Dr. Shefali: What Today's Boys and Girls Really Need From Parents

0:00Hi, it's Hunter Clark Fields, author of Raising Good Humans. If you've ever thought, I wish I could help other parents the way I've been helped, this is for you. The Mindful Parenting Teacher Certification Program is now open for enrollment. You'll deepen your mindfulness, learn to lead powerful parenting groups, and join a supportive, heart-centered community. Are you ready to make a difference? I only take a very limited number of people into this program, so apply now. Visit mindfulparentingcourse.com slash teach.

0:31Welcome to the Mindful Mama podcast. Here it's about becoming a less irritable, more joyful parent. At Mindful Mama, we know that you cannot give what you do not have. And when you have calm and peace within, then you can give it to your children. I'm your host, Hunter Clark-Fields. I help smart, thoughtful parents stay calm so they can have strong, connected relationships with their children. I've been practicing mindfulness for over 25 years. I'm the creator of the Mindful Parenting course and teacher training. I am the author of the international bestseller Raising Good Humans, Raising Good Humans Every Day, and the Raising Good Humans Guided Journal.

1:11Hello, Shefali. Thank you so much for coming back to the Mindful Nama podcast.

1:15Dr. Shefali:Oh, I love talking with you. Thank you so much. We need some mindfulness. We definitely do. Oh my God, this is a crazy world I live in. Yes, indeed. Well, I'm going to introduce you now, which I don't normally do, but I'm going to do that because we're doing this a little bit of a special way. All right. So as you can tell, as you can hear, I'm talking again to the beloved Dr. Shefali, clinical psychologist, New York Times bestselling author, and the founder of the conscious parenting movement, redefining how families understand selfhood, connection, and the inner life of children. Her work brings together Western psychology and Eastern wisdom into lived practice, creating a path for children and the adults who raise them to know themselves fully.

2:02And we're going to be talking about your new books, two new books. You've done a lot of work, my friend, Raising Conscious Sons and Raising Conscious Daughters, two paired books. So I wanted to kind of, I've been thinking about, it's been a long time since The Conscious Parent came out, which sort of started this whole thing. And you've been teaching this for so many years. So how has the conversation changed and the challenges we're facing today? And how are these fundamentally different from when you wrote The Conscious Parent?

2:34Dr. Shefali:So when I wrote The Conscious Parent, you know, it was way back in 2010. So I'd been thinking about it since 2007. Maya was four years old when I started realizing that I am so unconscious. and it was hitting me that, oh, if I'm unconscious, suddenly 80 % of parents must be unconscious. And when that book came out and that philosophy, that mindset that we need to look at our own inner crap, let's not pass it on to our children. Let's stop projecting. Let's stop using them as our tools in our movie to fulfill our own deepest inner brokenness. when all those ideas first came out, you know, you and I have known each other for a long time.

3:17Dr. Shefali:It was so hard for parents and they were so resistant. And I remember Oprah telling me, maybe it's not the zeitgeist. And I mean, which meant it is not the zeitgeist. And because it wasn't, we were getting so much flack and resistance. So back then, my main message of looking inward, being present, being connected, which you cannot do if you're You're not whole and joyful and abundant. You just can't do it. If you're stressed out and anxious, you're not going to show up in a meaningful and beautiful way for your children. So that was back then. I was struggling. You were struggling. We would take our kids to the park.

3:57Dr. Shefali:Our mind was wandering. We were just zoning out. Well, now, all of that is one million times worse. Yes. Back then, we didn't have a phone in our pocket, Hunter. We weren't constantly being pinged and ponged and looking at emails. We didn't. When we left the house, all we needed to do was focus our eyes and our attention on who was before us. But that was hard enough to do back then. So imagine now with a computer, a video game, a phone, email, texting on your phones and devices all the time in your back pocket. Can you imagine how little parents must be paying attention to their kids? I know because every dinner I'm with a friend, I pick up my phone at least 10 times.

4:45Dr. Shefali:10 times is a good dinner, right? I'm really captivated and engaged. But every 30, 40 minutes, I feel I need to check. Check what at 9 o 'clock at night? Oh, got to check something if the president calls. I don't know what I'm checking, but I feel I'm very tethered to that device. Well, raising children, being tethered to something constantly, tethered to something that is an algorithm, that is artificial, that is superficial, does have a huge effect on how our children look at themselves, how they feel significant and important and purposeful with us. Yeah. Yeah. And it's so much harder to be present and to think about the asks that, you know, we asked at some point and then to think of now how much more distracted we are, how our attention has been really shattered, pulled apart.

5:42And we're really asking people to sort of stay, use that attention, build that attention skill so you can be present, so you can be really here for your kid. And it's incredibly hard now. And we may know. We may know. We want to model it for our kids. And we may know. We know it's this persuasive device, yet it pulls at us. Right.

6:07Dr. Shefali:And that's why I wrote these two books. I promise you, my last book, The Parenting Map, I think we talked about it here, was really my last parenting book. And I was so ready to start writing books on relationships, so excited. And then I saw the Netflix documentary, Adolescence. And literally, Hunter, the next day I was writing a proposal for raising conscious sons and raising conscious daughters. And now I saw it in September. A year later, both books are coming out. because I saw the urgency. I saw that there was a real need to not only wake parents up, but also give them hope and confidence and empowerment.

6:49Dr. Shefali:So every chapter has tools and strategies that outline simple, effective, but profound ways that we can create the antidote to this great disconnection that we're seeing in the world. And the great mental health crisis that our children are experiencing. I mean, the numbers are astronomical, no? Hunter, they're like ridiculous and self-harm and sexualization and body issues and gender issues all over the place. And that's why I had to separate it out in two books. So whether you have a son or a daughter, I recommend you get both or give it to a friend. They're not that big, you know, not that thick, but they're very simple, concise, and powerful.

7:32Yeah, I think that in the last 20 years, we have done like an experiment on our kids and on ourselves. And it's, you know, we're seeing the results of that in real time. And we're scrambling, we're struggling to keep up. So I really appreciate that this, these books. So let's start with the boys first, because I think the situation with the boys is really fascinating because, you know, you write that traditional masculinity is collapsing, but a new healthy model of masculinity hasn't really fully emerged. So what are boys needing from us right now?

8:11Dr. Shefali:Oh, my goodness. Boys are the most misunderstood. I never thought I would have so much compassion for boys or men. I've kind of been one of those women who loves men, but I've had this kind of edge of, you know, oh, what a disappointment. Oh, so backward, so primitive. I've had this undertone of great judgment, I'm being honest. And then because I grew up in India where I was sexually molested a lot, I was so angry with Indian men and just done with them. But I never really looked beneath the hood to say or to ask, well, how were these boys once boys? How was their childhood? And what did women get wrong?

8:56Dr. Shefali:Because women were mostly raising them. What are fathers getting wrong? And man, when I started doing the research on my book, Raising Conscious Sons, interviewing real boys, it really broke my heart open that boys feel misunderstood. understood. I didn't know how deeply boys felt until I did the research. They feel as deeply as girls. They just express it differently and they have different needs. Boys' emotions move through motion. They need to move. They need to run. They need to sweat. They need to be wild. They need to explore. This is because of their testosterone and dopamine. And then at puberty, it rises up and they have to really be helped to integrate those big emotions.

9:39Dr. Shefali:So sexuality, their anger, how can they tone it down? How can they tame it but not suppress it? Not suppress it. And mothers looking at this wild energy in boys, you know, remember their own past experiences with, you know, unhealthy men. And then they project that onto their sons and then their sons feel it and then they feel ashamed and then it's a cycle and then suppressed shame becomes perverted violence later toward us women and children. So we need to break that cycle. But to break it, we have to understand male physiology, male neurochemistry, main hormonal development, and the temperament of your unique son.

10:19Dr. Shefali:But if we are trying to make him like his sister and like us, we're going to lose our boys. Okay, so thinking about the idea of boys and their energy and boys' anger and things like that. We're very uncomfortable with anger, anger in anyone, but we're very uncomfortable in anger in boys. How can we, thinking about this idea of what you just said, we don't want to suppress it, but how can we not suppress and also not allow harmful behavior? Well, the first thing is we need to look at masculinity and its qualities of intensity and physicality and wildness. Those are qualities of masculinity. Oh, beautiful.

11:01Dr. Shefali:First, we need to go, where is my son's wildness? Give it to me, boy. Right? We're coming to it with excitement, with celebration. That is the first big shift. Next, once you're allowing it, once you're accepting it, once you're loving and understanding that they need your help to just channel that wind tunnel, then you're like looking for ways. Oh, I see you're getting upset and you're punching the wall. I can't let you punch the wall. But yeah, come on, let me give you something else. Let's run outside. Let's do 50 jumping jacks. Let's do some burpees. Let's get the pillow. We're never shaming.

11:34Dr. Shefali:We're just redirecting. See, that's the key. And if we consistently do that, then the boy learns nothing to be scared of, only to integrate. I'm not going to suppress. I'm going to integrate. It's happening non-verbally. Please don't force your son to talk about his feelings when he's showing you his feelings. You can just say, boy, you have a lot of energy. Let's take it outside. That's it. You just have to take it somewhere else. And typically taking it to the quiet corner where they have to sit still is hell for them. They need to go bigger in order to go quieter. Girls don't need that. Girls can go deeper and more silent to go quiet.

12:11Dr. Shefali:Boys have to go the opposite way. And parents don't realize that. It feels scary. It feels threatening. Well, then you have a powder keg waiting to explode.

12:25Stay tuned for more Mindful Mama podcasts right after this break. Having a new baby in your house is such a mental, emotional beat storm of a time. There are hormones. It's hard on your relationship. It's hard if you have other kids in the mix and you're trying to get them to school and all the things. It is so hard. So I am so for all the things that are going to make this time easier. And two things that are going to make it so much easier are the MomCosy Night Pro Bottle Warmer and the Deep Clean Bottle Washer D8. These are the ultimate time and sanity savers for parents navigating the newborn stage.

13:02You're sleep deprived, you're hormonal, your relationship's in a wreck, so you might be exclusively pumping. There is so much to manage. And the feeding schedule, oi yi yi. The MomCosy Night Pro Bottle Warmer was designed by somebody who actually understands all that. It's great for keeping baby calm and fed. You're not going to wake up the whole house. You're not going to turn on your bright overhead lights at 4am. And you're going to be able to heat up a bottle in three minutes. A game changer. And with the deep clean baby bottle washer D8, there's space to clean eight bottles at once. It literally takes the entire day's load in one go.

13:39And it really gets all those little nipples and straws and things. So you don't have to worry about it. If you're in the infant stage or know someone who is, you need these MomCozy products in your life. Right now, you can get 10 % off the Night Pro Bottle Warmer and 10 % when you pre-order the Deep Clean Bottle Washer 8 at momcozy.com with the code MINDFULMAMA. So head to momcozy.com and use code MINDFULMAMA for 10 % off my favorite MomCozy product. Yeah, so we're wanting to channel that energy. It's fascinating. I just talked to Stephanie Kuntz, the historian on relationships in that episode.

14:20Dear listener will come out a little bit after this one. But she was talking about how male relationships 200 years ago were so different and how men were so affectionate with each other. They wrote these letters about, I'm missing you. I've reread your letter three times. where have you been? And just like much more affectionate with each other and emotionally expressive. And I thought that was so fascinating that we have kind of lost that over the years. What do you think about how we as parents can, you know, we can encourage boys to expend that energy that's, you know, that's overflowing and maybe anger and things like that.

15:03But can we also encourage the, you know, just more direct emotional expression.

15:10Dr. Shefali:Yes. And bonding amongst boys and the tribe and the brotherhood and keeping friends and encouraging boys to express themselves. Yes. But you see, they are expressing themselves. Who said words have better value than movement or emotion, right? And yes, because movement and motion can cause physical harm, we stay away from it. But we can teach our boys to move their bodies and count it as the most elegant, eloquent expression, just as if they use their words. You can have them, you can mirror them, you can do a dance with them, you can put the music on, you can do 20 jumping jacks without saying a word.

15:50And that is still a direct manifestation of anger.

15:54Dr. Shefali:Anger doesn't have to be only expressed with words. Anger can be painted. Anger can be jump jacked, can be obstacle course, can be scavenger hunted. There's so many ways to move anger. But the first thing is we cannot get scared of it. We're not talking about aggression. We're not talking about danger and violence. We're talking about intensity, fire, anger, a healthy communicator about what is going on underneath. Yeah, I think that's hard for parents because our own fear comes up and we are afraid for our boys. And to then be able to be there with acceptance of this energy of anger, that's probably got to be the hardest part of the whole thing.

16:42Well, the most important thing is that boys need space.

16:45Dr. Shefali:They are big and they need to feel free to understand the limits of their physicality. When your boy is getting angry, the older he is, the more space you can give. It's a good thing. When they're younger and they can't have space and they're kicking and screaming and biting, you need to be the wind tunnel around them. You need to kind of hold them, but lovingly and gently. First, you try to take them out. First, you try to take them on the trampoline. If you have a son and you don't have a trampoline, I don't know what you're doing. If you have a son and you don't have like pillows and you have taken out all your shop objects and you don't have much furniture, I don't know how you're surviving.

17:22Dr. Shefali:If you're a mother of a boy or father of a boy and you're not having regular scavenger hunts where you hide the toothpaste, hide the toothbrush and try to remember where you hid it and your boy has to find it in order to go to bed, I don't know what you're even doing. So boys cannot go linearly from A to B. They cannot talk linearly from A to B. They are zigzagging, wildfire energy. It seems really chaotic at first and seems really overwhelming, but it is the way he will regulate. Girls regulate through tears and fears and crying and bonding and tending and befriending and boys through storm and stress.

18:02Dr. Shefali:I mean, that's how they regulate it. And theirs looks really unhealthy and crazy. That's why they get a bad rap. But it's not. If you understand it's regulation, let him go out and play ball for 30 minutes and run around the racetrack and give him space. You know, many women will come to me and tell me, I hate when my husband just shuts down and goes to the basement. But I tell them that this is his way of saying, I'm not safe. I don't want to harm you. I don't want to harm you. I need to go and recalibrate. And we need to let them go do that. But we take it personally and we make a bigger hoopla about it, but we don't have to.

18:40Okay. So the big message I'm getting is channel. Channel the energy. Channel the energy. I remember feeling that way when my daughters were four. Like, I need to run the child.

18:51Dr. Shefali:Yes, run the child wild. You have to run the child enough during the day. Okay, so if a boy is withdrawing emotionally, what about that? And he's saying, I'm fine. How can parents reopen communication without pushing too hard? Yes, so many boys do the opposite of anger and acting out. And they go inward. And they go really inward. Like girls can turn on themselves, but girls will talk, talk. They'll say, I hate myself. I hate my hair. I hate my nose. But they're talking. They're giving us a window into their critical mind, self-critical mind. The boys just shut down. And parents take it very personally, especially mothers who were not heard in their own life.

19:37Dr. Shefali:They're like, oh my God, I have another human being who's not listening to me. And they make it about themselves. But we have to understand that the boy who's shutting down is actually in a worse state than the one who's angry because he's kind of given up on expressing. He feels too unsafe. He's been vilified. He's been judged, shame, scorned. So he is checking out. And when he checks out, he's lonely. And when he's lonely, he's potentially suicidal. And that is a dangerous place for a boy to be. Okay, so the shutting down, this is more dangerous. And it echoes what I've heard from parents of boys who have gotten deep into addictive cycles and things like that.

20:22We hear about the shutting down.

20:23Dr. Shefali:Yeah, I'm going to read a passage from chapter 9 in the boys' book, Taught to Freeze, How Boys Become Disconnected Men. It's on page 126. I just want to read a few things because that was a really heartbreaking chapter, taught to freeze. And I write, when a girl is anxious, she tends to broadcast it. If not through words, then through tears, tone, pacing, overthinking attitude. Her storm will let itself be known. But a boy, unless he's very young or has had the privilege of conscious parents, he will almost always say the same thing. I'm fine. And he will say it so flatly, you might actually believe it.

21:06Dr. Shefali:Do you know why that is? He has already absorbed the ancient male code. To share feelings is to be weak. As Sam, a 14-year-old boy I interviewed, said, if I say I'm okay most of the time, I'm not, but I don't want to bother my parents. In fact, take it that it's likely not that he's fine. And what mistake we make is because our boys typically are bigger and they go inside their hoodies and they're chatting with their friends on video games. We really take it that they're fine. And then we leave them alone because they don't come to ask for a hug and they do not clingy like the girls. We literally leave them for hours on their video games with these, you know, strangers.

21:46Dr. Shefali:And then slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, he becomes habituated to that. And then you wonder, where has my boy gone? And, you know, I think women, mothers feel hesitant. They're insecure that, what do I talk to my boy about. I don't like video games. I don't know his world. He's a strange animal to me. So she stays away. He picks up on that and stays away too. And there goes the cycle repeating itself generation after generation. And that's why in this book, Raising Conscious Sons, I really empower mothers, especially, don't be scared of your boy. He needs you. He wants you. In fact, he wants you more than the girl in many ways because he's younger in maturity and needs you.

22:27Dr. Shefali:But he puts up such a stoic front that you believe him, but you shouldn't. He's just acting. He needs you. So we want to find a way into our boy's world, especially if he's sort of really shutting down. Yes, we want to find a way. And at first, it may seem really counterintuitive, which means you may have to go in and play the video game with him. Sit and watch him, even though it's so damn boring. You know, watch him play hoops. You got to show up where the energy is. You got to flow in the energy, not bring him to your energy. You have to go to their energy. And that's what parents do wrong as well.