Transcriber: Mohand Habchi Reviewer: Ariana Bleau Lugo
As a clinical psychologist
it is my privilege to help people explore their inner worlds,
their psychological terrain.
Hour after hour, I hear thoughts, emotions, feelings.
This is my data.
This data helps me to better understand
what is it that emotionally paralyzes us.
How is it that we may thrive at this thing called life?
In voices that are awash with need and ablaze with yearning,
my clients invite me into their history.
They tell me stories of love, loss, hidden fears and deepest desires.
And let me tell you, inevitably these stories turn to childhood.
They speak of a common theme, a similar rhythm.
They speak of a hunger that only a parent can appease,
of a thirst that only a parent can quench.
The other day,
this tall strapping man in his mid forties,
he came to explore
his particularly difficult relationship with his father.
Yes, we grapple with problems of our childhood long into adulthood.
And he said to me, in a voice that turned plaintive,
that of an eight-year-old,
he said, "Will I ever meet my father's expectations?
Will he ever accept the man I've become today?
Or will I always be a no-good loser?"
He was seeking, searching, yearning for an approval
that may never come.
And what about the woman in her thirties,
so beautiful, talented, successful,
she screamed, "What is wrong with me?
Why am I this messed up?
You tell me it's because my father overdosed when I was 4,
but when will this pain fade?"
And the woman who picks on her skin constantly,
a lifetime habit, you see.
She said, "These," pointing to the rageful scars on her body,
"These began the day after my mom said
I was the reason daddy left us."
"Help me!", each one of them silently shouts at me,
"Who am I?
Am I my whole, am I worthy, do I matter?"
Life's essential questions.
But no matter what I say to them,
my words do not seep in.
Because they've internalized another voice, you see,
that of their parents, an early voice.
Now try erasing that first blueprint.
It runs wild, rampant, chaotic, unpredictable.
It comes to be the way we define ourselves.
It becomes the air we breathe.
Parents, few hold a greater power or more immense responsibility.
And this is why I'm here today,
to propose that we occupy the role of parenthood
in an entirely different way, with a renewed curiosity,
a heightened awareness, a transformed commitment.
Because nothing like parenthood
that needs to be at the forefront of our global consciousness.
It's the call, the linchpin
that affects how our children will thrive.
Everything: how they take care of themselves, each other,
the earth, show compassion,
tolerate differences, handle their emotions,
create, invent, innovate.
This is where global transformation begins.
We cannot expect our children to embody an enlightened consciousness
if we parents haven't dared to model this ourselves.
It all starts with us
and how we parent.
Our children are facing challenges today that we couldn't have dreamed of.
And evidence suggests that they are buckling under the pressure.
One in five children in America
shows signs or symptoms of a psychological disorder.
Now that is a hair-raising statistic.
Two years ago, there were over 662,000 children in America
that were in foster care.
The use of ADHD drugs is on an exponential high.
274% global increase.
UNICEF did a study a few years ago
and found that American children
ranked the second unhappiest.
There was a study done in the UK of 30,000 children,
and it was reported that one in ten, over the age of 8,
reported being unhappy on a consistent basis.
Something is amiss.
We need to sit up, pay attention and raise our children differently.
Now, of course, parental influence isn't the only factor at play.
There are confusing and colliding
and chaotic influences in our children's life
that shape them indeterminably.
We aren't the only ones, of course.
There's neurobiology, there's temperament,
there's social pressures, there's poverty.
We could blame psychiatry, education,
Big Pharma and the government,
and chances are we may be right,
but our influence in these spheres is relatively limited.
But let me tell you where we hold indubitable power.
That is in the relationship we nurture with our children.
Our children and us, moment after moment after moment.
Nothing glamorous here.
Early in the morning, as they brush their teeth,
as we take off their backpack,
as we soothe away their tears,
brush away their fears,
put them to sleep at night.
This is where each one of us holds transformative power.
There is no excuse.
Now this isn't just some clinical psychologist here
speaking of her convictions.
There's real science behind this
to show how the parental relationship
impacts not only our emotionality and our psychology,
but also our neurobiology.
Here, take a look at this,
two brains of 3-year-olds.
A great difference in size.
You may wonder why?
An illness perhaps? A genetic mutation?
No.
They differ in the quality of the relationship
they shared with their mother.
The one on the left suffered abuse and neglect,
and the one on the right
enjoyed the thriving connected relationship.
Chances are, the one on the left will grow into an adult
at greater risk for drugs, crime, a lower IQ,
and most tragically,
a diminished capacity for empathy and relatedness.
Now, the mother of the child on the left certainly wasn't evil.
She was probably a mother who loved her child.
You know, we don't hurt our children because we are evil or ill-intentioned,
certainly not out of a lack of love.
We hurt our children for one reason only:
it's because we are hurting ourselves
and we barely know it.
It's because we are unconscious,
because we have inherited legacies of emotional baggage
from our own parents.
We're sitting on emotional baggage that lies dormant unconscious,
waiting to be triggered at a moment's notice.
And who better to trigger us than our children?
They just know the buttons to push.
Through our children we get theatre seats,
orchestra seats to the theatrics of our emotional immaturity.
You know when we lose our temper with our children
and believe that they're devils and monsters,
chances are it isn't because they're that,
but because they've triggered an old wound within us.
They've made us feel feelings that we don't care to feel.
They've made us feel powerless and out-of-control, helpless,
and in order to regain a sense of supremacy,
we lash out at them in reactivity.
You know when we pick on our children nonstop, we nitpick at them,
"Why aren't you like this? Why don't you do that?
"Why couldn't you be more like her?"
Chances are it's not because they are inadequate,
but because we come from a place of inner lack,
and we ourselves live under the tyranny of a severe inner critic.
You know when our children are disrespectful to us
and cross our boundaries and we fret and fume,
and commiserate with our friends about our evil children?
Chances are it's not because they're wild and chaotic,
but because we ourselves
have a problem with our leadership, with consistency,
with order, with handling conflict, with saying no.
You know, our children come to us whole, complete and worthy.
They're happy with two sticks, a stone and a feather.
But because we've been conditioned so deeply in an unconscious manner,
so severed from our own sense of presence, wholeness, attunement,
and sense of self and whole and abundance
that we project a sense of lack onto them, and we teach them,
"Do not depend on your sense of self for worth and value, but look outward.
Look to the Ferrari, the corporate corner office,
to the casino, to the pill, to the bottle, to the needle,
to spouse number one, two and three,
to where you live, to where you graduated from.
Because we are severed from a sense of being,
we are consumed by doing.
This is how we know self value.
We teach our children,
"You can't simply play, you must achieve."
"You can't have a hobby, you must excel at it."
"You cannot dream, you must dream big
and why really dream if you can't succeed?"
It's time for us to change the spotlight,
to turn it inward,
and change it from being the child who needs to be fixed,
the child as the one with the problem,
and parental evolution as the solution.
The extent to which we as parents know ourselves,
is the extent to which our children will.
The extent to which we as parents can love deeply, laugh loudly,
risk bravely and lose freely,
is the extent to which our children will know joy and freedom.
The extent to which we can run out into the rain
without fear of getting wet,
is the extent to which our children will lead lives of courage.
The time to awaken is now.
The parenting paradigm needs to shift.
No more the parent as the greater than,
but now we need to look at our children as equal
if not greater transforming agents.
Our children are our awakeners, they are our teachers.
It is time for us parents to answer the call,
to pause, to reflect more,
to connect to our own abundance,
to trust our children,
to understand their brilliance,
to follow their lead,
to self-love, to create purpose,
to enter worth, to be in gratitude.
For this is how our children will absorb
wholeness and abundance, fullness and spirit.
And from this place, they can fly free.
It is time for us parents to answer our call to our own awakening.
The moment is now and our children await.
(Applause)