Author

Dr Shefali Tsabary

The 3 Most Important Messages for Your Child

Mother with her baby playing with pet on the floor at the kitchen at home

What do you imagine your children most want from you? The newest gadget on which to play games? The latest iPhone? New shoes or designer clothes? A trip to Disney World? Tuition for a top university?

Sure, these things are always nice. Every kid enjoys getting something new or going to an exciting theme park.

But what all children truly yearn for goes much deeper. It doesn’t involve fancy clothes, the latest electronics, pricey trips, or even a high-brow education.

Every child wants to know three things:

Am I seen?
Am I worthy?
Do I matter?

When a person feels seen, feels worthy, and feels they matter, they grow up to live an empowered life.

It isn’t gadgets, clothes, vacations, or even the best of educations that enable a child to feel good about themselves. The key to how they see themselves and feel about themselves lies in how we see them, how we feel about them — and this is reflected in the connection we experience with them.

It’s through our gaze, our presence, our attention that our children grow up with a strong sense of self. We communicate their importance in all our everyday interactions with them.

When children aren’t valued for who they are rather than for what they achieve, they grow up anxious and may well become depressed.

Many of our young people are so deprived of our attention — of simply being seen for who they are — that they self-harm. Getting drunk, taking drugs, engaging in inappropriate sexual relations, even cutting themselves—all of these are cries for our attention, manifestations of a deep yearning to be seen and known.

A child develops a solid sense of self when who they intrinsically are is seen and affirmed. A sense of their worth springs from whether we truly connect with them as an individual who’s unique, not a clone of ourselves or someone in our fantasy.

“Do you see me?” This is the big question your child is asking every day. “Can you see me for who I am, separate from your dreams and expectations for me, separate from your agenda for me?”

A child doesn’t need to be a superstar to be valuable. To simply be ordinary is perfectly okay—to be just the way they are, and know they are treasured.

It isn’t enough to tell your child you love them. They need to feel lovable within themselves.

A sense of their worth flourishes when the way we look at them, the way we listen to them, and the way we speak to them reflects just how lovable they are. This is how we empower them—how we draw out in them the powerful sense of self that will carry them successfully through life.

March 28, 2016 0 comment

•-Feature Family & Relationships Health & Well-being

The Power of Validation

written by Dr Shefali Tsabary

There is nothing that creates a greater inner schism than an emotion that is dismissed, or worse still, denigrated, and invalidated. As adults we know exactly what this feels like. We have all encountered situations where someone says something to us or does something to us that completely nullifies our sense of self. For that one moment, their power to reduce us to a sense of nothing is absolute. Their words like a sword pierce into our core, slashing away at any sense of worth, integrity or dignity. What is left behind is the ruins of a self that feels powerless, devastated and shattered. We have all been taken to this place or rather allowed ourselves to go there. Unfortunately…or fortunately, we have all had to confront this pain.

The reason we arrive at this place is because we have felt invalidated. Our emotional state has been dis-honored and left by the wayside. Sometimes this occurs in the most subtlest of ways; we are ignored, or looked at as if we have two heads, or questioned constantly till we begin to question ourselves, or told how we are actually feeling. We enter a conversation feeling one way and leave it feeling an entirely different way. Our core has been shaken, ripped apart and we no longer remain in our as-is state.

We all know the opposite feeling – the feeling of being validated. We feel accepted, honored and empowered. We have been seen. Our need has been attended. This again can happen in the most subtle of ways: we are allowed to speak, we are given eye-contact, we are paid attention to, we are given space to be. Here, we either leave the conversation feeling the same, or in most cases, feeling a little lighter. This is the power of emotional validation.

Our first tendency when we are confronted with an emotional state of another – especially if it is contrary to our own emotional state – is to disallow. We unconsciously or consciously do not give the other’s state a space to exist. We seek to energetically annihilate it. We are all masters of this.

Attuning to another’s emotional state is an art we all could work on.

It means having the space within oneself to allow another to exist. As is.

Without judgment. Without desire to control them. Without shaming their need to be lesser-than the standards we have decided they should be.

This takes a strong inner connection. A connection that thrives on its own pulse. That feels validated without the need to de-validate another. That feels so much inner freedom that others are allowed to feel free as well.

This means we would need to feel our Oneness on a deep and fundamental level. When this Oneness is the natural state of the inner experience, our desire to manifest external fusion through control , dominance and mental doing fades.

It all begins with one’s sense of inner Oneness.

November 18, 2015 0 comment

•-Feature Family & Relationships

Children and Marijuana: The Missing Factor in the Debate

written by Dr Shefali Tsabary

The debate over whether marijuana should or shouldn’t be legalized will likely be with us for a long time. If you are a parent, you no doubt have a strong opinion on the matter, either for or against legalization.

Ultimately, the prevalence of marijuana in society won’t come down to legislation, which has proved unable to control the widespread availability of such substances. After all, just about any high school or college student knows where to get drugs, despite the law.

What will ultimately decide whether a child grows up to use any kind of substance is something I don’t see being addressed in the arguments for or against.

When anyone abuses anything — from alcohol to food, drugs, or sex — they are screaming that they feel “empty” inside. There’s a void, a hollow, where there ought to be a solid sense of themselves.

A child who knows their true self — who is deeply rooted in their essence — has no internal sense of “emptiness.”

There’s no void to have to fill.

Instead, their life flows from a feeling of well-being, as who they are discovering themselves to be seeks to express itself creatively and meaningfully.

I believe that the sense of being a person of inestimable value is the taproot of responsible behavior at all ages. And this is a feeling that can be cultivated in childhood — something we really can do something about — for we all come into the world initially feeling wonderful about ourselves. We are excited to be alive.

When “wonderful” truly describes how our children feel about themselves, they are no longer driven by an internal sense of lack. They don’t “have to have” something in order to feel like a complete and valid person, though they may enjoy many things in a manner that’s uplifting.
When children truly know their own mind, neither do they bow to peer pressure.

The question is why our children lose this wonderful feeling of being the person they are that they were born with. I believe it happens because of the way we parent, along with how we react to children’s behavior in our schools.

We pump a huge amount of money into the “war on drugs.” What I would like to see is for us to address the fundamental parenting issue that underlies this social issue.

I would like to see us move to a style of parenting that will bring our children up so they have no need to abuse anything in their lives, but instead make intelligent choices in everything.
In my practice as a clinical psychologist, I’m interested not so much in teaching “quick fix” parenting techniques, but in children knowing who they are.

When our kids know and respect who they are, they don’t need to get blitzed or stoned, let alone engage in meaningless sex, in order to have a good time. Because their lives are fulfilling, whatever they participate in is thought out and enjoyed responsibly.

As a society, if we dedicated the sums of money we sink into fighting substance abuse into helping our children discover and be true to themselves, we would have a very different society.

If we put our minds to it — if we become intentional as a society — we can raise a generation that has no desire to binge on anything, let alone to drop out. Through our homes and schools, we can bring up children to be self-directed and responsible. We can raise children who love themselves, value themselves and want to express their creative nature by building a better world.

The way to do this is to begin practicing what I call “conscious” parenting. To parent consciously — which is the opposite of most of the reactive parenting I see among many parents, not to mention often advocated in parenting books — requires us to connect with our child’s essence.

This is about getting to know them at a much deeper level than the person we think they “ought” to be or imagine them to be. It’s about discovering who they really are.

When we shelve our expectations of who our child should be, and instead tune into their real self, they no longer have a need to act out. After all, all bad behavior is a form of acting out.

Conscious parenting requires us to find out what our children are trying to tell us through their poor behavior. When we find out what’s driving them, it totally changes how we respond to them. Our responses are not determined by their surface behaviors but instead by who it is they are on an internal level. Their being-state is always honored over and above their actions.

Children who are raised with their emotions and self-hood validated on a moment-to-moment basis grow to be self-directed and self-aware. Such children rarely feel the need to check out via drugs or alcohol. Instead, they are fully checked-in. Life is not something they need to escape from. Instead, it is to be danced and played with. With engagement, fearlessness and joy.

To view my TEDx talk on Conscious Parenting click, here.

Follow Shefali Tsabary on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DrShefali

July 25, 2014 0 comment

•-Feature Family & Relationships

Raising Compassion: The Most Important Thing Parents Can Do

written by Dr Shefali Tsabary

All of us want our children to grow up to be compassionate. We want them to contribute positively to the well-being of others, so that they leave the world a better place than they found it.

It’s this desire that causes parents to constantly urge children “not to be selfish,” to “wait their turn,” and to “share” with other children. We believe that the more we demand this of our children, the greater the chance they will develop into selfless adults. Little do we realize that this is highly ineffective.

The problem with commanding and directing our children to share, give and be compassionate is that it has no effect on how they feel internally. And if our children cannot feel this on a deep, internal and authentic level, they will be unable to develop this on a life-long basis.

So, if instruction is not nearly enough, how do we teach a child to develop qualities of true compassion for others? How do we move them away from a narcissistic approach to life?

Many are confused about what narcissism really is. They imagine it refers to a superior sense of self emerging from an excess of self worth, whereas it’s just the opposite. Narcissism originates in the child who has not learned to truly value themselves. This child grows up with a feeling of a void inside them. This leads them to develop a false sense of superiority as a way to cope with their inner pain.

It may seem like a paradox, but as a clinical psychologist, I’ve observed that when our children are taught to connect with their own needs, they quite naturally are able to connect with the needs of others. In other words, caring for another flows from caring for ourselves.

It is this sense of inner attunement and connectivity that is the key to developing a sense of compassionate giving to others. This is where parents need to turn their attention.

When a child consistently experiences in the home the kind of connection we want them to have with others, they grow up able to connect with others. So, if they feel we parents are attuned to their needs, present to their feelings, respectful of them as an individual and supportive of their unique way of being, they quite naturally grow up to be this way with others.

You might think you are “there” for your children. You take them to all kinds of activities, help them with their homework, make sure they have food and clothes they like. Ballet classes at two, math enrichment at five, equestrian training at six. You sit on the edge of your seat at their tennis or soccer matches, eyes swiveling back and forth, not missing a single shot that your darling takes.

And yet, I suggest that despite the intense investment many of us have in our children, we often fail to establish an authentic connection with them. And so they grow up selfish, narcissistic even — unable to truly connect compassionately with others. Which is why you hear parents bemoan, “Why are they so selfish, when I gave them everything?”

Connection doesn’t come automatically with things or activities. It involves real presence with our children — often without things or activities. And our ability to be present, and therefore connected, has to do with how connected and present we are with ourselves. It is this inner connectivity that helps foster an empathic and compassionate connection to others.

It all boils down to the parent’s ability to be connected to their own needs, boundaries and sense of self. From this place of inner attunement the parent will naturally be able to honor and validate their child’s sense of self. A child who experiences this moment-to-moment connection will grow up sturdy and full of self-worth. It is this child who will stretch out their arms to others with tolerance, acceptance and compassion. You see, this child has no reason not to. After all, they are brimming with self-love and acceptance; they are unable to withhold this from the world.

The ultimate solution to the problem of childhood narcissism lies within the parent’s sense of self-connection, worth and acceptance. A child’s capacity to self-love is directly related to its parent’s level of emotional integration. Parental evolution then, becomes the hallmark of an enlightened future.

Take a look at my TEDx talk on this topic:

May 21, 2014 0 comment