Daughters Are Struggling. Here's What They Need From Us with Psychologist Dr. Shefali

This episode of The Opropodcast is presented by our partner, Kaiko. Today we're talking about the specific difficulties in raising daughters in today's world. Parents are in a new era now. It's not the same. They have to become humble and begin listening to what our children are telling us. And they are in pain. They're feeling the pressure of knowing too much, too soon. Or being too overexposed and too over-sexualized. Your daughter now is on a platform where it's a global curation of over-perfection. Being presented to her as an ideal, right now with the filters, now with the like button. She's living disconnected, disembodied, dislocated, and that girl is easy prey for predation. Instead of wanting your daughters to be good, you want your daughters to be heard. Yes, yes. You want to train them to use their voice and not just be good. Yes, so their voice that speaks to them first. We must allow our daughters to lead the way for their own self-direction, for their own destiny. Hello, it is just my pleasure to welcome you once again to The Opropodcast. I'm so glad to be back on my front porch with one of my favorite parenting experts, spiritual leader, teachers, world-renowned clinical psychologists, and New York Times best-selling author, Dr. Shafali. On a prior episode, we talked about the new challenges that so many of you as parents are facing, raising children in this modern era, and we focused on Dr. Shafali's book called Raising Conscious Sons, cultivating purpose, connection, and inner power in a chaotic world. We can all feel how necessary that book is. Check out that episode if you have not already. And now, today we're talking about the specific difficulties in raising daughters in today's world. Dr. Shafali's book is called Raising Conscious Daughters, building confidence, courage, and inner power in an anxious world. I think we can feel how much this book is needed also for our girls in the world. You have to do too. Why? I had to write two books because we are in a very unique, unprecedented, cultural turning point. And our children are being raised in a world that is increasingly misaligned to provide them the nourishment for their neurological, developmental, psychological, spiritual needs. And I felt I had to write two books because boys and girls, and this is not about gender dichotomy. This is not about a binary. Of course, you can read one book and see more of your son in the daughters in vice versa. But I wrote two books because boys and girls go through very specific, precise, and different developmental trajectories, hormonal landscapes, and culture exploits them very differently. Wow. I asked you this on the other episode before. Give us a quick refresher for those who are not familiar with what it means to be a conscious parent because we first became friends. I was introduced to your book, Conscious Parenting, and I was so struck by that because I'd done so much work with Eckhart Toley. And you, to me, seemed like the Eckhart Toley for parenting and turns out that's what you said to your publisher when you presented that book. Yes. Eckhart talks about presence, attunement, stillness, and recognizing the projections from our own wounds. Well, who does that more than parents? We constantly project on to our children, our unmet needs, our unfulfilled expectations, our fantasies, and we cast our children into our movie as if they were our object because they are ours. And so Conscious Parenting is a movement that is my answer to the toxicity of the traditional parenting model which treats children as our objects. Yeah. And parents are doing it. And sometimes, you know, you hear those words, it feels like I'm sure a lot of parents didn't take it well at first when they were reading this about themselves and the conscious parent. And they don't see themselves as creating a problem because they're doing it out of love. I who've never had my own children did this with, I remember one of my girls from South Africa came to the United States. I remember the night, I might have shared this with you before, I remember the night that she got into Wellesley. And I always wanted to go to Wellesley. She didn't want to go to Wellesley. But I wanted to go to Wellesley. And I talked her into going to Wellesley. And she ended up having a miserable time, feeling isolated and disconnected and never felt like like she belonged. And that was a huge turning point lesson for me in projecting what I wanted onto her. And I learned because I've now put over 800 girls through college is to let them live their lives and have their own will about whatever it is they choose. And I have literally released it. I have surrendered whatever anyone becomes. I try to provide you know an opportunity and open door. And so and I learned that from you. I learned that from conscious parenting. Parents get so afraid to release trust and autonomy onto their children because they were not raised with autonomy, trust and sovereignty. They were raised with control and most of us are so we are love language is control is possession because we think we're supposed to because we think we're supposed we don't know any other way and we've never been tuned in to listen to our own sovereign spirit. So we don't know how to gift that to our children. Yes. And it's so interesting. I was talking to one of your friends, Pilar recently who said that even though you were her best friend and you are very close that she didn't realize until you wrote the book conscious parenting. That she was doing that in her own relationship with her son, forcing her son. Yes. Many of you may recognize this forcing her son to have piano lessons and he hated it. Right from the most benign go kiss grandma and the child is like I don't want to kiss grandma. She smells right from the the pushing of the child from that to play an instrument because I want you to play an instrument or excel in school. Where your hair like this and go into a beauty page and because you look so cute get married to this person follow my God all the way to sexual exploitation and trafficking. It's all the same through line of objectifying our children commodifying them and using them to fulfill our ego are unbridled ego. So these books are my interruption to the pipeline of raising insecure girls to become self abandoning women raising lost boys to become predating men. These books are my interruption of that pipeline in the beginning of raising conscious daughters. You write a wake up call letter to parents you say as both the psychologist and a mother let me say this plainly I am deeply troubled by what I see unfolding in girlhood across the industrialized world for one simple reason. This is not the way we should be raising our daughters. What are you seeing? Over I could cry because I'm a girl inside me and I'm raising a daughter and our daughter's ecosystem their neurochemistry is so finely tuned to relational nuance. So sensitive to cues from each other. They build their identity girls more than boys and I'm not saying boys can't do this but more so than boys girls are primed. To develop an identity based within the container of a face to face eye to eye relationship that's how they discover who they are. Now you're putting these very sensitive fine tune forks into the tornado and hurricane and tsunami of constant the algorithm the feed comparison perfectionism you know feeling bullied feeling objectified over sexualized early sexualization. You're taking that butterfly and she's lost in that tsunami and that's why overall tell you the stats okay I'll just rattle them off because they're alarming okay one in three girls are anxious anxiety disorder depression has doubled in the last decade anxiety has double the last decade it's in the last decade since the advent of technology which is hijacking their attention and consuming their sense of sell. Pression has doubled one in five girls by the age of 18 has self harmed self harm has risen 188% since 2010 okay wow that means girls cutting self harm eating disorders suicidal ideation up 60% in the last decade one in four girls by the age of 18 and this won't come as a surprise I've been dealing with this. As has had sexual violence or sexual abuse one in two has been cyber bullied so now you take a girl who's intricate brain with that has amazing neural bridges between the left and right hemisphere she can talk about her feelings she feels more deeply and can access her feelings more deeply because of her neurochemistry you know estrogen. to be tuned so. and turns it on, so her bonding hormone is right there, and estrogen does that. Mm-hmm. She's primed for, you know, becoming a victim, and pray to these forces that are constantly telling her. She's not good enough, she needs to be more. She is not perfect, you know, the filters. I don't know how -- how y'all are doing it out there, raising young girls, because I think with the social media and the pressure -- I mean, I look at my feed and I never end up feeling better about myself. How can you? And women, I'm sorry to say, need to take some responsibility because we are perpetuating the same climate of perfectionism that besieges us, that entrapes us. Yeah, well, that's why one of the things I so appreciate it and felt so compelling in raising conscious daughters is this letter, you created a hypothetical letter from a 16-year-old girl to her parent that really is a compilation of hundreds of conversations that you've had with your clients, with your patients, of all ages over the years. So I want you all to listen to this. Maybe this will resonate with you. This could be your daughter. You tell me to trust you, but I don't feel safe, too. You tell me to love my body, but I've never heard you say one kind word about yours. You tell me to find love, but I see how many of you stay in relationships that seem loveless and dull. You tell me to speak my truth, but then you tell me to calm down when I do. You want me to find purpose and joy, but I watch you burning out. You want me to accept myself just as I am, but then I never see you okay with yourself, like ever. You always look stressed and like you are in a bad mood. It's all so confusing, Mom. You want to know the truth about why I act the way I do. I'm really scared most of the time. I don't really know how to believe in myself. Everything feels warped and shaky. I know that what I see is based on what I saw last in my feed and not the truth. And this freaks me out. I want to know the truth, but I cannot find it anywhere. When you are growing up, you could just trust the news at least. But now, none of us can rely on anything to be real. Most things are not and that is an awful feeling. So you wrote that letter as a composite because this is what the girls are sharing with you for themselves. Yeah, they're trying to tell the moms and dads, hey, just because you are an adult now and you went through teenagehood, what I'm going through is something that you don't know. So do not tell me, oh, when I was your age, when I was 21, this is what I did because I'm growing up in a world that you don't recognize. Please have the humility to know that you don't know. That's where we all need to start. That's why I wrote these books, my seventh and eighth book, because parents are in a new era now. So whatever we knew before, it's not the same. We have to become humble and begin listening to what our children are telling us. They're feeling the pressure of knowing too much too soon of being overexposed, too overexposed and too oversexualized. And this is robbing them of their rightful childhood. She knows that her feed is curated to her desires and insecurities. It's complete manipulation. So she believes that these worlds know that what they're seeing isn't even real anymore. It's just for them to exploit them, they're in security. Oh, you want to travel to the mountains? Now your feed will be full of that. Beguiling you, seducing you to go travel. You only have to say it in your phone. Maybe I'm not going to be shown mountains and trips and all the things. The same is for cult ideology. The same is for toxic masculinity, misogyny. Misogynyistic messages are coming through her phone and into her brain and she's not ready to process it. She has no language for it. But she's been told she's an object way before she even realizes that she's a body that she can own. Yeah, she's been objectified. Yes. And our daughters will look to the women around them because their mirror neurons are so activated that they will identify with the modeling that we provide as women. And that's why I teach mothers more than anyone. If you want to raise sovereign daughters, you have to learn to self-love. And if you continue in your self-loathing and if you're at war with your body and if you are always in the land of more, more and never enough, your daughters are absorbing that. So you owe it to your daughter to heal and to hold us. But don't you also say in raising conscious daughters that that's where we are with girls now, that we are in the land of more and more and more and more. Yes. And you know, it's one thing to put pressure on our children. We've always done that. But it's another thing when your daughter now is on a platform where it's a global curation of over perfection being presented to her as an ideal. Right now with the filters, now with the like button. So now it's become a constant audition. She's always auditing. She's never herself. She's always the persona and never the essence. And she's living disconnected, disembodied, dislocated. And that girl is easy prey for predation. She's easily manipulated because she's been told who to be before she ever. Because she's gotten her whole life manipulating herself. Yes. You're spending all your time manipulating herself. Right, I call it the perception prison. She's in this perception prison where she herself is the prisoner and the warden to her own essence. That's why I think this is such an important book and raising sons because whether you are raising daughters or sons or not, you will see yourself in these stories. Yes. Our listeners tell us that the podcast is resonating with you and is serving as a bright spot in your day. That means a lot to me, so here's the thing. I would really appreciate it if you like and subscribe to the Oprah podcast on YouTube or wherever you podcast. It's just a quick tap of the subscribe button. And that way you won't miss an episode in your queue. You don't have to pay anything. I know subscribe usually means you're paying something. But this time it means you just are notified when there's something new. There are many more to come that we're excited about. So thank you for watching and listening. 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And we have parents of daughters joining us. Kristina is zooming in from Michigan. Hi, Kristina. Hi. Hi there. Hi. Dr. Schultz, hi, Oprah. I'm so grateful for your focus and attention on this topic. I have three daughters. They're 15-year-old twins and a 12-year-old daughter. And I feel like what I once knew to be true about parenting no longer applies at all. Honestly, I feel really lost. I feel like I'm constantly rerouting and recalculating my approach. These girls are growing up in a world of individualism, capitalism, social division, materialism. It's not in that pressure. Like you've said, Dr. Schifali and comparison and always striving for the unattainable, the dopamine addiction from their social scrolling just continues to fuel that, you know, materialism. And every week there's a new brand or object or thing that they need to have. And not to mention all the scary news in the world and events that are currently taking place. So it's all just too much. And I've watched my little girls grow from these happy young girls into really anxious, overwhelmed, anxiety-medicated, attending therapy, just to get out of bed in the morning and go to school. And it doesn't feel right. They've been raised in a really loving and supportive household with two parents and their smart girls. They have friends. They're athletic. But it doesn't seem like that's enough anymore because of all the external pressure. And so with all that pressure, I feel like I am constantly bailing them out, rescuing them, making accommodations for them with no consequences. Things my mother would never have done. And I'm finding myself something. Give us an example. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So I think we all have the instance where a child forgot something at school. And you're going to bring it to them, right? Once in a while that happens. I feel like any ask they make, they forgot their homework. They forgot their lunch. They're cold. I am picking up these things and rushing off to school. I'm disrupting my day. I'm disrupting my week because I see it a baseline just how anxious they are at all times that I'm trying to like hold them together and scaffold around them. and keep them going throughout their day. And I'm almost embarrassed to admit some of the things like that I'll continue to buy for them or experiences I'll give to them, like having a personal trainer, because guess what, their friends do and they're afraid they're gonna fall behind in their sports team because they're not running as fast as they're the girls. And I am embarrassed. It truly feels like I have to do this from a deep, like, maternal instinct and my question for you really is, how do I start to let go at this age? Natural consequences are very important, right? But this anxiety. Right, so you have so much anxiety also that they're falling apart, right? And I do not blame you. I just had a 15-year-old. My daughter's now 23. So I totally understand the pressures that you feel as a mother because they're feeling all this pressure to keep up, to be perfect, to be something. So we buy, we borrow, we do anything to buttress a flailing sense of self. But here's where we are part of the pattern, right? And you know this, it doesn't feel good to you because you know you're being pulled against your will. But that's what our daughters are. They're being pulled against their will. We are being swept by the undertow of a materialistic consumeristic culture that we all are feeling helpless with. So what do we do? Yeah. And what is she really teaching her daughters by giving in to every single thing that they ask? What is she really teaching? Well, she's really teaching them that, yes, your personal trainer matters for your identity. Yes, getting into that team matters for yourself worth, right? You're actually, we're doing the very thing that is actually going to keep taking from them. It's a never-ending cycle because that's how they've got us hooked. And they've got us parents anxious because our girls are in a panic attack of, right? Do not blame her. They come to her and they're screaming, crying, they're having a meltdown. She's afraid they're going to self-harm if she doesn't give them the car or the gift of the jewelry because all the friends are being bathed in this ocean, this current of anxiety, panic, perfectionism, hyper exposure. I mean, it's girls are at a different level because their attunement to culture is even more. So we have to scaffold them. So now you think you're scaffolding them by buying them that purse, by buying them that vacation or whatever, that bubble. But here's the thing, you're actually feeding the monster because you are teaching them that, yes, their worth means that they should look beautiful and fit in. So what do we do as parents? Very hard, not saying it's easy. And I talk about the pillar of antifragility in the book. It is so important for us as parents to make them antifragile. What does that mean? We have to teach them that they will be okay even if they fall apart. But see, I know what this mother is experiencing. She's like, no, they won't be okay. They won't be okay. So let me pump them with the drug, whatever the drug of the day is. And this is where she's codependent and she's enabling. And I don't blame her. I've done this myself because we're so worried. So we're anxious, they're anxious. So we keep feeding and giving the drug. How do you break the cycle? You break it is to realize that the teaching of resilience and antifragility comes from the falling apart. Comes from the rock bottom moment. Even with my clients, I wait for rock bottom, not because I'm sadistic, because I know that it is only when you see yourself at rock bottom and see yourself able to handle it that you build the antifragility and the resilience. So what we're doing is protecting the rock bottom from getting to rock bottom. So we never believe we're strong enough. So we keep feeding, we're stuck in this loop. You're in a loop, then a loop. You'll be millions of dollars, you know, poorer and nothing will change until you cut the loop and stop feeding the monster. So how does she do that? She has a talk with them, comes to a coach like me and I'm off in the bad guy who says, we cannot feed the monster anymore. We are now drug addicted to the thing on the outside and we all have to detox. The whole system has to detox and it is painful and scary, especially with anxious girls, because you think they're going to self-harm, they're going to cut themselves, they're going to harm themselves. But we cannot feed that beast, because we're all afraid. They're afraid of their own pain. We have to teach them that we cannot be afraid of pain. Pain is something that teaches us. It is our gift and our invitation. It's one of the things you also said about boys, so it applies to raising children, period, I see, that you have to let them know that if you fall apart, you will still be okay. And I'm here for you. And we all have fallen apart. And we are together. And the relationship is strong enough. See, you're not believing, mom, that your presence is more important than the purse and the shoes. The shoes and the purse are transitory and they're just momentary gratification. You can hold them through the falling apart. And you are going to be the one who will pull them through. So if you believe in yourself, they will fall apart, you're right. But that is how we detox the beast. It's really interesting, because I thought we were at rock bottom when they wouldn't go to school and wouldn't get out of bed. And we were going to therapy and taking these anti-anxiety meds. So I think rock bottom, that felt like my rock bottom, right? Yeah, and obviously that's-- But because you're in this loop, it means that it wasn't bottom enough. It's coming again. Now you're just buttressing it with things. And things are never going to teach them connection to the self. They have to face themselves at rock bottom. I saw you have a moment of recognition. And their things are never going to teach them connection to their self. Yeah. Yeah. And pain does-- And pain does. And pain does. Yeah. Our ability to transcend and transform and alchemize pain teaches us connection to ourselves. I know that no parent wants their child to have to experience pain. Yes. Yes. Right. And what you said about control-equaling love, I mean, I think that's that is where I feel like I'm coming from. I'm trying to manage, control their environment and help. And consciously, I, you know, materialists, I know that doesn't-- I think you're trying to control them falling apart. And yet falling apart is a very thing that will teach them self-control. Oh, well, I'm grateful for that advice. That is a tough one to swallow. But you are certainly the person we need right now to start being more disruptive and sharing this information, because it's hard. It's just really hard. It's very hard. You're going to have so many a-has and seeing yourself in the book and be-- and you'll be grateful for it. Because one of the things that she does is offer a path forward, not just stating what the problem is, but offering a path forward. So I could see your whoof that hit your heart. But yeah, it feels like the truth to me. It does. I feel a little like-- The reason why I hit you, Christina, is because you know inside yourself that what she's saying is true. 100%. And you know, I just tied back together, but just briefly, ultimately, Christina, it's your little girl that wants to be a good mother. That is actually unable to watch them fall apart, because then you'd have to face that you can't control it all. And you can't keep your kids happy. And that's actually not your job. Yeah. Ooh. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. It's the little girl in us that wants to be the best mom. This shoe over here, because you're getting-- you're starting to get to me with these things. Oh, wow. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, dear listener. Head over to the Oprah Podcast Instagram to check out The Takeaway, presented by Geico. I'm really happy to tell you about my latest conversation. It's that quiet time I take after an interview where I can reflect on what sparked and what stuck with me. I love to share those takeaways with you all. Unbelievable. And Geico is proud to support these moments and the journeys they inspire, with insurance designed to keep you covered and make life's road a little more manageable. So go to the Oprah Podcast Instagram where you can check it out. Lisa's joining us from Illinois. Hi, Lisa. I hear you have twin girls in college. Hi, do. Hi, Oprah. Hi, Dr. Shafali. Thank you so much. This is such an important conversation. I do. I have twin girls. They are 20. They are currently juniors in college. And they definitely grew up with anxiety as well from an early age all through high school. And what really has impacted them over the years is the comparison culture or social comparison that happens on Instagram and TikTok. But now in their junior year, there's a whole new pressure. They're all thinking about their careers post-college. And what's really important for most of them is to get an internship right after their junior year. And so in particular, for one of my daughters, I've noticed that she's starting to really struggle with LinkedIn because her feed is exactly what you're talking about, Dr. Shafali, where it's every single person that she is connected to on LinkedIn is consistently posting self-promotional posts about all the achievements that they've received academically. leadership positions that they've gotten in clubs, and now they're all in the process of posting all the internships that they've received. And this has put some incredible pressure on my daughter, and I know this. - Comparison, comparison, yeah. - Comparison, and she is saying everybody has gotten an internship, and I have not gotten one yet. She used to be in high school, I think, a perfectionist, needed to have the straight A's. And now I see this all kind of falling apart, and sort of blowing up. And what's happening now is she's actually with drawing. The question is, how do I help her through this? This is obviously a very critical time in her life, and how do I help her proceed in this environment, without hurting herself worth? - You see, when she was a perfectionist in high school, and was getting the good grades, and the trophies, it was fine, and she got a lot of external validation, and we were all happy with that. But now you see these things mutate on themselves. We just don't see it coming. Too much perfectionism breeds over anxiety, and the desperate desire to fit in. And your daughter basically is saying, "If I'm not in the high school yearbook," right? LinkedIn is now become like a high school yearbook, the most popular, the one with the most best job, the best race, the best salary, the best title. And these are children we're talking about. They're not even formed. They are still in identity formation, but they believe they have to foreclose their identity. That's the pressure the world puts on them that you better decide who you are, identify who you're going to be in high school, right? Because that way they can prey on girls wanting to find, and because then if they want to find, they'll go get training earlier. They'll join classes earlier. They'll spend more money to train themselves earlier than they should. So your daughter has been misguided by culture, and it's our job as parents to align them back to reality. Even if everybody's crazy on LinkedIn, and everybody's saying that they need to be earning 100,000 by the time they're 18 years old, and money matters so much, and status matters, we are here to teach our daughters differently, and that's where you step in, and you teach her, that when she was winning the trophies in the medals and the good grades in high school, actually that was a tragedy, because she was actually doing it to chase worth, not out of worth. And most of us are chasing worth. We're not expressing worth. Wow. So she's doing all this just to fit in, so it is empty, and it's just not hitting her yet. She thinks that if she gets the fancy job, and the diamonds, and the cute boyfriend, is going to give her worth. She's so lucky she's not fitting in, because now she has to find her worth without all of this. But you see, she's falling apart. That's what happens to us. The husband leaves us, we get a divorce, we put on 10 pounds, we fall apart, because who we are has been so connected and mired with how we show up in the world, or how we look. So this is your golden opportunity as a parent to teach her to move away from the toxic cultural messages and learn to discover her worth, which is right there waiting for her within herself. So that means you can't buy into this either. You can't have a panic attack either. In fact, she shouldn't do an internship right now at all. And instead, go to her own self-school, like go to school and learn about herself, discover who she is. That's the school she needs to go to, the self-discovery school. Yeah, yeah. And so what if she doesn't get the job, and she doesn't get whatever the opportunity is, it's happened to every one of us in life. Right. And you don't get that one. You recover, you move on, you find strengths from that. And when the next thing shows itself, it usually is an even better opportunity. Right, and nothing again. As you know, you know that's how life works. Right, so that's so true. Yeah. For a girl like that, a platform is toxic, not for everybody, but for a girl like that, she's very sensitive. So parenting needs to trump the platform. Yes. Right, the adult needs to trump the algorithm. That makes so much sense. Yeah. So much sense. Thanks, Lisa. I hope it gives you some guidance. It does. Definitely. So helpful. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. You say in raising conscious daughters, girls have been socialized by the toxic patriarchy to compete with each other just as we're hearing here. Each one has been socialized to be prettier and smarter than the others, to get the attention of the males around them. Patriarchy has always thrived by turning women against one another. Mothers especially must model something radically different. That's what you're saying. Yes. The greatest power the patriarchy has is in dividing us against each other. And in us competing with each other, which we are doing. And it is in our sorority and in our sisterhood that we will stand up to the toxic patriarchy. But if we're too busy fighting and competing with each other with our sisters, then patriarchy wins. We cannot blame the toxic male on the outside when we're having toxic with each other. And this is the thing. I mean, as you turn the pages of this book, raising conscious daughters, every sentence is a gem. I really appreciate this. And I know this is going to resonate with our mothers. If I had to identify the single most corrosive condition shaping the mental health of our daughters today, it would be what I call the psychology of more. Will you break that down for us? Yes, we are in a pervasive, oceanic turmoil of this culture of never good enough. It's never enough. So we have to always optimize. And the wellness industry is the leader of this. Like, make a bed, have your mother do this. Do your Pilates, have your protein, go out of the sun. Do your sun salutations. I mean, it's a sneaky way to keep us never accepting who we are. This idea, this toxic positive idea of keep improving. It's a hollow way of keeping us stuck in thinking there's a next self that's going to be happy. Because there's never enough, you're never enough. So we want more and more. But how about look in the mirror, except that this is it, wrinkles, cellulite, all of it. And this is enough. That's radical. India, a mom of two joins us. Welcome, India. What's going on? OK. Hi. Hi. Thank you, guys, so much for having me. So I do have an 11-year-old daughter, and I allowed her to get on TikTok. Only because of the dance trains, because her school friends were doing it. Her track friends were doing it. So I allowed her to get on there. And so I do monitor it. I make sure who she's following and her followers are people that I know. But recently, I noticed that her algorithm changed to more about makeup and skincare and beauty enhancements. Just things that an 11-year-old should not be worrying about. I want her to be confident and comfortable in her skin and her natural beauty. But I guess social media brings so much comparison. And so my question is basically, how can I guide her in a healthy way, especially since we didn't grow up with social media at all? So I have nothing to go off of. So just very gently, I'm going to tell you and encourage you and challenge you to reconsider her being on TikTok altogether, because no matter how you can maneuver and monitor, the algorithm will outpace you. It is way smarter than you. It is watching your daughter's every move. It is noticing her every move. They're listening to her. They're watching her take a selfie and take it down, because she's insecure about it. And they will pump her with beauty products, because this is the new marketplace for commodities. That's why she's getting all the beauty products. Because any pictures she's taken or taken down, it's like having big brother watching you all the time right there. That's where we are. Yes. You and I cannot fathom the influence it is having on your daughter's brain. It is beyond you. So I'm not saying-- Can I just interrupt to say that one of the things you expressed in the Raising Conscious Suns book is we've gone from the algorithms wanting your attention to now wanting your complete attachment. That is what is happening. And your daughter being on TikTok at this age is her attaching to a form of parenting that you are not going to be able to control. Yes, there is no consciousness in the computer code. OK, there's no consciousness there. It is only exploitation for the purpose of profit. You would not do this in regular life. Do not do this. She is developing her identity at 11. 11 is the turning point for most girls where they go from self-celebrating, self-honoring to a shroud of who they are within moments, without the comparison. So the best gift you can give her is to tell her that, you know, you as a family, your values have changed. And you can bring her to a therapist to be the bad, quote unquote, bad guy. But you have to detox her from this. Even if all her friends are on it. Yeah, OK. You can make them all watch this. - Yes, I see you're not there yet. - I see you're not there. - I see you're like, "Well, yeah." I know what you're thinking, India. You're thinking it's gonna be really hard now to get her off a TikTok because she's been on TikTok. But you're the parent, you're the mother. - Yeah, don't outsource your power to the platform. - Yes, yes, agreed. And I will say it was such a drastic change with her Christmas list this year from the toys to literally just get her makeup. - At 11. - Yeah. - At 11. - Yeah. So you already see it. - Yeah, this is what's so interesting. This is what's so interesting. And I think you do a lot of this for warning in both of the books is that things that seem mild now at 11, by the time she's 14, if you don't assert yourself in the parenting role and continue to let the computer and the algorithm do it, you will not be able to have any voice. - Any influence, the greatest influence we have as parents comes from our attention and our attachment. - 'Cause it's about to get real out here. - And it's gonna get worse. - It's gonna get worse if you see it now. - It's about to get very real with AI being the companion to your child in ways that you have no idea. Yeah. - Mm-hmm. - And the psychological impact of a girl who sees herself with a filter and sees, wow, my nose looks this way and my cheekbones look, I look better if only I can just go buy all the products now to match that filtered image. And you know, the filter will just keep out doing her. And now. - Right. - And it'll pull me. - And 11 is just too young to process that. - But it doesn't. - She doesn't have the language. She doesn't have the prefrontal cortex to tell her what is fake and what is real. So you're throwing her into the tsunami without the guidance and the guide rails. And so she's gonna fall off the cliff. - Yeah. Yeah. - Well, yeah. I do think I am gonna get her off of it. It's literally started with the dance trains. And now it's-- - It starts in a very benign way. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. You were doing what you thought was best at the time. But Maya Angelou always said, "When you know better, you do better." And you just heard it, you just heard it. You can't say, "We all are witness to you hearing it, India." So you can't say you didn't hear it. - Yeah. Yeah. - Yeah. - She's holding you accountable. - Yes. - Yes, yes, yes. - Thank you, India. Thank you. - Thank you. - Okay, we have one more zoom. Kiera is zooming in from New Jersey. Hi, Kiera. - Hi, how are you? - Hi. - Thanks so much for me. - Thank you for being here. - Wonderful. Wonderful. I've taken a whole page full of notes. And I can't wait for you to come out and buy it for myself and my sister and all my mom friends. I know there's gonna be a lot of really great wisdom in there. So this is a very difficult job of parenting. I'm a teacher. I've been a teacher for almost 20 years, middle school children. And nothing that I've ever experienced in the classroom ever could prepare me for how difficult parenting is. So I just wanna say that right off the bat, my husband and I both full time were really busy, but very hands on. We've got two teenage girls. Our oldest is the junior. She's 16 years old and then our youngest is just about 14 years old. This past year we've had more challenges than ever before with academics and with social pressures and with the older one is entering romantic relationships and just everything that a teenage year is bringing. And we realize that we're really venturing into behaviors that can have real consequences. If they're not handled appropriately right now. This past year has been really difficult, especially for my older daughter. She's had lots of incidents aimed and targeted at her with a boy and school related to bullying. And how old are they again? Remind us, we fresh, how old? - So my oldest is a junior, she's 16. And then my youngest is 14. - Okay. - The oldest, they've both actually been aimed at incidences of bullying so much so that the state of New Jersey actually had to kind of get involved and intervene. Thankfully that's kind of in the rear view mirror. But we're just trying to navigate the teenage years with all of the pressures that come with raising teenage daughters. I wanna give my girls, we trust them and we wanna give them the autonomy to make their own decisions and learn from their own mistakes. But at what point should we step in? So what is controlling versus guiding my teenage teenager's decisions and behaviors look like? - Well, just as a general rule of thumb, anything that is self or other harming. So if it's eating disorders, cutting, suicidal ideation, bullying another person that is impinging on the emotional and physical well-being of the self or the other, you need to step in with your authority and influence and take them to a coach, take them to a therapist, take them to someone so you get the support. But do not be in denial that that is a passing phase because these things very quickly catapult, as you saw with bullying, they became the victims of bullying. So cyberbullying is a real trauma now that our girls especially are experiencing. There's sex exploitation, there's extortion, there's cyberbullying, so I'm not surprised and I'm really sorry though, that this happened because the bullied is no longer left in the school yard or the playground. You see, the bullied follows you home now and the minute you open your phone and the WhatsApp chat and your Snapchat's, the bully's right there in these groups that the kids form and leave you out. So it's very, very, you know, the part of the brain that lights up when a girl is rejected is the same as the part of the brain as she's experiencing physical pain. That's how painful it is to her to be excluded from the social milieu from the group. So what your daughters have gone through is traumatic. And so now you're talking about the fallout of that and that is, you're going to see that. It is interrelated, it is not separate. And the thing with bullying we need to understand as parents is that the girl begins to doubt herself. She begins to think it must be me, you know, it must be my fault. So let me fit in more, let me wear this or let me become skinnier, let me become cleverer. So whatever you're seeing now is the fallout and it could be rebellious behavior is because they are now trying to fit in because that sorority, that community was taken from her. So now she'll do anything to be part of the group. So we have to understand the underlying need here and not just focus on the surface behavior. - That makes sense. - That makes sense? - Yeah. - Yeah, you're seeing the oscillation of the devastation of her self-hood being ostracized from the group for a girl that is death. - Yeah, that is death to a girl. - Yeah, Kiera, thank you so much. Thank you so much. - Well, you write this about how young girls can become so accommodating, it becomes toxic. What happens to the daughter who's obedient and always helpful? The one who smooths every rough edge who adapts, accommodates, and rarely asks for much. The one who's never a burden on her parents. I know a lot of you are listening and you're hearing yourself in this. Never too much, never in the way. She's every parent's dream child. The answer is this, she slowly disappears. - Yes, she gets a race. - I was so struck by that because four years, as you know, I've talked to women on the Oprah show all those years and even now who tried to be the perfect daughter, the perfect girl, the always good. This is a kind of suffering, you say, that hides in plain sight. We don't recognize it as pain because it looks like success because she's the good daughter. We call it good behavior, even ideal womanhood, but inside our daughters and inside so many women, the expectation to be all things for all people siphons away her power. - Yeah, this is the curse of the woman, the modern woman who wants to be the savior, the fixer, the pleaser, she's the parentified daughter, she's the golden girl, and she's often raised by the mother who herself was parentified and expects the daughter to take on the legacy. So it's really the mother who at the kitchen table will train her daughter to be the next caretaker, the emotional janitor for the household and passes on that legacy. And what happens is that that girl begins to identify as that role, as that function. So she herself doesn't know who she is without that role and that function. So she will constantly look for broken pieces and damaged goods to fix so that gives her her identity of fixing, but in all of this she will burn out because there's not enough people outside she can fix. - Wow, I want to read this passage about when we praise our daughters. So to every mother reading this, when you praise your daughter for being good, helpful or mature for her age, pause, ask yourself what that praise may be teaching her and what it might be costing her because without realizing it, your applause can train her to abandon herself in order to be loved. And over time, the power that wants to live so freely inside your daughter will begin to dissipate. Until one day you find yourself wondering how that bright, spunky girl slowly faded into a quieter, more careful version of herself and more uncomfortably into a version of you. - Last part of you, I talk about three pillars that are connected to what you just said. The pillar of voice. It is our sacred responsibility to give our daughters their voice. Yes, one of the things that struck me in the book is that you were saying, you know, instead of wanting your daughters to be good, you want your daughters to be heard. Yes. Yes. Yes. So their voice that speaks to them first. Yes. So that means they have to train themselves to hear that voice. That relationship with the. I have to trust that voice. Trust that voice. That is the first gift we need to give our daughters. This doesn't mean they're disrespectful. It doesn't mean they're loud. It just means they're heard. They are authentic. They're self-knowing. The next pillar I talk about is Enoughness. We must train them in the language of this is enough. You've done enough today. Rest is not a dirty word. You are allowed to be ordinary. I talk about this in every book. You are allowed to be unhappy. You're allowed to be imperfect. You're allowed to be ordinary. And the third pillar I talk about in the seven that I outline is the pillar of self-authorship. And that takes trust. So imagine women in our generation who were never trusted by their mothers. How can we bestow and bequeath something we've never been given ourselves? Well, you have to cultivate it. And I teach parents how to cultivate it. Well, that's what the young girl read in the letter and the composite letter. Yes. She's like, "Listen to me." "Listen to me." "Listen to me." "Listen, trust me. I have a voice. Can I allow it to unfold?" Well, you write in the end, you say, "My hope is simple and impossible all at once," you say. That somewhere between these pages, your heart is softened, that your chest is loosened, that your shoulders drop just a little bit, and something inside you cracked open just enough to let more love in. For the daughter you are raising and who you now can see not through fear or expectation, you say, but through reverence for her unmatchable power or inhibitable voice and her untame light. So what's the message you want to leave with parents? That our daughters are not broken, they are not over-dramatic or over-feeling, it is their capacity to feel, and our daughters have it more than anyone else, that will heal the world. So you have to preserve that as a parent. And in order to preserve that, you have to scaffold her from the toxic misogyny and the messages from this world. She is a gift to the world, and she is a force to be reckoned with, and she has wholeness waiting to burgeon, but she will be fragmented because she's also sensitive and fragile, and if you're not going to protect her, she will fragment. Wow, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Schvolley. For your paradigm shifting wisdom, raising conscious daughters, building confidence, courage, and inner power in an anxious world, I also highly recommend her podcast. It's called Parenting and You. If you're a parent, you should be listening to Dr. Schvolley. You can have access to her wisdom anytime you need it, because I know it's hard out there for all of you parents. I speak from having spoken to parents for years and years and years. I don't pretend in any way to even begin to understand what it's like, but what I do know, it's harder now than ever. It is. It's harder. Thank you, Christina and Lisa and Kiera and India for your parenting questions. Until next time, everybody, go well. Get this book for yourself. Get it for your friends. And thank you to our friends at Geico for presenting today's episode. Dr. Schvolley has two new books, raising conscious sons and raising conscious daughters. And yes, as Dr. Schvolley says, raising a son versus a daughter are different experiences. Both books are available on September 15th. You can pre-order your copies right now by scanning the QR code on your screen. The books are both thoughtful. They're practical guides for raising emotionally secure and resilient boys and girls while also navigating the complexities of today's world. I can't recommend them enough. I know for sure that these books are going to inspire some meaningful conversations with you as a parent and with your friends and families. That means a lot to me. So here's the thing. It's just a quick tap of the subscribe button and that way you won't miss an episode in your queue. So thank you for watching and listening.