Josh TrentIdentity Transformation Architect and award winning Host of the Wellness + Wisdom Podcast—a decade-strong show with over 750 episodes and 15M downloads.

Parenting Love: Guiding Children's Self-Love & Choices #shorts

11 Jun 2026 · 1 min

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In this short, Josh Trent reflects on the paradoxical challenge of raising children who remain true to their essence while also learning to make loving choices in moments of shame, self‑abandonment, or self‑blame. He describes his role as a father as primarily a model of self‑love—living a life that demonstrates love for oneself first—so that his children can instinctively know how to act when their mind and nervous system push them toward self‑criticism. He also frames his responsibility as providing emotional containment, creating a safe presence that allows his kids to feel held when they are tempted to reject themselves. Trent acknowledges that this modeling is a joint effort with his wife, emphasizing co‑parenting as a shared source of love and guidance.

Chapters

It seems like a paradox at times for me, because I want my children to be in their own essence, as you describe. And I also know that they're going to have moments in their life, and it like crushes me to think about this, where they're going to have to choose to put their hand up in love or not. And so I feel like my role, and I'm curious how you feel about your role in preserving the essence, is essentially just to be a model. The way that I live my own life, that they know what to do unconsciously in moments where their mind and their neurology is screaming at them to abandon themselves or to shame themselves or to blame themselves. My role as a father is to provide containment. What it really means to be in the presence of a man who feels that he loves himself first and foremost, and then secondarily that they can just learn how to be that love, obviously through my wife as well.