What Parents Get Wrong About Raising Boys and Girls - Exclusive Interview with Dr. Shefali
Brainz Magazine Exclusive Interview
What if everything we thought we knew about raising children needs a second look? In a world where social media, technology, and changing expectations are shaping how children see themselves and others, parents are facing challenges that go far beyond traditional parenting advice. Boys may struggle to express what they’re feeling, while girls face pressure to be beautiful, successful, and constantly validated. But how much do we really understand about what our children are going through, and what might we be missing?
Dr. Shefali, a clinical psychologist, New York Times bestselling author, and founder of the Conscious Parenting movement, has spent decades helping families move beyond patterns of fear and control toward greater connection and understanding. Trained at Columbia University, she draws on Western psychology and Eastern wisdom in her approach to parenting. In this interview, she discusses what inspired her books, Raising Conscious Sons and Raising Conscious Daughters, the emotional challenges children face, and why she believes changing the way we raise our children can have an impact far beyond the family home.
Dr. Shefali, NYT Bestselling Author and Founder of the Conscious Parenting Movement
Photo credit: Zayyir Photography
After years of leading the conscious parenting movement, what made you feel that this was the moment to write separate books about raising boys and girls?
Honestly, I didn’t set out thinking, “Oh, I need to write one book about boys and another about girls.” It happened because I kept seeing how much our children were struggling, and how differently that struggle was showing up. And most importantly, how the algorithm was treating each sex so differently. Once I realized that the tech companies were intentionally targeting our boys and girls in different ways because of their hormonal development, I decided to help parents with these blueprints.
I was seeing girls who looked incredibly capable on the outside but were riddled with anxiety and self-doubt on the inside. Girls who were trying so hard to be beautiful enough, successful enough, liked enough, good enough. But it was just never enough. And then I was seeing boys retreating. They weren’t always talking about what they were feeling. They were disappearing into gaming, pornography, anger, isolation, and sometimes just this detached numbness. But underneath they were struggling in deep and dark ways.
Of course these are not absolutes. There is tremendous overlap, and every child is different. But there are cultural messages our daughters receive and different ones our sons receive, and I wanted to really go into those rather than skim over them.
At some point I realized I couldn’t do justice to both in one book. They each deserved their own conversation. So I wrote two.
You write that today's children are growing up in a state of "algorithmic abduction." What do you believe constant digital exposure is doing to a child's emotional development in ways many parents still fail to recognise?
I use the phrase “algorithmic abduction” because sometimes I really do feel as though our children and their childhoods are being taken from us all, right beneath our eyes.
And I don’t mean that technology is evil or that we should throw every phone into the ocean. I mean that something very powerful is shaping our children while we are busy thinking the problem is simply how many hours they are online.
It is shaping what they think is beautiful. What success looks like. What kind of body they should have. What they should want. Who they should be attracted to. What everybody else is supposedly doing with their lives. What deep intimacy means.
Imagine being thirteen and trying to figure out who you are while thousands of messages a day are telling you who you should be.
That is what worries me. Our children need time to figure out who they are in privacy and simplicity, without being barraged to define who they are according to the world.
In Raising Conscious Sons, you explore the hidden loneliness, shame, and emotional suppression many boys experience growing up. Why do you believe so many boys still feel unseen, even in loving homes?
Because we can love our boys enormously and still not understand them. I believe that most parents of boys seriously misunderstand them.
I think that is hard for parents to hear because we immediately think, “But I love my son. I tell him I love him. I would do anything for him.” And I believe you. But being loved and feeling understood are not always the same thing.
Many boys learn very early that certain emotions are welcome and others are awkward. Anger we know how to respond to. Achievement we celebrate. Strength we admire. But sadness? Shame? Fear? Tenderness? Feeling rejected? Feeling like you don’t belong? Many boys have absolutely no idea where to put those feelings.
And sometimes we mothers do it too. We say we want emotionally expressive sons, but the moment our son becomes emotional, we become anxious and start fixing him, advising him, questioning him, trying to get him out of the feeling. Certainly fathers do this quite commonly.
Sometimes the greatest gift we can give a boy is simply the experience of someone staying with him without needing him to become different.
Also, no one is handing our boys a blueprint for a conscious masculinity. They are told not to be like a girl on the one hand and then, on the other hand they are told to not be toxic. But no one teaches they how they should be - in real time. Without this foundation of a conscious masculinity, they flounder and flail, often imploding instead of expanding.
You challenge the traditional way many parents respond to boys' anger and emotional outbursts. What do adults often misunderstand about anger in young boys?
We take the anger so literally. When our son slams the door, screams, or becomes defiant, we immediately start dealing with the behavior. “Don’t speak to me like that. Go to your room. Give me your phone.”
And yes, there have to be boundaries. Conscious parenting does not mean your child gets to terrorize the house because he is having feelings.
But I want parents to become curious about what is underneath the anger. Very often anger is the bodyguard. It is protecting something much more vulnerable: humiliation, loneliness, fear, rejection, shame, feeling powerless.
If all I do is punish the bodyguard, I may never meet the child underneath it.
Our boys need boundaries, absolutely. But they also need us to help them find the language beneath the anger so that rage doesn’t become the only language they know how to speak.
In Raising Conscious Daughters, you speak about the pressure girls face to be perfect, desirable, successful, and constantly validated. Do you believe girls today are carrying a heavier emotional burden than previous generations?
I think girls today are carrying a very particular kind of burden. Our mothers and grandmothers had restrictions that many of our daughters thankfully do not have. So I don’t want to romanticize the past. Women fought very hard for the freedoms girls have today.
But now girls have inherited another problem. They have been told, “You can be anything,” and somehow that has become, “You should be everything.”
Be brilliant. Be ambitious. Be beautiful. Be thin but don’t look like you’re trying to be thin. Be sexy but not too sexual. Be confident but don’t intimidate anyone. Have friends. Have followers. Have a passion. Have a plan for your future. And please look effortless while doing all of it.
It is exhausting.
And now there is an audience watching all the time. When I was fifteen, I could have a terrible hair day and maybe twelve people knew about it. Today a girl can feel as though her entire life is being watched, measured and compared.
We have to understand the emotional cost of that.
Both books suggest that many parenting models are outdated for the world children are now growing up in. What do you believe parents today must unlearn first?
They must unlearn the automatic Fear to Control equation. Most of us parents live in fear around our children’s future - who they will become and how they will fare in the world. And because of this fear, we try to control their every step from a young age. We want the grades, the manners, the right friends, the right college, the right choices, and underneath all of it is this tremendous fear: “If I don’t control this, what will happen to my child?”
But look at the world they are entering. We cannot possibly control all of it. We cannot stand beside them every time someone offers them a drug, sends them a sexual image, humiliates them online, pressures them, excludes them or tries to sell them some version of who they should be.
So our job has to change. Instead of raising a child who always listens to us, we need to raise a child who knows how to listen to themselves. That is much harder. And much more important.
You write about helping children build inner authority instead of seeking external approval. Why is that becoming increasingly difficult in a world driven by likes, comparison, and performance?
Because our children are growing up with little scoreboards everywhere. How many likes did I get? How many followers? Did they respond? Did they invite me? Why did she get more views? Why does his life look better than mine? Adults struggle with this and we have fully developed brains. Imagine being twelve.
So when I talk about inner authority, I am talking about helping a child develop a relationship with themselves that is stronger than the noise around them.
Can I know what I feel even when my friends disagree? Can I say no when everyone else says yes? Can I tolerate somebody not liking me? Can I make a choice because it feels right to me rather than because it will get applause?
This is why home matters so much. Home needs to be the place where the child gets to take the costume off. They shouldn’t have to impress us too.
Across both books, there is a strong focus on emotional literacy, self-awareness, and conscious communication. Do you believe emotional intelligence will become one of the defining survival skills of the future?
Absolutely. In fact, I think we are going to discover that many of the things we have been obsessing about as parents were never the things that mattered most.
We spend so much energy on grades, colleges, resumes, activities, accomplishments. Meanwhile, I want to know: Can your child handle disappointment? Can they hear no? Can they be alone without falling apart? Can they recognize when they are anxious? Can they apologize? Can they leave a relationship that is hurting them? Can they tell the truth when the truth is uncomfortable? Can they sit with another human being’s pain without making it about themselves?
Those are life skills.
And especially as AI becomes capable of doing more of what we once considered “intelligent,” our humanity becomes even more precious. Self-awareness, empathy, creativity, discernment, connection — these are not extras anymore. These are the muscles our children are going to need.
You often say that children do not need perfect parents, but conscious ones. What does conscious parenting actually look like in everyday life when things are messy, emotional, and imperfect?
Oh, it is messy. I wish people understood that. Conscious parenting doesn’t mean you are floating around your house in a meditative state while your teenager tells you they hate you.
You will lose your temper. You will say the wrong thing. You will become controlling. Your ego will enter the room wearing a crown and carrying a megaphone. Mine certainly did.
The difference is that we begin to see ourselves.
Maybe I yell and twenty minutes later I realize, “That was my fear. That wasn’t really about my child.” And I go back and say, “I’m sorry. I was anxious and I took it out on you.”
That repair is conscious parenting.
It is the willingness to look at ourselves instead of constantly looking at the child and asking, “What is wrong with you?”
Sometimes the most conscious thing a parent can do is say, “I lost my mind. I was triggered. I have to work on myself."
If the next generation is raised with greater emotional awareness, empathy, and self-worth, how do you believe that could change society over the next few decades?
This is why I have stayed with this work for so many years. Because I have never believed conscious parenting was only about parenting.
We are raising the adults who will create the next world.
Think about how different our relationships, our workplaces, our marriages, even our politics would be if more human beings knew how to tolerate discomfort without immediately attacking someone else. If they could disagree without dehumanizing. If they knew their worth without needing to dominate. If they could feel pain without passing that pain on.
So much of what we call dysfunction in the adult world began somewhere much earlier.
It began with a child who learned, “Don’t cry.” A girl who learned, “Be nice so they will like you.” A boy who learned, “Never let them see that you’re scared.” A child who learned that love came when they achieved, behaved or pleased.
When we change those early messages, we don’t only change a childhood. We change the adult that child becomes.
And to me, that is where real social change begins: in the smallest rooms, in the ordinary moments between a parent and a child, when nobody else is watching.
For more insights on conscious parenting, follow Dr. Shefali on Facebook and Instagram, or visit her official website.
