Ep.07: 13 Secrets For High Vibration Parenting

This content has been edited for clarity.

Hey, welcome to episode 7. I’m really excited about the content that we’re going to dive into today.

Before we get started, I want to tell you that if you had any questions burning on your mind for me, here’s the phone number. Just record who you are, where you’re from and what your question for me about living high vibration life is. The phone number is 855-474-5484. Again, the phone number to call into Your High Vibration Life is 855-474-5484. I’ve been collecting your questions and I’m going to do a Q and A episode very soon.

Also, we’re going to start something new with this episode. And that is, every week, if you’re looking for the takeaway, the best bits as you start to incorporate this information that you learn into Your High Vibration Life, go to greensmoothiegirl.com/episode7. Each week, we will have for you a “consider and create” sheet. You will have a synopsis of the best bits in this, the stuff that you can take into your own life.

Today, I’m covering my top 13 secrets, things that I learned from spending half of my life as a parent.

The next topic is an interview with my friend, the amazing Carol Tuttle. She’s known online, as she is the Dressing Your Truth brand. She’s about a 30-year energy worker, so she knew about energy and vibration before anybody in popular culture was talking about it. She’s also the founder of and author of The Child Whisperer. Our interview was fantastic. Don’t miss the next episode, episode 8.

By the way, I intend for these 2 parenting episodes to be really helpful for you whether you’re a parent or not, because a lot of the principles that we’re going to talk about are very timeless and I hope helpful in your relationships with other human beings in general, and for interacting with children who are developing.

What we’re talking about today isn’t going to be at all comprehensive about parenting. That is a huge topic; literally thousands of books have been written about it. But I think the problem with parenting is that when we have a baby, it’s fairly intuitive.

Most parents think that parenting comes naturally and that they can go with their gut as they parent and that that will be enough. Combined with what they know, usually because they were parented by someone, most people are parenting either the way that they were raised or as a reaction to it.

By the way, neither of those are particularly conscious ways of parenting. It can work out well if you had good parents but neither of them lead to particularly great outcomes, unless you just had fantastic parents who knew what they were doing.

The tough thing about kids is that they go through different developmental stages and all of them are really very predictable. There are specific things that a child learns in each of the areas of development. Whether you studied child development in college or in graduate school like I did or not, you recognize it intuitively.

This episode is not going to be a short course in child development. If you want that, if enough people ask me for it, I will certainly do an episode on the basics of child development, what to expect from your child from birth through adulthood.

Just a quick little mention about my own background: first of all, you might know that my background is really as a shrink. Partly, I studied psychotherapy to get the upper hand on my own childhood. I knew that it was harming me. I knew that if I didn’t manage the situation that I’d been raised in for 18 years, which I often refer to as the Lord of the Flies if you read that in junior high school – it was assigned reading when I was in junior high – it very much reminds me of my childhood.

I mentioned recently on an episode earlier that I was raised in a home with a tremendous amount of abuse, including physical abuse. I haven’t really talked about this at any length in a public way, but I was raised in a home where there was a lot of conflict and a lot of anger every single day. There was exactly zero good conflict resolution skills.

One of my parents had Asperger’s syndrome and didn’t really know what to do with human emotions. The other one was acting out a lifetime of rage and a history of abuse in her own past. The reason I call my childhood “the lord of the flies” is that we were raised, “it’s you better look out for you because no one else is going to.”

One of the major developmental tasks of my 20s then was to learn how often this dukes-up ways of operating in the world that I had to learn growing up.

I had 6 brothers. You learn that it’s every man for himself in the Lord of the Flies. There was really very little adult supervision or adult intervention into our conflicts or into teaching us good coping or conflict resolution. I went into adulthood thinking, basically on a subconscious level, “I got to watch out for me because no one else will.”

What I had to learn in my 20s is how often this way of looking at the world didn’t serve. I knew even at a very young age that I didn’t want to be my parents, but that I also didn’t want to be a pure reaction to my parents either. For example, parents who were never given anything … I was never given anything, not a single dollar as I was growing up. I had to buy my own car, my own car insurance, my own clothes, my own food.

At 16, I was entirely independent except that I live under their roof, some of the time, after the age of 16.

Just because of that, I knew better than to become a really indulgent parent, and raising entitled kids who are given everything also wasn’t something I was interested in. But I was so confused about what to do that was in between or what to do that was more healthy.

Anything that I’ve learned about parenting has generally been through my own experience, as well as through academic study of parenting and through getting an advanced degree that was heavily devoted to that subject and overall, just really caring about it, caring about doing it right whatever that is.

I’ve made a lot of mistakes as a parent. My own personal development has really played out in my parenting. They really couldn’t be separated, and it hasn’t always been pretty.

What I want to share with you today is my top 13 secrets to high vibration parenting from 23 years now of full-time parenting.

These are the things that I wish I had known earlier. I hope that they will serve you. I hope that you can learn some things vicariously through this show that I had to learn the hard way through making quite a few mistakes.

In the questions we’ve gotten already just in our first couple of weeks doing this podcast, we had a young mother write us and said, “How do I raise my ViQ when I’m neck deep in raising little kids and I don’t even have time for self-care?” That’s a paraphrase of what she said.

Just so you know, I’m going to tackle that subject on a Q and A show later. The parenting issues that come with being a parent of small children is not going to be the primary content of today.

My content today is more about raising twins and teens and young adults. That is, raising human beings who are breaking free of you, that third developmental task. They are figuring out their individualism. They do that in part by literally kicking against you.

If you’re not in this stage yet, I hope you still enjoy this content because if you’re a parent, even if you’re a parent of young kids, you are going to go through this. The sooner you get clear on this stuff, the smoother your parenting experience will be.

Let’s get started.

 

Parenting Secrets Number 1

Secret number 1, the thing I remind myself of the most often, raising not only teens but also young adults and raising them as a single mom, is that parenting is a long play. I say this to myself all the time. Parenting is a long play.

I’m coming right out here with my very best stuff because this is principle number 1 of high vibration parenting and that is remind yourself you get lots of chances.

This moment, this event, this terrible thing that happened in your child’s development does not define him. It does not define you. It doesn’t define nor does it limit your relationship with this child. If you tell yourself this often, you don’t get your feelings hurt as much.

You have so much more hope, so much more long-range thinking in the way that you parent your child. That’s important, because if you operate your parenting style and substance out of your own feelings, then you aren’t operating from the child’s feelings and the child’s needs. I know that you want to live there, from a place of always, “What does this child need, what does this child need right now?”

The mistakes you make as a parent are perfect. Did you hear that? The mistakes you make as a parent are perfect. Your child is going to learn from them. You’re going to learn from them. You are going to evolve in your relationship with your child partly because of the mistakes that you make.

I hope that right out of the gate, secret number 1, “parenting is a long play” is already giving you some hope and makes you realize that every little thing you say or do is not going to make or break your child.

 

Parenting Secrets Number 2

Let’s move on to secret number 2. That is, remind yourself every day to have a sense of humor about tweens and teens and young adult kids, kids in general really.

Kids love when their parents have a sense of humor. They will roll their eyes. They will make fun of you. It’s just what they do, but they love it. It’ll serve you so well if you can laugh about whatever is going on, about whatever their mistake is, about whatever you did that you wish you didn’t.

Laugh with them though, not at them.

It’s a really easy mistake to make in parenting teenagers because teenagers are so sarcastic. It’s their culture. It’s what they do with their peers. It’s so easy to be sarcastic back to your children but kids are … They’re kids. They are hypocritical in a sense that they want to be sarcastic, but they don’t receive it particularly well.

They may act sarcastically but they are still sensitive. Don’t forget. They’re very sensitive. They’re still very much a little child at heart no matter how tough they dress and no matter how tough they act.

On Facebook, on my personal page in response to something that I said about my 16-year-old son who is my youngest and remains at home … I have 2 sons and 2 daughters. My boys are 16 and 23 and my daughters are 21 and 19. A reader said, in response to something goofy that I had posted about my son, she said, “Aren’t millennials the cutest?”

I almost fell out of my chair. I laughed so hard because I took it as ironic, right? I thought she’s being just really sweet and slightly sarcastic. You know what, it turns out in continuing the conversation with her chit-chatting a little bit back and forth on Facebook. She wasn’t a middle aged person laughing at how dumb her millennial children are. She really enjoys the positives about millennials.

First of all, they are so much more technology-savvy than we are. They can figure anything out. They dig deep into those menus and they solve problems. That’s going to really help them long term.

Two, millennials are funny. They’ve been raised in age of everything being pithy, everything being on social media. They have a really funny insider vocabulary. They really are funny.

Three, they really know how to work the system. While that may be annoying to us, that’s going to serve them well.

Four, they’re on their way somewhere better. However they act now, they’re on their way somewhere better.

 

Parenting Secrets Number 3

Secret number 3 in raising kids here in 2016 – and that is go back to episode 5 and 6 if you haven’t heard it on this podcast “Your High Vibration Life” episode 5 and 6 – listen to my 90 seconds to metabolize, reframe and release any negative emotion.

This is really key to parenting. Honestly, I developed this in my own life because of having such a firestorm of stuff to deal with as my divorce went down. I’ve been married for 20 years. I was raising 4 kids. I was smack in the middle of raising kids. My kids were 8 to 15, as well as business issues and learning how to run a business which I was never trained to do. I really developed this in the context of raising kids. I hope that you’ll revisit it.

One of my children used to say terrible things to me for that couple of years after my divorce, about 18 months or so. One of my daughters said awful things to me. Not only did I learn from that experience how to put my reactions on hold and how to shift into neutral and go through this 90 seconds process, but I’m actually grateful for that experience because it taught me so much. I learned about setting loving but firm boundaries.

Another thing I learned is how much children want and crave and need boundaries. If you won’t set boundaries for them, who will? If you won’t show them how to set boundaries in their own lives, how will they develop healthy boundaries?

Again, secret number 3 is to master the 90 seconds to metabolize, reframe and release any negative emotion because you will have negative emotions, and you’ll have intense, high conflict situations if you’re going to raise children.

When you have a baby, you don’t think about that. You think of cuddly, cute, giggly baby. Luckily, you have those years of really bonding to that child that then get you through the dark ages, which is the 11 to 18. Luckily, they come out of that and things get lots better.

 

Parenting Secrets Number 4

Let’s go onto secret number 4. That is that that frontal lobe of the brain is a very big deal. Truly, if you want to think of it, (you want to use your sense of humor here), know that your child is, you might say, brain damaged, if we’re having a sense of humor about it. That is obviously one of the things that we’ve already covered but it’s actually normal for them to not be consequence oriented.

It’s not that we don’t talk to them about consequences. It’s not that we aren’t a really significant part of helping them develop that frontal lobe. But the frontal lobe of the brain is well-developed on you and on me because we’ve had the years for that part of the brain to knit together and to become strong.

If we teach our children meditation, we will teach them how to use the frontal lobe of their brain earlier.

It’s actually normal that kids think that they know everything. It’s normal that as children head into latency phase, which is about age 11, that their friends are their biggest influence, not you. Relax and breathe when you see that major shift taking place in your child. Remember, they’ll be back. They’re going to figure out how important you are in their life when they’re about 19. Literally, that part of their brain will develop at approximately age 19, or later if he’s a boy.

 

Parenting Secrets Number 5

Let’s move on to secret number 5. That is this, and it’s very important that you know this if you are raising daughters, and that is daughters are supposed to hate their moms. It is completely developmentally normal, which is another phrase I use a lot probably because I was a psychotherapist as well as having seen 4 children through adolescence.

Daughters are supposed to hate their moms from about age 11 to about age 19. It’s a long, hard 7 or 8 years but remember, you signed on for this when you got pregnant.

You are not the first person in the history of the world whose daughter thinks she’s as dumb as a bag of rocks. I don’t get riled up when my daughters say awful things to me for this reason. Know your child development phases because they’re important, because if they didn’t go through them, they would be missing something that’s critically important for them to become the adult that they’re meant to be.

Again, child development phases are a little bit beyond the scope of this episode and if you want more on this topic, let me know.

About age 11 to 13 though, your child is going to change. They’re supposed to. If they cling to your every word and they think that you’re amazing at the age of 15, then either A) you have birthed a unicorn and you should celebrate that you live in the land of rainbows and lollipops rather than where the rest of us live and try not to be self-righteous around all the other parents who are living in reality. Or, if your child is still clinging to your every word and thinks you’re amazing at the age of 15, then, B) they’re missing a very important stage of development.

I hope this helps you take a deep breath and just breathe through this phase of raising your child. In your “consider and create” sheet for episode 7 at greensmoothiegirl.com/episode7, I’ve written you a mantra that has helped me for many, many years bring together the psychotherapist in me and the parent in me and that is this:

“This is developmentally normal.”

Just keep that as a mantra and tell yourself whatever age your child is at, when they do those goofy things that make you roll their eyes, remember this is developmentally normal.

Just to sum this one up, your daughter will hate the way you dress. She’ll hate the way you talk. She’ll hate the way you do your makeup. She’s going to hate just everything. It’s her job. She’s comparing herself to you. She’s evaluating whether you’re worthy to be her idol like you were when she was little, and she’s forming herself. It cannot be otherwise.

Write it out. “Be you.” Don’t adapt and try to act like her teenage friends. She will not respect that. That is not helpful to her development.

Just know that you are her lodestar. You are her image of what it is to be a woman. You will regain your connection to her, and she will love you again. In fact, she loves you now. She’s just struggling with those teenage years of self-loathing, with identifying who she is in the world. It’s a big job. We should be in awe of it, the size of this job, of the importance of it.

If we sit with how humbling it is to raise a teenage daughter, then we can let go of the critical ways that they speak to us. We can make a space to love this marvelous creature regardless of how thoughtless she can be.

She is in a chrysalis. Have you ever been out walking around in the outdoors and you happened upon one hanging the tree? There’s a caterpillar in there in some kind of stage of becoming a butterfly. If you’ve ever come upon on in a tree, you find yourself completely in awe. Why is that?

See your daughter as who she is in this moment. You get to be witness to it. You get to watch nothing less than a caterpillar become a butterfly. Your challenge is to love her through it. You enter it too. What a phenomenal privilege to pass through that rite of passage yourself and then, with the wisdom you’ve gained, to be able to turn around and reach out a hand and help another woman in transition through that doorway.

I’m astonished by the wonder and the beauty of that. Aren’t you?

 

Parenting Secrets Number 6

Let’s get on to secret number 6 and that is accept and get over the fact that you do not know your child’s every motive, your child’s every thought and your child’s every action. They’re having a really unique experience in life that actually has little to do with you.

Every parent of an older child that I know has had the experience of hearing about the stuff their kid was thinking or doing that you didn’t even know was happening, and it can be really devastating to think, “I cared about this adventure, this parenting thing more than I’ve ever cared about anything in my life, and I was so asleep at the wheel that they were having this whole life that I didn’t know about.”

It doesn’t mean that you’re a bad parent because your child doesn’t tell you everything. They’re not even supposed to tell you everything.

I’ll give you a couple of examples. My former husband and his 6 siblings grew up in Arizona. I remember a number of times sitting around with all of them and their spouses and their children and telling their mother what they were doing as a kid.

She lived in the same house that these 7 kids did and did not know that on a daily basis, they were jumping off of the roof into the pool in the backyard. Watching them talk about it, I remember decades later watching their mother, my mother-in-law, with her jaw on the floor. It was really priceless, and it’s all really funny until it happens to you.

A more painful experience (not a funny one), is that one of my own children confessed to the others that he was suicidal for some of his teen years.

I had no clue. That’s a painful thing to realize. But I don’t know a parent of teenagers and young adults whose kids didn’t keep big, big secrets from their parents. You teach them right, and you hope that they make good choices, and you know they’re going to make some bad ones.

Another example is I, in high school, was a straight A, concert pianist, totally responsible oldest child. And I was drunk driving my parents’ van. I literally would go out with my friends, didn’t know how to drink, and I would drink and drive their car completely trashed and ran some red lights.

I don’t tell you this to scare you. I tell you this because it’s just a fact of their growing up. Accept it. It’s a little bit narcissistic of us to think that we are totally in control, really in any way, of the experience our kids are having as they get older.

Now, granted, we protect them from many things and we try to be in the know, but just know that lots of things are going through their heads and their hearts and many things are happening between them and other people that you have no clue about. Honor it. Give it oxygen.

Really, there’s two reasons to tell you this. One is to lean into it and accept it.

One of your tasks as a parent is to, over time, let go. That’s the most difficult thing you’ll learn as a parent, is how to let go. We’re more involved in our children’s lives for longer than any other mammal.

Two, the point of this is to clue into your heart and into your intuition.

I really believe in parental intuition, and not only the fact that we have some innate energetic impulses telling us what our children need, but also that we are sometimes blinded to what our children need because we’re so in the forest. We’re smack up against all the trees. You can’t even see the forest.

Listen to your gut. Ask your child meaningful questions when your gut is telling you something, in a climate where they’ll feel safe to tell you but also know that sometimes, you are too close to it.

Listen to others who will point things out that you aren’t seeing.

I’ll give you a couple of examples.

Recently, a dear friend of mine was talking about how she’s worried about her son and that she knew that he was smoking weed. I was listening to her and putting several data points together. I said as gently as I could, “Honey, there’s some things here that you aren’t seeing. Your son isn’t just smoking weed. He is doing opioids. My guess from what you’re telling me is that he is deep in heroin addiction. Go home and ask him.” She did and it led to a breakthrough where they could address some really serious problems because they were able to put a fine point on it. It turned out, he was very deep in heroin addiction.

Another example is that when I was a teenager, my own mother had some other mothers take her side and say, “We don’t know how to tell you this but because you have such heavy restrictive rules, did you know that your daughter is spending the night in her car because you’re so disapproving of her boyfriends?”

My mother had a rule that I couldn’t date anyone who wasn’t of the same religious faith that I was. I was literally spending the night in a city in my car, with the doors locked, but how safe is that? That’s important stuff for a mom to know. That gave us opportunity to turn that situation around.

Listen to you, and also listen to others because they’re seeing some cues that you’re not.

 

Parenting Secrets Number 7

Secret number 7 that I wish I knew a long time ago – one of my biggest regrets is that I wish that I had this mantra earlier than I did – and that is this: children are not their mistakes.

They are more and better than their mistakes. They know less than you think they do. They have worse judgment than you expect them to. When you find yourself feeling angry with your child, ask yourself, “What really basic thing are they not understanding here that I could sit down and explain with all the patience and kindness I can muster?”

Sometimes, this is tough when something that they’ve done has caused you some expense, has caused you some inconvenience, has caused you some embarrassment with other people.

Tennyson, my youngest son, worked for me as my assistant for a while. I would get very frustrated with him that he wouldn’t take something I texted him and go to the store and follow it. He would get to a store and then ask me to tell it to him again. I’d say, “Scroll up. Scroll up.”

He did not have the organization skills to be able to know that you can put together a grocery list from what’s in text.

One day, I sat down with him and I talked to him about some basic organization skills, about list keeping, about having a schedule. He responded so gratefully that I was treating him with compassion that it made me feel bad that I had been frustrated that he didn’t have the organization skills that I’ve developed with an extra three decades on the planet.

 

Parenting Secrets Number 8

This brings us to secret number 8 and that is punishment parenting is easy but it’s cheap and it’s not particularly effective. We won’t go into great detail here, but if you take a look at the literature, punishment is not a very effective means of teaching a child a lesson.

It’s not that you have a choice between punishing a child and letting them “get away with it.” I’m also not a fan of children not being taught consequences as they’re being raised.

Ask yourself, “Does the punishment match the crime?”

Are you meeting out some kind of punishment in a moment of anger? Is the punishment clearly related to the crime? How does this child respond to punishment?

I had one child who really did not respond well to punishment. For her, I had to learn other ways of engaging with her because it just didn’t work.

Then, finally, are you acting in anger versus acting with precision and with consciousness and with thoughtfulness?

 

Parenting Secrets Number 9

Number 9 (this is one of my favorite tips) and that is when raising pre-teen, teenage and adult children, use that car time.

Time that you are with your child in the car, I consider to be holy, I consider to be sacred. It’s precious. It’s an opportunity.

Let me tell you why. When your child is in the car with you, whether you’re on a trip to a sports tournament or whether you’re just driving them to go shopping, here’s the difference between car time and any other time you’re having a conversation with your child. It’s really simple. Ready?

They can’t run away.

When I am in the car with my child, that’s when I have sex talks with my kids. That’s where I talk to them about things that I think they need to know about human intimacy. It’s where I ask them questions of things of consequence. It’s when I tell them things that I see them doing that show some fundamental development gaps.

I remember being in a car with my son and I planned for it this way. “The next time I’m in the car with him, I’m going to have a conversation with him about the fact that I see that he doesn’t open the door for women. He doesn’t give up his seat on a train to an elderly lady.”

Instead of getting mad at him about it or shaming him about it, I realize that’s because he doesn’t have any male role model in his life. He doesn’t have any real presence from any man in his life. It’s nothing to chastise him about. He literally doesn’t know that that’s a thing. You and I at our age know that it’s a sign of character, that it’s a sign of respect for your elders, that it’s a sign that you’re a gentleman, but how would he know that? It’s my job to teach him.

 

Parenting Secrets Number 10

Secret number 10 is a very easy one. This is how I start sentences with a teenage or a young adult child because remember, they know everything. When you get into college education, when you have a more developed frontal lobe, you figure out what you don’t know but teenagers don’t know what they don’t know.

This is how I start anything that might be taken as a lecture or anything that might be instructive, that they might roll their eyes at, I start with this: “You probably already know this but …”

This start to a sentence is pure magic, because it disarms them and they don’t have to show you how smart they are and how dumb you are if you start with, “You probably already know this but…” You’re going to get a completely different reaction if you start a sentence with that.

 

Parenting Secrets Number 11

Secret number 11: when it comes to teenagers, reduce your word count.

Make every word count. Make it relevant to them. I’ll give you an example. When I talk about nutrition, which is super important to me – I’ve had a career in nutrition, I’ve written 14 nutrition books, so it’s hard for me when I see my children making bad nutrition choices – if I talk to them about food, I keep it light.

If it’s heavy, if it’s judgmental, then the door isn’t open and then, when they get sick, they’re not going to come to me. I keep the conversation light. I keep it non-judgmental.

I keep that door open above all, but I talk to them about what specifically is in it for them.

What would make them want to eat better? I talk to them about studies I’ve read or stories I know about how academic performance improves when you eat better. I talk to them about sports performance; I got both of my sons to give up soda years ago, not that I was ever feeding it to them, but really give up soda by telling them a little bit (usually when we’re in the car) about how it decreases oxygen exchange and makes you slower when you drink carbonated drinks. I talked to them about how skin health is related to gut health and that when you don’t treat yourself right nutritionally, it shows up on your skin. When you have blemishes on your skin, it’s a reflection that something is going on in your gut or in your liver.

Those are the type of topics that I relate to what’s in it for them. Relate something I want them to do to something that they want.

 

Parenting Secrets Number 12

Secret number 12: speak in positive terms about your children.

I’m not talking about bragging to all your friends. Your friends can’t stand that. But in an authentic way, you’re saying, “Here’s what I’m learning,” from whatever situation that you have going with your kids.

If you want to complain to your friends about what’s going on with your children, I’m sure they’ll want to be there for you and that’s okay but also, always frame it in the sense of, “Here’s what I think my takeaway is from that. Here’s what I think my challenge is as a parent.”

Frame it positively and also, speak to yourself positively about your parenting. This is key in being a high vibration parent.

I’ve often said to people I was a very good mom to my three youngest children, and I’ve been reconsidering that lately. I have a lot of guilt about the way I parented my oldest child especially while he was young. I’d be happy to tell you why but for now, all I can do is ask for my son’s forgiveness.

1, hope that it’ll all lead to growth and development for him, 2, forgive myself, 3, because, as I’ve said before to you, “Until I love myself, I can’t love you.”

This is really, really important. Love you. Because until you do that, your love for your children has a martyr trippy kind of quality. Trust me, that is a great way to squander all your many gifts to your kids, is by reminding them, “I brought you into this world. I’ve done everything for you.”

Kids hate that like no other. I choose out of that kind of language and I try to stay in the neutral. I might say, if my child is unhappy with me, “I’m sorry that I failed you. For sure, I failed you in so many ways. I do love you though and my door is always open if there’s something that you want to talk about, including, I’m happy to talk about how my deficits as a parent may have caused you harm. If I can fix it, know this: know that I want to. Know that if I can, I will. I love you and I want you to be healthy and happy. I care about that a lot.”

You can understand how a child might hear that and receive that better than the martyr trippy, “I’ve done everything for you.” We all know parents. We may have even been parented by a parent who talked like that. It’s highly ineffective.

 

Parenting Secrets Number 13

Finally, my last tip or secret for you is this: Do not, and I repeat, do not think that they aren’t listening.

Don’t think that they aren’t learning it. Don’t think that they don’t care what you think, what you say. They are and they do. You know this if you’re a parent of a teenage child, if you’re lucky enough to hear them talking to their friends.

If you’ve been in the long play of parenting for long enough, you’ll hear words that you’ve said, actions you’ve taken. Life lessons you’ve taught them show up in them more and more as they move out of the independence phase where their fears about breaking out, fears about being anybody but you, fears about breaking free and into a phase of being more conscious and more enlightened and more mature, more operational in that all important frontal lobe of the brain.

Don’t think that, to preserve the relationship with your child, you have to be the cool parent and not speak up about your core values, about their core values, asking them hard questions about who they’re developing to be and about how to be a high vibration human being. Do challenge your children.

Challenge them to read books. Challenge them to listen to podcasts that matter. Challenge them to study a subject that up-levels them. Do give them tips. Do give them your feedback.

Do share your core values often. Repeat things that matter to you. Don’t worry about them calling it a lecture.

If you see something missing in their current stage of character building, remember, your impact decreases the older they get. The most impact you have is up until latency phase at age 11, so take every opportunity.

But say it positively, and minimize your word count.

I hope that this is helpful to you. I hope that you’ll share this podcast episode with another parent who cares about the quality of the way he or she is parenting their kids. I hope you’ll subscribe and rate and review this podcast. It’s how I learn and grow. This is how we share it with more people.

Don’t forget to go grab your “consider and create” sheet. It’s at greensmoothiegirl.com/episode7. I love your journey towards a high vibration life, and I love that I get to be here for it. I love that I get to celebrate you in the chrysalis. May we all be reborn as a new creature many times in a lifetime including in the different phases of parenting. Namaste.

See you next time for the amazing, legendary Carol Tuttle’s thoughts on how we are raising the highest vibration generation ever born. See you then.