Dr. Shefali Tsabary defines conscious parenting as attunement: engaging and negotiating with children instead of controlling them. She combines Eastern meditation with Western psychology to help parents work through their own fears and suffering, so they can let kids learn from mistakes without hovering.
Chapters
You know, many people think that conscious parenting is about never saying no to our kids. You know, treating them like these fragile little statues in a closet and putting bubble wrap around them and only feeding them what they want. It's not about that. It's really about attuning with the child. You know, what does the child need right now? Can I not power trip my child? Can I just not do things? Because that's the way parents do things. No, it's about something in between negotiating, it's about attuning, it's about engaging, it's about connecting with our children. And I think parents want the easy way. You know, either I'm like this or guess what, I'm nothing. And this is just the parents way of being lazy, you know, and not doing the work of kind of treading that middle space. I'm Dr. Shefali. I'm a clinical psychologist and wisdom teacher. I went down the path of pursuing a PhD in clinical psychology. But along the way I also began this intense journey of my own awakening. I began meditating really seriously. I began to understand that all of our suffering is really created in our mind. And I became fascinated with the workings of the mind and really became focused on uncovering the root causes of my own suffering and then inevitably helping my clients with it. I found that this approach of east meets west was quite unique. I didn't know there were not too many people doing it. And it really allowed me to accelerate my power to help people liberate from suffering. So I have a 16 year old daughter and it's quite an adventure. You know, simple things like she wants to go out at night and she wants to go out with a group of boys and she'll tell me, mom, they're like my brothers, you know, they're like my best friends. She doesn't know that I know that boys who drink too much can get out of control and they could harm her possibly. She doesn't know that I'm driving myself crazy with all these fears. So she thinks I'm being controlling. When I ask her who's going, what are their numbers? Who are their mothers? Give me their mother's phone numbers. She thinks I'm a raving lunatic. She doesn't realize that things can get out of control. On the other hand, I don't realize that these boys are good kids. Perhaps, perhaps they are best friends. Perhaps she can trust them. Perhaps they will protect her. Right? So it's this constant battle of who knows more. And at some point, you know, honestly the parent has to kind of relinquish their desire for control. Because especially with a 16 year old, they're going to go out into the world very soon on their own. They've got to kind of flap their wings and try it out and test things out. And part of that is having your heart broken or drinking too much, or not knowing where to stop and when to come home. This is part of the growing phase. I mean, I made a bazillion mistakes as a teenager, so I know that that's how I learned. So now I have to give my child the opportunity to learn through her own mistakes. People can naturally ask, you know, why should we trust you? Like what's so special about you? And trust me, before I wrote my first book, I too sat with myself and asked, you know, there have been hundreds of parenting books, what's going to be special about yours? And I think what's unique about my message is that it truly gets to the core of the suffering of the parent. Because I've worked with so many innumerable thousands of families and spoken to, you know, hundreds of thousands of people. Now I've begun to understand human nature and I've begun to understand the parents mind and the parents attitude and, and I deconstruct that and I study that and I've analyzed the trends that make us as parents, stressed out, anxious, unhappy, dysfunctional. And I offer my insights and I always tell people, you know, don't follow me. The last thing I want you to do is treat me like I'm some exalted guru. I help people discover their own truth. I help them to discover their own wisdom. And I think that's what's perhaps maybe different about me. I don't offer them a technique or an easy fix solution. No, I make them go inside themselves and do the hard work and find their own wisdom and discover that they knew all the answers all along. They know their child better than anyone. And so I really do not take the responsibility of being the leader, the expert or the guru. I really give that power back to parents and I train them and teach them how to cultivate their own knowing. And I think that's what's really empowering about my message. So I'm so excited to be working with Vishen and Mindvalley because we have created this amazing quest. It's called the Conscious Parenting Mastery Quest. So you may know, a quest is 35 days of this incredible journey that I lead parents on where I take them through different lessons week by week. You know, say week one. We uncover our patterns, and we go into our childhoods, and we see how mom and dad messed us up, and then say, in week two, we uncover our fears and our greatest dreams for our children. Talk about our emotional toolkits as parents. And I teach parents how to expand their toolkits. Or we talk about boundaries and discipline and why discipline doesn't work and what will. So week by week, I take parents on this journey toward uncovering their greatest anxieties, towards taming their greatest anxieties and really releasing them. And eventually, the parent comes out at the other side more liberated, more joyful, and more connected with their children. So I'm so honored that mindvalley is doing this, because the message of conscious parenting really needs to be out there in the world. And this is one more pathway to spreading it to many, many more parents who need.
