Conscious Parenting Webinar May 2020

Conscious Parenting webinar. My name is Diana Chapman. I'm the co founder of the Conscious Leadership Group here with my best buddy Jim Dethmer. Hi Jim.

Hey Dee.

Jim's coming to you from Michigan. His soul's home. And I'm just outside of Santa Cruz. And we're going to be muting you all now for the rest of this webinar and will have some of you unmuted when you ask questions. And we'll have questions throughout our time together. If you do plan to want to ask questions, we ask that you be mindful to turn off all of your bells and whistles around you so that when you are on speaker we don't get distracted by those things. Want to let you know that there will be a page or webpage where you're going to be able to get a recording of this webinar and this recording will be publicly accessed. So just want to let you all know that all the content you'll be sharing here will go out more broadly. And so we'll send you an email with a link to that webpage and likely some other resources will be on that page. Things that we bring up here today. If you're not sure what was that, we'll make sure to put those on the webpage so you'll have access to those resources we mentioned. And let's see here. I think those are the basics for logistics.

One more thing. Hi, I'm Erica and we will also be sending out a survey that we will be very grateful if you'd be willing to give us five more minutes in addition to this webinar to just to let us know how this experience was for you, how we could improve it. And at the end, Lainey will be putting to the survey in the chat. We'll also be sending it to you with all the other materials. Yeah.

I want to introduce Erica, who is Gemini's partner here leading at the Conscious Leadership Group. And also Laney is here handling all the back end of this event. So thank you, Lainey. She's also part of our team.

All right, Diana, did you mention that we're going to offer a four week course? I was daydreaming.

We are going to be offering a four week course if you like this content. We're going to be having a 90 minute once a week for four weeks starting sometime in June that you all can sign up for and that will also be on the webpage, that link and I think we'll also post that link here in the comments section along the way so you can have access to that place to sign up. And we're going to be offering, for those of you here, 10% off. I think that's right, 10% off for the next 24 hours for those of you who've come here as a, as a thank you for joining us today. And then after 24 hours it will be back to its normal price of 150.

We decided to do that. It was a conversation amongst us at the Conscious Leadership Group. Our brand has been very focused for years now on supporting leaders inside of organizations. And we have been very, very interested in things like conscious parenting or conscious partnering or other dimensions of consciousness. But we've stayed pretty ruthlessly focused on leaders in organizations. We felt that's what we were called to. And we've been having these conversations in recent months about letting the brand expand a little bit to include things like conscious parenting. So it was a big decision on our part to let it expand out and we decided to do it. And I would say we're very, very excited about it. Over the years that we've been doing this, we go into companies and organizations and you know, we work inside of teams and oftentimes they'll say, you know, this was really good for our team. And it's been unbelievably helpful for me with my 12 year old or me with my 3 year old twins or stuff like that. So we've always been deeply interested in this subject.

We've also been practicing conscious parenting for decades. I have a 27 and 25 year old. We started working with them when they were four and six, putting them on the drama triangle and using this with our families. I was a stay at home mom for 12 years and a homeschooler for a period of time. And so being with children and working with children has been a big passion of mine.

And I have two daughters. This is important for many of you, one naturally born, one adopted. Because there are other dimensions that come in when you start bringing adopted children in children and things like that. And then I have four stepsons, so I also have blended family experience. I joined into their life when the oldest was about 17 and the youngest was about 12. And now Debbie, my wife, and I are getting to practice conscious grandparenting. We have seven grandkids. So you know, all the stuff we're going to talk about, we practice. If you know us, you know, we practice it. So there isn't much theory here. It's all stuff that we're doing day in and day out. With our children and our children in law, we've got a bunch of. I have a bunch of children in law and grandchildren. So there you go. All right, so let's frame the conversation a little bit, because I imagine since this is an open webinar and there were no prerequisites, there might be some of you on this call who came because you heard there was going to be a discussion around parenting and conscious parenting, but you don't really know much about the conscious leadership group or our approach to consciousness. And then others of you are seasoned veterans, have been around us forever. But to make sure everybody's on the same page, we just want to say a couple of things about our approach to conscious parenting. So one of our big ideas is that in life there are two basic buckets. One bucket is the content of your life. This is what you're talking about, what you're thinking about. Kind of just the normal stuff of life. If we were to go out and have a cup of tea and I were to say to you, so how's parenting going? Whatever you would talk about would be the content of your life. So, you know, we asked you when you signed up, you know, what are the issues you're facing? What are the questions you have? So anything that relates to, like, I'll just pull out from my mind some of the stuff I read. Sibling rivalry or screen time or how to homeschool or agreements around bedtime, or how to be with feelings in the home on and on and on and on and on, how to balance my energies when I'm exhausted at the end of working from home, and then I'm homeschooling. Everything that you wrote down, and I think maybe 450 or so people signed up for this. So everything that got written down is the content of your life and specifically the content of parenting. Got it? That's just the normal stuff. We are context coaches, not content coaches. This is really an important distinction. So if we were content coaches, we would be subject matter experts. For example, in screen time. That's a hot one, right? And there are people who've done serious studies about screen time and serious studies about the effects of it. Or a couple of you mentioned, you know, that you've got teenagers who are smoking marijuana. And we'd be experts as scientists. We might be practitioners of marijuana, but we would be experts in the science of marijuana. We would talk through that and brain development and all that. We are not content experts. Really important. We are context experts. So for us, content, whether it's Parenting or partnering with your intimate partner or in the work world, content is simply a means to practicing context. Another way of saying that content is a means for practicing consciousness. Now that's a big distinction. So many of you probably signed up because you go, this is great, maybe somebody can give me some advice about sibling rivalry or, you know, whatever chores and how to make agreements around chores. We're not going to do that. We are going to support you to use the content of parenting to help you become a more conscious human being, to help you wake up, to help you become more present. By the way, we do this when we go into the workspace, we say, we're not subject matter experts on anything in the workplace. We're going to use the content of the workplace to help leaders become more conscious, to wake up, to become more self aware. A really important distinction about what we're up to here is that this is foremost a class on consciousness. And we're going to use whatever's going on for you as a parent to support you, to explore waking up, becoming more present, becoming more awakened, more alive, more enlightened, whatever you want to call it, get that distinction. If you don't understand that, you might be frustrated and disappointed because you're going to go, they didn't answer my question about screen time.

The other thing we're up to here is it's our belief that the wisdom lives within you on how to address the issues going on with your children, that the resolution, the awareness of what to do next is available to you when you're present, when you're conscious. And so what we're interested in is seeing can we support you in shifting from your reactivity to a place of real responsiveness, a place of trust, so that you can drop in and know how to lead your children. And that's what our focus on is that. And so we want to help empower you to know the answers, live within you, not outside of you necessarily.

So let me just, let me say one more thing. We just put out a blog, what we call going deeper, and I wrote something on conscious parenting. Maybe some of you read that. And this would be an example of the distinction that we're making here. Often over the years, the decades that I've talked to parents and grandparents about parenting and grandparenting, one of the primary identities that they come to the subject of parenting with is this identity. My primary job as a parent is to train up my children. My children come to me as a tabula rasa blank slater with some encoding, and my Job is to teach and train them, to train them up to independence. The goal of parenting is to raise healthy, well adjusted, independent adults. And by the way, we're not saying that isn't part of the dynamic. We're suggesting that there's something else going on for you that is equally powerful and that is this. Your children haven't come to you to be taught by you. They have come to you to teach you. They have come to you to teach you. And we mean that in several ways. The youngest of my grandchildren is just a few months old there. In my experience, there are few greater embodied experiences of presence than an infant. When I sit with this infant, he is teaching me about presence. He is reminding me what it looks to be. Unattached in a state of non dual oneness. Then I have these toddlers and these, you know, young children, they remember that life is all about play. They've come here to remind me about play. So they literally are teachers. But then also every experience they're having, getting dumped when they're in junior high by somebody they wanted to have an intimate relationship with, or the experience they're having about failing in a class, or the experience they're having about, you know, not making a team they wanted to make, or the experience they're having of being quarantined. You've got a social 17 year old and they are so sick of seeing you and they want to see their friends. Every experience your child is having is there to teach you about your consciousness. So we just want to stress this. This is the conversation we want to have. How are you being with the content of parenting and the content of your child's life such that you are available to being woken up by it, taught by it. This is a big distinction and in our mind an incredibly important distinction. Because if you prioritize your growth, learning and waking up, like Diana said, you will find yourself resting more and more in non triggered awareness in presence. And the things that you want answers to will be more and more obvious to you. Your access, your internal wisdom. Okay, I'm thinking this. I'd like to pause here and just say, does anybody have any questions about that? Because it is a big subject, it's not the way most people come to parenting. So if you have a question, you could type it in the chat window there, if you have a question, and then Erica will find a question, if there's one there, and will unmute you and you can ask the question again. The specific question here is about the difference between content and context and how parenting is just like everything else in life, it's an invitation for you to become more present, drop into a greater state of basic trust, live more from love, be a more awake person.

And I'd like to define conscious because I don't think we've done that yet. So we define conscious as to be here now, to have my full attention here now in this moment, and to be here now in a non triggered, non reactive state. That's how we define conscious. And that's when Jim talks about your children are here to help you learn to be more in that state.

Anything popping up? Erica?

Yeah. We have a question from Christie Ch at the beginning, could you do an unmute? Lainey?

All right, we're ready for you.

Can you hear me?

Yes. Hi. So my question is, when you just define consciousness, can you really be conscious when you're a working parent right now? So full time working mom, my husband's a full time working dad. We have a two and a half year old and a ten month old, and we're doing it all at the same time. Can I even attain consciousness? Well, can means are you able to? And we would say you are able to, and you might not choose to. And there might be lots of good reasons why you would choose to be reactive instead of be in that state of trust.

Yeah. And I want to say this question comes up so often with young parents, and especially young parents who are in a state of overwhelm. And, you know, a lot of the stuff that's on there on consciousness includes stuff like meditation, which we're huge fans of meditation. But I say to young parents all the time, your practice is your children. So this is not extremely complicated, Christy. It's simply this. As you're sitting down to the dinner table, or let's say grabbing food and moving through the house, the question we would simply ask is, are you actually present to your children or are you in the future thinking about bedtime? Are you in the past thinking about a client call you had? Are you actually there with your child? And if you're there, are you there in just this moment with a sense of trust, with a sense of presence so that you can see your child and see you in that moment? And our experience is that we all come in and out of of the now moment all the time, and we all come in and out of reactivity. So anybody in the world can be asking, is it possible to be conscious if, like your question, if we have kids, we're busy, we're full time, we're Homeschooling. Somebody else could say, is it possible to be conscious when I have this disease? Is it possible to be conscious of when I am in the financial free fall? Is it possible to be conscious? There are always the circumstances of life that we can say, well, is it possible to be conscious there? And that's the premise of our entire work in the world, is that the circumstances of the content of life are always an invitation to practice in this moment. So our answer to your question is yes. And it's just little tiny practices done over and over again with a full willingness to become self aware, self accepting and present. Yes.

We also want to remind you all that conscious does not mean oh, I'm all in peace, it's all great. Conscious can mean I'm scared, I'm really scared, I don't know what's going to happen. Conscious can mean I'm angry, I'm angry, something here is not serving me or my people. Conscious can mean I'm really grieving my whole life that I knew is now dying away and I'm in deep sadness about these changes. So we want to make sure that you're aware that you can have all kinds of different feeling states in this place of presence.

Yeah. Including conscious can mean my body is exhausted. Yeah. So what does that mean for me with you, my six year old son? Ah, there's a way to be with exhaustion in our language from above the line from presence versus being with exhaustion from below the line from threat. Any of life can be a practice ground for consciousness. It doesn't mean that you're happy. Happy and conscious are not equivalents. Okay, is there another question or comment, Erica, that we should tend to otherwise we'll start demonstrating some of this with the 15 commitments.

I think that some of the other questions will get answered throughout. And just to put it on your radar so you can weave it in, is person asked about trust and what do you mean? What do we mean by trust? And then another question about what about the balance between child being teacher and also what about that balance?

Yeah, well, you answered it. It's a balance. We're not saying you're not here to teach your child about manners. It's not that you're not here to teach your child about independence. Yes. We're just saying that you're probably clear that that's your role. What most people are not clear about is that the role of the purpose of parenting is your waking up. So it's a both and that we're addressing here and from our perspective you, your role as teacher, trainer, coach, implementer will be marvelously improved if you do it understanding that it's about your consciousness. So it's about a. Both and yeah. Okay, so. And we'll come back to trust. We'll touch it right now. So our model is real simple. You know, at any moment as you're with your children, by the way, literally physically with them or with them in your mind. Like a lot of my kids now are not physically present with me, my grandkids, but I'm with them in my mind many times a day. So physically with them or with them in your mind or with their co parent in your mind. The question we always ask is around whatever it is that's going on with them, the content that we've talked about, or whatever's going on in your mind, are you above the line or below the line in this now moment? Are you in a state of trust? Are you in a state of open hearted, open minded learning? Are you valuing learning and growing? Or are you in a state of threat or fear? Are you contracted below the line? Are you in survival mentality? And again, just for those of you who are new to us, we don't make either of those right or wrong. They're just two states of consciousness. They're just two ways of being in the world. And we're actually hardwired to be in the world from a sense of threat. So I'll just tie it to parenting. It's very easy to experience threat. For example, your home, your homeschooling, your kid. You begin to believe they're falling behind, they're falling behind, whatever that means to you. It's natural and normal to experience that function. My child is falling behind and they might not catch up as a threat. And when we experience it as a threat, we go into a reactive mode. And all of these threats are basically threats to one of three things. They're a threat to our wanting of control, of approval and of security. Approval, control and security. So if I think the thought multiple times, my child is falling behind because of the way she's being educated right now. And I experience that as a threat, it could be a threat to my wanting of control. I want to control how my child learns, I want to control my child's development, I want to control my child's future. This is a huge one for parents. I want to control the outcome of my child's life. Or it could be a threat to your wanting approval. This is a huge one. Right now, in the midst of what's going on. All of a sudden you're being asked to homeschool and you want approval for doing a good job as a teacher as well as a parent. And you're experiencing your own disapproval of yourself or the disapproval of the society that is you believe is telling you you ought to be able to spin all these plates and balance all these hats or the disapproval of your co parent, your parenting partner who says you're not doing a good job. So as you think the thought that your child is falling behind, you get threatened because you hear disapproval, you're doing a bad job. So you're not able to control your child's learning, you're not able to control your child success and future. You're in a state of threat to your own sense of approval. And the third one, it feels like a threat to safety and security because literally, I don't know about you, but many of our parenting minds go to my kid's never going to make this up. They're going to be always behind. They're not going to get into whatever you want to say, the kindergarten I want them to get into or the high school or the college or they're not going to get a job. Or you have kids that are just graduating from college and they're coming out into the worst economic conditions that have existed since the Great Depression. And you're smart enough to know that they will always be behind the monetary curve. This is a belief. And so you get threatened in a state of safety and security. Will they ever be able to be financially independent? Off we go.

I used to get threatened a lot around they're going to resent my parenting, they're going to say I did it wrong. And so later on they're going to not approve of me. That one used to get me a lot.

So again we're just saying whatever the content is, you're being with that from either above the line a sense of trust or below the line a sense of threat to your wanting of approval, control and security. And again, we don't make that wrong or bad. We actually make it natural and normal. If you know whatever. I think they're about 180. It looks like if 180 of us could all go out and have a glass of wine tonight and each of us could report when we went below the line that day, all186 have an illustration of where we got triggered and went below the line, it would be ok. We just went into survival mode. So our work is to say the first key to conscious parenting is to be self aware enough to notice that I've become scared, I've gone into a threatened state. I feel like there's a threat to my wanting of control, approval, safety. And first, recognize that. Oh, yeah, okay, got it. And then second, take a breath of acceptance. Just that you're scared, you're in overwhelm, you're stressed out. Can you just give yourself a breath of loving kindness?

Wow.

Today is Thursday and I am really below the line. I can't even see the line. I'm so far away from it. I'm in total overwhelming reactivity.

One way you know you're below line is it's not funny. The more not funny it is, the more below the line you are. So Jim is starting to talk about these four questions that we use over and over again in conscious leadership. And we say parenting is a form of conscious leadership. So the first question is, where am I? Where am I? And Jim was describing, am I above the line in a state of trust or am I below the line in a state of threat? Am I above line, open and curious and wanting to learn, or am I below the line, closed, defensive, wanting to be right? So the first question, where am I? So as you all think about some relational issue that you've got going on right now with your children or some parenting issue, everybody think of one, think of some parenting issue you've got screen, as Jim is describing, screen time, social distancing, homeschooling, child, sibling rivalry, all these different kinds of things. You've got some parenting issue. The first question is, where am I? Am I above the line or below the line? And here's a pro tip, you're almost always below the line when you're thinking of these issues, almost always. And to go, look, how do I know I'm below the line? And then the second question is, can I accept myself? I'm just scared. My identity, my ego is perceiving a threat to the security, control and approval, and I'm scared. So can you breathe in and give one breath of acceptance to just being scared? It's okay to be scared. My gosh, parenting is what a journey. It is not for the faint of heart. And I get scared. Those are the first two questions. Where am I? And can I accept myself for being in this threatened state, for being just where I am.

Now? What I want to do is I want to map this territory of above and below the line a little bit more. And what we decided we would do is we would take the first six commitments or so of the 15 commitments of conscious leadership. And we would give you some illustrations of how we apply them to parenting. So the first commitment says that when I'm above the line, when I'm above the line, I'm taking 100% responsibility for the circumstances of my life. And this is the key, and I'm supporting everybody else in my world to take 100% responsibility for the circumstances as well. When I'm below the line, I'm taking more or less than 100% responsibility. And the tool we use there is the Karpman drama triangle. There are three bases on the Karpman drama triangle. One is victim. This is life is happening to me. I'm at the effect of life. One basis, villain. When I'm on villain, I'm blaming. I'm trying to figure out whose fault it is, who fucked it up. And I could be blaming myself, I could be blaming my child, I could be blaming my co parent, I could be blaming their teacher. So I blame myself, I blame others, or I blame the collective. By the way, we have never been in a better time to blame the collective. Can we all just say yes? There are moments when I blame the collective, the virus, the political environment. It's so easy to be on villain and blame. So victim. I'm at the effect of it's happening to me. Villain. I'm blaming. Hero. I'm rescuing and relieving. Hero is a funny word because for many in our culture, hero is a positive word. And in the Karpman triangle, it's not a positive place to be. It's saying, what I want right now is relief. I just want this to go away so we can hear ourselves. I just wish we could all say yes to this. The end of the day, you've worked your butt off. You've been on 15 Zoom things. You homeschooled your kid, then they had a fight at dinner. You skipped the showers. You don't care whether you're putting them to bed dirty. You didn't read to them, you just tucked them in. And you couldn't get to your glass of Chardonnay fast enough because you needed relief. You're going, oh My God, hi, Dr. Barringer. Saying, you know, it used to be about 7:00 at night, I want a glass of Chardonnay now. It's about 2 in the afternoon, I start going, and you've kind of upgraded, you know, I went from chardonnay to a big bold red to a glass of vodka to a shot of whiskey to smoking a joint or just vegging out in front of some screen where you can mindlessly watch whatever that's heroing yourself or it's heroing your child. And this is the big one. One of the things we see in unconscious parenting, and this is the point we want to make, we can make a lot here, is parents who view their children as victims. Their children are at the effect of the current circumstances. They're at the effect of homeschooling. They're at the effect of social distancing. They're at the effect of their siblings. Going to say this, Some of you view your children as victims at the effect of their diagnosis. Once they're given that diagnosis, adhd, you see them as a victim. They don't have good executive function. So therefore they are a victim at the effect of their brain chemistry, at the effect of their psychology. And you relate to them as victims and you hero them over and over again. Or you go to villain and you blame somebody else who doesn't understand your child's particular uniqueness. So parenting from below the line is parenting in the drama triangle. Go, Diana, you're going to say something.

I want to just say that a big reason why we're heroing is I don't want to be with my discomfort. I don't want to be with those sensations in the body because I don't. And I don't want to feel these feelings that I'm going to have. If they're having their discomfort, if they're having feelings, if they're upset, something's going to happen over here. And a lot of times what I'm really relieving is me. I'm relieving myself from my own discomfort by keeping Suzy and Johnny in their perfect little happy spots so I don't have to go into my own deep work to become more self aware.

So we could do a whole parenting class on how we're all parenting from the drama triangle versus when we're above the line. We're seeing our children, regardless of their age, as fully empowered creators of their own experience. I'm going to say it again. We see them as fully empowered creators of their own experience. We don't see them as victims at the effect of now that doesn't mean that I see my 3 month old grandson as a fully empowered creator capable of foraging in the wilderness to find food and feed himself. I don't see him that way. I see him as an age appropriate developmental creator of his own experience. Now, we could do all kinds of distinctions and understandings here. But we would just back up and say, how do you see your children and how do you see you in the parenting relationship? A lot of times you see yourselves as victims at the effect of your child. Some of you mentioned that you've got teenagers who are using drugs. Great. So do you see yourself as a victim at the effect of your child's choices and behaviors? Do you villain your spouse because you don't think they've set good enough boundaries? Do you blame your child? All of that is the drama triangle and it's all driven by fear. You're just scared. I'm going to say it again. You're scared to lose control. My God, when you can't control what your kids ingest in terms of drugs, it is fucking terrifying. This is your sweet, beautiful child and you can't control what they're doing. It's a loss of control and it's scary. But rather than face, feel and deal with our consciousness, we get all reactive and fill in the blank in how we relate to our kids. When you realize you can't control how much gaming your kid is doing, how often they are playing games on their computer because they can sneak it, they can do it at night, you can take the computer and throw it away, you can try to power up, but they are smarter and faster than you. They figure out how to do it. You that is terrifying to your wanting of safety and security because you think your kid is brain is just going to go to mush or they're going to be addicted. You've read all the literature that they're living on this dopamine addiction and you're 20 years out in the future and you're terrified about their safety and security. Before you go have the conversation with them about their compulsion around addiction. Gaming, you've got to come back and do your own consciousness work. So this is commitment. One below the line, scared into the drama triangle above the line, present.

I'd like to give an example. Below the line. I'm at the effect of my kids not going to bed when I ask them to. I'm reactive and I blame them. I blame maybe my spouse or my co parent. I blame, you know, technology for making them overstimulated, whatever. From above the line I say, how am I creating them? Not easily going to bed at the times that we, that I'd like them to. How am I doing that? And I start to take a look at it and I think to myself, gosh, if I could teach a class to other parents on how to make sure Their kids don't go to bed at the time that we asked them to. What would I tell them to do? You start to own how you're a co creator of the experience. Don't have natural consequences in place. If you do have them break them. When they do whine and cry, go, oh, okay. Don't let them feel their feelings and don't be comfortable with your own feelings when they cry or they're angry at you. Try to control your kids liking you on and on and on. You can go into, oh, that's how I create it so that I'm committed to the kids not going to bed on time. And I start to own that. So that's what that looks like in real time.

Okay, let's go to commitment two. I get so hooked on these, we could just chit chat. There are questions I want to ask you right now, Diana, about that, but I want to keep moving. Ok, so commitment number two says, when I'm above the line, curious, like curious. I want to learn. I see life as one big invitation to learn, to grow. I see life as an invitation into the unknown, into uncertainty. Now you get this. This is when I'm in a state of trust. I actually see life as an invitation to the unknown and the uncertain. When I'm below the line, I want certainty, I want knowability, I want predictability because I'm scared and I want to control. And the way I do that is I auger down on being right. So when we work with parents around conscious parenting, we just say, look, list all the things in your parenting that you want to be right about. Oh God, this would be so fun if you got a piece of paper or open up a screen, open up a document or a text thread and just write down what are all the things you want to be right about as a parent? And by the way, it's not just that you want to be right. When you start this, you are right. So write down all the stuff you're right about as a parent. Let's just get you started with a few. I'm right that my kids shouldn't eat a lot of sugar, aren't you? Write that down. Diana, what's something you think parents want to be right about?

Well, I'm definitely right. They should not be on their screens as much as they are. I'm right that they should be happy. I'm right that they should be. We should find ways to make sure they're happy and enjoying their lives. Well, I'm right that they should like and Value me. I'm definitely right about that. I'm right that they shouldn't treat each other the way they are.

That's a good one. I'm right that the 6 year old shouldn't hit the 4 year old. I'm right that they should be sleep trained.

I'm right that they should be motivated. I'm right they should be motivated to want to do their homework.

Beautiful. Just gang, you should be writing stuff down right now.

Oh yeah, you should listen to me. You should listen to me and do what I tell you to do. I'm right about that. That's a good one.

I love it. I see people throwing stuff in the chat line. That's great.

Yeah, throw out some. Everybody go ahead and just put some of the top things you're wanting to be right about.

Oh, I love it. Shouldn't ask for sugar constantly.

Also things like, like you were talking about diagnosis. You know, I have a daughter with pretty significant learning differences and so I used to be right about she's going to need certain things a certain way. And I'm right about that. And I'm, you know, so I got all into. I could start to get caught in seeing that diagnosis and being right. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm right that the teacher should be more honoring of her differences. I'm right that it should be fair for her.

So you're getting this. Everybody's getting. I love the text thread here. So I get the chat thread. So everybody's getting this. It doesn't take long to figure it out. I'll go back to where we started when I believe that my job is primarily to teach and train my children. And it's not that that isn't your job. We get that. Then one of the things I want to do is come up with a set of constructs about what I'm teaching them and training them about. And that becomes a set of values, a moral code, a set of responsibilities, a set of do's and don'ts. We get that. We're not saying don't have that. Just hear me on this. But then we get so invested in being right about all that. And anytime our child isn't living that way, acting that way, behaving that way, believing that way, we want them to believe what we believe about race. Then we get threatened and we go below the line because it's a threat to our wanting to be good parents. I guarantee you, everybody on this call wants to be a good parent. You took time out of the middle of your day to get on a call to be a good parent. And a big threat you have is around failing as a parent. And one of the aspects of failing as a parent is your kid isn't living the way that you believe they're supposed to live. So you can check off whether or not you were a good parent. Great. But then the shadow side of that is we get so attached to being right that we get more interested in being right than we are in learning. We get more interested in being right. Listen to this. Than we are in being connected to our children. This is a huge one. You'd rather be right than be connected. So commitment two says that the key to commitment two is, would I be willing to see. Would I be willing to see that the opposite of my belief could be as true as my belief? Now, it's not that your belief is wrong. We're not saying that. Would I be open to the possibility that the opposite could be as true? Could I learn from spinning it around and looking at it from a different place? Now, most people are terrified that if they started to do that, they would go into a moral free fall and they wouldn't have any basis on which to say to their child, stop. In our experience, that isn't true at all. But the basis of the stop becomes something other than your righteousness. That's a big statement right there. So commitment two says, I'm more interested in learning, in exploring, in being curious, than I am in needing to prove I right. Okay, let's do commitment three, and then let's take a few questions, because I imagine there will be some questions. So commitment three says, when I'm above the line, I develop an extremely friendly relationship with feelings. I experience that feelings are just part of being a mammal, part of being a human with a limbic system. Feelings just come and feelings go. Feelings are part of being fully alive. So when I'm above the line, I feel my own feelings. They come. Feelings are just energies in the body. I feel them, I breathe, I move. I give them a little bit of sound, and the feelings go through my body. I don't act out my feelings. If I'm angry, I don't violate somebody with my rage. If I'm angry, I don't hit something, I don't break something. I learned to be with my anger in what we call a clean way, where it comes and I learn how to move it through my body and it's gone in less than 90 seconds. I know how to do that with my sadness, with my joy, with my fear. And I know how to support my children to do the same thing.

And I listen to the intelligence of those feelings. They have wisdom to offer. They are pointing me in the ways that would most serve me and others. So sadness is saying something needs to get let go of anger. Saying something could be more exquisite. Something needs to change. Something's no longer of service. Fear is saying, hey, pay attention. Something needs to get known. So I'm listening to my intelligence, to the intelligence of my children. Joy, let's celebrate. So I don't dismiss those as a problem. I welcome them like good advisors.

When we watch parents just feel into this yourself, we say there are five core feeling states. Sad, angry, scared, joy, and sexual feelings are one of the core feeling states. That feeling of attraction, that feeling of creativity, procreativity, and way beyond that. When we coach parents, we often discover that they're somewhat comfortable feeling joy, maybe sadness. But they don't want to feel anger, fear, or sexual feelings. Therefore, since they won't feel them in themselves, they won't let their children feel them. One of our six kids, One of my stories about this child is they've never been comfortable feeling their own sadness. Never. They have an extreme positivity bias. So as I watch my grandchildren start to feel sad, the system kicks in to try to get the kid to not feel sad. And these parents are very, very intelligent. They have all kinds of ways to try to move the child out of sadness. But it's coming from their unwillingness to feel their own sadness because they have never experienced the great value of brokenheartedness. So when we watch conscious parents, they develop a fluid, dynamic dance with feelings. So when anger comes up, you can say to your child, oh, sweetheart, I can see you're angry. I welcome your anger. Your anger has a place here. And you know that in our family, we let anger come out of our bodies. So you can have them stomp their feet, you can have them walk over and pound on the couch. You can have them scream out loud so they move it through their body, as opposed to saying, stop being angry. Stop being angry, stop being angry. So conscious parenting is developing this friendly, flowing relationship with your feelings and therefore with your children. So like Diana said, you get all the incredible wisdom and intelligence of all the feelings. Okay, when we're below the line, we just repress, suppress, and express inappropriately. Repress, suppress, or express inappropriately. You know, I talk to people who say, God, you know, my family, we did anger. But whenever anger showed up, somebody got hurt. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the expression of anger in a way that's clean and healthy and responsible.

One other thing around emotional intelligence is we also pay attention to what we call cog, cognitive emotive loops, which is, I think I'm right about something. You shouldn't have so much screen time. And then I anger myself because you're on the screen again. And then that comes back and gets my thought going again and I create a loop. And now I'm in a state of resentment about your screen time. It's a mood, and it's not. If I try to be with that anger, it's not going to really shift because I've got a unlock. This is from Commitment two. I got to unlock being right first before I can let go of being able to release that emotion all the way through. And sometimes once I unlock the thought, maybe anger is not even here anymore. Maybe it's fear, or maybe there's something else going on here. But I've got to pay attention to how I might be actually generating. In our work, we say I sadden myself, I scare myself, I anger myself with these thoughts.

I just want to say, if you combine all this together, let's stay with screen time for a second. And we don't do this very often, but just because this is an intro, people always say, well, what does it sound like? Well, here's an example. From above the line, you walk into your kid's bedroom and they're staring at their iPad again or on their computer. From below the line, you can say, I told you no more screen time. Only 15 minutes of screen time a day. Unless you do any of the following, then you can earn more screen time. Because screen time is fundamentally destructive. It gets you hooked on this chemical addiction. It's melting your brain. And I'm right about that. So put the screen away. We've all done that a million times, right? Or some version of that. Some of you are more passive aggressive than aggressive aggressive from presence. It might go something like this. You walk in and you see your kid on a screen and you say, wow. I just want you to know I'm scaring myself. I'm scared. I look over there and I see you on your screen. And you know, my friends are all sending me these articles about what screen time does, and I don't know whether it does or doesn't because I can find countervailing arguments. I'm just scared. It'd be great if maybe I were wiser and more enlightened. I'm not. I'm just scared. So I'm just going to ask you to put the screen away because I'm scared. I don't know whether I'm right, but I am scared. And in my role as parents, one of my responsibilities is to make choices on this. Someday you'll get to make these choices. Right now, you don't get to make that choice. I get to make it, but I don't have to do it from being right or righteous. I just do it from the presence that I have right now. And it's a completely different conversation from presence versus from below the line and fear and reactivity. And your kid can feel the difference, even if they're triggered and reactive.

I was thinking, let's coach somebody here and actually see how we play this out. So, Erica, is there someone?

Yeah, I just reached out to Anjani over on Chat to ask if you'd be willing to be coached around your issue. And I see you are probably cross typing your question. So curious. If you're willing to be coached in front of the group around your children and feeling their feelings.

Sure.

Thank you.

Okay.

Jim, do you want me to just put my issue out there?

Sure. And you know what I'm gonna do? Anjani and I are friends. We're in forum together. I know her very well. So, Diana, you coach her.

Okay.

I don't think you. Right. So this is a clean slate.

Okay.

Okay. So the thing that I posted was, how do I. How do I feel all my feelings in front of my children who are six and eight, without scaring the shit out of them? So, example, my husband and I were in a heated discussion the other day, and it was a conversation. It was going back and forth, and I just.

I felt.

I felt my anger. And I just, like, I just like. And I just screamed. And he knew what I was doing. I wasn't screaming at him. I was moving anger through my body. And my. My daughter thought we were going to get a divorce. And I had to have this long conversation afterwards with her about how, you know, mommy believes that feeling our feelings is a good thing. And, you know, we talk about that a lot. And that's all I was doing. She was fine afterwards. But I still have this, like, guilt that I. That I traumatized her with this sound. And so very curious. And I think someone else wrote something similar of, like, how do we help our children feel our. Feel their feelings in public places? And, you know.

Okay, so the content is. I want to know how best to feel my feelings in Front of my children. Right. And you're asking the question, how do I do that? Okay. So the first question we ask is, from where are you asking the question from where are you being with this issue? Above the line or below the line?

Below the line, because I want. I want my children to not be scared.

Yeah. I want to. I notice I'm below the line. And one way I know is I want to control their feeling states. Great. Any other way you know you're below the line?

I feel contracted in my body.

Yeah. Good. So there's some somatic experience you're having in the body that lets you know. Oftentimes there's often a. I might be holding my breath a little bit or there's some muscles tightening.

Huh.

A certain posture can get locked in. Great. So you're below the line. So second question we want to ask you is, would you be willing to accept yourself for being scared? I'm scared.

Yeah.

I'm scared. Yeah.

And I'm scared that I don't know what I'm doing.

I'm scared I don't know what I'm doing, and I'm afraid. Does that feel most like a threat to your security, your control, or your approval? Control. Control. Okay, good. And when we ask for you to accept yourself, we're not just asking intellectually. Can I accept myself? Yeah. Yeah, I know I'm scared.

I can.

Yeah. I get that.

It's.

Can I have my mind and my heart and my body except open to being scared?

Yeah.

Just scared. That's all.

Yeah.

And then the next question in conscious leadership is, would I be willing to shift from this state of threat to a state of trust? Would I be willing to get open and curious and learn versus wanting to be right? They shouldn't be as scared as they are when I feel my feelings.

Yeah.

So you say, yes, I think I'm willing. And then we want to ask a few willingness questions. So let's just check it out and see. You have two girls, Is that right?

Mm.

Would you be willing to let the girls feel whatever they feel when they feel it as much as they do? Would you be willing 100% intellectually? I hear you, but you were shaking 100%.

That's what Indian people do when they mean yes.

Okay. So I want to have you just still. That was a quick answer. So just really let. Imagine that this question's dropping down in the top of your head, and every cell in your body gets a vote all the way down to your toes. Would you be willing, Anjani? To allow your girls to feel whatever emotions arise as much as they do when they do. Would you be willing to allow that?

Yes. And then quickly, what comes afterwards is a and. And a but. And so momentarily. Yes.

And then.

And then it goes back.

And then it goes back to. And the but says what?

As long as they're doing it the right way, not storming outside the house and running away or breaking something or.

Yeah, as long as I can control these kinds. So then what we would have you do is recognize there's this momentary yes, but really it's still a no. Because I'm wanting to control. I can feel myself trying to control an outcome. So just try on what would be like just to go with no. I'm not willing right now to allow my girls to feel whatever they're feeling.

I'm not willing to let them feel whatever they're feeling. It sounds ludicrous. Sounds very hypocritical.

Yeah.

But that's what we do. We're just scared. And our experience is being aware means being aligned with what's actually true right now. So I'm appreciating. You can just feel that. I feel the yes for a moment, but then it goes to a no. It's a lot of awareness. So no right now. No. And we say no is just as good of an answer as yes. Another one would be would you be willing to let go of trying to control the outcome of your children?

No.

No.

No. Another one would be, would you be willing to feel all of your feelings, all of your scare. When they're scared.

What comes up is I should. And then what comes up is, but I'm the adult.

And. And what's the story about adults that you have?

I should be able to take care of them if they're scared.

And taking care of them so means if I'm gonna take care of you and you're scared, I'm not allowed to be scared. Is that it? Yeah.

And that sounds ludicrous.

Yeah. Well, work. We're all kind of crazy. Yeah. In the most wonderful ways. We're learning. So you can feel that place of no, not yet. I still want to be right. I shouldn't be scared as an adult. As a parent, I'm right. They shouldn't have their feelings all the way. I'm right. That I should control things. So I'm still here in reactivity. And we say hooray. You're just right where you are. It's not good. It's not bad. It doesn't mean Anything about you, unless you want to make that mean something about you. You can make it mean ludicrous if you want to, but that's just a story. And instead you're just going to get with right now for just right now. We don't know what's going to happen next, but for right now, I'm committed to controlling my daughter's feelings and therefore controlling my behavior so that they don't have feelings. That's what I'm committed to just for now. And it's an invitation for me to come back and look at what's over here that's wanting to wake up. You know, my sense is there's something around you just being with how scared you are. And would you be willing to feel that in the body and let all of your fear be here as much as it is?

Yeah. To give myself permission to feel the full range, I think I give myself lots of permission to feel my feelings.

Yeah.

Permission to feel the full range of my feelings.

Yeah. There are some times when I have that fear come in, I feel like I'm almost on the edge of throwing up. I'm so scared. And can I have the capacity to.

Hold that.

To be with that, to allow life to come through me and be as scared as it is?

Yeah. By the way, I'm going to say something. First of all, engineer, I appreciate you pause there. I just appreciate.

Thank you.

And your willingness to show up over and over and over again and keep exploring your edge. Keep exploring your edge. Yeah. For you, you know this. But for everybody else, I would say if you want to experiment with commitment number three, we recommend that you give your children kind of a friendly on ramp to feeling feelings. It's not like you go to a parenting thing, you know, in the middle of the day on a Thursday, and then that night you say, okay, kids, about time for you to see what real anger looks like. You know, and you fill the house with your rage. You know, that might not be that friendly to either you or to them. Better off to say, hey, you know, I've been thinking about how I don't feel all my feelings. And I want to start to feel my feelings, and I want to support you to feel your feelings. And then we're huge fans of play. As you know, Anthony and I was a master of play. One of the things I recommend to parents is because your kids get this, by the way, they get this. Especially kids your age, they understand this. Some of our kids, we've socialized out of feeling our feelings. But a Lot of the younger ones, they really get it. And you can say, we're going to put on some music and we're going to just have a dance party and we're going to dance our feelings. So put on, you know, some, like, heavy music, and everybody gets to dance their anger. What does it look like to dance your anger? And then put on some sad music and everybody gets to dance their sadness and some scared music and some happy music. And what you're doing is you're teaching them the relationship between their bodies where feelings get expressed, and the feeling that it's not an intellectual thing, it's a somatic thing. So having some emotional dance parties is a really fun place to start. And then if you want to give them an on ramp, give them little tastes of it, you know, where you're in that role of doing your own practice and in the role of supporting them to practice with you. So there are lots of very basic tools that we would offer for how to really get emotional intelligence flowing in your family once you're fully willing.

I love that.

Can I just.

I just.

I love that because my kids are very.

They.

They roll their eyes when I talk about feeling their feelings. Like, oh, I don't want to feel my feelings. I don't want to talk about my feelings. I don't, you know, and so I love. I love the idea of easier on ramp.

Yeah. There are a couple things I want to say about that. One is, how is that a mirror for me? Right. My children are often a mirror of my consciousness. So thank you for showing me how. I still don't want to feel all that. My feelings. I get it. And then there's a couple other things. So one of the things I want to have you all get is if we answer Anjani's question, because we do have content. Like Jim saying, you know, you could do these dance parties. We got all kinds of ideas. If we just give her content to her question without addressing the context from where is she asking the question, she'll take our ideas home and she might play around with them, but she's going to come back over and over again to the same pattern because the context hasn't shifted. And so we really want to have you understand that. Otherwise we would go be doing heroing. Oh, Anjani, here's what you should do. You should do, da, da, da, da, da. And we ignore her deeper underlying commitment to not feel all of her feelings and let them feel all theirs. So I want to. That. That's why we're always going to test from where are you asking the question? Because if you're in a victimhood, consciousness will just hero. And many of you are doing that with your children. They come to you with problems, and you're getting caught in the content of their issues, and you're not addressing their context, which is a really important part of parenting or managing a team or for whomever you're giving guidance to is where are you? Let's talk about that first. Now, Anjani, one way you could play with this is you could say to your girls, hey, girls, I just want to let you know I'm committed to trying to control your feelings, and I just want to own that. And, you know, they might go, duh. But you could say, you know, let's make it bigger. And so you could do this dance party that Jim's talking about. Let's dance a little bit. You guys start to feel your feelings, and then you come over and like wrap your arms around them and go, no, no, no, no. Don't feel them that much. And you could make it bigger, like, play the pattern so it's stops. Playing you is one way to have some fun with this. Because right now it feels so serious.

I'm letting that, I'm letting that sink. And I'm trying to imagine that Jim knows me very well. He knows how serious I am.

I can feel that about you. There's some way to loosen it, you know, so. Or find name that Persona, that part of you, and make her bigger in playful way. Yeah.

Thanks, Anjani.

Yes. Thank you so much.

Erica, is there a question out there we should be addressing?

Yes. So James Cervelli is asking a question that lots of people are asking and are excited, plus one ing and asking their own questions about discipline and discipline and boundaries and feelings and how does it all work together. And I'll let him do it in his own words. And it's all on behalf of many.

Hello. Hi, James. Hi. Yeah, my question was I have a 10 year old, and sometimes when she's feeling her feelings, she's really acting out. And sometimes it can be like a hitting or a violent or these outbursts. And so how do we find the balance between supporting our children, expressing their feelings, you know, keeping everybody safe? Yeah, we put, we have, you know, like all of our trainings. When people come to our trainings, we say, here's the deal, you get to feel your feelings and do whatever. But the rules are it's got to be friendly to your physical self. Everybody else's physical selves and to this physical space. So we all, could everybody commit to that? Could we all agree on that's how we're gonna be in relationship? And if you break the agreement, I remember, remember somebody like broke a bunch of glass. We had people doing all kinds and then we'd have to say, hey, hold on a minute, we're gonna, you're now no longer in the agreement. Now we're gonna take responsibility for even removing you out of the space, holding you so that you can't harm yourself or others, et cetera, et cetera.

So what we're talking about there is commitment number six, James. And making an agreement with your children. And with a 10 year old you could do this. Not when they're feeling a feeling at another time when there's some peace and equanimity and calmness. You could say something like, hey sweetheart, I love that you feel your feelings. I love that you have not started repressing and suppressing your feelings and you let them flow. Especially I'm thinking of Clarissa Pinkola Esty's book Women who Run with the Wolves. And you said she's 10 years old and Clarissa Pinkola Este says it's a 10 years old that women. I think for boys it's different, that girls face a crossroads of whether they're going to repress their wildness, their instinctual being and get socialized or whether they're going to stay in their flow. So I love this to a 10 year old to say I love your flow. And this is a place where you can have flow. Now again, not while she's flowing, but when you're having a conversation, but for your wellbeing and for my well being, for our wellbeing and for the house. I'd like you to consider, and I would ask her to consider making an agreement that when you feel your feelings you won't hurt yourself, hurt other sentient beings, including the cap or break property we don't want you to break. By the way, you could have a big stack of old dishes that you say you want to break something. Here's the old dishes and here's a hammer. Or here. And then say, I'd really like you to consider this. Would you be willing to make that agreement with us? And by the way, we'll make the same agreement with you. So you say, you know, as your father or parent or co parent, I'm going to feel my anger too. But the agreement I make with you is when I feel my anger, I will not speak to you. In an unfriendly and hurtful way. I will not use words to criticize, judge, blame you. I might make sounds that reflect my energy, kind of like Anjani said about her anger, but I'll make the same agreement with you. And then she comes back and she's. You'll have a conversation around that. And then she comes back and says, yeah, dad, I'd be willing to do that. Great. So if you start moving some anger and you're wanting to hit somebody or break something, then it's my responsibility at that point to call the game and to say, nope, we can't play this game right now. So here are going to be the consequences. Here's going to be the choices we're going to make. You ask something about discipline, and then you could talk that through. If we're playing the game and we're not playing it according to the agreements we've made, then, you know, here's what happens. And you'd have that conversation with her, by the way. You'd submit to the same agreements. I'd be having a conversation like that. Does that make sense, James?

And as Jim said, I highly recommend having a way. We are going to do it. So if we can break dishes or. In my house, we had some big pillows with the plastic wiffle ball bat, and they would go to the bat station. We'd all go to the bat station to move some energy. 15, 20 seconds. Or take a towel and twist a towel and bite into it and scream as loud as you want, how mad are you? And welcome. You can be as mad as you want and bite into that towel. So find ways and talk about that before the emotion comes out so that we have plans for how we'll move that energy.

I just want to. I think this is a great moment to tie back to the dual role of parent, teacher, teacher, parent, and our model of feelings. And people have asked often say, why is love not one of the feelings? And our answer is, love is in all the feelings. Love is behind everything. And so when it comes to discipline and there are feelings like anger. Coming up, the role of a parent of where we are at in our developmental state. You know, we. We have this developed superego to use. You know, to borrow from psychology, we can hold the space of love, and love can say, no, I'm not going to let you hurt yourself. Yes, anger. And underneath it, the parent gets to hold those boundaries from love, which can look like all kinds of things.

That's great.

Right? That's what you're pointing to stop can be very loving. Grace, who's on our team, she started teaching, she started training her child very young. Mommy's gonna get angry. Mommy's making sounds. Mommy uses a bat. She started doing that when he was an infant. She got him a little bat. He had a bat. She tells the story that when he's 18 months old, she's in the kitchen, she's banging dishes. She's really angry. He waddles over in his diaper and hands her her bat because he sees she's not expressing. And he recognizes at 18 months, you need to move your motion through. They move that energy through so kids very young can understand these concepts.

I remember we were joking last night in our family. Some of the kids are here, and we were joking about a moment where I took my little granddaughter. And she must have been, I don't know, maybe two. And this little girl can move some anger. She is just. She is a vessel of full aliveness. She's exquisite. And she was moving some anger, and she was doing some stuff that was outside of the agreement of what we could do. So I just went and sat out on a porch with her, and I made sure the environment was safe. There was a rug down. There was nothing sharp around. And I just sat with her. It was a long time. This is what we were joking about. We just sat out on the pool porch while she just raged on and on and on. And all I was saying was, I see you. You make sense to me. And I made sure I was deeply breathing, so I was equilibrating my nervous system, and I could just witness her. And it was so beautiful to watch because these rage things came through like waves. There'd be a wave of rage and then some sadness and then a wave of shaking and then some peace. And I just rode waves with her. And by the way, bringing feelings into your home is what aliveness is all about. One of the things your kids have been brought here to teach you is that because you're repressing so many of your feelings, you've cut yourself off from your full aliveness. Let them invite you back to your aliveness.

Yeah. Another question.

Yes. Let's go with Sherry, Sherry Bachi. And we're going to move to teenagers, which people are chomping at the bit to talk about. She's going to lead us there. I believe you should be. Oh, you're not. I've got you. You are unmuted now.

Hi, everybody. Taking my question. So I find all this amazing, and I'm brand new to conscious leadership. And I have a 17 year old boy and I'm wondering, is it too late to start? Like, how do I get going with this with him? Never too late to start.

Good.

Never too late. And is there anything in particular, any issue in particular you want to deal with with him or you're just saying in general, I'd like to start practicing with him? Well, there are some issues, the most prominent right now being substance use. I know that one. We know that one. Yeah, yeah. And so there's substances being used, you get scared.

Yes.

And likely you've been dealing with this often like I did, from below the line, wanting to control, manage their behavior. So one of the first things I would recommend is you role model by you practicing first, first coming in and recognizing locate yourself, where am I? And I'm scared, as Jim was saying, to go and say, hey honey, I'm scared. And really drop into where's the threat coming from and reveal that. And I can feel my part of me wants to control you. And I feel this, like, have a very candid conversation. And you know, have you ever asked, it took me like three years before I asked my son, hey, can you tell me more about what do you like about smoking marijuana? Can you tell me why you are so enthralled with this? I want to learn about you. I want to understand more about what turns you on about this. And I mean, gosh, it was shocking to me that it took me three years to answer that, asked that question after trying to manage and control and throw every article his way. And we just had article debates for three years.

You know, Sherry. Yeah, I love this. Is it too late to begin? Well, again, let's go back to the very beginning of this conversation. To begin. What is it too late to begin? You choosing to have your son and your relationship be your teacher? Is it too late for you to use his relationship to substances to wake you up? It's never too late. So one of the questions I'd want to explore with you, not necessarily in front of hundreds of your best friends, unless you want to your relationship to substances. What is your relationships to stimulants and depressives? Do you partake? Do you hide that you partake? Do you have any dependency or are you over on the other side? You cut them so far out of your life that they have become like this. No way. Never, Never. So you become some rigid, uptight person. He's just there inviting you to wake up and do your own work. So imagine this conversation. Hey, sweetie, you know, I've been, like, kind of up your ass for a couple of years about you and substances. But the truth of the matter is I got some issues myself around substances. So, like, I'm going to work on myself for a while and get out of your business. Try that one. Like, I don't know what you do. Maybe you smoke weed or you used to. Or maybe you did a cocaine thing when you were in your 20s. You were scared shit about that. Or maybe you're addicted to surfing the web. Or you're addicted to caffeine. You say, you know, there's no difference between me and you. I can't imagine making it till noon without a cup of coffee. So I get it. I get what compulsive behavior is like. I'm going to face and deal with my own shit before I start screwing around with yours. It's never too late for you to use the relationship to help wake you up. Does that make sense, Sherry? Does that resonate totally.

It totally makes sense. I am on the spectrum of I didn't do this in high school. I don't know why you're doing this in high school. I can't imagine why you would want to ruin your chances and cloud your future. Yeah. And then you'll have to. You could go look at things like, I feel right that you should. I shouldn't have done that in high school. I feel right about that. I did the right thing so you could go unwind that. Like, I should have done that in high school.

True.

As I shouldn't have. So maybe. Maybe there could be differences of having done those, or I should do them now is as true as I shouldn't do them now. So that your mind. One of the things we want to help you do is get the mind to let go of being right in either direction. So I don't know. Maybe you should. Maybe you shouldn't. I don't know. And now if in the. In that I don't know. What do we get to learn about substance? Our relationships to substances? And what do you get to learn about ourselves in all of this? Because it's not even really about the substances. Something else. There's something way more interesting underneath all that.

Our children are inviting us to investigate our beliefs again and again. And that's what Diana is prodding you to. Not about doing drugs or not doing drugs. Like the beliefs. The beliefs that they're going and going and driving us.

Just a mild graduate school statement. If we went to graduate school. Unconscious parenting. One of the things that Our mentor, Katie Hendricks, said about this when we were learning parenting from her is everything your kids are going through is an invitation for you to deal with something you were going through at the same time age, and your kids are bringing it back up to you. So here. How old? You said your son's 17.

Yes, 17.

You're all locked down and being a good girl and you're repressed and you're going to be a straight A student and you're going to do whatever you do. And you disowned your little bad girl. You disowned your rebel, you disowned your druggie, your rule breaker. And so now life, this is just a fun game to play. Life is bringing you back to yourself. And if you could do the work to own the disowned parts of yourself, then it might be that your son can release from having to own them for you, because you won't own them. Now, that's a wild statement about parenting, but it makes it really fun.

Yeah. And especially my sense about it is like your relationship to control in general. You know, if I weren't. If I weren't moving around from a controlled state all the time, what, what would be able to come forward in me?

Okay. I think.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sherry, because I imagine you're speaking on behalf of a lot of us. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So we're coming to an end and we want to remind you that we do have a course that will be going diving into all these concepts more. So if this is of interest to you, we'd love to have you sign up for this course. Also, we do have a survey that we want to make sure everybody gets a chance to fill out the survey. This is all new for us to be doing these kinds of things, and it's really helpful if you can give us guidance around what works, what doesn't work. What else do you need? As we're starting to create more content and more offerings out in the world, your guidance will help us know how to best serve you. So thank you so much for that. Also want to remind you all that on our website, Conscious is we have a resource page there. And there are so many wonderful videos and guided meditations and handouts that are all available for you to use in dialogue. Download as you like. And so we want to make sure that you know that those are all there. And we do have a newsletter that we put out. And I believe you are. I believe you are on this newsletter now, having signed up for the this course. Is that right? Erica.

Well, nothing's happened yet because we just finished the course. We will on the list and unsubscribe away if you're not interested.

Yeah, but we will put you on the list. It comes out twice a month. Jim does some wonderful going deepers. We've just put a lot of content out on conscious parenting. And so the latest newsletter will come to you or the next newsletter will come here to you. And is there a way for them to pull up back past newsletters? Erica?

Not yes. I mean, no, we don't. Not directly.

We will.

We are going to be following up tomorrow by tomorrow with an email to you that will have these survey links again. It's going to have a link to a page on our site where there'll be a video of this course for you. You can share it far and wide with other friends and parents and anyone you'd like with resources from this with. With the course information. And we will have links to our past newsletters that are dedicated to conscious parenting.

Great. So Elaine, if you could unmute everybody, we can all say goodbye and just want to thank you all for joining us and we hope this was valuable. Cheers to this wonderful spiritual journey of parenting.

Aye.

Thank you.

Bye.

Thank you everybody. Bye. Thank you.

You.

Bye.

Bye.

Good day, everyone. Thank you so much. Thank you, everybody. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Jim and Diana, have a great day. Thanks so much. Bye.

All the children out there, thank you very much.

From the Caribbean. Thank you so much. But encouraging employees to take them is very different.

Everything that's not.