What Our Sons and Daughters Need Most, with Dr Shefali

0:00The Wiggles acknowledged the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respects to elders, past, present and emerging. Welcome to Wiggles Talk, a podcast for parents. My name is Lockie Gillespie and I am the purple wiggle. Hello Lockie, my name is Simon Price and I am the red wiggle. Now today, Lockie and everyone, we've got a very special guest and a friend of the pod joining us again, it's Dr. Sheffali. We spoke to Dr. Sheffali a while ago and you might remember our first conversation with her, it was about conscious parenting and how much of parenting is actually understanding ourselves and the way we react to our children. This time she is back with two new books. She's been busy. She has. Raising conscious sons and the other book is raising conscious daughters and they are both out today. We'll be talking about some of the different pressures, boys and girls

1:01can face, how those patterns start much earlier than we might realise and what we can do with our children while they are still young. Yes, now this is going to sound like a shameless plug for Wiggles and Ready Steady Wiggles number eight, which is just out now on ABC, the next 26 episodes. Yes, but we've got a bit loose and a bit more lax with television time and the shows at Asher Watches. They have noticed a little bit of, I'm going to say, behavioral issues, but with some shows, if you watch as too much of them, his behaviour can change and he's never, like I've said before, he's never really wanted to watch Wiggles on television, but I put it on, I just put it on and he loved it. But what I loved the most about it was that he was actively playing while he was watching it. And so many other shows that I have noticed him watching now that he's a little bit older, he just kind of sits and I think it is because it's a bit more faster pace and it's a bit more going on. And he was just moving from side to side with the music, he was laughing every now and then, but he was busy playing with some toys,

2:02he was dancing and ball here and there, but he really, it was a very different experience for him. And I know that sounds like a shameless plug that's not meant to be. Now, but the girls do the same. Yeah, but I was fascinated by it because we hardly ever watched it. He hasn't watched it for a long time and just putting it on how much he actually really enjoyed it and how there was no issue turning the television off. He just moved on from it because he was also in that play mode. Yeah, it was a very different experience. Hmm. The food reviews were surely Sean. Oh, yes. Yeah, the girls favorite. Yeah, they are. They laugh at everything when he crosses our arms, crosses their arms. Well, that's not, that's not done. Very good time if you have the food reviews. Yeah, no, no, there's some meant lots of great things in it, but I was just really, I don't have a look back at work we do very often. And, you know, I actually thought it was actually quite good. Yeah. Why, what do you call a ball that sleeps? Oh, yeah. I saw that one. A ball and a dough. Oh, sorry. Yeah, that's lucky. So I have a giggle with a wiggle.

3:03You with wiggle? Yeah. Today we're not giggling with wiggling. We are talking to Dr. Sheffali, who is a clinical psychologist a New York Times best selling author and the founder of the conscious parenting movement. She trained at Columbia University and has spent decades helping parents better understand what's sitting underneath their children's behavior and what might be coming up for them as parents too. Her work has even been championed by Oprah, who called the conscious parent one of the most profound books on parenting. In Raising Conscious Sons, Dr. Sheffali looks at the world boys are growing up in now and all the mixed messages they're receiving about being strong, sensitive, confident and tough. She explores what boys really need from us to feel secure, connected and comfortable in who they are. And in Raising Conscious Daughters, she looks at the pressures girls can feel to be good, successful, beautiful and liked, and how we can help them trust their own voice, set boundaries, and know that their worth doesn't depend on what other people think of them.

4:06Today we'll talk about where those patterns begin, what they can look like in younger children, and how we can support our sons and daughters without putting them into boxes. So Dr. Sheffali, welcome back to Wiggle Talk. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. We have been looking forward to this chat. Simon's read Raising Conscious Sons. I have tapped into Raising Conscious Daughters, but they are extraordinary. Yeah, they're incredible. I have got so many quotes that I would just love to get through, but can we just start Y2 Books? Because I just wanted to emphasize and highlight that boys and girls do have a different developmental timeline. Their hormones roll out differently. Their brain chemistry responds differently. But more so, the digital era and the algorithm targets them differently. We know culture has been doing that always. But now the digital algorithm knows how to capitalize, commodify, manipulate, and curate the effects it wants

5:12based on your child's neurochemistry. So I felt that parents really needed to know while both books are a conversation and you should read both books too. Because maybe you have a son who is more in the daughters book and vice versa. I don't want to be reductionistic, but I did want parents to have a real blueprint for what are the core issues, girls are facing, and what are the core issues, boys are facing because they're different. I think like you said, it's really important. I got that from reading the books as well. It is important to read both because you can get a better sense of your parenting your child through being able to read both. And in the books, something that's really stay with us, it says, girls can learn to suppress their anger while boys suppress their vulnerability. Girls perform perfection while boys perform toughness. Now, I guess these aren't exclusive to one gender, but they can chop in different ways. How early do those patents begin?

6:12Yeah, I mean, of course, it's very different, but there's a free disposition starting very early. And the reason why culture suppresses anger in girls is because we don't like quote unquote bad girls. We like good girls who don't make noise, who are silent and subversive. And for boys, we want boys to not be vulnerable. We want them to be stoic and strong. So culture begins bombarding us very early. Now, why does it show up differently within the girl? And the girl feels pressure to be perfect. And the boy feels pressure to perform is because the girl is developing her sense of self through her relationships with others. So she, because of her estrogen and her oxytocin, will seek greater validity through her bonding, through her different relationships. And therefore, she is going to feel this pressure to show up as perfect for her tribe,

7:21for her community, for her family. And boys, similarly, you know, I always say that boys are going through a real crisis of masculinity. They're not given a clear idea of who they should be. On one hand, they're told don't be like girls, but be sensitive, but don't be too dominating. So there's a whole load of mixed messages on one side. And then on the other side, they're told be super masculine. They're given this caricature of extreme exaggerated masculinity. But don't be so much that either that you're a real asshole. Right? So boys are getting a lot of what they shouldn't do, but they don't have a clear blueprint for conscious masculinity. You talk about the blueprint, which I think is really interesting. And for if we're talking about raising conscious sons, that blueprint where for a boyhood was all about movement, there was challenges, who was risk involved, there was purpose belonging.

8:22So what are boys not getting enough out of their childhood today that they were previously? My goodness. So then boys are ruled by the hormone testosterone. Testosterone by its nature is the hormone of drive, pursuit, desire, risk taking competence, dominance, hierarchy, you know, finding yourself through your body. So movement, physicality, stretching yourself, taking challenges. So if you look at culture today, how anesthetized have we created our culture? Everything comes through the door, everything's at your scrolling fingertips. There's no more friction, there's no more outdoor, endless play. Like when you and I were growing up, we could not wait to leave the house and we didn't want to come back. And what were we doing outside? Falling down, failing, making mistakes, going on hunts for beetles and frogs and, you know,

9:22getting into trouble and being with our band of brothers and sisters and keeping the covenant of secrecy and privacy out of the home, right? And we discovered who we are, we did a lot of very, you know, dumb things. But in that we took risks and discovered who we are. Look at the world today, you know. Children are just sitting in front of their screens on their consoles, they are virtually taking risks, but they're not really in real life embodying those risks. They are very fragile now and cannot handle a lot of friction or rejection or upheaval or challenge, not because they themselves are weak. It's because culture has so indulged and entitled them. So a boy who's sitting a lot and not moving his energy out because boys express their feelings through their body, then they are sitting on this powder keg and suppressing so much of their

10:25energy, which eventually will mutate and pervert and have nowhere to go. And then secondly, boys are not being initiated in a brotherhood. So they enter manhood and their sexuality through the dark web, through pornography, through the manosphere. And, you know, don't get a chance to articulate and integrate their sexuality. And that's why there's so much perversion when they grow up because they are not mentored through rights of passage to integrate their manhood. How do you let them go then and experience those things? And when there's so much emphasis on keeping them safe and not wanting them to go down the street because who knows who's down there? It sits so much fear these days as parents don't we? Allowing our children to go and to run free like we're used to. What is there something we can do as parents to allow them to somehow still find that or achieve that? Yeah, so you know, are safe to allow risk taking. You may have to be there more, you may have to follow them or be around or create safety guidelines.

11:31But risk and adventure and curiosity and competence and purpose and belonging can be created in the day to day. So I often tell parents of sons, you know, make a scavenger hunt out of everything once a day. If he has to go brush his teeth, he has to go through an obstacle course, he has to find the toothbrush. Give that testosterone a channel that's healthy to express. Don't allow him to sit on a video console. Don't allow him to be behind locked doors just because he says I'm fine. And also don't push him and force him to use his words. He is showing you what he feels through his body. So go there, allow him and make everything physical. Everything needs to be a challenge. Everything needs to be physical. Allow him to contribute. So if your light bulb goes off, let your eight-year-old boy contribute. Let him go to the store with you, let him buy the light bulb. Now this seems like a lot of work. But what you're doing in the long run is a huge gift to your son, which is giving him the sense that he is meaningful. He matters.

12:31He belongs. He's needed. He's useful. A boy who feels purposeful will really be bored. And in a negative way, being bored is positive. But in a negative, restless way, which can lead to destruction or apathy. So we want to channel the boy into externalizing that testosterone, burning it off, you know, being part of something greater than their own self-indulgence. Why is it necessary for boys to have that sense of that need of belonging and to feel like they're being useful in data life? Why is it necessary for boys to feel that way? I think testosterone-wise boys want to kind of do. And it's a hormone of competition and competence in hierarchy and finding who you are through your body and boys are wired to be more physical. So being physical and being of service and contributing allows them to feel that they

13:34matter. And why do boys need that? I think it's their hormonal makeup and the way they are just wired for action and for physicality. You know, there's no question if you have a teenage boy and a teenage girl or young boys and young girls, the girls will be sitting in circle time for the most part, coloring beautifully, playing with butterflies. And the boys will be complete like feral monsters. And then they'll be labeled and diagnosed and chained and sent to the principal's office because really our education system is not designed for the young boy. And then look at the teenage boy. You remember, he's pumping with testosterone. It was a while ago, but I didn't remember. And did anyone mentor you? No. You remember? No, no, you just figured it out. Figure it out through the locker room, through magazines, the porn and other boys. And sometimes, you know, the other boys weren't really wonderful either. You need elders. Why is elders who know

14:35that this energy needs channeling? And it is very important to energy, but boys are told their sexuality is a problem. So then it becomes a problem. The more we force boys to suppress, we'll have men who suppress. And out of 100 men, there will be five who cannot suppress it. So we have to understand, if we want to keep our women and daughters safe, we have to understand male sexuality. And to understand male sexuality, we have to understand adolescence sexuality. And to understand adolescence sexuality, we have to understand the boy and his desire to move and be physical. It's all willing. If that is being suppressed, does that also lead to those physical outbursts and the slamming of doors and the throwing of things? And if that is happening, how do we as parents acknowledge that and then deal with that? I know you talk about which I love the connection before correction. Is that where that kind of falls into play? And if you could explain a little bit more about what that is and how that works? So while our daughter will cry and

15:41have tears and express themselves through words and their fears, boys will say, I'm fine. And kind of either slam the door and show it through the fist in the wall or eventually through complete apathy and demotivation. So he will look lazy and like a loser, right? The parent will think, oh my god, I have a loser kid. But what they don't understand is that they are overwhelmed and don't have a channel and an outlet. So what do you do? You first don't punish the outburst. Understand that anger in a teenage boy, young boy is because his physical self has gotten too charged and it does not have an outlet yet. So allow the boy to move and express and say something like, whoa, I see you're struggling. Let's go outside. Let's take it to the court. Let's take it on the track. Let's go for a drive. You know, boys work best with side by side, not face to face.

16:42Conflicts still allow your boy to experience that physical release of energy. It happened to me that I've a Asher who's a five year old boy, my son. And it actually happened this morning and your words, the connection before correction was sort of ringing in my ears because he was doing some Lego and was getting really frustrated because it wasn't quite going as planned and it kept breaking and he just picked it up and threw it. And then my initial response would be to, hey, don't do that kind of response, but I didn't. I sat, I watched and then I've got him up and we went outside and we hit the tennis ball around for a bit and we kind of, I just changed him, I'm in and got him physical and got him active. And then he naturally came back and picked all his Lego up. But if I had to react to differently and go and pick your Lego up, don't throw you, there was no way he would do it. So it was so good having your words in my ears in that moment and to seeing the effect instantly of how that worked. It was so beneficial. So thank you. Oh my goodness. I'm so happy. Such a simple thing, but it

17:44averted so much disconnection, right? Because you knew when he threw it that he's actually wanting to say, I'm frustrated, but he didn't know how to say it. And then you knew because he cannot use his words, his energy needs to come out somewhere. So then you took him on the court and basically let him be frustrated in a safe, acceptable way. And when he came back with all that discharge of energy, he was able to focus and be in the moment. Yeah, it was so powerful. It's such a good reminder because I think to also fall into the trap, have done a lot of parents where you do, like you're saying, use your words, how you're feeling and it's just not the time or the place. But I guess he's at the thing that you can, I had to go to work. But later on this afternoon, I could talk to Asher about what happened this morning. Is that you can leave some time and then go back and address it and try to use words then? You can use that but better than that. And because boys are more visual and more physical, you can play a game and make him be you and you

18:44be him. And you act like him and then let him talk to you and let him and you then process. But bring it back, right? It's too abstract for young boys to remember what happened in the morning. So you're basically just creating fantasy again and that's not as powerful as if he can be you and you be him or he's himself again and then we roll play it and then you'll switch. So he gets to be in the body and see it in real time and feel it again. So it's not just a concept. You know, concepts don't work with children. They need real life physical embodiment of the experience. We will move away from from me and my life and get onto daughters. But a fear of mine is when Asher growing up and I think a lot of parents have it is the gaming world and we talked about it briefly before with online that online community and you put it in your book with regards to basically I might not be able to get the words quite right. But two personalities that all of a sudden this

19:44online world happens and they can be confident and they have a voice and they can be strong and all these things that they feel empowered by but then at home or outside of that world they don't talk they shut away and the longer you leave that the more that gap appears the harder is to bring those two together. If a parent is finding that they're in that situation how do you start to bring those two worlds together and in my head I want to go you're never gaming in your life but I know that is not a practical thing to say. How old is Asher? Oh he's only five so I've got a long way to go but I'm already frontend. Petrified. So you're frightened that your boy or when he grows up will be enveloped in that world. Yeah. And then you don't know the dance between or the fine line between allowing him to have fun and explore but also they're not letting him become an addict. Yes. Yes you said that so much better than I ever can put that yes exactly. Yeah and because you're so educated and you're so aware you won't do make that mistake but just know that boys numb

20:50in different ways through substances sex, porn, masturbation and video games and it can be a good release if it's very monitored and reasonable and what is reasonable is subjective but then it can quickly torpedo into addictions and escapism. So you want it to be communal so keep the video games and the console in a common area where people can play together he's not in his room. Never send anything that's addictive to his room because then you will never see him. You wanted in the common area you wanted to be you know a schedule so it's predictable. You don't want things to be haphazard and intermittent and you want to educate him and you don't want to do this till his brain can handle the intense onslaught of that dopamine. So you don't go with till he's 12 or 13 and even then it's really the worst time actually because he's so sensitive to pleasure and isn't seeking it very desperately. So the more you can delay the better and the more

21:54public it is the less private and secretive and clear agreements. So if he breaks the agreement he has to do chores for the whole house he has to clean the neighbors yard you know give him accountability and use it to your advantage. Oh if you want it go read 15 pages and if you said you'll take it for 20 minutes but then you do 25 minutes oh now you have to go grocery shopping right so you try to tie it into purpose and contribution not to punishment. We've covered some suns and now we're covering daughters. Dr. Schifalli is that kind of a nice crossover there was that imagine a few studies that notice the difference from kind of from birth or from girls and they're looking at faces to boys. Can you just quickly kind of explain those studies and that the evidence is actually there? Yeah very early even in utero they have

22:56studies of the infant turning their head towards the mother's voice and from a young age girls respond to faces much more and boys respond to toys and mobiles and different things. So girls because of the estrogen again it makes them more heightened to relationships and to connecting. So when they become pre-pubescent, pubescent if they are straight they're going to transfer all that desire for relation to boys and if they are not straight then they'll do it with other girls but regardless they are always scanning the environment trying to read the cues trying to pick up who it is I am from how I'm being perceived. So I call it the perception prison in my book. It's all about am I being perceived in a certain way versus who do I think I am and that is the

23:56danger that daughters place more importance on what other people believe about them then discover who it is they are from the inside. There's so much I'm going to go on a roll but I loved first of all that the book the part one of the book has all your really meaningful conversations with a whole lot of different families in your private sessions which I just loved I loved reading they are a few that stood out particularly with the daughters and how powerful that is but you talk about the self authorship the idea of daughters to be you know heard rather than just to be good can you I love the idea of self authorship can you just talk about that for a few moments. Sure and self authorship is a pillar of life a value for every human being to be author of one's own life to write one's own chapters to be able to edit to delete to create the poetry book the songbook so it's not just for girls but it's very particularly profoundly important for girls because

24:59culture as historically at least modern culture has historically abducted girls of their own rights right you see you know we have child trafficking pedophilia child marriages and so much of our children's rights have been robbed by predatory cultures so self authorship becomes all the more important for a girl a female more than a male because of what culture does so at home if you have a daughter you begin to intentionally allow for spaces where self authorship can show up it seems really silly at first because our children's world is so tiny right so it's like tiny stuff so you're like who cares who cares like I tell my mother for two year old daughter ask her if she wants her to paste you know here or here and the difference between here and here is like this much right but for a child this is their world right you remember I'm sure you went back to your childhood

26:05neighborhood and you're like oh my god this is just a little mound of dirt I thought it was a mountain right yes yes so the same from a young age you give your toddler your preschooler your schooler little choices so if the toddler says can I have scrambled eggs but you were about to make fried eggs you go wonderful you have listened to yourself you've authored your own breakfast excellent I'll make your scrambled eggs and this doesn't mean you indulge them it just means you allow few choices but mostly to give them the practice and exercise of accessing their own in a voice and ordering their own lives do we stop that these days I know we answer too much for our children or we need them to like little things like you're saying like going up to the cafe and asking for a cookie or something actually getting them to do those tasks instead of us always doing it for them is that part of it for me that level of I would you maybe call it independence or that confidence that ability to ask

27:08for what they need or what they want yes several things so for the traditional parenting paradigm has told parents that they don't need to ask their kids and kids don't know anything and I know best and I'm too busy and I'm not raising a brat and I'm going to just do it and I don't have time to wait for the answer to show up it is what it is when I was young I ate what I ate so it's that very traditional mindset that this feels too lay safe air and giving the child too much power which is not true to really power as much as we do number two I think the reason that we are unable to do this really today is because we're so busy and distracted ourselves and number three technology has truly made it so easy that even we are not being pushed or challenged to exercise choice kind of look at the algorithm on social media you think you're in charge of the algorithm no the algorithm is making choices for you so more and more our ability to make our own choices

28:11is actually becoming curtailed even though we think we have more choices because now we have all the apps but it's not true the apps control us now in many ways so true self authorship is not about convenience or indulgence or entitlement true self authorship is transmitting the awareness to your child that they have a voice that deserves to be heard and a path that is uniquely there's that deserves to be walked and my role as a parent is not to give you the path is to really encourage you to discover your own can I just read this because I love it so much when when you're on your daughter's voice you're not raising a child who gets her way you're raising a child who knows she has a way her own way to herself you're raising your daughter I get so much you're raising a daughter who understands that she is valued that she is accepted and that she belongs and a girl who belongs to herself becomes a woman who cannot be easily broken like seriously it's just so

29:13it's so wonderful and it's so important it's so important but it is a pain in the neck to and especially a girl because then they talk and then they talk and they talk and they talk and they have opinions and they talk back right and I'm being tongue in cheek yeah yes because there is that that's why we don't like it because see girls will talk and they will cry and they will make you aware boys just disappear into the ether you know doesn't mean they're healthier they just are a little more low maintenance but the power behind a girl who can talk and talk and talk and doesn't get scared of you and can stand up to you is that what I said is that she will be less vulnerable to predators and she will make trouble and she will be too much trouble for the predator he'll be like can you go back home can you leave me alone your parents raise you so you want your daughter to be good trouble so that as John Lewis

30:15said a civil fighter here you want your child to be good trouble not necessarily just on beauty standards but I love that you've said embracing good enough is the key to true worth and modeling what it means to live with enoughness with rest and joy that that just that idea of setting up at home that the idea of just being enough and not striving for these ridiculous perfections and you you need to be a girl to go on Instagram because for example or TikTok because the algorithm will change for the female and it will start sending her plastic surgery beauty fashion bags shoes beauty routines morning routines night routines the perfect glute exercises the perfect abdomen exercises and she will be barrage very much without her conscious consent by all things beauty and objectify and she being a young girl may not realize that these are filtered these are

31:21curated these are edited heavily edited and she may begin to compare herself and because she wants to be approved she gets a sense of worth through relationships she's going to be very susceptible to this and the algorithm knows it the advertisers know it and they capitalize on it are there some signs that we can look out for his parents to become aware that that is happening for our daughters yeah you'll notice that she will look in the mirror all the time by seven she will ask mommy am I pretty am I fat she will suck in her tummy pinch her cellulite she will ask to go to the beauty store she start doing makeup routines and night routine now some of it is very normal but it's is excessive at this age and then she will look in her camera all the time on her phone see the the hardest thing for a girl is when the phone became a camera and a mirror and now she's constantly checking on herself I mean you know you just have to go to the mall and you see all these

32:24girls taking photos and selfies and deleting and boys are not doing that boys are doing other naughty and unhealthy things but they're not doing that and when you say that that can be like from the age of seven oh yes a seven year old girl today's hyper exposed and stimulated and aware of or she's becoming very quickly aware of beauty standards competition and image and perception and I can't imagine what she's going through because I know how hard it is for me to look at all these impossibly perfect faces and then you go out in the real world I'm sure you as men you're like where all bodies and the faces they don't exist in the real world but they exist on screen yeah and that what your girls are consuming so they're truly thinking that there are millions of girls out there like this they don't realize because they don't go out much at seven that no one looks like this in real life and as parents are we doing a disservice or feeding that when we're telling our

33:29daughters that they you all you look beautiful today I mean that's something as a parent you want to tell your child but is there a different way of framing that so it doesn't then encourage this perception of look instead of for you yeah I think if you can say she looks beautiful but tie it to something very internal like man your eyes you don't realize they're just shine like you have a light inside you and when you laugh like that man you are the most beautiful girl in the world and the way you you know take care of your body that just shows me that you love yourself you know you can just tweak it a little bit and just tying it to something inside or you know you look like nobody I know and that's what makes you so beautiful or you're the only one in our family who has dark eyes and wow right you're always trying to let her know that there's something innate in her she doesn't have to work on brown eyes she has them and it's beautiful

34:30so as she is she's already beautiful and then if she comes to you and says am I fat the instinct of women typically is to say no no no you're not fat you're skinny and they don't realize that you walk right into the trap and reinforce the stereotype but instead you say I don't know whether you're fat I don't think you're fat I don't think you're skinny I think you're just you everybody is very different and I want you to know some days you'll be fat some days you'll be skinny who cares like who cares it's about you feeling good in your body and knowing that you need to be healthy and then you're good enough and beautiful enough right so you have to be careful but in order to be careful you have to know what to be careful about and that's why my two books really outline raising conscious time and raising conscious thought is really outline the red flags and I give tools after every chapter in part two to come home to yourself to help your children come home to themselves which then kind of you know lovely circle goes right back to the consciousness of it all

35:34yes exactly right it all goes back to our home our inner selves our connection yeah I'd also written down this is the most notes lucky they've ever written by the way Dr. Shavali that consciousness brings compassion and then compassion brings connection have I kind of said that right yeah because when you are conscious what it means to be conscious is to first be aware how imperfect you are and if you are aware of your own ego and your imperfections automatically you get off the pedestal of superiority you're like oh my god I thought I was going to be this parent will never yell that yell 1800 times by the time she's too so the minute you realize oh my goodness I'm so imperfect you have empathy and compassion yes and compassion immediately creates connection but when you're narcissistic and delusional that you're perfect you're not going to connect with people because no one wants to connect with you so

36:36it is the pathway consciousness to compassion compassion to connection which very much your previous book which we spoke to you about is about once again us as parents reflecting on how we were brought up being conscious of the world that we were brought up and we're not just automatically bringing that back into now our children's lives and you know it's all so related and also I think it's so great that we can continue to reflect on ourselves to make sure that we're making different choices and decisions for our family now it's so important how do you see things going like you obviously get such fantastic results in your in your private practice but it can change right are we getting better lucky we all need to read these books that's what we have to do that's a really good place to start isn't it yeah I wrote these books because I was really worried and it's very urgent that we parents get on board and stop outsourcing our connection our attachment our bonding our attention to screens and letting our children I know Australia has a ban that's

37:41only the surface you know you need to really be present for your children and build connection so I think my books are wake up calls but also with a protocol a blueprint permission and direction I do think we are at an urgent crisis and in flexion point and we need to wake up and that's why both my books I have wake up call letters to both parents urging and pleading them to take this very seriously and to step up with their presence yeah that's what I love that at the start you do a what a a note would sound like from a son and a daughter to their mom and dad and I just I don't know why it moved me so much but you ended the letter with love even just that word love even though the letter was quite quite intense and full of so many feelings but you finished it with with love which I just thought was beautiful and I kind of agree it does feel like this is a real time this is the time and children are suffering they're not bad kids no you don't have a fault in fact they are the most overstimulated generation in modern history and they are suffering they are in

38:46our deep abyss of mental health crises and we need to understand that have compassion and pull suicide is at an all-time high anxiety body dysmorphia cutting self harm andorexia believe me I mean it is catastrophic and yet we are the most you know knowledge-based cohort we are the most indulged most technological but yet so abysmally lacking in mental health and well-being if someone is recognising some of these patterns in their family and the way their children are the way they're parenting how does that repair begin where can a family parent and a children start to repair and to turn that around is there a couple of well I'm not going to say simple but there are a couple of things that parents can start to do well I think you know there are a few steps the first one has to be awareness the parent has to be willing to look in the mirror and go oh my goodness

39:48I have largely created if not go created my current relationship with my children now what the second step is an apology but an apology is very empty if it doesn't have the next step which is accountability accountability is realising that I have worked to do and I have caused harm and outlining the ways I have caused harm and taking full responsibility for that harm not if I hurt you but when I hurt you and I'm so sorry right all that is connected and the last step is an action for change so you have to say I'm going to go to a therapist I'm going to journal I'm going to take the scores on my anger I'm going to really work on myself and also making them aware that I'm not perfect but I'm going to do these these four steps and really work on my inner self and my inner being wonderful I gave myself phone neck by reading your your book on on my phone I really

40:51are waiting at the high coffee my eyes got so fat I've got to stop looking at this this phone I couldn't put the phone down but thank you so much oh my goodness thank you for all you do thank you so much and I hope that the audience of yours looks up my website and even if they don't want to buy the books I have a coaching institute I have a community I'm coming to Bali in November for a women's retreat so people can go to my website and come to Bali and ask for discount code I have a discount code so I'm constantly doing retreats workshops I have an amazing coaching institute so there's a lot that they can get on my website drsafali.com oh that's amazing thank you drsafali we'll put everything in the show notes as well so people are able to get all that information so they can go and find out more I'm going to recommend your books to everyone it's been such a wonderful chat and thank you once again for coming on we go talk thank you bye bye bye

41:53well once again with drsafali an incredible chat and I think it's also it's she makes you you don't know book that love you is for it may just she just makes you think these books are remarkable as a parent if you'd like to learn more find out more about how your managing situations then these are really good books to actually get your hands on them read yeah I haven't enjoyed reading one for a while like this and and they're actually an easy yeah they're really easy it's not the right word actually they read really well so I know drsafali just an amazing language but the books are actually really easy to understand yeah I'd like to finish with a quote please presence is the ground beneath everything presence is the ground beneath everything that's not for me that's first drsafali yeah there are lots of wonderful quotes and you just if you've got more than you book being present no it's so true and and that's that concept that the algorithm like it controls us and the fact that how did she say with the apps we feel

42:57like that's allowing us to think more and do more but actually we're thinking less because it's doing all the work for us I've been very angry social media lately ready to throw my phone and the nearest river yeah well go back to the old flip phone I think I will yeah mention they bring it back yeah just to call you loved ones send a text message yeah replace snake replace snake it's all you need it's snake life thank you drsafali that was awesome in her books raising conscious sons and raising conscious daughters are both out now you can find out more about drsafali and her work at drsafali.com or you can follow her on instagram and we'll include all the links in the show notes that's right and look and if you love the show make sure you follow or subscribe so you never miss an episode this episode drsafali is one that I think really should tell all your friends and family about but thank you for listening to wiggle talk lucky yes it's a podcast bye bye