In this final episode of 2023, I welcome my husband, Gaurav, to chat about how we, as a generation, are making parenting harder on ourselves. He has joined me for two episodes already about Marriage and Parenting and Re-Parenting ourselves as we parent our children, and on this episode, we discuss:

• How we can tap back into our intuition as parents
• How we have created a skewed view of success as parents
• How we can simplify parenting again

00:00:01:01 – 00:00:20:10
Guarav
Being so connected with each other has caused us to become disconnected with ourselves. And that, to me, is the key. It’s that we need to go back and reconnect with who we are authentically, what our intuition and instincts are, and be true to them and be confident in them.

00:00:20:11 – 00:00:46:07
Dr. Mona
Welcome back to the show, and thank you so much for tuning in each and every week this year and since the podcast started in 2020. This is the last episode of 2023. So if you’re listening to it live, thank you for joining me and leaving your reviews. This is how the podcast continues to grow. And in honor of our last episode, I am welcoming a returning guest who has been on my show two times already.

00:00:46:09 – 00:01:01:17
Dr. Mona
We have recorded two episodes called finding Joy Marriage and Parenting with my husband, reprinting ourselves as we parent our son. And of course, I am welcoming back my husband, Gaurav Patel. Thank you so much for joining me, honey.

00:01:01:19 – 00:01:11:02
Guarav
Well, I’m so honored to be the last guest of the year, and so I’m excited to record this episode with you and look forward to the new year ahead. Yeah.

00:01:11:02 – 00:01:46:14
Dr. Mona
And you know, for the last episode of 2023, I wanted to go into 2024 with motivation for all of our listeners, especially knowing that many of our listeners are parents or maybe work with parents. Obviously, who have children. And we are talking about how parenting is hard enough and why are we making it harder. And a lot of these conversations that I’ve recorded with my husband have come from inspiration, from conversations we have after the kids go to bed, they’ll go to bed and we’ll just sit and talk about life, parenting, marriage, human nature, psychology, whatever you name it.

00:01:46:15 – 00:01:49:06
Dr. Mona
And so I’m just so glad to do this with you today, honey.

00:01:49:07 – 00:02:11:07
Guarav
Yeah. This is something that I think we essentially have this conversation almost every night after the kids go to bed. So and I think we’ve both have mentioned how I think your listeners would benefit immensely from just kind of dropping in on some of our conversations that we do have. Because I do find that we spend quite a bit of time discussing the ups and downs and the rollercoaster of parenting in this day and age.

00:02:11:08 – 00:02:12:22
Guarav
So I’m really excited to be here.

00:02:13:03 – 00:02:29:08
Dr. Mona
And so tell me, I mean, obviously there are so many things that we can talk about in terms of why we’re making it harder, but I want to hear your perspective. And so the first thing would be, what would you say is like that top reason or one of the reasons why you feel our generation is making it harder than it needs to be.

00:02:29:10 – 00:02:49:18
Guarav
Well, I think our our generation has so many things going for it in a positive sense. Right? We’re so connected now more than we ever have, more than any other generation has ever been connected in the past. And that’s been great for so many new innovations and things of that nature. But with all those great positives, there have come some drawbacks.

00:02:49:18 – 00:03:17:19
Guarav
And I see it in everyday life and in parenting, like you and I. And it just seems that we are so hyper focused on getting it right. And when I say getting it right, I put the word right in quotation marks because there’s just so much emphasis on not wanting to make a mistake or I don’t want to screw up my kid or I don’t want to do to my children what my parents did to me.

00:03:18:01 – 00:03:54:14
Guarav
And now when you take that and you add in the fact that we’re now in a super hyperconnected world where social media is in everybody’s life every single day, and we have glimpses into other people’s lives and how they’re parenting, we’re creating this environment, this very toxic environment where one we’re not even sure what we’re doing is necessarily 100% correct, but we’re comparing that to someone else’s journey and parenting and sometimes giving ourselves the shorter end of the deal on that comparison.

00:03:54:15 – 00:04:18:14
Guarav
And, you know, if we were to take this back to when you and I were growing up as kids, right? The only things were the things that were happening down the street from us, right? Or what was happening two houses down or three houses down. That was our world. It was just our neighborhood, our block. Right? We didn’t know or see or have exposure to anyone else’s lives or anything like that.

00:04:18:16 – 00:04:44:15
Guarav
Now you take what’s going on in our generation at the moment where just by flipping on a phone, you have access to millions and millions of people’s lives on a daily basis. And in our culture, we have created this sentiment that, you know, you must be doing something a certain way. You must parent this way. You must sleep, train your child, you know, don’t sleep, train your child.

00:04:44:15 – 00:05:11:08
Guarav
Like all these mixed messages coming from all different angles. And what I think it’s doing is, is that it’s creating a real imbalance in, in the parent in terms of what is it that they’re supposed to do. There are so many mixed messages. There’s no one size fits all manual for this, and there’s just so much I don’t want to say confusion, but I want to say there’s so much information out there that it may be just too much information.

00:05:11:10 – 00:05:48:23
Guarav
And maybe we need to start going back to the basics of how families were raised, maybe even generations ago, where we had these tight knit, smaller communities of family members. And that was essentially your entire community. Yeah. And so I think we’re in an age of information overload. We’re in an age of purview into other people’s lives, and it’s just creating this toxic sort of environment where we’re not really sure if what we’re doing is right, and we’re comparing it to maybe somebody else who we may look up or who may have a larger profile or platform.

00:05:49:01 – 00:06:22:21
Guarav
And we’re basing our decisions on what they’re seeing and what they’re doing when we’re not following our own intuition and our own gut feeling anymore. Yeah, yeah. And so I just think that if we were to simplify things a little bit, I think that would lift a lot of anxiety and a lot of stress off of the parents in our current generation, if we just kind of went back to the basics and simplified parenting, then I don’t think you would have so many parents who are dealing with anxiety and depression and all these other mental health things.

00:06:22:22 – 00:06:46:02
Guarav
If we could just kind of peel back the layers and just, you know, look at parenting as a journey. It’s not a competition amongst other parents out there or down the block or around the quarter or anything. It’s doing what you feel is right for your children and doing the best you can, and understanding that that’s enough. Yeah, that we don’t have to create the next entrepreneur who’s going to be Elon Musk.

00:06:46:02 – 00:07:06:09
Guarav
We don’t have to create the next athlete who’s going to go on to gain stardom or anything like that. Once we take the pressure off of ourselves, you’ll notice that things just seem a little bit lighter around the home, that it’s okay if we don’t get everything right on the first time, or we do, quote unquote, make a mistake.

00:07:06:09 – 00:07:27:18
Guarav
Not that I think there are any actual mistakes in parenting, but I think that people are looking at parenting through the lens of, am I doing it right? Am I doing it wrong? Right? I don’t think there’s any real wrong way to do parenting. Obviously, there’s cases of, you know, physical abuse and emotional neglect and, and those kinds of things, and that’s a topic for discussion for a different time.

00:07:28:00 – 00:07:33:23
Guarav
But if there would be a message that I would give to these parents, it’s like you’re doing the best you can and that’s enough. Yeah.

00:07:34:01 – 00:07:56:12
Dr. Mona
I mean, so much to unpack with the intuition. I completely agree that I feel like so much of our peers have lost intuition. And, you know, it is something when people hear that phrase, they can feel bad if they don’t have the intuition, right? They’re like, well, everyone’s saying that I should just know, like, I should just know what to do and what my feelings so I understand someone who’s listening, who may feel like, okay, I don’t have the intuition.

00:07:56:14 – 00:08:11:08
Dr. Mona
Do you feel as if we lose that intuition because we’re kind of comparing ourselves too much, or not focusing on our own needs? Or what would be your perspective as to why you feel? And this could be a discussion we have that our generation has lost that intuition.

00:08:11:10 – 00:08:47:07
Guarav
I don’t want to say we necessarily lost the intuition. I think the intuition is something that lives inside of all of us, and we all have it. I think that what has happened is, is that our culture has become so toxic, where it’s that we’ve been conditioned to suppress that intuition and focus our attention on external factors and external voices and external measures of quote unquote success or modeling, where we’ve subconsciously we’ve suppressed our own intuition and we’ve done this to ourselves.

00:08:47:09 – 00:09:07:13
Guarav
But to a larger degree, society has done this to us or has helped or played a part in doing this to us. We, like I mentioned in the beginning, have never been more connected with each other, but I think being so connected with each other has caused us to become disconnected with ourselves. And that to me is the key.

00:09:07:13 – 00:09:35:00
Guarav
It’s that we need to go back and reconnect with who we are authentically, what our intuition and instincts are, and be true to them and be confident in them. And so much of our culture forces us to abandon our intuition or gut feeling right on a constant basis. We are bombarded with messages that we’re not enough. We need this item to get the best results for your children.

00:09:35:00 – 00:09:59:02
Guarav
Your child needs to go to this type of school. You need to be in these kinds of extracurricular activities. We need to be eating these whole foods and things of that nature. And what we’ve lost in all that is our own authenticity and our own intuition, and how we feel like we should be raising our children. That aligns with who we are as people individually, right?

00:09:59:06 – 00:10:28:10
Guarav
As opposed to what everyone else around us is saying. And doing. And it’s very difficult because like I said, we’re being bombarded. We’re around every corner, no matter where you look, no matter what you turn on the TV, the phone at work, people are talking about it. It’s there and it’s always there. And so it’s very hard in this generation to block out all of that noise and to truly listen to that gut intuition that we have.

00:10:28:10 – 00:10:45:12
Dr. Mona
Yeah. And you mentioned, you know, this view of success, right? Like that our generation has this skewed view of success or has created this. And that can be hard when we’re trying to tap into and connect with ourselves. Like you said. What do you see that as like in terms of our generation looking at success as well?

00:10:45:12 – 00:11:11:12
Guarav
It depends on what you define the word success to mean. And I think that’s the first question everybody needs to ask themselves is like, what is the definition of success? Who came up with the definition of success? If I were to look up the word success in a dictionary, what would be written underneath it? And I think that definition is totally different for every single human being on this planet.

00:11:11:12 – 00:11:20:07
Dr. Mona
I looked it up the accomplishment of an aim or purpose. So of course that’s going to be subjected to each person. That’s the dictionary definition. And you’re right on. Yeah, you’re.

00:11:20:07 – 00:11:49:06
Guarav
Right. So that’s going to be as individual as each individual human being on this planet is. But what our culture has created and what our environment has created is this false narrative that success has to look like a certain image, right? You need to get into what the image is. We are constantly shown these images of what quote unquote success looks like.

00:11:49:06 – 00:12:27:19
Guarav
Right. And so I think every parent would agree that we want the best for our children, and we want to give them the best opportunities to be the best versions of themselves. But what I see, unfortunately, happening far too often is that we are misusing this definition of success and then projecting that onto our children and forcing them to conform to this mold, let’s say, so that if everything aligns and we do everything right, then little lady Sue over here will be a successful person in life.

00:12:27:20 – 00:12:59:07
Guarav
And if we make the right choices and put our child in the right school, then little Joey is going to go off and be a successful adult. When he gets to that point. Well, great. There are certain things that we can control and help our children along, but at the end of the day, we have to start to really look at that word success and and try to tear it apart and analyze what exactly are we trying to get our child to become, or who are we trying to get them to become?

00:12:59:09 – 00:13:23:21
Guarav
And these external markers of success that are being fed to us from the media and social media and things of that nature, are what continue to perpetuate a lot of these toxic sort of behaviors or these stressors that we’re imposing on ourselves. Right? Because inevitably, as human beings, we all want to be connected. We all want, you know, community.

00:13:23:21 – 00:13:48:13
Guarav
We all seek some sort of praise and external validation. Each human being has an ego that looks for those things, but when it gets a little bit too much on that spectrum is when we start to lose our true authenticity. So everybody needs to go back and analyze what it means to be a successful parent. My personal opinion is, is that, you know, this is kind of like a mantra that I have that it’s like, it’s okay.

00:13:48:18 – 00:14:17:08
Guarav
We should all strive to be not extraordinary, but just extraordinary. Right? That we shouldn’t all of us be striving to be the number one or the best at everything. We should all strive for personal growth and improvement and all those things. Those are healthy. But I find that too many times we’re putting these sort of markers of quote unquote success, as you know, checkboxes that our children have to reach.

00:14:17:08 – 00:14:28:14
Guarav
And if we do these things correctly and we put everything in a line for our children that this is the future for them. When we’ve seen examples over and over again where that’s not true.

00:14:28:16 – 00:14:44:22
Dr. Mona
I think a lot of the, you know, you said you didn’t want to go into like what these measures of success is. And I think it can be broadly put in that still, in 2023 at the time of this recording, so much of success in life and then also with parenting in our children is based on metrics and status.

00:14:44:22 – 00:15:03:04
Dr. Mona
Right? So metrics like, okay, how many followers you have on social, how many this do you have? How many friends do you have like volume and volume over quality. Right. So quantity over quality I need to do this much for my children. I need to get these many gifts for the holidays. I need to do this. How much am I doing for this?

00:15:03:04 – 00:15:20:01
Dr. Mona
There’s so much, you know, on metrics. And I mean, it goes down into the newborn phase when we’re like freaking out over volumes of food. I mean, I use it as a metric, right? And metrics exist throughout all of our life. You know, we talked about that the other day with like, people who have fitness trackers, you know, tracking how many steps they have.

00:15:20:01 – 00:15:43:21
Dr. Mona
And then you have, okay, well, how much is my child doing here? And then what grades are they’re getting. And those metrics and status, you know, when we tied that into success right. It’s tough because we live as you know, we’ve discussed this. We live in a you if you’re listening in America we live in a very capitalistic society that metrics mean you can maybe get into a better school, get a better job, which is used to be the narrative that was fed to us.

00:15:43:21 – 00:16:09:15
Dr. Mona
When we know that now people can make their own way with their own realities and businesses and whatnot. But it’s the metrics. It’s that status success rate. So we’re looking at this with everything that we do. And then our children are starting to look at that. Right. Like in schooling we know that it’s so stressful. And I look at my teenage patients that are like struggling because they are so obsessed with metrics, because they think that the metrics mean that they’ll succeed.

00:16:09:17 – 00:16:43:03
Dr. Mona
And what we’ve lost when we think about raising children, because we’re so focused on the metrics and the status is, how is my child feeling? Me? And you talk about this all the time about the feeling. I’m not saying that feelings are going to be security, right? Obviously, I think every parent wants their child to be happy and can afford life, but we are sometimes sacrificing success in the social way of like, you know, having this and this and this item and this and the latest and greatest toy and all of that, when we’re actually forgetting, well, what is the quality that we spent here with our child?

00:16:43:03 – 00:17:00:09
Dr. Mona
What is it that we’re teaching our child? What life skill am I teaching my child from this experience, or from this thing that I purchased, or having this home or having this, that, or the other? Or if my child got an E on the test, are we celebrating the A, or are we celebrating what they did to get that?

00:17:00:09 – 00:17:08:15
Dr. Mona
A? You know, that is what’s so important. And I think we lose that so much in this sort of narrative. And that’s how we can make it harder for ourselves.

00:17:08:17 – 00:17:41:00
Guarav
Well, it’s interesting that you bring that up because I think, you know, for the listeners out there, you and I are essentially the poster child for that kind of metric driven upbringing. Right? Absolutely. You were a high achieving student, went on to a very competitive college, medical school. I kind of followed the same path, grades upon grades, taking test after test, getting through medical school, becoming a doctor.

00:17:41:02 – 00:18:07:13
Guarav
And especially, you know, I’ll throw in the caveat from a cultural standpoint as well, being that we’re both of Indian descent, that on the outside it look like you and I are crushing life, right? If you look at it from just a did this person check the box? Right? You and I checked every single box that was put in front of us, right by our parents and by society at large.

00:18:07:15 – 00:18:40:00
Guarav
And what’s so interesting about that is that in doing so, and by checking all of those boxes and by everyone’s standards, they would consider us both very successful, right? Just based off of what we’ve accomplished. But you and I both know, and we talk about this all the time, that regardless of how far we’ve come and all those things that we have accomplished, no one ever allowed us to speak about the stress that came with having to perform from a very young age.

00:18:40:00 – 00:19:08:21
Guarav
Yeah, the feelings of inadequacy when you didn’t get the highest grade, the comparison of other peers in your classes when the report cards came out. Yeah. Or which college everyone got into or which medical school or where did you match for residency? Right. These are all things that our parents celebrated about us. And they gloated to their friends that, oh my God, look at my daughter, look at my son.

00:19:08:21 – 00:19:39:12
Guarav
They’re the doctor. And look, they’re getting married. My doctor daughter is marrying a doctor son, and now they’re going to be two doctors that. Oh, man, you and I. Now, having gone through all of that and now reaching sort of midlife, realized the true essence of parenting was lost on both of us. Neither one of us had parents who could emotionally provide us our needs as children, adolescents, or even young adults.

00:19:39:14 – 00:20:03:03
Guarav
And what effects did that have on us? Well, for you and I and this is just speaking for you and I, it was that we were completely unable to communicate our needs. We were completely unable to communicate our feelings effectively. We had conflict after conflict about how things should be or what things should look like, or where we should be doing or buying or not buying and all that stuff.

00:20:03:05 – 00:20:25:20
Guarav
When what was completely lost was the understanding of another human being and their emotional needs, and the things that truly mattered to them as a person were never safe to be spoken to anyone. It was never safe to feel anything. It was never safe to bring home an emotion. It was always just swept under the rug. Right?

00:20:25:20 – 00:20:42:20
Dr. Mona
You never able to feel anything but happiness, like I feel was anything but happiness. It was like something you can’t feel that way. You can’t feel sad. You can’t be angry. If you’re angry, go to your room. If you’re sad, let’s just push this down. You can’t be sad. You got to be happy. I mean, you never got to feel any other emotion but happiness.

00:20:43:02 – 00:20:58:15
Guarav
Well, in our culture and especially in our previous generation, emotion was equated to weakness. So if you showed emotion, you were considered weak. And you and I lived this our whole entire life. Like what happened? If you would cry, what would they say?

00:20:58:15 – 00:21:01:19
Dr. Mona
Don’t cry. You don’t cry. Oh no no no don’t cry. Yeah.

00:21:01:22 – 00:21:15:12
Guarav
Strong people don’t cry. Only weak people cry like only babies cry. And when crying is an emotion that whatever you want to believe created us, gave us the ability to cry. To allow us to process. Yeah.

00:21:15:14 – 00:21:19:16
Dr. Mona
I want you to cry more often. I want you to cry more. Ryan. The cry.

00:21:19:18 – 00:21:46:22
Guarav
Like crying, is a way in which we release, right? Like God gave us the ability to cry. Why would we want to suppress that? Why would you want to try to squash that? We’ve been given the ability, and this is what separates us from all other animals in the animal kingdom, the ability to feel emotion and then translate that emotion into a physical sense of like, okay, I’m sad right now.

00:21:46:22 – 00:22:15:14
Guarav
Yeah. I’m stressed. I need to talk to somebody. I am emotional and I just want to cry and you and I both know that that was something that was just swept under the rug and was like, don’t you dare bring feelings into this. Yeah, and what we’ve created is this current culture of super really, you know, quote unquote, again, externally successful people out there.

00:22:15:16 – 00:22:34:03
Guarav
But you and I both know a lot of externally successful people who have a lot of, a lot of internal struggle. Yeah, you and I both know a ton of people like that. Who on the outside seemingly have it all put together, but we know the truth about them and the demons that they’re dealing with, and they’re pretty nasty.

00:22:34:07 – 00:22:59:02
Guarav
And where were those demons created? Well, those demons were created in their childhood, most likely, and they were created in an environment in which parents were not able to be emotionally attuned to their children yet again, this is just speaking from our example. And culturally, I think I see this a lot in our culture. But to extrapolate that to the rest of our generation, we’re raising children.

00:22:59:04 – 00:23:22:09
Guarav
It’s the understanding that, again, there is no checkpoint that we have to reach. There is no finish line in this journey called parenting. It’s going to have many twists and many turns, much of which we have very little control over. And I like to equate, when I think of my own self as a parent, I like to equate parenting almost as a tour guide.

00:23:22:15 – 00:24:00:18
Guarav
Like my job as a dad to our children is to be a guide for them to, you know, help them maybe nudge back this way, nudge back that way. But for the good portion of their lives, I’m just going to be there to help guide, not to force them to be something or do something, to allow them to falter, to allow them to take some missteps, to allow them to experience life for what it is, all the ups, all of the downs, and to just be there to support them through that and to be their guide through life.

00:24:00:20 – 00:24:18:19
Dr. Mona
And you said this parenting is not a destination. It’s a journey. We talked about that one a few nights ago and I was like, I love that. Looking at the end point, right? We look at like, when you think about a lot of my listeners, who are we have younger kids, you know, milestones. Well, they need to reach this and this and this, and then you kind of forget to enjoy the process.

00:24:18:21 – 00:24:36:17
Dr. Mona
And, you know, I’ve spoken about that with Ryan because, you know, he had the stroke and stuff. I was so obsessed with him meeting milestones. And I developed anxiety over that. Like, he has to do this. And then with Viera, we’re being much more relaxed about it. And of course monitoring all he’s doing and whatnot. But you kind of lose sight of the joy of the journey.

00:24:36:22 – 00:24:49:18
Dr. Mona
And that includes the ups and downs like me and you are both aware of. But you kind of forget that when you’re so focused on, again, the what is it that I need to get to? They need to start rolling. They need to start doing this. You need to start doing this. And then you just forget and time passes.

00:24:49:20 – 00:25:07:06
Dr. Mona
And then you know me and you have related so well to this about feeling like, wow, we have a four year old at the time of this recording. We have a six month old at the time of this recording and it flew. You know, it flew by. And that was with us being aware of all this. So I don’t want parents who are not aware of this and just kind of losing the day to day.

00:25:07:06 – 00:25:13:04
Dr. Mona
Forget that there is beauty in the journey, even if the destination may look different for everybody else.

00:25:13:05 – 00:25:47:06
Guarav
Yeah, I think you see that really well. And I think that if we as a collective people started to share a lot more of the not so pleasant parts of parenting with each other, and this is what I think I love about your community and your platform is it is a safe place for people to talk about all the, quote unquote, taboo things or all the unpleasant parts about being a parent or the the stressful parts about being a parent.

00:25:47:08 – 00:26:08:20
Guarav
And, you know, this goes back to my original statement about how we’re creating this toxic culture of putting on this performance for people. What I think we all need to start doing is we all need to start being more vulnerable with each other and start showing our wounds and our scars and our painful parts of ourselves with each other.

00:26:08:22 – 00:26:49:01
Guarav
And, you know, again, I’ll use my in this example of being someone who is raised by an emotionally immature parent who wasn’t able to provide me with any emotional attunement. It wasn’t until I finally reached a breaking point early this year. You know, I went through a very difficult time in the beginning of 2023 and seeking help with a counselor and a therapist and really getting to just talk about all of the things that I had experienced as a child the good, all the bad, and everything in between, without the worry of having any judgment coming back towards me.

00:26:49:03 – 00:27:07:07
Guarav
That in and of itself was such a relief off of my shoulders, because and especially this is coming from, you know, a male. Yeah, I think that I speak for a lot of males out that us men need to talk more about this stuff. Right? There’s still very much a masculine like.

00:27:07:09 – 00:27:09:04
Dr. Mona
Yeah, like a very small like, you know, like.

00:27:09:04 – 00:27:10:03
Guarav
We have to where we.

00:27:10:03 – 00:27:13:15
Dr. Mona
Can’t be vulnerable. There’s no we have to be tough all the time.

00:27:13:17 – 00:27:36:04
Guarav
We can’t be vulnerable. We can’t show any weakness. We need to be the strength of the family. Well, no, the strength in the family does not come from always putting on this masculine armor. The strength in the family comes from being authentic and being vulnerable and being, you know, happy. Sometimes being sad, sometimes being upset, crying, sharing when you’re not feeling great.

00:27:36:07 – 00:27:36:23
Guarav
Right?

00:27:37:01 – 00:27:57:15
Dr. Mona
I still remember when Vera was born and my own father, you know, told because you obviously for anyone who’s not familiar, we had another you know, traumatic postpartum experience where I was hospitalized and I was very sick and you had to do a ceremony like a religious ceremony or, you know, cultural ceremony without me at home. You know, I wasn’t there, and it was supposed to be where our daughter and myself at home.

00:27:57:15 – 00:28:13:05
Dr. Mona
And I remember you told me you cried. And, you know, you are very vulnerable, and that’s amazing and healthy. And I love that about you. And then my own father, who has grown up in this cultural cycle, and we’re trying to break that hold you, that you need to be stronger for the family. You can’t cry. You have to be strong.

00:28:13:05 – 00:28:29:21
Dr. Mona
And I, I told you, I’m like, I am so happy that you’re crying. I mean, I would be worried if you weren’t crying because what we were going through was so hard. And like you said, I appreciate that. Were you were trying to undo that and we spoke about that on another episode. The re parenting ourselves as we parent our son.

00:28:30:02 – 00:28:46:06
Dr. Mona
You can look that up on my episode list, but that is so key to, I think, changing also and making parenting a little more simpler in that breaking those, you know, narratives and breaking that generational trauma, if you want to call it that. And I think that is so key.

00:28:46:08 – 00:29:12:07
Guarav
It’s so key because a lot of in, you know, the title of this episode is how why are we making parenting harder? Well, a lot of it comes from repeating generational cycles of trauma that are occurring subconsciously. What I mean, subconsciously, they’re occurring automatically without you even knowing about them. Right? So when you were a child, let’s say you’re listening in and you’re currently a parent.

00:29:12:13 – 00:29:37:05
Guarav
Well, when you were a child, you were absorbing everything that your parents told you. And because you were a child, you didn’t have and your parents were your primary caregivers, well, you didn’t have the ability to analyze what was being told to you and determined for yourself whether this is right or there’s something wrong with this, you just took everything at face value because that’s what you do as a child.

00:29:37:05 – 00:30:09:05
Guarav
When you’re with your parents. So a lot of parents currently, when you think about ways in which you’re making it more difficult, well, a lot of it is because we have not processed what happened to us as children, right? We have not yet processed the trauma that we endured as children from our own parents. And when I use the word trauma, I don’t mean like physical trauma or a giant traumatic event, like a death in the family or something like that, although that is part of it.

00:30:09:06 – 00:30:34:02
Guarav
What I’m talking about are are smaller traumas, like witnessing your parents fighting or having heated discussions about money, or always having stress around money or, you know, dad not always being there because he’s working all the time and mom being the primary caregiver, and she’s stressed because she has to put food on the table every night and things of that nature.

00:30:34:02 – 00:31:09:03
Guarav
And so she’s a little bit short. Every parent is going to traumatize their child no matter what you do. That’s just the nature of being a parent and the nature in which we there’s no such thing as being a perfect parent. So we’re all going to traumatize our children in some way, shape or form. Now, some children will be traumatized more than others, but what we need to do as adults is to look back at our own childhoods and see how those narratives that were created when we were six, seven, eight years old are showing up in our lives today, and how we’re passing those narratives down onto our children now.

00:31:09:05 – 00:31:49:05
Guarav
And this has been a huge awakening for me in the last year. Right. You know, this that intensive therapy that I’ve been doing and work that I’ve been putting in is trying to create a new narrative around who I am as one, as a person. And then therefore that trickles down into how I parent our children. Right? So for all the parents out there, I think it’s extremely important that you look at your past, you look at your childhood, start to question some of the things that you were told, start to question the way things were done when you were a child, and try to look at them from a very clear lens and see

00:31:49:05 – 00:32:32:05
Guarav
if some of those things are showing up today in your own parenting journey, in your own parenting life, and you’d be surprised at how many things are automatically just happening because someone told you at six, seven, eight years old, this is how it’s supposed to be. It’s all running in the subconscious mind. And if parents want to change, you know the way that they parent their kids or they want their kids to have a different experience than the one that they did as children, they need to do that internal work and start to heal some of those wounds and recreate some of those narratives around parenting so that they can better show up for their

00:32:32:05 – 00:32:39:19
Guarav
own children today. And that in and of itself, will decrease a lot of the stress and anxiety around parenting in this generation.

00:32:39:19 – 00:32:56:08
Dr. Mona
Yeah. And I think, you mentioned about how in some way, every parent will cause some sort of trauma. I would love to dive into that in another episode, because I think how I word is, and some way our children will not like everything we did as parents, even if we’re the perfect parent, whether they’re going to label as trauma or not.

00:32:56:08 – 00:33:10:15
Dr. Mona
Like me. And you spoken about like our children when they get up, you know, different generation, right? It could be like, you know, I didn’t really love that my parent was on a cell phone, right? Like that to be something that our kids don’t like as they get older, right? That, hey, we have cell phones and our parents generation did not.

00:33:10:15 – 00:33:26:05
Dr. Mona
So there’s always going to be something with each generation that the kids will grow up and say, you know, I didn’t like the way it and I’m going to evolve. But it’s like you said, that part of the evolution that’s so important as we adapt and grow. Now, what would be your final you know, we started this talking about the parenting is hard enough.

00:33:26:05 – 00:33:34:02
Dr. Mona
Why are we making it harder in your like kind of one liner? What would be a way that a parent can simplify all this? Like you said, using that word?

00:33:34:03 – 00:34:02:09
Guarav
I think it all comes back to looking at yourself in the mirror and taking a really deep, deep look in the mirror and starting to unravel all those layers of conditioning that you’ve been exposed to over the years. And once you start to unravel those layers, you start to notice patterns in how you show up and how you respond and how you work and how you view things.

00:34:02:11 – 00:34:44:01
Guarav
And that’s the opportunity. There’s the opportunity you have. Or you can change some of those narratives. And if you’re able to do that and trust me, it’s someone talking from experience. It’s extremely difficult to do because these things have been ingrained in us for decades. So it’s not something that’s easy work or it’s going to change overnight. But if you could just start the process of self evaluation and seeing how you operate and why you think the way you think and why you do the things the way you do them, then you can start the process of re parenting yourself and that will trickle down into your own children, and then you’ll show up authentically

00:34:44:01 – 00:35:07:04
Guarav
for your children. Then that intuition, that gut feeling will finally be able to surface again. And it will guide you throughout this journey. And you will feel safe in those decisions. You won’t feel the anxiety anymore. You won’t feel the oh my God, she’s not rolling over. She’s not talking by 18 months or you know, he’s not as coordinated on the soccer field as the other kids.

00:35:07:06 – 00:35:30:13
Guarav
All that chattering in the mind that happens that all times will start to slowly become quieter and quieter and quieter, because you will know that there is no such thing as a perfect parent. Again, look it up in the dictionary and tell me what it says. Under the word perfect parent doesn’t exist. It will allow you to then enjoy the journey however it unfolds.

00:35:30:15 – 00:36:02:22
Guarav
And yeah, that will allow you to go to bed every night. Put your head on that pillow, know that you’re doing the best that you possibly can and doing the best that you can. And that’s all we’re really should be striving for, is to do the best that we can. And if we can get to a place where we can live by that mantra and be okay with it, then I think you will see such a cultural shift in the amount of anxiety and depression, and just stress around parenting just completely dissolve.

00:36:02:23 – 00:36:17:16
Guarav
It’s not easy, especially in this day and age, given how, like I said, how bombarded we are with ways in which we need to be a better parent or a better this or a better that, but we just need to be okay with just being okay.

00:36:17:16 – 00:36:20:10
Dr. Mona
Yeah. Being ordinary. Like you said earlier.

00:36:20:11 – 00:36:25:12
Guarav
Exactly. We shouldn’t strive to be extraordinary. We should just strive to be extra ordinary.

00:36:25:13 – 00:36:51:04
Dr. Mona
Yeah, well, this is awesome. And I just love getting our conversation on recordings for people to hear. I obviously just think it’s so important from just a cultural perspective, being both of us being physicians, you know, having two children, all of the experiences we’ve gone through. I just love talking about this, and this is our third episode, and I’m trying to get my husband to start a podcast with me.

00:36:51:04 – 00:36:54:18
Dr. Mona
And so thank you so much for joining me. This was awesome.

00:36:54:20 – 00:37:11:08
Guarav
Well, if you guys want me and Mona to start a podcast together in the new Year, go ahead and leave a comment. I plan this episode and I have to. If we get some good feedback, then we’ll we’ll make it happen. I mean, you’ll be just.

00:37:11:08 – 00:37:37:05
Dr. Mona
Like, this is just a preview, okay? I mean, we have so much to unpack. I’ve already created like, five topics for our podcast and they would have to do about marriage, parenting, relationships, sibling relationships, family dynamics, being immigrant children, second generation American, the health crisis. I mean, everything that is about life. And as you can hear, I just love connecting and talking about people.

00:37:37:05 – 00:38:04:03
Dr. Mona
And you mentioned that too. Or of like connection, right? Connection with ourselves, connection with our children, just connection with what we want out of life. And I love getting to connect with you. I love that you are my husband, but I also just love connecting on our show. So thanks for everyone who tuned in today and make sure to leave that review like or of said and say how much you love the episode and share it on social and tag me at Peacock so I can see how much you enjoyed our conversation today.

00:38:04:09 – 00:38:11:00
Guarav
Like she said, go leave a comment, give it a five star review and you’ll see us in 2024.

00:38:11:02 – 00:38:32:19
Dr. Mona
Thank you for everyone tuning in today. This is the last episode of 2023, and again, I’m so happy that my husband could join me for it. We’ve had a new adventure building our family and it’s here. Two children. We’re happy, everyone safe and joyous right now, and we want to continue that vibe for everyone listening. And so I hope you all have a great end of the year.

00:38:32:19 – 00:38:40:00
Dr. Mona
If you are listening to this live, and if you’re joining me in 2024 and listening to this episode later, I can’t wait to talk to another guest next time.

00:38:40:01 – 00:38:44:18
Dr. Mona
Thank you for tuning in for this week’s episode. As always, please leave a review.

00:38:44:20 – 00:38:46:07
Dr. Mona
Share this episode with a friend.

00:38:46:07 – 00:38:55:17
Dr. Mona
Share it on your social media. Make sure to follow me at PedsDocTalk on Instagram and subscribe to my YouTube channel, PedsDocTalk TV. We’ll talk to you soon.