The Healthy Post Natal Body Podcast
The Healthy Post Natal Body Podcast
Intentional Parenting: How to Raise Respectful, Boundary-Setting Children with Katherine Sellery
This week I'm delighted to be joined by Katherine Sellery as we're talking intentional/conscious parenting.
I absolutely love this subject as intentional/conscious parenting is quite far removed from the way most people my generation were raised and it's a delight to see a better, more engaging and empowering way is now becoming more popular.
And Katherine is exactly the type of person I want to hear from when it comes to this. She has over 20 years of experience, has done 3 TedX talks and is a wonderful communicator.
We discuss absolutely everything;
What is intentional parenting?
The difference it makes in the relationship between a parent and a child,
Value driven parenting.
The importance of understanding your own, and your child's, triggers and how to deal with them
How to begin? (and "isn't it a lot more work?")
And soo much more.
You can find Katherine online;
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Though I'm not terribly active on Instagram and Facebook you can follow us there. I am however active on Threads so find me there!
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Playing us out tonight "False Banners" by Wicked Cinema
Hey, welcome to the Healthy Postnatal Body Podcast with your postnatal expert, peter Lap. That, as always, would be me. This is the podcast for the 5th of October 2025. And today, as in the day before, music means I have a guest on right. It's all guest interviews these days. I promise I'll do another Q&A. What is it not next week but the week after? Promise I'll do another Q&A. What is it Not next week, but the week after.
Peter:But today I have the pleasure, the absolute joy, of talking to Katherine Sellery from the Conscious Parenting Revolution. We are talking intentional parenting. Oh, yes, it's another one of those episodes. I know we've done tons of parenting episodes, but you know, I think these things are important and I would say that, as a someone who was raised a certain way, with a certain style of parenting, there has to be a better way out there and therefore I am delighted to bring Katherine, who's an absolute machine for all this type of stuff.
Peter:She's been working on this for the best part of two decades and all that type of stuff. She's been working on this for the best part of two decades and all that sort of stuff. She's done TEDx and she's worked with, basically, parents for absolute donkeys, how to get food to your kids in a way that works, how to raise your kids in a way that works that doesn't frustrate the hell out of you, or indeed, your children. So you know again. I love this subject, especially when it comes to someone, when I get the chance to listen to someone like Katherine. So, without further ado, here we go. What is intentional parenting?
Katherine:yeah, I, I love the question and you know when I think about my own journey as a parent, I have two kids and they're grown my son's 30. Our daughter is 26. And they're, you know, at different places on their journey as well. But my parenting hasn't stopped Right. It's just changes as your kids get older, but you're always mom, you're always dad. I mean, you still play that really important role. And what I guess intentional parenting is about is that along the way, we don't slip into our unconscious and just start doing some things that are damaging the relationship. Just start doing some things that are damaging the relationship. So when we're intentional, we have the capacity. I started a conscious parenting revolution so that people could be intentional, and the conscious aspect of that is that when I'm having relationships with my kids, my spouse, my family I like to call it a family- because, sometimes it's not just your children, it's the extended family and, you know, depending on the context, it can really include friends, neighbors, people we love.
Katherine:I mean, it's all the people that we think of. And if you want to get really broad, you know, if you feel more of a connection to humanity in general, then your role can be even bigger. You know, we make our role bigger. Small. We see a child in the street, we can decide that they need support and we step into a role that a parent would step into. As somebody who cares about kids, I would never walk past a lost child, would you? No, no, no, absolutely not Right. Never walk past a lost child, would you? No, no, no, absolutely not Right. I mean that's where you know I have held kids' hands in movie theaters, broadway shows. I mean Target, safeway. I mean they get lost.
Peter:They get lost everywhere.
Katherine:And I'd rather be the one holding their hand because I will wait with them until that parent arrives. So I think that's probably across the board. I'd say almost everybody would do the same thing I would like to think so yeah.
Katherine:I'd like to think so. So the intention part is, you know, I guess we can be intentional in that when we experience distance or breakdown or a hurt feeling, either ours or one of our children or spouse or any of the extended, that we do something about it, that we don't just let it fester. You know, rupture and repair is the nature of relationship and the best relationships are where each party takes equal responsibility for the closeness in the distance. So kind of like let's use those two to anchor us. So rupture and repair are the nature. It's going to happen. They're always going to be breakdowns.
Katherine:Trying to think that there won't be is really like putting yourself in an impossible situation. So with that comes an acceptance of yeah, it's going to be part of my job to handle the repair part and and to also be open to somebody else coming to me when they feel like they want to repair. So how do I handle that? And am I also present to the fact that there's probably a blind side that I'm not aware of? You know, we call it the dark side right, the shadow, the aspect of my interactions and how I show up that I'm not really that clear about, but I see it. I see it around the edges when I get a nasty response or something and I can either look at it as well there there's something wrong with that person or how is?
Katherine:How is our dance? What kind of dance are we in that this is part of what's going on in our relationship and that allows for there to be kind of the no shame, no fault, no blame, no guilt, no shame. I mean, if we have that no fault, no blame, no guilt, no shame mindset, then we just have things that arise that we handle, as opposed to trying to find the culprit and make somebody wrong or bad or land in the God forsaken land of blame, victim, blame consciousness. So there are a lot of minefields out there and if we're intentional about being present I guess that would be it, really present, embody, conscious then we're going to have a much better chance of coming out and through all of the things that are going to be happening throughout our lifetime with all of our relationships, in ways that we feel proud of.
Peter:Sure, no, absolutely, and that makes complete sense. I can almost hear the first email towards me being typed up saying it sounds exhausting. Right, it's so much easier to just drift through life. So much easier to just drift through life. And what you're talking about requires a lot more effort than people sometimes not want to put in but feel like they're able to put in.
Katherine:Let me put it that way. So, so, so astute. I do hear that that. You know that sounds like a lot of work and I would say, um, there's, there's.
Katherine:I know if we are using, you know, the lazy man's guide to parenting, if you will, or relationships. What that's going to mean in that lazy man's guide is that I just deal with things on a surface level and they never really get resolved. So, while it may look like it didn't take me long to deal with it by really not dealing with it, it never went away and I'm going to be really not dealing with it over and over and over and over again. So, when we come down to the, you know the mathematical analysis, I'm not really sure that it is longer, because you end up never getting out of the loop, because you never resolve the symptom and you live at the land of just presenting problems as if they're really the issue to deal with rather than the surface, and they're what arises from the deeper problem, the wound, if you want to call it, or the hurt or the scasm or whatever is creating that thing on the surface. If you're only going to deal with this stuff and you're going to do it through rewards and punishments.
Katherine:Then you're going to activate the secondary problems retaliation, rebellion and resistance and that is a whole nother land, and 75% of behavioral disruptions actually are over in this land, over here. They are so far away from the underlying original unmet need so we just kind of go God, who'd want to do that? That sounds exhausting. It really is, in fact that potentially you're going to be dealing with things at the core and it may take a bit longer because you haven't ever done it and you're clearing a lot. But once you've done that, there's so much goodwill and everybody is operating at such a clean level that really problems are dealt with so fast, so easily because there's no resentment flow. I think that's the case. I really do.
Peter:No, it sounds to me like a classic case of you know, you put the effort in now so you don't have to put more effort in later on, as in the way that it is with almost everything in life to be honest, right it's when you're looking at.
Katherine:Is that shortcut, really that short?
Peter:Yes, it is usually that it is most of the problems that I at least the way I see it the most problems that I see in the world, especially in the world of politics, is usually because we're just going to kick that into the long grass and just deal with the superficial stuff. Right, we just not going to. We're just going to kick that into the long grass and just deal with the superficial stuff. Right, we're not going to, we're going to.
Katherine:You're just opening up a whole new can of worms. You know that. Now.
Katherine:I'm just like bursting at the seams to talk about short sightedness in political arenas where there's almost an amnesia that goes on around the cost we pay for short term, you know. Ok, let's lower interest rates even though we have inflation in our economy, mr Economist, yeah sure, you're going to fuel a boom and the whole society pays for your having ignored the fact that it's also your responsibility to talk about. We can do this. It'll be great for everybody in the short run, but you do know that you have to pay the piper.
Peter:Yeah, which is what we see with a lot of things, and I think a lot of listeners can relate to that and I think a lot of that. I always say that your job as a parent is basically to put as capable an adult into the world as you can. Yeah, so basically just gone. Your job isn't necessarily just to get your five-year-old to go to bed quietly. Yeah, right, it's. The job is to have an 18 or 21 year old or whatever 26 year old, 30 year old, that isn't completely out of their mind with, yeah, trauma, all those other stuff because they used to get shouted at for going to bed.
Katherine:Yeah, so we have, like, the behaviourless perspective, and a behavior list is really focused on behavior. I'm not a behaviorist. I'm much more in your camp where it's not really about like, of course, I want you to go to bed Sure, who doesn't Right? And we all want you to go to bed. We want you to pack your own lunch in the morning, and we all want you to go to bed. We want you to pack your own lunch in the morning. We want you to put your shoes on, brush your teeth, make your bed. All the stuff, all the stuff that's going to make you a good spouse, that it's going to actually support you later in life, because you're not acting as though you're alone, that there are other people that live here too, and so, yes, but a behavioralist is looking for obedience and compliance, and I, and I think you might be looking for consideration, and I guess the behavior changes not because of what's going to happen to you if you don't, which is you know the foundation of behavioralism and you know rewards and punishments, external locus of causality. External locus of causality, which means that people change their.
Katherine:The worldview is that people, then who use that system believe that the reason people change their behavior is because what's going to happen to them if they don't? So? The foundation is fear and dependence. You have to be dependent on me for the goody, so you learn sort of like learned helplessness as well, as you have to be afraid of me, that I can just wield my power and take stuff away. So you've got to realize that that's going to impact your relationship, of course, and it's also robbing someone of agency, responsibility, autonomy.
Katherine:That they learn not because they're afraid, but because you take the extra time to cultivate values, and one of them is the value of consideration, and included and embedded in that is not just the consideration of the people and the powers that be to do as they're told, but also the consideration of but hold on, regardless of my age, because I believe there is ageism and I feel like I'm a child advocate and that I spend my life trying to raise people's awareness that if you're talking to this person that way, who's significantly younger than you, in that tone with that directive, it is as though they are marginalized in your mindset, that there should just be doing as they're told Rather than you'd like to have cooperation. But you also want to take into consideration that their resistance is a no to you and a yes to something inside themselves. So what are they saying yes? To Help me understand what's behind this.
Katherine:I mean, people are generally cooperative and they actually do want to please. It's kind of built into our survival mechanism that we are not, you know, obstreperous just out of like being nasty. But there's something that goes on in these dynamics that give rise to cooperation or rise to resistance. I'm more interested in what's going on in the dynamic.
Peter:Yeah, and that's an excellent, excellent point, because the behaviorist approach it's yeah, that works a treat on my dogs, right, that's amazing. I mean I'm all for positive behavior, but that is dog training. That is like you said, that's looking for obedience, that's looking for Our children are smarter than dogs.
Katherine:Well, but we hope.
Peter:We hope that they turn into adults that are smarter than dogs and even that's not necessarily a given these days, but it is.
Peter:I think it's interesting what you said. I did a conversation with someone a long time ago and I'm going to have to look this up about value-led living yeah, and what you were talking about. You're trying to raise people who have values, yeah, but, as they were pointing out, a lot of people say they have values, such as consideration and all that sort of stuff, but they don't act in accordance with their values because they've never really been taught how to, or they've never been given the opportunity They've never been shown.
Katherine:Exactly. It's also, you know, when you value yourself as a child and are holding your ground because you have something in you that you treasure that is somehow being jeopardized through the conversation with an older person and an adult and the ageism sets in. With an older person and an adult, and the ageism sets in. And I had a daughter, my daughter, who would say to me as a very little girl mommy, she would never have spoken to you that way. So she was so attuned to tone of voice, facial expressions, body language, as was my son. He said mom, she was saying yes. Her teacher was saying yes about something he said, but everything about her was saying no, so he could pick up on this lie.
Katherine:We're going to call it a lie where people say one thing but they meet another, and I think kids are like savants in the land of picking up on that double talk. So they pick up on it and they're really confused at that stage, even as adults. I'm sure you have experienced this. You're like well, I know what your words are saying, but I know everything about you is saying something different, so you're not congruent. Now I can I can choose which one I'm going to respond to, but the intentional person will respond to what's really being communicated and they will not play the game of of responding to what they know is not the truth but is, for whatever reason, being presented because that person is fine. I mean we've all heard that. Okay, clearly you're not fine, whatever you know. I mean it's like come on.
Katherine:It's not that hard for us to figure out that these are not really the truth, that they are saying to somebody out of exasperation, I can't talk to you anymore. You're not listening to my side. So that ability to be able to include the other person, regardless of their age, means that we have to become conscious of the fact that we have an irrational, unconscious, negative belief about children, their value, their worth and their ability and or space to speak for themselves. We call it disrespectful. We all probably have it in the back of our mind. How dare you talk back to me?
Katherine:There's something about you're supposed to not speak up? Yeah, there's something about you're supposed to not speak up. You're not allowed to talk. You're just supposed to do as you're told.
Peter:Anything other than that is disrespectful and go to your room yeah and maybe on the time you'll get spanked for it yeah, it's funny, I I have a lot of clients with kids that are, I'd say, a little bit older 12, 14, 15 years old, so they're into that, becoming a young adult. I'd say. I tend to talk like most kids and I've worked with some kids, some little athletes and all that type of stuff. I talk to them as if they are adults, right, these guys are essentially. When I've worked with them, they're my clients. So you know, you're the boss. I always point out to them as if they are adults, right, these guys are essentially. When I've worked with them, they're my clients. So you know, you're the boss. I always point out to them you're the boss.
Peter:That's the power dynamic here, so that means I. But it's quite funny that when you sit around the table with their parents and the child there and you're just having a casual conversation with everybody and everybody is having a bit of a joke and a laugh, and and you're just having a casual conversation with everybody and everybody is having a bit of a joke and a laugh, and then the kid says something back which is on the same level as the adults have been saying. All of a sudden the parents will say, hey, you can't talk to adults like that, exactly.
Katherine:You know what?
Peter:I'm saying and I'm like we were having a conversation with each other what he said or what she said is completely fine within the context of what was going on. She said it's completely fine within the context of what was going on.
Peter:yeah, and all of a sudden we pulled the, the, but he's an adult card yeah, exactly which is a weird and, don't get me wrong, my generation, as I always point out, middle-aged white guy, right, my generation was very much I. I am the problem, right, but middle-aged white guys of my era. We were raised in that way you sat at the kiddie table. I'm not sure they still do these things, but we sat at the kids' table at the family functions and by the time you were old enough I'm not quite sure what age that was you got moved up.
Katherine:Yeah, I know. I mean, you know children are to be seen and not heard, that's that type of stuff.
Katherine:It's as old as the ages and it's passed down through the ages. It's here now. You know, we lived in hong kong for 35 years, so most of the coaching practice I've run has been in um, the parent communities in Hong Kong, which is a huge mix internationally A lot of Asians, of course, everything from Japanese, korean, obviously Chinese, but lots of British, plenty of Americans and a smattering of Europeans as well. So it's really a pretty good cross section of the world. And what I found is that, to my surprise almost and I think everybody is always surprised that this is not an American, a German, a this. This is a universal, a universal mindset around children and their place in society. I don't know children and their place in society. I don't know. I mean it's very interesting. I speak to so many people on so many podcasts and so many hosts from you know different cultural backgrounds and I would say that there are certain pockets where it's more, I mean it's very strong.
Katherine:Where it's more, I mean it's very strong Filial piety in the Asian context is very much about respect your elders, which the word is being used in a way that I believe is a distortion. Respect does not mean don't have a voice. It does not mean you have to subjugate yourself and essentially betray yourself in service to elder in the room. At what point do we recognize the danger of teaching children not to speak up for themselves? I mean it's at the core, of course, of all child sexual abuse. Oh yes, absolutely Absolute core is that you have someone who's learned to be obedient and compliant to whoever has the most power in the room, and that is usually going to be an adult. It could be a very powerful peer or someone in their age group, absolutely. And you see that on the playground, where you know Lord of the Flies, like you know, power is there and you've got a group of kids who are all the same age, but that doesn't mean they all have the same power.
Peter:Oh for sure, no, absolutely Everybody knows that, that that clique right, every group has a leader, so to speak.
Katherine:There's a cruel group, and they're usually the cruel group as well because in order to have that status, they have to eliminate a lot of people and create somehow. You know something about them that everybody wants to be a part of, right, I don't know how to be a part of that group. I've heard so many kids say that and I mean really. It's like why would you want to? Oh my God.
Peter:Yeah, there's nothing pleasant, but when you're, I suppose, when you're younger, and even when you're, let's call it an immature adult, so someone who has never really turned into we still want to be part of that. I mean half of the.
Katherine:Instagram.
Peter:TikTok manosphere is based in that alpha male nonsense world of you know if you're not X, y speaking has a very strong dominant hand.
Katherine:Father knows best kind of thing, right, you know, wait till your father gets home. I mean, even women will use it right. And you know that's where that it's everybody's complicit in this. It's not like men are alone, it's like women are also complicit. Wait till your father gets home, I mean, how many people grew up with that. I did. Yeah, you know, and it was like there was a fear of what dad would do when he heard about your great transgression and like what would be the response.
Katherine:And then it gets into the land of well, they did such and such, and you know, mom could say things like and they made me feel so hurt. And how dare you hurt your mother, right? And then the but it's a lie, nobody makes me feel anything. And if we're stuck in victim blame consciousness and we give our power to our kids and other people to make us feel, and then we blame them on how we feel because it's as though they caused it, when we know that's not possible, the whole thing is a cesspool.
Peter:Yeah, it sounds that it's a recipe for disaster when you think about it like that.
Peter:So how do we?
Peter:We okay, so, assuming every parent has their own shit to deal with, right, that is a given, and we have to have to deal with that stuff and need a bit of therapy or whatever you need to do. Just work on it, ideally before you have kids, as we've had conversations on this podcast before. Part of your prenatal, antenatal prep should really be getting some therapy to work some stuff out, so when the baby comes, totally great, you don't, you don't have that mess hanging there, uh. However, having said that, we all have stuff to work on, right, how do you teach your kids because what you're talking about is essentially children that are respectfully setting boundaries right, or even disrespectfully setting boundaries, maybe but how do we, as parents, make sure that we not only listen to their boundaries and to some point, appreciate that they have them and raise kids that know how to set boundaries and all those sorts of stuff and get healthy adults, but also that there is still a level of cooperation rather than compliance when it comes to things that just kind of need done?
Katherine:Yeah. So I mean, I guess I would say that the key is to create an thing. Then you know we focus on where's our breakdown, that you know you're feeling so wronged by me that this doesn't feel like a request anymore.
Katherine:It feels like I'm demanding that it it my sense of what's going on here is that you know we're creating more and more distance and I believe that happens when we don't see each other. So I want you to feel so seen, heard and understood by me that what actually happens is it reciprocal? It's reciprocal, then, of course, the child wants to see, hear and understand you just in the same way.
Katherine:So, it's ebb and flow, and ebb and flow of reconnecting, breakdown like rupture, and repair, like we talked about earlier, where each party is taking equal responsibility for the closeness and the distance, and I just, I just feel like that's such sage advice. I heard it from someone I repeated. All the time where I think about and I'm actually, as I'm talking to you, I'm scanning my relationships and I'm thinking about like where, where is the other party taking all the responsibility for the closeness or taking all the responsibility for the distance? And how do I, with my intention, step into the role of the adult? Because we kind of get to keep that role throughout our lives and have an action, a reconnection that moves past the current conversation.
Katherine:So it really does take us out of the, you know, the blame game world where I'm sure everybody has their side and, you know, would love to talk about it ad nauseum, but it doesn't get us anywhere, although I do think there's a right amount of conversation that does need to happen. You can't just sweep it under the carpet. You know they in a lot of spiritual communities we talk about a spiritual bypass and that's essentially what we're talking about. If we don't actually address it is that we just pretend that it didn't matter, when it did matter. You know, it was a silly, silly thing, but it mattered.
Katherine:And no matter how small it was, it was big to someone, and so I think it's just about that mindset. I hope I've answered your question. I feel like I've been rambling, but it's kind of a way of looking at things.
Peter:Yeah, no, you definitely did, Because that's a good point, because it's something you said earlier on about. The thing you're angry about isn't actually the thing you're angry about, right, the and we see that a lot. And I will throw a crappy television reference out now, because that's what I do. Anybody, if anybody's, watched that lasso. I love it, and everybody kind of has watched that lasso by now. There's no spoilers in here. One of the final season I think it's the last season where one of the coaches goes up to one of the players it's a football thing, right? A football comedy and he says listen, I'm not sure what you're upset about, but the thing you're upset about is not the thing you're upset about, and you need to work on that Because that is such an open. I don't know about you. Obviously this is a field you work in, but no one ever said that to me, because the thing I'm upset about middle-aged white guy is the thing I'm upset about. Do you know what I mean? As in, that was how I was raised.
Peter:That's how I was, when my dad was upset at me leaving the light zone. It was he was upset at me leaving the light zone. Yeah, and no matter how many hours he would sit down with you, he would never be able to say well actually yeah. He just held on to that.
Katherine:You know my dad, when we would come back to the US in the summertime, when the kids were on summer break you know, come back to my parents' house. My dad at the time was he was an older dad, so he was born in 1915 and I was the last of five children after, you know, three marriages. So you know you can imagine ours was a his mind and ours family, with all kinds of stuff happening and you know go on for hours, but, um, we all had a different dad actually.
Katherine:So all five of us had a different father. Because I was the last, I had the best, I had the best guy because he'd made tons of mistakes, but not so much on me, I think for me he just showered me with love and taught me that he loved me, warts and all. And.
Katherine:I grew up feeling lovable, and you know it was. It was a gift he gave me. But when my daughter, I left them. I came back. I said, hey, would you watch after her while I run to the grocery store? Sure, honey, and so I came back and I wasn't gone long and I said Well, where is she? You know? Oh, I sent her to her room.
Katherine:Why She'd never been sent to her room, why she was disrespectful to her grandpa. I was like, oh no, dad, what happened? Well, I told her it was time to come join me for lunch and she ignored me and she's not going to disrespect her grandpa. I said, wow, well, let me go find her. And I went into the room. I found her. She's in floods of tears. She doesn't know what's going on. She's literally never had this kind of an interaction before. And I said you know, I can see her so upset. What happened? And she said I was finishing my drawing, mommy. I was almost ready, and grandpa just started yelling at me about being disrespectful and that I was disrespecting him and I don't even know what he's talking about. And it was literally two ships passing in the night. There was nothing in her beingness that disrespected her grandpa. She was finishing her her little. She was playing with finishing her drawing.
Katherine:So I went upstairs I said well, let's go upstairs and talk with grandpa.
Katherine:And so we came upstairs and we sat down and I said you know, dad, I just spoke to Pia and this is what she said about the interaction and I shared that with him and I told her you know, and your grandpa was, you know, this is, you know, like you thought, this is where he's coming from.
Katherine:And I said I feel like the two of you have just been two ships passing in the night, like, like there's a complete breakdown in communication here and I'm going to I hope we can repair this because it's an important relationship and I hate to see this fester and I got up and left and you know they each went their own direction and I think both of them felt, you know, somewhat heard, somewhat seen, somewhat understood and somewhat revealed about what was going on.
Katherine:And you know, somewhat heard, somewhat seen, somewhat understood and somewhat revealed about what was going on. And you know, I swear my dad must have been I can't remember, he was probably in his late 80s at the time and he came back to me later hours later and he said to me honey, it's a better way. So I just look at that, where you're looking at that average white guy in his 80s who's able to take it in and digest it, and say I think it's a better way and I love that. It's one of my best memories of my dad. So you know there's somewhat bad story about their interaction and yet I look at it and I think that was a hero's journey.
Katherine:Oh, yeah, for sure, and I think it's one of those that, if you, it shows that if you take the time to quietly engage with all parties and you know, not everybody has an outsider, has a third party there, right, I think as a parent, quite often you have to be that person because your child isn't necessarily I so agree and it would help so much to have a neutral party and I mean it was great that I wasn't triggered, it was great that I could sit with each one of them without shaming or blaming or making me feel wronged or bad, just pointing it out, as we've got a breakdown here and I feel like it's two ships passing in the night and let everybody come to their own like conclusion about, like, reflecting on it.
Katherine:It's easier to do when there's no shame in the room. By the way, it's a lot easier when you have that big sign up in your house that says if you're not making a mistake, you're not growing. So I mean, you know, if you accept that mistakes are going to happen and that there's going to be generational mindsets, it's, it's a quagmire. We walk into a room, all of us, and we're dragging along with us generations of mindsets, generations of viewpoints, generations of harm and pain and trauma. We're not just showing up like this, it's not just me so much baggage.
Katherine:All the generations that came before me and, yes, I think I purged a lot of it through a variety of different ways to heal and ultimately getting to the place where we realize that everybody's doing the best they can. Yeah, even though it might be absolutely abominable.
Peter:Yeah, it's a funny one. It's coming to the realization that even people who were not great but doing their best in the moment can be quite eye-opening. For I think especially again, not not necessarily for for for kids, but for for adults and people who are about to be parents, people who have been parents for for a while, even people who aren't parents just realizing that everybody is kind of just figuring stuff out and dealing with it as best they can.
Katherine:And that we also have a responsibility, where harm is being done, to stop it.
Peter:Sure, of course.
Katherine:And you know to be able to say I understand it may have been acceptable when you were growing up, but this is not OK now and we will not allow you to growing up, but this is not okay now and we will not allow you to speak to each other this way. And I've done that. I've done that with my father-in-law speaking to the kids in a way that was not acceptable and I just said get up, leave the room. I'm going to talk to grandpa and I'm going to let him know that we don't do this anymore. We don't speak to each other in this way. We don't shame people. It's not okay.
Katherine:So it's both are true. Like I can understand contextually where he was, my dad was. I mean both very, very. You know old white guys who we understand that was the, that was the dominant culture, that was the culture they grew up in. Mistakes were not acceptable actually, um, and and there really was a sense and a belief and a culture that supported that, um, the dominant culture could do whatever it wanted to children yeah, very much, so very, very much around the world.
Peter:Yeah, well, because that is a funny thing, right, because again, you mentioned that earlier about seeing so many different cultures and and I know we're we're about to wrap up, but it's an interesting because I can again almost hear an email being typed saying that this is this, this is the patriarchy, right and and I'm not saying they're wrong, hey, the patriarchy has a lot to answer. It's a very patriarchal way, it's a very patriarchal way of of dealing with with kids.
Peter:Right, it is the it's. As one of my one of my clients pointed out, she thoroughly dislikes child-free holidays. Uh, as in as as principle, not going without children, but banning children from places where children would usually be. She said, because it implies that thing that we were talking about earlier there's a kid's table. Yeah, the kids should not be. You're not centering, you're not treating the kids like little adults that or that need to, that need to learn, to be had to function in a society. You're just going these little jackasses, I don't want to see them until they're 18 years old and then we expect them to be fully formed adults at the age of 18, as in they've had no experience of dealing with any of that stuff. And then we put them in that situation and now behave yeah, um, that can't be the healthiest way to do it it's certainly not.
Katherine:I mean I. I don't know if you're familiar with alice miller and the drama of the gifted child I've heard of it.
Katherine:Yes, so it was one of her seminal works. I mean, I I'm a big Alice Miller fan and I loved how much she saw through ageism and and she spoke about, you know, with, with, for example, just one. One thing that we usually focus on in parenting is this idea of sharing and sharing. She said that it's one thing for it to come and emerge from within a child that if you wait, it's kind of like reading. You know, um, in so things I know in Europe they don't teach reading until much later and that it takes like an afternoon and they all know how to read. Because when you wait until the apple's ripe and ready to fall from the tree, it's not hard work, they're ready, they've heard the phonics, they've been exposed to it, I mean all the things, so that literally it's that easy.
Katherine:Well, in the States and maybe other places, they start years before, and it's not that they can't get them there, some of them faster, some of them, by God, it takes a long time because the apple wasn't anywhere near ripe and it wasn't ready to fall from the tree, but we could force it. So it's kind of like that with sharing, force it. So she said it's kind of like that with sharing. It is actually developmentally normal that a child will get to a place where they want to actually share their goodies with the people around them, but we tend to want that to happen years before it's developmentally emerging. So we can, in fact, just like reading, teach them how to do it, like you teach someone how to ride a bike like a skill, and they can learn it as a part of being socialized into society with the right set of skills to be able to probably succeed in social circles in better ways than kids who don't learn this skill.
Katherine:Yeah.
Katherine:Almost everyone will learn it anyway. They will actually learn it, not because you teach it to them, but because it was coming, just like they will learn how to you know. They'll potty train themselves. If you give them the right amount of time. Nobody has to teach them how to do that. They'll sleep through the night. Naturally. I mean almost everything that we do or consider a developmental milestone is that it will happen about this time and we then get in and try to have all those things happen years beforehand and we, by God, can make it happen because somewhere in our mind we puff ourself up and say, well, our kid's smarter or our kid's better, because, look at, they're doing that developmental milestone in an earlier age.
Peter:When what is?
Katherine:developmentally normal is actually a spectrum and somebody earlier on or later in the spectrum is still normal and there isn't like a weightedness about when you hit that spectrum. You're better or worse, but in society tend to create that, so it's kind of another way of looking at the same thing. That you're talking about is that we can allow things to emerge and it's so much easier trying to force the issue and sharing is a good example.
Peter:Point that's a really, really good point. Um, I'm not happy now because I think that's a, that's a great ending. I don't think we can necessarily top that, to be honest but yeah that's absolutely, you know, buzz-beater level sort of thing. That was amazing. So, on that happy note, I will press stop record here and, as you know, press stop record is exactly what I did, because these are my dulcet tones. Again, thanks very much to Catherine for coming on.
Peter:I love it when busy people who are experts in their field. Take the time to come on to my little podcast. Obviously, I will link to absolutely everything in the podcast description. Well, you will find a link to the Conscious Parenting Revolution Catherine's website and all that type of stuff. There's a ton of stuff on there. There's tons of um with a couple of ebooks uh, certain strategies to keep your relationship from your kids from hitting the boiling point, something. Uh, there's a webinar on there about video gaming. There's there's just a ton of good information and and and courses, um, and and and courses on there, and I think you know this is the sort of stuff I like. I said I talk about this a lot. This is the sort of stuff we need to be investing in, right, I would argue this is more important than a postpartum exercise program like you have to pay a couple hundred bucks for um. That says the guy with a postpartum exercise program, um. Anyways, that's me done for another week.
Peter:Peter at healthy postnatalbodycom, if you have any questions, any comments, would like to be a guest on the show or you know someone you would like to hear from someone? I don't. Again, I don't mind inviting people. You can email, you can text. You can do all these sort of fun things. You have a tremendous week and I, my friends, will be back next week with a From the Vault episode. You take care. Bye now.