If you're a parent out there who wants a better relationship with your children,
then you need to start practicing conscious parenting.
Hi, I'm Dr. Shefali.
I'm a clinical psychologist and an author of my latest book, The Parenting
Map. I lay out six typical essences of our children to help you, the parent,
identify them, but also see the superpowers in each one of them.
The anxious exploder.
It's a child who is typically fussy or irritable or very sensitive who seems to
react all over the place.
These children feel a lot and that is often a strength.
So we need to just help them regulate their feelings and manage their big
emotions. So what is asked for the parent of this kind of child is that
they stay calm and grounded.
If you have a highly sensitive, exploding child and you begin to explode
and overreact, then you are just going to create a tsunami of conflict and
chaos. So teaching these kinds of children how to pause, how to take deep
breaths, how to maybe hold their hand on their chest while they're heaving,
will allow these children to feel more grounded.
The hyper active explorer.
These kinds of children are those that find it hard to sit still.
They're always on the move.
They on the go. It's like they have their finger in every project and in
every pie.
And these children seem very resistant to fitting in to any kind of
conventional mode or any kind of box.
Our tendency when we have these kinds of children around us is to label them
as bad, bad, bad.
But that will dishonor their passionate spirit.
Their super strength is that they're super curious, super passionate, super
engaged with all of life.
So it's really important for parents to let these children know that their
spirit is intact, that it is worthy of celebration because these kinds of
children are often so shamed and shunned by conventional society that
they need to be told that they are good enough as they are.
The overdo over pleaser kind of kid.
Now, this is the kid every parent wants because they are soft like butter.
You can mold them. You can adapt them into any shape you want.
But here's the risk in having this kind of kid, it is very easy for the parent
to run their ego over these kinds of children and abduct them for their own
fantasies. So it's really important for parents of these kinds of children to
teach these children that it's okay for them to have boundaries.
These children are always eager to please everyone around them.
So we need to teach these children that it's okay to say no to.
To have boundaries against authority and to have their own voice.
The Dreamer recluse is typically a shy child or more introverted.
That child who loves to doodle in his notebook or wanders into space or likes
to be on their own.
Now, this child will also be shamed by culture because culture tells us that
our children should be extroverted and cheerful and loud and boisterous.
So often these children feel labeled, they feel ostracized.
It's our job as parents to let these children know that they have super
powers. It takes a lot of courage for a child to be with themselves and to like
their own company.
That is a strength that we need to encourage in our children.
Males in particular.
Fathers may have issues with such kind of children, especially if it's sons who
are more introverted because again, we expect boys to be more extroverted, more
assertive, and we need to remind these parents to not push these children to
become someone they are not, but instead to celebrate that being an
introvert is also a great, great strength.
The rebel nonconformist.
I often call these children our true awakeners because they defy our egoic
need for control and dominance.
These children simply need to be assertive.
They have an inner confidence and a sense of empowerment that doesn't allow
them to just be our blind, servile, compliant little puppets.
So often parents go head to head with these kinds of children, and that is
often the worst approach.
My daughter was the typical rebel nonconformist, and I remember when she
was young how my ego wanted to just overpower her and like dominate her.
And it took me a while through doing conscious parenting to realize that she
was actually already doing the right thing for herself.
She was going to be a leader in her life, but she was doing it at home,
which was making it hard for me to be a leader.
So that's when I realized that instead of trying to lead her, let me become her
partner. We need to allow these children to have that voice, have that
inner authority, and to pave their own way.
The easy, breezy, happy go lucky child.
This is the child who's always optimistic, cheerful, relaxed, fun, and
the one who brings joy into every situation.
So what could be the problem with this kind of kid?
Well, this kind of kid rubs the parent often in the wrong way because they are
not type A enough.
They're not ambitious enough.
They're not motivated enough.
What parents don't realize is that these children really are the masters
and the gurus of living in the present moment.
And the more we try to make them like us more type-A, more controlling, more
dominating, we're actually robbing these beautiful spirits of what makes
them whole and complete as they are, because these children, they walk into
every situation grateful, abundant and joyful.
And that's what makes these children also such positive role models for us.
The parent, of course, these are not the only types of children.
And of course, your child could be a combination of a little bit of all of
them. It is our job to attune to our children's essence versus making our
children attuned to our expectations of them.