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You're listening to LifeKit from NPR.

Hey there, reporter Andy Tagle here.

I'm on my way to becoming a parent,

and it's starting to dawn on me that parenting is tough.

I'm just kidding. I know.

Parenting is often called the hardest job in the world for lots of reasons. The time, the energy, the immense responsibility, the never-ending worry, the expense both financially and physically. Raising little humans is really difficult. No doubt about it. But have you ever thought about how parents,

not kids, can sometimes make parenting even harder? We keep expecting the child to change. We keep

wanting the child to change and keep trying to micromanage the child. I'll yell louder. I'll punish the child. I'll

incentivize the child. All the while, we never look at ourselves. And most of the time, it's only

10% what the child is doing and 90% what the parent is doing wrong.

Shafali Sabri, better known as Dr. Shafali, is a psychologist and author with expertise in parenting,

family dynamics, and personal development. Her new book, The Parenting Map, is a step-by-step

guide for creating conscious parent-child relationships. Rather than defaulting to parenting with

rigidity and absolute authority, you know, that because I said so mentality,

conscious parenting is a practice of coming to the kids' table with humility. It requires parents

to look inward and examine what emotional baggage or unsaid expectations might be influencing

how they parent. Then, to use that knowledge, to be less reactive with their kids,

maybe that sounds simple.

Trust me, conscious parenting is a lot of work.

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