Perfect parenting a mirage

0:12 Welcome back to the Buck Stops Here. If there's one thing that nobody agrees on, it's what's the best way to bring up your kids. There was, of course, the much debated Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. There has been the recent controversy between Norway and India, for example, with one country seeing what Indians would consider normal parenting as an abuse of the parent child relationship. And now there's a brand new book out that blends thoughts of the east, our own thoughts, with perhaps borrowing from the best of the West.

0:46 My newsmaker, my second newsmaker on the program tonight is Shefali Sabari, the author of the Conscious Parent. It's her second book on parenthood. Shefali, thanks so much for being on the program.

0:58 It's a pleasure.

0:59 When you say the conscious parent, the assumption, obviously, is that much of parenting that goes on is actually done either unconsciously or subconsciously. You're also, of course, a trained clinical psychologist. Why did you reach that conclusion?

1:13 Well, you know, it is quite apparent, if one is willing to look within the self, that most of our assumptions and preconditions around parenting or around life in general or about ourselves have gone largely unexamined. We don't really spend a lot of time focusing on self awareness, self understanding or self actualization. So now here you've given birth to a brand new being and we're supposed to raise this being according to the being's spirit. But having largely paid little attention to one's own spirit, how can one then endeavor to raise this spirit to be the brightest, to be the best that it can be?

1:51 You know, so what we end up doing is just repeating what we have known in our own lives, and that's just regurgitating more of our unexamined unconscious.

2:00 So are you saying that in a sense, as parents, we all look to create mini mes?

2:04 We really do. If we're deeply and truly honest with ourselves, that's what we're doing. Because there simply isn't enough time in the day to focus on, to take the time out, to focus on the conscious self. So my book really speaks to the importance of spending that time to discover one's emotional, preconditioned assumptions about the self, about life, about parenthood. Because in doing so, one can extricate oneself from that deep, unresolved baggage that we all carry and hopefully don't pass it on to our children.

2:38 In fact, one of the things that you do say in the book is that parents, in a sense, bring those anxieties, bring those insecurities to the process of parenting. And often what they're doing is just transferring those anxieties onto, onto their child. But in India, for example, we have parents who actually live out their own dreams through their children. Or you have parents who want their child to, let's say, go through school with a certain kind of report card.

3:07 Now there's a cultural question here, and the cultural question is this, that some people would say that's why Indian, Indian children do so well when they go abroad, because they've had this. So where is that line between a cultural, instinctively Indian way of, if there is such a thing of bringing up your kids and overdoing it?

3:29 Well, you know, you speak to two issues. One is, is it really a cultural thing to look at self esteem as being dependent on external factors such as achievement, or is it a universal phenomenon that we need to pay close attention to and disentangle from? Because it's not really true. You know, all psychology research has shown that when self esteem is dependent on extrinsic validation such as grades, beauty, who we marry or where we live, that really lends to a deep emotional disconnection within the self.

4:00 So when we enter parenthood with the assumption that our child needs to be pushed, we're already entering from a lack based perspective that says that self esteem cannot be borrowed or garnered or, or be grounded on a deep inner connectivity, but instead needs to be dependent on external validation. That's just an illusion.

4:21 So what would you do as a parent if your kid flunked a class?

4:25 Well, the first thing is that we don't enter into anxiety because the child is not reflective of our level of intelligence, surely. Right. So first we stay grounded in our deep knowing that just because our child is displaying a lack of intelligence, we don't have to get tangled up in it. So here is where we see the roar of our ego come up. You know, every parent wants to institute the self onto the child, but we tame that ego.

4:51 You talked about Amy Chua. Yeah, Amy Chua. So you tame that tiger mom inside you, the tiger parent inside you, and understand that the child's lack of intelligence has no indication or bearing on yours. And then you enter into a deep, connected relationship building exercise with your child and you become curious as to why it is your child is displaying a lack of connection to his or her intelligence.

5:14 But Amy Chua has actually argued, or she would say to you that this is a very western way of looking at things. And Asian moms, if there is such a thing, are actually looking out for the best for their Kids, they want them to be sturdier, tougher creatures who can survive in the world even when the parent is gone. And what you're calling that process is externalizing your own desires onto that child. So are you really saying that you wouldn't feel worried if your child consistently did not perform well in school?

5:45 Just take the simple, most universal example.

5:48 Well, I would definitely get worried and that would be my ego and I would tame that worry, that anxiety because it's coming from lack and really offers no deeper perspective on how to help myself.

5:57 So what would you do?

5:58 So I would enter into a state of curiosity and, and into a state of building my child's inner connectivity with his or her own motivation level. And let me just, you know, reflect on Amy Chua because I was just

6:10 going to read out a couple of things. She said what Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. And she also says that Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, hey fatty, lose some weight. And lastly, speaking to what you're talking about, Western parents worry a lot about their children's self esteem.

6:27 And this is not to say that Western parents have got it right. You know, this whole book, her book was pitched as an east, west debate because we love binary modes of thinking and it creates sensational debate. But it's really not about east or west, it's about what really serves the better and deeper interest of the child, you know, so Amy Chua on one hand will say that we need to push our kids and make them tougher and so they can be more competent and survive in this tough world.

6:50 But on the other hand, just paradoxically, everything she does indicates the opposite, that her child is not really tough because her child cannot survive without being an A student. Her child cannot survive without being a concert pianist. So you really, you know, if the child is, if you want to institute a tough, gritty, connected approach within the child, then you have to begin with trust. You have to begin with an abundance based model. You cannot impose upon a child our own anxieties about what will be.

7:21 You know, we all as parents believe we're psychic and we can look into the future. And all our future predictions are based on anxiety. And what does anxiety inevitably lead to? A deep need for dominance and control. So Amy Chua is highly dominant. She calls herself a tiger mother, but in doing so she creates a divorce within the child to their own sense of knowing, to their own connectivity.

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