I have been blown away by the mom’s in my life who are so progressive, patient, open, vulnerable and focused on doing things differently than they were exposed to as children. In my girl group, I would say a handful of my friends are mamas. Amazing ones! And what I admire most is the way they go about parenting. It’s hardly traditional and many would say rather controversial. But what it does do, is create a conversation around what we are exposing our children to, how we are speaking with them verbally and non-verbally, what their discipline looks like, and the space we give them to grow and learn their own lessons.

I had an amazing conversation with my girlfriend Tamara Iglesias recently about conscious parenting. She is an actual expert on the topic, lives it with her own 6 year old daughter and works with families one-on-one in order to redirect the way communication is happening within a home. She mentioned to me that she is often called when things have already been rough for a while, but that during her process of at least 90 days with a family, she is able to find the pain points and educate the parents and kids about how things will change to improve the dynamic.

A few things I took away from our conversation, which I highly recommend you listen to whether you have kids yet or not…

1. Kids need space to learn and grow. As a parent, it is natural to want to fix things, smooth them over and help our child have the easiest and most successful life possible. But this keeps them from learning how to work through problems and trust themselves.
2. Talking to our children like humans instead of with baby talk and dumbing things down is really empowering for them. I love Tamara’s example in the show of Scarlet, her daughter, understanding her meditation and self-care practices and why it’s important for her mom to recharge in that way. Tamara takes the time to discuss what matters to her with her young daughter, which then gives Scarlet power in situations to use those tools for herself but also fully understand what’s going on.
3. Discipline has taken on a whole life of its own and there are many ways to help your child learn a lesson. Tamara’s beliefs on not withholding love or food, for example, are truly amazing and she goes through this in depth as we talk.

At the end of the day, every family has to find what’s right for them. But we explore a lot of tools that I had never been exposed to or thought of myself that I really think you can benefit from greatly.