incomes. They need to go to the gym every day. They need to have their 18 eggs a day and really kill it, crush it in the economic world. And then they will have access to women. And they should have entitled access to women if they are that kind of man. And the manosphere really has tapped into the lostness and the insecurity of the boy and told them, I see you, I understand you, and here is the solution. And we parents need to understand that the manosphere is answering a very specific problem. It's solving a very specific problem for our boys. If we don't understand it, we will not step in and provide those ingredients ourselves. So we should study the manosphere if we have if you have children, period. And then on the other extreme, boys are told to use their words and express themselves and be vulnerable and be more like their sister. And they look at that and they think to themselves, I can't really do that either. And so I'm caught in this double bind of impossible extremes. And let's face it, the education system is extremely female-centric and feminine-centric. And it doesn't understand the way of the boy, the boy who between 3 and 7 is having a massive testosterone spike. And he cannot just sit still. He cannot. He has to bite. He has to ram. He has to roar. He has to scream. He has to— he's all body and all feral and wild. And I'm not saying boys should be boys. It is the truth that his wiring is different. And that's why I wrote 2 books, because each one's neurochemistry and hormonal development is different. So I just speak to that in a very celebratory, compassionate way.

Yeah, I've certainly— I mean, my son is 5 and a half, and he is a feral little creature. And he's also a beautifully emotional little boy. I think I was the same way when I was a kid. I had all of these really big emotions, and I wasn't necessarily taught what to do with them or how to navigate them when they came up. And so it seemed like the only outlet for them was through the vehicle of anger and physical expression. And I was talking to my son this morning because he woke up and he was tired and he was like a little bit cranky. He just woke up a little cranky. And he even said that. He's like, I woke up and I'm cranky. Like, okay, cool. No problem. It's not a big deal. And when he got downstairs, he was still kind of cranky. And then we were playing and then he got emotional and whatnot. And we ended up having a conversation. Because, you know, he said to me, I can't be calm right now. I don't— I just can't be calm right now, Dad. And I was like, okay, no worries. I said, I'll be calm for you. And we sat down and I said, one of the things that I've realized is that I need to be able to show you what it's like when we're cranky and how to just be calm, or if we're angry and how to let that go. That's my job because you're a kid. He's like, yeah, I'm a kid, you know, and I don't know how to do that yet. And he's so funny, right? He just says like sometimes, I'm just a kid and I don't know how to do that yet. And—

They're so cute. They love that. When my daughter's 23 and she'll still say, you know, I'm just a child. And I'm like, no, you're not. You're 23.

Yeah, you're 23.

But they love that because it allows them to feel less like a failure, less ashamed. But, you know, when your boy is cranky, what I write in the book, is that we have to move them as much as we can. You know, 20 jumping jacks, punch a punching bag, run on the spot, you know, do some burpees, do a scavenger hunt, you know, push your body to the extreme. Because what he's trying to say in many ways is that all this testosterone in my blood, it's making me out of sorts. And we know this, women know this, because ask women about their period. And when we're coming to our period, we feel out of sorts. Our estrogen is all over the place. Talk about menopause. So it is with our boys too. And we don't really talk about testosterone and how testosterone can mess up their entire hormonal interior world. And they don't understand it. We can't see it. So then we call them defective or defiant or dysfunctional. But it's not true. It's that their body has too much kinetic energy and doesn't know what to do with it. So, I write in my book that motion is emotional regulation for boys. And so, moving the boy is the first go-to strategy before talking, before being calm. It's let's move this energy like the wind in a wind tunnel to channel it because it needs to be worked through the body, not going to the mind. You You know, uh, and then you can use your words, and then you can process.

Say it again.

Motion is emotional regulation.

Yeah, I think that's so good. One, one of the things that we do in our house is set up obstacle courses for my son. And so we'll turn the whole living room into like one giant obstacle course. He's got to jump over things and run and hop across things. And, uh, yeah, I—

they want it so badly. They want to dig, they want to look, they want to find, they want to explore. This is testosterone. It is the novelty hormone that makes them want new things and exciting things and getting his dopamine going. I mean, that's exactly what these video games have capitalized on. So, we need to learn from how the algorithm capitalizes on our boys' neurochemistry and adapt it in analog living.

I want to back up the train a little bit. What do you think the manosphere is saying to young men that is capturing them that maybe needs to be brought into sort of cultural, societal awareness?

The manosphere is telling them that there is a reason for your pain. First, the manosphere sees them for their pain. I see you. You're lonely. You're insecure. You feel rejected. You feel left out. I'm here for you. And then it gives them a reason why they're that. You're this way because you just haven't become a 666. Because you just haven't had a girl, and because you just need to live a certain lifestyle. And then that tells them that if you don't get it, it is the fault of the woman or the powers out there or the matrix out there. It's a very seductive message to keep the boy from externalizing his responsibility for himself, and it's a very dangerous but very well-packaged and well-disguised message to assuage the soul of the boy. It also gives the boy brotherhood because you enter these cults and you have brotherhood. You all are a tribe doing it all together and setting challenges. So it's very, very seductive to that primal part of us that wants to belong.

Yeah, I think it's challenging because I do think that culture and society has shifted so much in the last decade or so, and it feels like there's sometimes the inverse of— it's like a different version of the witch hunts that used to happen, you know? But it happens now where we're like, everybody's kind of on the lookout for misogyny.

Everybody's like—

Everybody's on the lookout for are you a man who's misogynistic, or are you red pill, or are you this, are you that? And I think that it's— I think that it's identifying an issue, but usually putting out an incorrect solution in my perspective. Like, I don't think— and maybe we can disagree on this, and maybe my audience will disagree with me on this— but I don't think that things like they've instituted in the UK of anti-misogyny classes are a positive, healthy solution to what boys are going through. I think that that's going to more— that's going to push those boys more into the category of something's wrong with me. I'm being told in school that something's wrong with me. And I really feel like— and I've started to write about this, but I really feel like in culture there's been this repackaging of the concept of original sin that's being placed on young boys and men. And it's sort of saying that as a man, there's something inherently wrong or defective in you that you need to go and figure out, and then you need to atone for that sin. And it's not until you atone for that sin are you constituted as a good man or a good boy. And I think that that creates just very shame-based identities. So I'm curious to get your thoughts on that latter part.

Oh my goodness. Anything Anti is going to create more anti, right? We cannot be anti things; we have to be pro things. And so, if you're starting from a place that he's misogynistic and he's wrong, and now we have to convert him, you're already going to alienate the boy, right? Instead, we have to look at what does the boy need for healthy development, and I outline that in my book. They need motion; they need regulation; they need adventure; they need competence and purpose; they need to not be. fragile. They need struggle and strength. They need brotherhood and a tribe, and they need a conscious blueprint for a masculinity and a sexuality that feels less shame-based, less fear-based. That's what they need. So let's not teach them to be anti-misogynistic before we give them what they need, because when they get what they need at a deep level and they're connected to themselves, they will be anti-misogynistic. You know, the reason that they're misogynistic is because they've been brainwashed to believe that their problems lie somewhere else and, and that it's okay to demean women. And only the most insecure people demean other people. But if we raise our boys with confidence and connection and competence and purpose and belonging, then he will not feel the need to exploit and dominate others.

What are some of the steps that you think need to happen with boys? Like, what are some of the ways in which parents can begin to develop boys that have a robust sense of self, that are still assertive, that they have a good sense of understanding of who they are, but also have the sort of the emotional capacity that is so valuable and is so important?

Well, I think the first thing is applicable to all children. Stop putting your kid in a box. Stop labeling and judging them by the age of 3 and 4. You don't have to. And even if they're saying that they don't want a label because they wanna be fluid, even that is an identity that it's too young when they're too young. Just wait, everybody wait. We don't need to talk about anything right now. We don't need to lock in on anything right now because You are fluid. You are discovering who you are. And even if you say you're fluid, even that is fluid. So don't worry. It's all just meant to be in the essence state of being and flow. So the first thing is stop judging. Stop putting your kids in a box. Number 2, stop making him feel that he is to be ashamed or feel guilty about being vulnerable. And being vulnerable means being exposed to one's limitations. So expose your son to his limitations and teach him to accept himself as he is, he cannot be good at everything. And when he is vulnerable about his limitations, he actually will not be a bully to others because he doesn't need to dominate others because he's accepting of himself. Then a big mistake I see parents make is that they don't introduce and perpetuate and engender enough movement. And they think 20 minutes or 1 hour of movement is enough. No, for every average boy, You need 2, 3 hours of physical exertion and strength. And the more you move them, the more you regulate them. Another thing I talk about is introducing the tribe. So you have to borrow the uncles, rent the stepfathers, I don't know, get a whole bunch of adult conscious males, men around your son so that he feels like he's in a brotherhood. The men can check him. And he has a healthy initiation into adulthood. That is missing. And then the other big piece is learn to connect to him. You know, he feels deeply. He just shows it differently. So I always say connect before you correct. Then I love what you said with your son. You allowed him to borrow your nervous system. That is so important to be the nervous system that your son or your daughter can look at and emulate and draw from. And then lastly, we must talk about conscious sexuality, especially with our boys, also with our girls, but with our boys in terms of consent, in terms of not being entitled just because they have a lustful thought or desire doesn't make your desire be entitled to manifest itself and impose itself on others. So this is the gamut of what I teach in my book. And I go really deep and I give examples and data and neuroscience. And I've made it very palatable and an easy read, but you will never forget what you need to do after reading the book.

Say more about this notion of helping a boy to develop confidence, because I think one of the things— this is sort of a tricky thing for a lot of young boys and a lot of young men, and I think for a lot of parents— is I want my son to feel confident in a world that maybe is you know, telling him, uh, indirectly or directly that there's, you know, you should be ashamed of yourself, or that you got to find what's wrong with you, or whatever we've been talking about. Um, how does he start to build a sense of confidence that I think you talk about is rooted in integrity versus dominance? Can you just sort of flesh that out a little bit?

Yeah, so there are many ways that we can begin to build confidence. The first one, and I'm not saying this in order, one of the important ones is that a father or a male figure really show belief in the son and pass the baton in small ways. So even your 5-year-old son, you know, you can say, you lead the way to the car. You find the car in the parking lot. Can you take the keys and go open the car? You're— you, by giving him a job at a developmentally appropriate age, is telling him, I trust you. I see you. Now, of course, you don't want to make them worker bees, but you want to entrust them with some sort of belief that you see them as competent and worthy. Another way to introduce competence is to introduce struggle, right? We have to test our wings and test the edges of our physical self. And if we're never tested in struggle, we're going to always not know how amazing we are.

Hmm.

We may be like, OK, we're average. But we don't know how amazing we are. You know how it is when we have withstood a real storm in our lives or we've gone through a real tunnel of growth and darkness, we come out the other end going, wow, I'm badass. I could do that. I can survive this. I don't need to fall apart. So it's evidence for competence, which brings confidence. And then third thing I would say for mothers is don't smother. Don't smother. Don't over-infantilize your son. Allow your son to have purpose with you and contribution. Again, not making them a slave, but allow them to contribute in your home, to fix the light bulbs, to paint the roof, to paint the car, something, to clean the car. You have to involve him, and this goes for mothers and fathers, in activities that make him feel like he is an important integral member of the home. So competence through integrity, not through domination, is really is really pointing to that we have to build confidence from the inside through trial and error, through actual physical embodiment. And when competence doesn't come from the inside, it actually is only fleeting and transient.

Yeah, it's interesting because as you're talking, I mean, my son has a whole bunch of responsibilities around the house. He's 5 and a half years old. He's going to make his bed. He's responsible for setting the table. placemats, forks, knives, like the whole, the whole nine yards and a slew of other things. But it was funny because I've started to get him into learning a bunch of stuff. Like, he's starting skating this year. He wants to play hockey. He's in jiu-jitsu. I've started to teach him how to play chess. And it's been so interesting. Like, the other night, this situation happened where he wanted to race outside. And I know how this goes with him sometimes where He says he wants to race, but what he really wants is to win. He's super competitive. You know, he's just like, I want to win. And so, we raced the first time and I let him win. And then, we raced the second time and I won and he threw a tantrum, right? Just meltdown, crying. And so, I really— so, I took like 5, 6 minutes with him in that moment and I was like, hey, like, we're not trying to win right now. We are trying to learn. And I've kept saying this to him, like when we were playing chess, I said, I'm not trying to beat you. We're just trying to learn. I don't want you to try and win. We're just trying to learn how to do this because his natural predisposition I've noticed is Dad's really good at all of this shit. And so I have to be as good as Dad at all of this stuff. And it's— I think he's really— I can see this like little 5-and-a-half-year-old brain, like trying to put all this pressure on himself to be exceptional, even though he doesn't really even know the rules of the game. And so after the run, he's crying. And I was like, okay, take a breath, come here. You know, and so we connected. And I said, can I tell you a secret? And he said, what? I said, do you know how many 5-year-olds there are on the planet? And he said, no. And I said, oh, there's, there's so many. There's more than even I could count. And I said, you want to know something wild? And he said, what? I said, not one of them could beat me in a race. Not one of them. And he's like, really? I was like, no 5-year-old in the world could possibly beat me in a race. Just like, do you think that Daddy could ever beat a cheetah in a race? And he was like, no way. And I was like, right, Daddy would lose every single time to a cheetah in a race. And so it like helped him conceptualize, I'm not bad, nothing's wrong with me.

Yeah.

It's okay to lose. It's okay to fail. Like, you know, those, those types of things. It's okay to learn. Because I really see that in boys of like, I have to prove my worth.

It's testosterone. It's testosterone. It's like in the tribe when the alpha chief steps down, the next ones come up. It's just like instinctive. And it's— you cannot smash it out of the boy. We have to just teach him to gracefully lose at times and gracefully be rejected. and not throw a tantrum when he's 25, right? So he's going to learn and practice. And I think allowing him to lose is really healthy. It makes him understand that he cannot be good with everybody or at everything. And that humility will bring vulnerability, and that vulnerability will actually create antifragility because he's not going to fall apart every time he loses, right? What is fragility? You fall apart every time there is an obstacle. So he has to learn this so that he doesn't presume he's entitled to always winning the top prize.

So good. Do you feel like there's been a— and I don't know if this is relevant or not, but do you feel like there's been a push to try and get boys to just be different than they are?

Yes. Yes. Through a backlash of the MeToo movement, I think boys have, I think, felt very displaced. And this is, again, doesn't mean that women don't need to move forward. But I think quite naturally, when the pendulum starts to swing so much and women becoming boss babes and entering the lanes of men and, you know, and women, they can do women well and they can do men well. Now, men are, I think, feeling a little bit disenfranchised and disembodied, which is a healthy thing, I think. But in those gaps before they have found themselves, there are these very conflicting, polarizing messages, and they are feeling very lost about how to be. Women are coming back into their bodies now, and women are honoring and allowing, you know, with the menopause movement. And women are realizing, you know what, maybe I didn't want to be a boss babe after all. Maybe I do like being at home with my with my kids. A lot of millennial mothers are coming to me saying, I tried that, but I'm now feeling confident that I can do it all, but at a much lower scale. And that's very refreshing to watch. But men, on the other hand, have had the easy way so much that they're not used to struggling. And the moment that they have started struggling, Boom, the manosphere has come and taken them back into traditional, extremely toxic masculinity.

I think one of the things that you've talked about in, in the book is like, you know, on this notion of conscious parenting, that it sort of emphasizes what I have interpreted as presence over control. And I think that that's awesome. One of the things that we seem to be talking about, though, is that boys really crave challenge, that they naturally try and look for hierarchies, and that structure and discipline is pretty important. So, like, where do you think discipline, competition, having a little bit more of a hard edge fits into this notion of conscious parenting?

Well, I always say there is a thing as non-negotiable boundaries. And those have to do with safety, of all things. So it could be safety from the screens. It could be safety from video games if your child is getting addicted. It could be safety of not brushing your teeth long enough. And now that's going to be harmful to you. So I always ask parents to think about their non-negotiables and don't make it too long and go all out with the non-negotiables. Like, there you can have real strong boundaries. The rest of the world and our activities are pretty much negotiable, right? You and me coming here today, it was not a non-negotiable. It was a negotiable. You reading my book is not a non-negotiable. It's a negotiable. You choosing to study math in college is negotiable. So if you really think about it, most things are negotiable. And our problem is because we are so thirsty for control. And we operate from so much anxiety and fear that we turn things that are negotiable into non-negotiables. And then we have a dysfunctional, disconnected relationship and wonder why. So if whether they should play the piano, whether they should go to a school 20 minutes away or 50 minutes away, since all of this is a crapshoot anyway and there are no guarantees, why don't we just start letting go of the controlling part and enter into a partnership? with our children around the negotiables. Of course, developmentally appropriate. But even with your 2-year-old, you can start working on the negotiables. Okay, I'll hold your hand right now. But then in 5 minutes, when the clock goes like this, I have to hold my bags. And I can't hold you anymore. Right? We can begin to negotiate. And she can say, no, not in 5 minutes, in 3 minutes, in 7 minutes. I want longer time holding your hand.

Okay.

Let's settle at whatever, you know. And if you approach life like that, it's so much easier. And it gives the child sovereignty, autonomy, the sense that they are being treated like a whole human being.

I want to talk specifically about the role of mom and then the role of dad, if that's okay, and kind of go into some of these more specific areas. Because I think after working with men for so long, there are some very clear patterns from mom and from dad that end up showing up. So let's just start a little bit with mom. What are some of the more maybe unconscious patterns or the ways in which you have seen sometimes mothers engage with sons that ends up creating a challenging dynamic between the two of them?

I think mothers get very hurt and almost feel rejected. And insulted when their boys don't talk to them or don't hang out with them or don't answer them and send one-word texts back. Mothers take it very personally and they feel very, you know, used. And they project onto their sons all the negative men in their lives. Right. And they don't realize they're doing it. It's very subtle and very profound. And it's not fair to the boys because Boys are more compartmentalized. They are more detached. They do need a lot more space. And then what the mother does is either she retaliates through some petty threat back of withholding, or she gets super angry. And very often, she ends up shaming him for him just being himself. And it creates a vast disconnection. Oh, and then the other thing she does is she turns up the— the nurturing. She goes overboard and becomes this smothering mother, which is really unbearable, especially for your son's future partner. And she cannot de-identify with her connection to her boy and finds her own sense of worth through that. That's why many women will say, I've married a mama's boy. Why is that? Because many mothers do that. So that's what mothers do. And then fathers, what they do, the 2 most common things I've observed is, number one, because their own fathers or their own parents or culture did not allow them to feel okay in their vulnerability and to feel okay in their tenderness, they don't like it when it shows up in their sons. And so they pass down the same adage, you know, don't be a crybaby, don't be like your sister. Oh, look at you crying like a girl. And they unknowingly pass down the same kind of rigidity and stoicism that they were raised by. And the second thing is because their fathers or their elders did not really believe in them and pass down the baton and that they were only seen as achievers, it's very hard for fathers to pass down the baton to their sons unless the son is an achiever. So if the son is not a superstar achiever, but is just a nice average boy, the father feels it very personally and will not pass down the baton. And then when you don't pass down the baton, the son grows up believing that my father doesn't believe in me. And oh my goodness, it really attacks his sense of self and his self-esteem. So fathers' belief in their sons saying, I believe you, I believe in you, I trust you, is more therapy, more immunity against a crisis than I think anything. A son needs the father to acknowledge him, to respect him, and to lead him.

This is so good. And I think it's also— I think it's a double bind for dads usually, you know? And I think, like, one of the things— I think it was Bill Burr. Do you know Bill Burr, the comedian? He did this whole segment on parenting and being a father and whatnot. And he had this line. I don't remember what it is verbatim, but it was pretty much like, nothing builds and creates successful men like dysfunctional fathers. And there really is— it's really interesting because I think a lot of fathers have a fear of like, if I just love my son and accept him for who he is, he won't become exceptional. There is like this innate, I think, this tightrope balancing act that we as dads are walking of, I want to challenge you, I want to push you, I want to have you develop mastery and really find something that you love and to become passionate about and extraordinary in, while also reminding you, like, I just love you because you're my son. I just love you for who you are. And I think it is one of those situations where a lot of guys look out at the world and they see guys like Alex Hormozi that have had super dysfunctional relationships with their fathers and are wildly successful. And that seems to be more of the story than the guy that has a great relationship with his dad and has achieved greatness in some way. And so I think it's a bit of a conundrum, right?

It's the tale of the tragic hero, right? You know, that's— we've kind of been raised with this mythology that you need to have adversity and triumph over it. It's a suffering model of existence, really, versus an abundance model of existence. And sadly, if you follow the false gods of external success and try to ape these men, you, you actually end up with a boy who deep down is hollow. Because it hasn't come from a deep internal calling. It's come from an aping, from a, you know, just mimicking. And when we mimic, we are performing. And so there's a great danger in that. And I think you're right that fathers have never been told that you can be good enough and extraordinary if you want at the same time. They've been told you will only be good enough if you're extraordinary. So now, how do we raise a boy to have fire and drive and competence when he thinks he's good enough already? It doesn't go well together. But you and I know, because I know you see your boy as good enough, and you know that if he finds his sense of purpose, contribution, service, he will be on fire.

Yeah.

Human beings will be on fire. It's just a matter of being exposed to it. But there is another point there that I think I'd like to leave your listeners with. Children across the board today are living in a frictionless world. So we do need to create struggle and a little bit of analog, intentional, strategic strife. It's good if they fight with their friends so then we can figure it out. And it's good that he lost with you so he can struggle through that. And it's good if there's no Wi-Fi and the electricity goes off. I mean, really now, things have become so exaggeratedly and pervertedly luxurious that we are literally out of touch with the world. And so it's good that we can go back to real-life embodied experiences because then our children will learn to suffer, will learn to survive, We learn to wait. We've taken out waiting. We don't wait anymore. We're certainly not bored anymore. So these things are actually active ingredients for health, emotional health, but we've taken them out of our children's childhoods to their peril and therefore to our peril.

Yeah, it seems like it's been consolidated into just academic struggle, and that's really the only type of struggle. And then digital disconnection.

It's all in the head. It's all cerebral. It's not in the body.

Can you give some, like, for the parents that are listening to this and they're like, okay, you're totally right. I need to create some adversity for my son or my daughter. But for the sake of this conversation, for my son, I need to help him take some risk. What can that look like? Like, what experiments, what opportunities can they start to create for them?

Yeah, I mean, at this point, it's going to have to just be strategic and kind of artificial because we don't live in the ways we should have been living all along. So You know, things like getting your son to go to the grocery store with you, helping you cook your meal, learning to go and fish outside, building a fire, helping you clean up the house. I mean, just as much basic stuff that we used to do, but now we have machines doing it for us, or God forbid, one day robots doing it for us. Our boys need to feel in the body that they are really vacuuming the room and they're really mowing the lawn and they're Really using the broom. And, through that physical embodiment, they begin to see that they are capable, that they are needed, that they belong. Yeah.

I think that's such an important piece, helping them develop the competency of some of those things. And, I don't know if you saw this story, but there was a mother who sent her son to the store or he got to go for a walk to go to the lake and back. And, I think he was 5 or 6 years old. And somebody ended up calling the cops on her. She got arrested for something that I was like, I freaking at 6 was walking to school every single day, just like backpack on and off I went.

Yeah, we are living in the most safe times and we're acting like it's the most unsafe times. And the more surveillance you give people, the less safe we seem to feel. Because back then there was no GPS tracking monitor on you, but your parents felt safe. So it's an absurd dichotomy inconsistency that we're living with. There's so many of them in our world today. It's just so sad. But I just want to again bring people back to the reason I wrote these books is because I could see parents were overwhelmed and stressed and flabbergasted and confused. And I really wanted to do the research, come with my clinical experience, but also my personal wisdom to offer this blueprint. And if you have a son and a daughter, of course, buy both. They are very distinct books. The format is the same. Each of them have 2 parts. But the content is completely different. But they really, I think, open your heart to what is happening under the hood for our boys and our girls.

I think it's probably a good place for us to just wrap up with one last question, which is, you know, I think my interpretation of a lot of your work and these books especially is really that the— it's always in some ways is that the parent has to transform and not necessarily the child. Of course, the child has to face things and confront things. But what sort of inner quest or inner work does a parent need to do In order, from your perspective, to raise a really great son in the future?

First and foremost, understand that you can never do enough, and it'll always be a work in progress. And there's no such thing as, let me just become a conscious person and then have a child, because you can't, uh, because your child will trigger you in ways that you cannot even imagine. So you have to just do it along the way. I think the first thing is to have a willingness to be a seeker willingness to look in the mirror. And then the second skill is to begin to observe your patterns and be a witness to, holy shit, every night around 7:30, I lose my mind. What's going on with me? Or every time my, my daughter doesn't get invited to a birthday party, I act like it's the end of the world. What's going on with me? Being curious, looking in the mirror and going, is this about me or is this about my kid? And taking care of our side of the lane, the parts that are us and not our partner? I mean, not our child. I think that that's a good place to start, being open, being willing, being curious to look in the mirror, and being brave because it takes a lot of bravery.

Beauty. Thank you so much, Dr. Shefali, for joining me. For everybody that's out there, you can go check out the books. They're on Amazon, right? They're in all the major bookstores. So you can go find Raising Conscious Sons and Raising Conscious Daughters. And anywhere else that you want them to go? Website? Insta?

Yes. Yes. So I have an amazing coaching institute for anyone listening, men and women, parent or non-parent. If you want to become a more conscious human being and a more conscious parent, I will be the university that you never could go to for parenting. And then you also can get 2 coaching certifications, a life coach and a parent coach. So many people go out there and do this work on their own and earn a living at home, and they love it. So check out my institute. You'll get $500 off if you say you came on ManTalks. And I have a community for just $16 a month. And I have a podcast called Parenting and You. And in that podcast, I do interventions with parents in real time. So those are the ways. And of course, follow me on Instagram and get on my mailing list.

Interventions with parents sounds like a fun thing to listen to, especially as a parent. Like, okay, let me go.

Exactly.

Let me go hear the struggles that other parents are having.

Exactly.

Beautiful. Well, thank you so much for joining me. Congrats on all the success with the books, folks. Go check it out. Don't forget to man this episode forward. Man it forward to somebody that you know is going to enjoy it. And this might be something that you want to listen to with your partner that you are raising kids with. This is a great episode to listen to together. All right. Thank you so much for joining me. Till next time, Connor Beaton signing off.