VIDEO DESCRIPTION

Psychologist & Author Shefali Tsabary, PhD, shares advice for parents on what it means to truly accept your child for who they are and support their decisions in life wholeheartedly.

TRANSCRIPTION

I believe one of the greatest spiritual challenges as parents is learning how to accept our children for who they are. Now this sounds so passive, accept who they are, so parents often tell me,? oh so, I will just accept my child vomits his food everyday he eats, so I will just accept that he doesn?t like greens.? This is not what I mean by acceptance, to truly accept the? as is? nature of our children is an extremely active process, it means you truly see them in their spirit, in their being, for who it is they are, separate from, and this is the key, separate from our projection of desire, of fantasy, in our expectation of who they should be. This is what the problem is, this is where the abyss lies, because we want them, to match a mirror; our needs, our expectations, who we were or who we were not, so we failed to see in attuned to, really attuned, be in deep communion, engagement, to have your finger on the pulse of who your child?s spirit is. When you deeply attuned at that level, then you can do the dance of, should I push him a little bit more, should I back off a little bit, does the child needs to go for more classes, less classes, he can do a little better, you know what i need to back off; all this questions that are so hard to answer, will become clearer; but it can only become clearer when the parent is in deep attunement, connection, communion with the child?s essence.