Eps 237: Nurturing an Anti-Racist Home Environment (and so much more) with Vivek Patel

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Transcription

Casey O'Roarty 0:00
Go, Hello and welcome. Welcome to the joyful courage podcast, a place where we tease apart what it means to be a conscious parent and aren't afraid of getting super messy with it. I'm your host, Casey awardee, positive discipline trainer, parent coach, and in the trenches of the parenting journey with my own two teenagers. Each week, I come at you with a solo show or an interview. You can be sure that the guests on the podcast have something important to say, and I am honored to have you listen in as I pick their brains about what it is that they are passionate about. If you are a parent looking to grow while walking the path of parenting. If you're open to learning new things, if your relationship with yourself and your kids is something you are interested in diving deeper into, then this is the place for you. After you listen, I would love to hear from you. Head over to iTunes and leave a five star review, letting others know what you love about the show, or feel free to shoot me an email at Casey, at joyful courage.com, I love hearing from listeners, and am always quick to respond if you want to be sure not to miss any of the happenings going on with joyful courage. Join my list. You'll stay updated on the podcast and events that are happening for parents, both online and live. You can join the list at www. Dot joyful courage.com/join. Yay. So glad you're here. Enjoy the show. Hello, podcast listeners. I am so excited to welcome today's guest, Vivek. Patel. Vivek is a conscious parenting educator who works with families to help create more harmony and connection in their homes. Vivek has dedicated his life to spreading awareness and supporting change in schools. He's worked with youth organizations, teaching conflict resolution, anti bullying and leadership through movement, martial arts and dance. As a conscious parenting educator, he has written hundreds of articles and has 60 parenting videos. You can find his writing on Facebook, the meaningful ideas website and YouTube. You know that I'm going to give you links to all of those things towards the end of the show, in the show notes, I'm so excited to welcome my friend and colleague. Vivek Patel, welcome to the podcast.

Vivek Patel 2:29
Thank you, Casey. Hi. How are you?

Casey O'Roarty 2:31
I'm really good today. Tell us a little bit more about your journey of doing what you do. Absolutely.

Vivek Patel 2:37
Thank you. I have been doing conscious parenting, educating and coaching for about 10 years now, and my kiddo is 23 and when she was born, I knew that I wanted to do things differently from how I was raised. I was raised in a very traditional household with a lot of mainstream discipline. I was spanked and I was punished and had things taken away from me, and I had all the limits and the boundaries and and it made me pull away from my parents, mostly my dad, my mom. She really was trying. She had a lot of obstacles against her. I think part of the reason that I even knew there was another way was because she made an effort to try things differently. But the majority of my experience was very coercive, and it actually sent me on quite a self destructive path in my youth, in my teen years, in my early 20s, yeah, and I do workshops in prisons. And since my mother and I actually every week, not these days, because, of course, we're all isolated because of the covid virus. But prior to that, every week for the last eight years, we're in prison together, and we're doing self empowerment workshops in prisons. And when I talk to those guys, they can really relate to when I tell them stories from my youth, they can really relate, you know, because I had a really difficult and challenging time in my youth, and so much of it was a reaction to to the way I was I was raised into the My experience with adults, and so I knew from a young age that I wanted to be a dad one day, and I wanted to do things differently. And even though my life kind of veered from that for a while, and eventually came back, and I started to find myself again. And then, when I was 28 I had my daughter. Well, I didn't have my daughter, but my wife did, but she came along and and I remember her. I remember when she was born, and I looked into her eyes, and I could hear her voice in my head saying to me, Dad, if you treat me like most parents treat their kids, I'm going to hate you when I'm a teenager. And so I really took that to heart. And I was like, Okay, well, I want, I would think about, you know, and like, I'm saying she was 23 right now. So this is a long time ago. There was no Facebook. There are really no resources for how to do things differently. I was kind of just making it up, knowing that I didn't want to do. Um, I didn't want to have, like, an authoritative, punitive, controlling relationship with her. I wanted to have a human, a deeply human, collaborative relationship with her. And so that's what I focused on. I focused on relationship. I always say that my parenting mantra is relationship first. And I really focused on our relationship and forming a deeply connected human relationship where she could feel safe with me. I wanted to be the safest person in her life, and to know that she could be herself for without including all of her mistakes, all of her areas that she needed to learn, all of the things that she, you know, what we normally would call flaws, as well as the things that she was, you know, had strengths, and the whole package was acceptable and that she could be herself. Because so many kids, you know, they grow up in environments where they can't be themselves, and they're always having to adjust who they are to the expectations, usually the coercive expectations of their parents and other adults, and the systems they engage in, like the school system, and so they don't really get to learn deeply about who they are. You know, in most adults that I talk to when I do my workshops and stuff, I ask them, Who here is on a path of self development? And usually everybody puts up their hand, and I say, And who here, who we just put up their hand has this as a central part of that, getting to know themselves for the first time. And like, every hand goes up, and I didn't want that for my kid. I wanted, I wanted her to know who she was, to love who she was, and to honor who she was from the very beginning. And so that's really what I focused on. Now. We're 20 she's 23 and the relationship we have is, it's hard to even describe. It's, it's sublime. It's, it's so connected and it's so deep and it's so vulnerable. We one of the things that she enjoys eating the most is subway.

Casey O'Roarty 6:47
My 14 year old, same excellent

Vivek Patel 6:52
and so like she we there's a subway down the road that we go to on a regular basis. And when she was in high school, like every day, almost every day, we would go in there for a sub. Well, not every day, but like two, three times a week and and so then it was the same staff, and they were seeing us all the time, coming in and just being ourselves and and getting a sub together. And then one day, after two or three years of this, and we're very friendly to like we're out there, we're talking to people. We want to create human connections wherever we go, because that's part of the lifestyle that we've developed with each other. And so one day, I went in, after a couple of years, to the same subway, and she wasn't with me, and she was almost never not with me, and they were saying, oh, where's your friend? And I said, Yeah, exactly. That's exactly it, right? And then I said, Oh, that's not my friend. That's my daughter and Katie. I'm telling you I'm not exaggerating when I tell this story that those people behind the counter could not contain themselves. They literally started running back and forth, saying, What? Oh, my goodness. What? What? I can't believe it. I've never seen anything like it. They were running back and forth, up and down behind the counter because they couldn't control themselves. And then they yelled in the back, hey, come out here. Listen to this guy. Yeah, we know this guy. That's his daughter. What? And they were all like, completely losing their cool around it, like they just couldn't they couldn't perceive it. They said, I said, what's happening? Why are you people reacting like this? And then after a minute, they calmed down, and they were like, you know, we've never seen a parent and child interact that way. You really seemed like you were best friends, the respect that you had, the way you listen to each other, the joy that was between you, the trust we've never seen we've never seen it, and we've served parents and their kids for years. We've been doing that it was hard for them to believe. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 8:34
yeah. And

Vivek Patel 8:36
I never forgot that moment. You know what really made me feel? It made me feel so much, so much confidence in the stuff that I teach, because this kind of relationship where kids can can really benefit from our wisdom and from our guidance, because they can trust it. I think that's the thing that really was is really important and really powerful. Because I didn't want her turning away from me, like most teenagers do. I wanted her to feel like she could always trust my guidance.

Casey O'Roarty 9:00
Yeah. Well, now I'm like, thinking to myself, well, clearly, we're gonna have a few more podcasts after this one. There's so much there that I would love to tease apart and talk about, including, you know, just the learning process. I think a lot of us make that decision, you know, where I'm going to do it different than what I got, and then going from the head to the heart, you know, some for some of us, it takes quite a bit of of work, right? Easier said than done. So another time, we will come back to this, because I would love to know the work that you did to support yourself in moving through, you know, the the conditioning that was a part of you, just simply because your relationship with your dad existed, but not today. Today, we have a different topic. Yes, we do. Yes, we do. Yeah, we're talking today listeners about how to take current events and bring the learning into the home. It is June 9, 20. 20 we are still in pandemic mode, and we are also in the middle of this uprising. It feels like a revolution on the streets in the United States. And I'm so grateful to be a part of that and in support. I do want to acknowledge that I am a middle class white woman with loads to continue to learn and unpack, and I'm so grateful for you that you're coming on to challenge and teach me and my audience. And it's really important for me to bring this conversation to the podcast, because I know that the vast majority of my listeners are white women, right? And I really, my only intention is to be a transparent model of what it looks like to commit over and over and over to being better, to being actively and intentionally anti racist, right? And just like we have, you know, we come into the parenting journey with the conditions and the models that we were raised with. You know, it's not just contained to the parenting journey. There's a lot to unpack there. When it comes to the way that racism exists inside of us all, for sure, to start, will you talk a little bit about what it means to be anti racist, because I feel like that's kind of a new, not a new obviously, it's not a new phrase, but it feels like it's having its moment. Yeah,

Vivek Patel 11:30
for sure, I appreciate you correcting yourself when you said it's a new phrase, right? I started my activism journey in the late 80s and and so I'm, I wouldn't call myself old school, because old school, I think of people that started in the 60s, maybe even older than that, but, but for me, I've been doing anti racism, work and anti genderism, sexism, work, feminism, work, ableism, work for for decades. And of course, you know, in the last 10 years or so, actively doing child ism work, which I think is one of the, one of the perhaps most under talked about forms of activism. And I often say that children are one of the largest marginalized demographics on the planet, and so it is something that's been happening for a long time. And I think what's happening right now is bringing it, maybe forcing it into a larger conversation, which it's not the first time in history that's happened either. There have been times when it's when this has happened before. I think one thing that might be a little bit different right now is the access to information, access to video, access to planning tools online. It allows a greater degree of organization. I mean, you said that there's protests happening in this in the States, but really it's all throughout the world. It's a phenomenon right now. We're working towards change. For many years, it's so gratifying to see a lot of people getting involved and and, like you said yourself, you know, wanting to be, wanting to be better every day, wanting to learn more every day, and really opening yourself to that, because that's challenging, because defensiveness is, you know, such a natural part of that process, when, when we have to face ourselves, yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 13:20
I mean, I think it shows up like again in the we have. There's plenty of opportunity for that in the parenting journey, right? Yeah, and then, but to lift up and out and really look at the way that we interact with other humans, and taking an honest look at, you know? I mean, I was raised in a very white bubble. I still live in a white bubble. And so what, you know, and I would say, Well, I'm not, I'm not a racist. I love everybody, and truth be told, I don't have I think I was listening to white fragility, or it may have even been your video that we're going to talk about. Maybe it came from I've been listening to so much lately, but yeah, something that really struck me was, okay, great. You know, white people, I'm not a racist, and how does it feel to be in a room full of people of color when you're the only white person? Like, what's the response to that? And honestly, I've never really had that experience, so I can't even really tell you other than, you know, being 21 and living in Costa Rica, which was a big party, it wasn't like I was marginalized or anything. I was this cute young, little gringo girl, you know, not the same. So I think it's just really powerful and such an invitation right now for all of us, and you posted a video a few weeks ago called you are a racist. Yes, you can you talk a little bit more about the message of this video? Sure, and I

Vivek Patel 14:50
just want to correct the title. It's not you are a racist.

Casey O'Roarty 14:55
Yes, yes, that is what's written down. Sorry about that. Yes, yes,

Vivek Patel 14:58
no, it's no problem. And I think. And I mentioned that because it's there's a big difference between the two, yes, because you asked me about what it means to be anti racist, and anti racist is, you know, it's a mindset. It's a mindset that we look at the world through, that we analyze the systems that we engage in with, that we listen to language with, and and everything from media and advertising to government systems to educational systems, the correction systems, the legal system, the financial system, the housing system, everything and, and the lens is a lens of recognizing the systemic inequities that exist more than inequities, inequities and violence that exists and and it exists in in systems. It exists in organizational structures like, you know, my wife works for a architect firm, and we're always looking at a very few people of color in her firm, and we're always kind of looking at how the firm is structured in policies and practices and attitudes. So it's like from the personal, you know, one on one individual, all the way up to the largest organization and maybe like global mindset. So from the micro to the macro, being willing to look at those things and see, look for, look at and look for the inequities, to be willing to see them inside yourself and in other people and the systems and the anti racist part of it is to be doing something, to actively change it. Now, we can always be doing something if we start with the personal that journey is, is always with us, because that system is, you know, it's like they say, like they say. It's closer than our hands and feet. It's part of us and and we carry that, that system, around with us, and so many people want to, and this is part of, part of what I talked about in my video, right where so many people want to avoid looking at that because it hurts, and that pain is natural. You know, when I first became a feminist, this was in the early 90s, it was really hard for me. It was hard for me because I thought I was a good guy, and it was very important to me to think of myself as a good person. And then if I allowed myself to think that I didn't consider women equal human beings as men, that I thought that that, you know, like I had power over them, and then I didn't treat them with respect like I had to. I had to change my whole vision of myself in order to do that, and it didn't mean I started hating myself, because I think that's where one of the reasons people have a tendency to defend themselves, quite the opposite. In fact, what I what I did, and what I understood even back then, which I don't know how I understood it, but I understood even back then was that if I was going to really make change around this, if I was going to shift the misogyny and the patriarchal lens that I had before my eyes, and it wasn't, it was a lens that was imposed on me. It's not like I got up when I was a kid and thought, I think, I'll, you know, view women this way. It wasn't like that. It was imposed on me. But still, as an adult, I had the opportunity and the choice to see the lens once it was pointed out to me, right and and I did, and I knew that in order to really be able to dig into it, one of my main practices had to be self love and self compassion. So when I teach, I mean when I teach anything, I always use self love and self compassion as the foundation, because we can't absorb an intense amount of criticism and self reflection if we don't have a solid foundation of self love and self compassion to buffer it. Otherwise, it just feels like we're getting punished by our parents again, and then we withdraw or we resist. Yeah, for sure, every time someone gets defensive, I see that. I see the the hurt child coming out and trying to protect themselves. That's what I see in that defensiveness. And if we can see that in ourselves when we get defensive, and we can give ourselves that love, we can give ourselves that compassion, and we can hold that for ourselves, I think that's one of the one of the roots of accountability is, I don't know if this is obvious, but I think one of the roots of accountability is self love. Because when we love ourselves truly, we can look at ourselves honestly and and, you know, the change what I talked about in my in my video, and the reason I said you are racist, yes you the yes you was the defensive part. No, not me,

Casey O'Roarty 19:22
right, right, right? This video isn't for me,

Vivek Patel 19:25
right, exactly. And and so I really wanted people to to not see it as such a bad thing. It's not an insult. When someone says to you, you're you're racist, it's not not to take it as an insult, because it really isn't. I mean, maybe somebody means it that way, but what it really is is a description of a mindset, perception, Filter and Lens like I was talking about, and maybe actions and words and you know and knowledge. But it's not you. It's not saying you are a bad person. And in fact, the more you take it in, the better we end up feeling about ourselves. And I have. On that, you know, and self evaluation requires real courage, by the way, you can jump in anytime Casey, while we're talking, if you have an insight or something, I

Casey O'Roarty 20:07
have a thought. I have a thought right now because, like, just the word, I'm like, I said, I'm listening to a lot right now, and, you know, unpacking the word racist for most of us, most of us. For me, I'm just going to speak for myself, when I think racist, I think of like the KKK. I think of white supremacists. I think of these, like extremely terrible people doing overt actions, hating on others, right? And so it's interesting to have this invitation, and it's not so much like the word that's coming up is a softening of the word racism, but that's not right, but it's just kind of, maybe it's an expansion of the word so that yes, those people, those people, yes, extreme, hate filled people live inside of it, but so do I, right? And so recognizing that and being willing, you know, even, I mean, I love that you titled your video that because it starts off with stirring people up, like, just the title of that video, like, oh, who does this guy think? This was not my experience, I might say, but I'm guessing, what does this guy think he is saying this? I'm going to listen to this, and then you proceed, you know, to just really eloquently invite the viewer into, again, recognizing their own stuff. And I love what you're talking about, especially with self compassion. Because as we peel back layers and start to recognize how individual like as individual people, how we may have, like, you know, for some people, microaggressions is a new term. And recognizing like, Oh, I've, I've done that, you know, or understanding that, you know, like, I mean, there's so many little things that people of color have had to deal with on the daily that, you know, some of us white people were just in such ignorance and cluelessness about, and now we're finding out like, Oh, I didn't even know that that was problematic, which often can be followed by guilt and shame enter in some self compassion. Because what I you know, and when I have this conversation with parents, because we you and I tend to be on the same mindset around parenting. And so when they learn more about I teach positive discipline and relationship based parenting, and they start to see the places where what they were doing were hurtful or not helpful or both. And then again, it's the kind of the same kind of experience of, oh my gosh. I can sit here and feel ashamed and guilty and beat up about how I have done things, or I can be in celebration of, Oh, I'm so grateful that my eyes are wider open now, and I can choose to do something different, and I can love myself, because I'm always doing the best I can with the tools and the consciousness that I have in the moment, which includes, you know, 10 years ago or 20 years ago or Whenever or yesterday, right? So I just really appreciate the conversation around self compassion here as well, because this is, this is big work, and this is, you know, shaking things up the way that it needs to, so that, hopefully, real, systematic, powerful change can happen for all of us, for all of us,

Vivek Patel 23:41
when we lift up the people that are oppressed, all of us benefit from it. Yeah, it doesn't feel that way, I think, a lot of the time, because I think there's a fear of people who are in power, losing power, but the kind of power that exists from stepping on other people and standing on their backs, that's not real power. Real Power is when we're when we come together. You know, when we come together in true collaboration and truly seeing each other and and being, you know, being together, that's when we have real power. You know, when we when we can love ourselves like you were talking about, then we can go towards the discomfort, rather than shy away from it. And I think that's one of the most important aspects of the self love and the anti racist self evaluative journey. Because being being able to evaluate ourselves requires courage and joyful courage. I might say it requires real, real courage. I gave, just last week, I gave a workshop for kids on anti racism and racism, anti racism and how they can get involved in social justice. It was really powerful, and it was such a great workshop, I'm still kind of buzzed by it, and we're doing another one this coming Friday. Yeah, it's called racism and me, and it was put on by an organization called school closures. Dot org. And one of the things I told the kids was that I said, I said, I encourage you to have courage. And I realized, so wait a minute, the word encourage has courage in it. And I was so excited about that, yeah. And the reason for that is, and I love that you said, celebrate, too Casey, because I love that word celebrate. You know, to to celebrate, the discomfort is so powerful. Yeah, I often say that when we're trying to change paradigms and and look at ourselves and see the parts of us that were programmed with, rather than our things that we we chose, it can feel like a it can feel as painful as like a cheese grater rubbing across your brain and and I always say, chase the cheese grater. Thanks

Casey O'Roarty 25:41
for the visual. Yeah.

Vivek Patel 25:46
And you know, the people who the people who do the work I work with a number of parents, quite intimately, and the people who do the work on a regular basis to chase the cheese grater, have these incredible openings inside themselves, with their relationship with themselves, incredible changes in how they and the relationships they have with their kid and the way their kids are able to be open with them. It's really a beautiful a beautiful thing, and I think it really connects with how we are able to help our kids learn about racism, anti racism, and other social justice issues in the world, because we can help them have the same courage to do self evaluation and to move towards the discomfort and feel safe in doing that.

Casey O'Roarty 26:25
Yeah, and I think that that's, you know, for me, it's something that's always really important is that I am modeling the courage to be imperfect and the courage to learn more and do better and clean up the mess when I make them, and which is, you know, pretty regular. And just so me too,

so that there isn't this idea that you get to a certain age and it's like, okay, well, you're an adult, so now you've got it all together, right? I mean, just even in the last 10 years, my evolutionary process as a human being has, you know, an astronomical as compared to the first 35 years of my life, and so just, I'm really transparent with my kids, and we're going to get into, I really want you to share for listeners about, like, specific steps and things that we can do to bring the anti racism work into the family and just to share my own, you know, just simply being transparent. You know, I had a really slippery Instagram conversation with somebody just yesterday, and really trying to do the right thing and and to not be silencing anyone, but also standing in what is true for me, and how that felt inside of a conversation about, you know, race and Black Lives Matter, and all lives matter and and it was very uncomfortable. And no one thing that I did is before I sent a message, I actually wrote it out so that I could be really clear, and asked myself, well, what is my intention here, and what is it that I'm trying to convey? And you know, in talking about that with my kids, and you know, we went here in Bellingham, we had a really lovely rally downtown. There was like five to 10,000 people. Oh, wow, all the speakers. Yeah, Bellingham is not huge.

It's up in it's north of Seattle. It's about an hour and a half north of Seattle, just below the Canadian border. So all of the speakers were people of color. We have a really solid indigenous people presence here in the area, and there were speakers from the local Lummi tribe. And, you know, I made a point, like the kids we came, and I made a point of saying, Okay, we're here to listen, you know, and so if you run into friends or whatever, like, that's fine, but really, we're not here to have a party. We're here to listen to. You know, the voices that are being amplified for us today. What do you like as you talk to families and parents, and I'd love to know too about your conversations with kids. What is it that kids want to know? What are the questions that they're asking? And how are you supporting families in bringing this all home in a really meaningful way, like beyond just, let's watch a movie, you know, right,

Vivek Patel 29:24
right? Couple of questions in there, so let's yeah for sure. Well, when we get excited, that happens, right? So many thoughts come and, and this is a, you know, these are important conversations to have. I think, you know, as as parents, part of what we're doing, I always like to zoom in and zoom out when I think about things, yeah, so good part, part of what we're doing is we're working with our kids. We're raising them, we're helping them learn stuff at the same time. Every interaction that we have with our children is. Think the whole world and the future of the world both at the same time, and and I always try and when I'm with my kid, or any kid that I interact with, because I've worked with kids a lot, a lot, a lot over the decades, and and still do whenever I'm interacting with children, I'm always thinking about the relationship I have with them and and how my thoughts and my choices and my words and my actions are impacting my relationship with them and their relationship with themselves. And I'm also zooming out and thinking how this interaction is going to affect all the ripples that this this child will will create as they go up to the world. And how can I be a part of that ripple and and help that ripple be something powerful empowered, and really, really strong. And I think one thing to one thing to do for for parents that can really help us to embrace this idea that, yes, I'm parenting and I'm also creating the world that I'm saying I'm creating the world I'm setting my kid out into, by the way I parent them. And certainly, you know, doing that from a perspective of social justice is really important, because even if this present protest and movement rises up and some change happens, we're far away from being able to get rid racism from our systems and our world, yeah, I agree, yeah. And then there's, you know, ableism and ageism and body size ism. Was that just size ism? I guess they call it, and, you know, homophobia and transphobia, and the list goes on and on and on and on, really, and for us to be able to bring that to our children's consciousness, not just in, like you said, not just watching a movie, but to make it a part of how we interact with the world. To make it, you know, you talk about systemic change, one of the places that we can really affect systemic changes, in our in our homes. The other day, I was going to be giving a talk on anti racism and teenagers, and I asked my kid, what do you think is really important for parents to know about teenagers when they want to help them and guide them? And she said, Dad, you know you're one of your one liners. I write a one a lot of one liners, by the way, it's one of my favorite things to do. And she said, Dad, one of your one liners that I like the best is I didn't teach my kid what to think. I taught her how to think, yes, and that requires a lot of letting go, yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 32:35
a lot of letting go of the narrative and the you shoulds and just do this and the directives that can come up, yes, for

Vivek Patel 32:44
sure, yeah. And, you know, letting go of the perfectionism that we expect from our kids a lot of the time too, letting because learning is learning is messy, yeah, exactly, we had the same word, exactly, yeah, we're on the same page for sure. That's great. It's messy, you know. And and instead of avoiding the mess, if we get into the mess with our kids, it's so much more profound,

you know, I myself. I call myself a mistake making machine, and I call myself that so I can recognize that I don't have something over my children when they make mistakes. We're doing it together. We're learning it together and helping her how helping learn her learn how to think and how to frame things and how to evaluate things, not just how to think, but like how to feel. You know, because how to be able to have a deep relationship with our feelings is so important too, and parents are often shutting down kids feelings when they're challenging or inconvenient or embarrassing, and certainly end up blaming the parents or shaming them for doing it, because we learned that from our parents and they learned it from their parents, and the whole message is reflected in society. Yeah, well, and

Casey O'Roarty 34:00
probably we're doing a lot of our own shutting down a feeling. Yeah, right. Like, I don't want to feel my feelings, so you expressing your feelings right here in front of me is stirring up all sorts of stuff that I don't want to deal with inside of me. So you need to just stop, right? It's so oh my gosh, it's just wild. Yeah,

Vivek Patel 34:18
yeah. That's why conscious parenting is cycle breaking, right? It's really powerful cycle breaking, and cycle breakers are warriors, for sure. Yeah, yeah.

Casey O'Roarty 34:27
So like, what kind of so you have this conversation with your daughter, and then, so what did you bring to the group of parents that you did the talk for Yeah,

Vivek Patel 34:37
for sure. So here, one of the things is that I think it's really important for parents to not be afraid to show kids the pain of the world. And this is something that I think parents often want to protect their kids from. I think there's a certain amount of that protection that makes sense, and I think there's a certain amount of that protection that doesn't i. Right that you know like there's a certain privilege in being able to protect our kids from the pain of the world. And that doesn't mean when I say that I don't mean hurting your kids. Sure, I don't. I don't mean that, but I do mean that there is pain in the world that we can let our kids see, pain of racism, pain of all the different people who are marginalized. You know, kids have a very strong sense of fairness. Kids are always saying that's not fair, right? So, yes, they have this intuitive sense of fairness. And one of the things that I often encourage parents to do is instead of because a lot of the time, parents will tell kids not to focus on that. Doesn't matter if it's fair. You're supposed to just share. It doesn't matter if it doesn't matter if it's if it's fair, just be nice. But there's something powerful in their intuitive understanding of fairness, and what we can help them do is focus that awareness of fairness, awareness of fairness. I love that Iran, we can help them see how many places in society aren't fair. I know we can help them see what the what the results of that unfairness are, and help them really value that fairness, so that they'll want to fight for that fairness. They want to stand up for that fairness. Well, it's

Casey O'Roarty 36:15
a great launch pad for the conversation around equal. You know, equality versus equity? Yes, right? Because I think kids, you know, with the fairness, you know, and somebody once said to me, you know, equal is we all get the same shirt to wear? Equitable is we all get the right size shirt to wear? I mean, that's a very simplified way of, kind of making the distinction between the two. But I think for kids, especially, you know, in the sibling dynamic, right? A seven year old and a 10 year old equal doesn't really make sense. Equitable does, right? And what does that mean when you're seven and, you know, big brother gets to stay up later or have a bigger portion, or whatever, you know, yeah, fill in the blank,

Vivek Patel 37:01
yeah, for sure, and certainly, age is one of the places where they feel their, their, their sense of fairness and unfairness the most. Yeah, because kids, because, because we just generally, we aren't fair to kids. We really aren't. We don't, we don't treat them with the same kind of I don't, when I say we, I mean mainstream consciousness of how to treat children we don't treat them with the same right,

Casey O'Roarty 37:26
or like all of us when we're not tapped into our best selves. I mean, yes, ultimately I can be, I can be a parent coach, and I can be on the path of of conscious parenting and facilitator of positive discipline, and still, for sure, in my reactive self, and not show up as well as I could have in retrospect, right? Yeah.

Vivek Patel 37:49
And I think that's part of the process. We're always in process. You know? That's why you said that you always want to be learning, and you're always wanted to be, want to be growing in this, right, right? And, and it's true in parenting, it's true in anti racism. It's true all over the place.

Casey O'Roarty 38:05
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Vivek Patel 39:38
Yeah, I think recognizing that knowledge is that knowledge is power is really important. And I think in a in order to in order to be able to really give kids the knowledge, even the difficult knowledge that we want to share with them, there's two things. One, we have to be doing our own learning, in our own research. So I think I say, learn something every day. Try and learn something about if you want. Be an anti racist ally. Try and learn something every day, and every day. I put in quotes. I mean, no one has time to learn something every day. But like, like, have the idea in mind that you're gonna try and listen well, these days, maybe try and learn something about it every day, whether it's learn something inside about yourself, or it's learn something by by Googling, reading something, watching you do video, watching half a YouTube video, just try and put your mind in that sense, in that mindset of wanting to learn something every day. And the other part of it is to face our own fear around these topics. Because we can hold a lot of fear around it, you know, a lot of fear of judgment, a lot of fear. You mentioned the shame and blame earlier, and the, you know, we again, as children, we're not taught to manage those difficult feelings. Usually, I certainly wasn't. I had to learn the whole I've had to learn that whole process, you know, from scratch in order to help my kid learn it for herself, so that she didn't have this disconnected relationship with her emotions, right? And so I think talking about how to help our kids learn to be anti racists or social justice activists in general, they have a social justice lens and a mindset I when I talk about parenting and replacing the mainstream, coercive control based authority, hierarchical power based relationship that adults have with kids. I'm just telling parents not to do that doesn't help them, because then what did they replace it with? And what did they do? Parents always say, okay, Vivek, you tell me not to punish my kids and not to give them consequences. But

Casey O'Roarty 41:34
what do I do? Right? Right? Yeah, you take away all the tools. There's none left in the tool, right,

Vivek Patel 41:39
right, and which still might be better,

Casey O'Roarty 41:43
yeah, and some instances, perhaps,

Vivek Patel 41:47
but still, I mean, I mean I guide parents enough that I want to help them to actually make changes and to give them tools. And so one of the main things I I talk about, is replacing that relationship with the relationship, what I call the three, times three, relationship is the relationship of model, guide and friend, model and guide and friend and and then the second three is with the children. Is relationship with self, relationship with parent and relationship with the environment. And the environment is other people and the systems that they would engage in, like we mentioned earlier, the education system, financial system and the legal system and all that stuff. And so with these three, with these six relationships, we can have really powerful framework to look at how we're inspiring them to take on the mindset of justice and equity, like you said, yeah, we can empower them to value kindness. We can empower them to speak up when they witness injustice and to recognize and to validate the fear that comes with that and the challenges that come with that, and also to help them feel the joy that comes from that, even in small moments. You know, from and from small moments all the way up to big moments. Again, I'm doing the zoom. Doing the zooming in and out thing, right? One of one of my acronyms is smabo, which stands for small moments. Affect big ones. And there are families all over right now talking about smabo. I love it and and so affect big ones. Big ones, yes, okay, Mabo. And when I do workshops, I when I do workshops or speak at conferences and stuff, I always get everybody to yell out, sma to yell out, smabo. Louder, louder, smabo and and so, you know, like, because we can show them the protests and everything, but we can also show them little things that we see on TV. Hey, look at how this commercial have only white people. Yes, right, yeah. Look at how, look at how that show treated that Indian person like for me, I mean, my family is of Indian descent, so I was, I was born here in Toronto. I'm from Toronto. I was born here in Toronto, but my parents were both born in India. They came here for economic reasons, and they actually met when they were here. That's like they came here. Both came here when they were, like, their teens, like a long time ago, and and as an Indian person, growing up in Toronto, I faced a lot of racism, a lot of go back home, a lot of violence. I would I talked about this in my video too. I would have, you know, gangs that white teenagers drive by in their car and throw things at me, like metal pipes and rocks and stuff. People would egg our house, and I went through like intense, intense bullying when I was a kid for for being of Indian descent. And then on top of that, when I would watch TV, up until very, very recently, the only Indian characters you would see were made fun of for their accent, yeah, caricatures, yeah. They were varieties. They either worked as a variety store owners or they drove a cab, you know, and then everybody would laugh at that. They're at their accent, and it's very painful for me, because I never saw another represent. Presentation of myself. We just, we just watched the Three my wife, daughter and I, we just watched a movie called yesterday on Netflix, which is about, did you watch it?

Casey O'Roarty 45:11
Yes. Oh my gosh,

Vivek Patel 45:16
right, yeah. And, and the premise of the movie is some something happens and shifts the reality of the world, and there's no Beatles music, and there's only one person who remembers all of the Beatles music, and he becomes famous, right? And the the protagonist of the movie was an Indian guy with an Indian family, and it was never made fun of for being Indian. And I watched the thing like part of me was, was enjoying the movie, but part of me was just like, in awe watching this, you know, this Indian man being propelled to world fame and everything, and it never having anything to do with his Indianness. And it was just, you know, he was a person, and people related to him like a per I was like, Oh my gosh, they're relating to him like a person. It was so Casey. Was stunning for me to watch an Indian person being related to as a person I don't know if, I don't know if how, how to impress how important it is to see that. That's how I saw it. Yeah, you know, because it's just not the message that I received. Right? And and to help kids who don't experience that recognize that other people do experience that. I mean, there's a certain pain, pain in doing that for with our kids, because we, we and rightly so, we feel that maybe part of their innocence is being taken away. I think it's really important to do that. You know when, when my kid would experience pain like my so I'm from India. My wife is black, from Trinidad, so we're a mixed family, and being not white is is something that is all we're always aware of in all of our interactions. Yeah, everywhere we go, and in every system we interact with, I acknowledge I'm not black, so it doesn't have the same impact. When I'm driving down the street and I see a cop, I get, I get, I get very afraid. I'm, you know, like, I don't want to get, I don't want to get pulled over and and I certainly don't have the same experience as black Canadians and black Americans in that, in that regard. But I'm not white, and I know, I know how things go, right? I'm always afraid. I mean,

Casey O'Roarty 47:13
I don't want to get, I don't want to get pulled over either, but I just like, well, I don't want to get a fucking ticket, right? Never. I'm afraid of how this could spin out and potentially cause me harm beyond I'm gonna have to pay a ticket. Ever, never have that. Yeah, experience. So, yeah,

Vivek Patel 47:30
for sure. And so the model guide, friend framework, I think, is so powerful, because the modeling is how we walk in the world, you know, right? And I do, I talk about two, two kinds? I was like, I like to break things down. So there's like, modeling with how I treat myself, modeling with how and how I'm treating my kid, and modeling how I with how I engage in my environment. That's the relationship with self, relationship with parent, relationship with environment part and and I also talked about modeling out loud, which Ian, you kind of, you gave an example of that too, right? Where you said you had, you had to write this letter and everything, and then you shared that process with your kids. Yeah, and that's modeling out loud. Because modeling is one thing we hope we mean, because kids are always watching us, and then when we actually talk about our experience with them and express it vulnerably what our experience was, then they get to hear us and see us as humans on this path.

Casey O'Roarty 48:18
I think it's so. I think modeling out loud is one of the most powerful things that we can do, for sure, for sure.

Vivek Patel 48:26
So tell a quick story. Well, none of my stories are quick

Casey O'Roarty 48:32
when I was

Vivek Patel 48:34
Thank you. Anyway, back in 2015 when my kid would have been 18 at the time I was in we were in a store, and we're buying some clothes. She is like one of the stores she likes to buy clothes from, and we had bought a couple of shirts, whatever. And we were walking out of the store, and just as we walked out into the parking lot, I heard this woman Yelp, and I looked over and this this old woman, she must have been like, 75 had her hands over her head, no hair on her head, and her wig was was rolling down the street. It was really windy that day, and it had blown off her head and was flying down the street. And her daughter was with her daughter must have been 55 or something, and the two of them were together like staring at there's no way they could run after that wig. So I just looked at my kid and and I gave her the nod. And we have this like nod, because all throughout our lives, anytime I have a chance to help somebody, especially when she's around, I wouldn't say especially when she's that's not true, but when she's around, we we have this understanding that, you know, if we have a chance to help somebody, we do and and with, with discernment, for for safety and things like that, to a certain degree. But I mean, it's a wig flying down the road. There was not a lot of safety involved. So I gave her the look, she gave me the nod, and I took off. And I was running after this wig, and it was like a little animal scurrying away from and every time I would get close to it, a gust of wind would, would would blow up and shoot it away, I'm sure. Her that it was 100% that wind was being controlled by the Divine to make this comical as possible. And finally, at one point, I thought, I have to, I have to just go for it. And I did it. I did I did a diving role. And grabbed the wig out of the air and and came up, and I held it up in my hand in triumph. And yes, exactly the three of them were clapping and cheering. And it was this beautiful human moment. And I went over to the two of them, and I I gave grandma the wig back, and then they hugged me, and they were so thank you, young man. It was nice to be called young man at 45 Thank you young man. Thank you so much. And my daughter was watching all this happening, and so it's really beautiful. And they went to the store, we got into the car. Now the modeling now the so that was the modeling part. The modeling out loud part was, I didn't say, You know what, you should always help somebody when they're in trouble, and that's how you should behave. That's right, right? Modeling out loud, right? That's right.

Casey O'Roarty 50:57
Nobody, right, right, right? And that's also from a place of like, you're you're not doing this well, you could be bad, like there's a there's some hidden there's some quiet messages that go with that.

Vivek Patel 51:09
Thank you. That's really helpful to me. I appreciate you pointing that out. Yeah, what I did instead was I, I feel so good after that. That was so empowering, and that was so much fun. I I'm just so happy to help people in situations like that, that I can do that. And I'm so glad you were here with me to witness that. Yeah, you know, I really, I really love that we do these kind of things together. Was so wonderful. That's how I that's how I modeled out loud. And then when we got home, we told mom the story, and got to do the whole modeling and modeling out loud thing a second time, right? Yeah, and, and now she's 23, five years later, you know, she's heard me. She hears me. Tell this story occasionally when, when I'm talking to parents and stuff. And so the modeling still happens, even from five years ago. It doesn't, it doesn't

Casey O'Roarty 51:52
well. And I just love that, because you're giving like, this is how we can be in the world. You know, my kids always, my kids are so funny. They can feel energetically when I'm because I talk to everybody, I love talking to people. It's and I never like, whether it's the grocery store clerk or somebody we're passing on the street. And, you know, they I can feel them like, Oh, here she goes. You know? I can just feel, Oh, geez, you know. And I'm just so grateful for that. It's not hard for me, like for my temperament and my personality. It is not hard for me to interact with the world from a, yeah, you know, most of the time, from a very authentic and transparent place. And, you know, and I don't have two extroverts. I have one extrovert and one introvert. And especially the introvert, I'm especially grateful that she can see what it looks like to step into conversation with strangers and not have it be scary and not have it be, you know, well, basically scary, because that's what gets in her way, you know, and uncomfortable. And sometimes, you know what? Sometimes it's super awkward. And the kids are like, you know, nice one mom, you know. And I get to just say, like, Oh, that was kind of awkward, yeah. But I think that modeling piece is so powerful. And coming back to bringing that anti racism work in the family, yeah, you know, it's interesting, because I think that there's this, and the same thing happens when it's a parenting conversation, like, give me the solid, free takeaway steps. Yeah, right. And really, what this conversation is reminding me of is it's not so much a doing as it is a being and a continuous stepping into being, and a continuous stepping into being and and so listeners, you know, yeah, surprise, it's not three solid steps to do, you know, to create an anti racist home environment. It's really about, how are you intersecting with your own right conditioning, right? And then how are you showing, like, how are you, how are you modeling, yeah, I mean, again and again and again and again and and creating that relationship with your child so that the modeling lands like once. One of the things you said is, it's not about teaching her what to think, but how to think. And again, in my mind, I can hear the parent mind going like, okay, so how do we teach them how to think? Right? And it's, again, it's one of those places where it's like, bigger than, here's the formula, I can

Vivek Patel 54:25
tell you. I can tell you why, how to think. Yeah, so one thing that, one thing that I do with with young people, is, if they have something they're going through or something that they have to deal with, or a decision that they have to make, I try not to tell them what decision is best. What I try and do is lay out all of the different potential options that they have, to talk about all of the different impacts that those different options can have, and then let them have that information. And say, now that you have this information, listen to your own heart, listen to your own mind. Think about. What's important to you and what you value, and then think about how you want to approach a situation and share with me. And then we'll hold that together, and we'll work on that. And it's so different, you know, like, for example, when my daughter was like, 10 or something, she sold, stole $20 from her uncle's plates, and we were at his place, and there was $20 in a bowl or something, and she took it and put it in her pocket. And when she came back, when we came back home, she told me about it, which is, which is a blessing in and of itself, that she stole something, and she just wanted to tell me, and and felt safe to tell me, and and so I asked her, How do you feel about it? And she goes, Well, I'm not really sure how to feel about it. I said, Okay. And I didn't say, oh, you know, if you steal from your uncle, who might not trust you anymore. I didn't say that, all right. I said, you know? I said, You know what? Like thinking about how you feel about it is a really important step in this, because there's no one way to think about something like this. You might feel good about it, you might feel bad about it. Might be a combination of those two things. Maybe part of it, it was exciting to do it, and part of it, you might think about the effect it'll have on your uncle. Maybe he won't even notice it. So then maybe it's got nothing to do with him. Maybe it's also just the kind of person you want to be, and you really want to think about all these kind of things when you're deciding how you when you're looking at how you want to feel about and then she's like, Okay, well now what do I do? And I said, well, that same thing. I said, there's many different choices you can we can take the money back and and apologize and say I did this, and you know, your uncle, he'll love you no matter what, he's gonna be fine. And she was like, Yeah, okay. And I said, you can also, we can be opposite into that is you can just keep the money and we'll never tell him, and maybe that, maybe that feels right to you, and then we can do that. And I didn't say it like, like, I didn't put a different emotional tone into that, into that decision, because then I'm trying to tell her what to think. It's subtle, and it's so hard to keep that, that directive back. But and then we looked at different things in between. You know, like one of the ideas we had was given $20 for his birthday, next birthday, and we'll know that we've returned to $20 but he will never know that another one. And what we ended up coming up with was that she really did want to return the money. She did want to keep it. It didn't feel good to her to keep it, but she also didn't really feel comfortable facing him directly and and so we came up with this plan that we would go over to his place. I would distract him by taking him into the back room to look at his computer, and she would put it back in the bowl, and then we would leave together. And we did exactly that. The caper went off without a hitch, and and when we got when we get out of there, she two things will happen. One, she really felt her own value around caring about other people's property. It wasn't a value I imposed on her and and relationship too. It wasn't a value I imposed on her. It came from so deep the inside out because I gave her the freedom to look at herself and and I still told her about the different kind of impacts that could happen. I just didn't put pressure on her to to think about it and what. And it's the power, it's the power relationship there, right? I think I didn't hold power over her in it. I was her guide. And a guide is somebody who has some more understanding than you, more experience than you, and they share it with you so that you can find your own way

Casey O'Roarty 58:20
well. And I think too, having conversations like that, I think that the relationship that we build with our kids creates an environment that a conversation like that can be neutral, right, right? So I also just want to tell listeners, you know, if you're feeling like, oh, well, my kid, you know, would respond this way, or my kid would respond that way. Like, what I'm remembering about you, Vivek, is that you have shared about the importance of relationship every step of the way with your daughter, so that the space really did feel neutral to her, and she didn't feel judged, and she did feel seen. And another thing that came up for me too is something that we talked about in positive discipline, which is motivational curiosity, questions. Is the technical term for it, but basically coming into that same conversation and looking for places to draw forth from our kids, right? Like so what? What might happen if you do this, or what might happen if you do that? And if any, anyone who has kids know that sometimes the answer is, I don't know, you know, and that's and then say, well, could it be that this is the outcome, right, right? But I think, and I'm guessing you probably did that, yes, exactly, yeah. That was a lot of part of the conversation to that question, asking, yeah.

Vivek Patel 59:37
And the thing is, you know, if she had said, I want to keep the money, which is, I think, one of parents, parents, worst fears, definitely want to keep money. If they she says, I want to keep the money, I 100% would have stood by her, and I would have not made her feel wrong or shame at all, because the moment I would have done that. That's what I do. That'd be, I

Casey O'Roarty 59:57
know. I mean, I know. Oh, and it's hard to stay out of the what kind of parent Am I

Vivek Patel 1:00:03
right, right? And, and, because, see, the thing is, this is the zooming in, zooming out thing, right? If

Casey O'Roarty 1:00:08
I'm so inside of this, I'm so inside of this challenge right now with a different context, with one of my kids, like, you're making this informed decision that I didn't want you to make, right?

Vivek Patel 1:00:19
Right? Exactly? Yeah, absolutely. And it's powerful. It's powerful to hold that space for young ones. And part of it is the relationship like that you're talking about. You know, if I zoom in on just this one experience, I might say, Oh, he's condoning bad but hey, that's what I hear all the time. He's condoning bad behavior. I'm a big condoner of bad behavior, Casey, and I should probably re rename my whole parenting strategy as condoning bad behavior. But so there's a couple of reasons why. Number one is, there's nothing my daughter could do that's worse than the stuff I did in my teen year, right?

Casey O'Roarty 1:00:54
Oh my gosh, that's exactly I made that. Oh my gosh. It's so funny that we're having this conversation right now. Yes, correct. Go on.

Vivek Patel 1:01:03
The second is my work as a guide, inspiring and helping her learn. Values education, which I think is really important. A lot of parents think, Oh, the way that Vivek does things is not is he's hands off. He doesn't teach. But this the opposite. I take the teaching role. I take the guiding role very seriously. I mean, it's one of the three roles model, guide and friend. But in order to make that a lifelong process, not just a one incident process, and so if I want to help her learn this lesson over a long arc of time, so that when she's 1820, 25, whatever, and goes out into the world, the value is deep inside of her, I can't break the connection and the trust in this one moment and make her feel judged. It's too is too, too high a cost for me, because I want that, I want that guiding journey to be something that lasts throughout her life. And I mean, I have a 23 year old that doesn't only it's not only that she doesn't roll her eyes at me, that she wants to know my opinion on things. She wants to know her wisdom and all her friends too. Her friends are like, what does your dad think about it? Yeah, because they want to know, because they know in their cells and their nervous system, they know that when I share something, I'm not judging them, and it's for their it's because I want, I want the best for them. I really do, you know. And of course, all parents do, but not all kids feel it. That's the difference. Yes,

Casey O'Roarty 1:02:23
100% and I think bringing this back to this anti racism work, I think a lot of what we're talking about right now we can put underneath the context of the conversations that we're having with our kids in the home and the mistakes that they might be making, because I know, you know, kids say random things and and there's things that have shown up with my kids, and I'm like, I feel that like that was not thoughtful, or that wasn't okay. And we get to, like, you're talking about, really work towards coming from a place of being curious and being neutral and supporting them in in wreck, and seeing themselves instead of dictating what it is that we are seeing from the outside of them, right? We want our kids to be able to see themselves as players in the world with influence. And you know, every action has a consequence. It's not something that we impose. It's just a fact. You know,

Vivek Patel 1:03:24
you know, there's one thing that's really important, I think in this anti racism work, yes, and again, you know, like, so when you were talking about wanting the three steps, I think the three steps, I think that's really important. I've always talked about that. I don't teach practical tips. I teach impractical tips, right? And because the practical tip is, you have situation A, you do method B, and you get results C, right?

Casey O'Roarty 1:03:45
As if we're robots,

Vivek Patel 1:03:49
and and so. So a lot of it is the soup that we that we steep our kids in. No, it's not a good analogy. You don't steep soup. Yeah? Goodness. And so the model guide, friend one of the places that that we model and also guide, and also the friend relationship, the friend relationship is so important because it's a relationship of, it's a human relationship, right? It's not a structural relationship. It's a human relationship, right? And one of the, one of the places that we model most, is in our use of power. And I think that, you know, like, like racism and structural racism and sexism and misogyny and ableism and and homophobia and all of that stuff. All of it has its roots. One of the roots, I won't say its roots, well, one of the roots is in power. And use power over exactly, not power with and it's a use of power that is based on trauma and wounding and fear and pain and not on deep, connected human relationships. And so as parents, we. Have systemic power over our kids. And I define this is my own definition of systemic power, because I like rhyming. Is power that you didn't choose and power you can't refuse,

Casey O'Roarty 1:05:12
power that you didn't choose and power that you can't refuse from the kids perspective, yeah, well,

Vivek Patel 1:05:17
it's not, how does that? It's not a perspective like being white, you didn't choose when you can't refuse it, okay, yes, okay, got it, yes. And so. And so therefore you have systemic power as a white person, yes, you can't refuse that power, no matter how hard you try. And and so it's like that.

Casey O'Roarty 1:05:34
Use it in better way. This

Vivek Patel 1:05:36
is where I'm coming from. This is exactly where I'm coming from, and how, and so it's the systemic power we have with our kids. Is we have economic power over them up to a certain age. We have emotional power of them because they're so they're so connected to to our our emotional relationship. You know, they need connection, and the way we interact with that affects them. That's why so many kids are are broken so early, because they don't have adults who are aware of that and engage with them. From that perspective, we have physical power over them. Where we can, we can access to resources. Power over them, right? So we can take their stuff. They don't even have any stuff. You know, even a kid who's 14 and gets a paper route or or a job washing dishes, and they make money and they buy an iPod. We can just take it, and they can't do anything. They can't they can't claim it's theirs. They can't take us to court. We they can't do anything. They're powerless. We can put them in their rooms. I mean, the only other people that can have that happen to them are prisoners. We can put them in their rooms and lock them like we have all the systemic power. And in many, many places in the world, we can actually strike them, legally strike them. So we have a lot of systemic power over our kids, power that we didn't choose, and we can't refuse. They can't go out and get a job, they can't find a place to live. And then we say, it's our house, as long as you're in my house, but they have no option to go to another house when they're young, especially so then they don't even have a house of their own. All of this systemic power we have, right? And the question is always, how am I choosing to use that power? What is the model I'm setting? Because when they engage with their power, right? What's the message? So for example, if a child wants to do something, and I use my power to tell them not to, because I think it's it's important for them not to do it, the message behind it is, if you have more power over someone and you think they should behaving differently than the choices they're making, you can use that power to force them to behave in ways they don't want to. This is the experiential lesson that they get and and so,

Casey O'Roarty 1:07:47
oh my gosh, there's so much here. Oh my gosh, there's so much here. In this conversation, I'm dying.

Vivek Patel 1:07:57
I am I'm loving your your responses and your enthusiasm, Casey, it makes me so happy.

Casey O'Roarty 1:08:04
Well, I'm in it too. I mean, my I'm, you know, two teenagers, and control is an illusion, right? And, you know, bumping up against my own conditioning and all the things. It's, you know, it's active. It's an active experience. And, you know, and not telling you know, not telling them what to do is challenging, for sure, especially when you feel like, you know, I feel like I see the world as it is, and so clearly I know a lot, and I want them to appreciate that, you know, and

Everything you're saying spot on. I want them to be the designers of their life, and also noticing how it feels when they do that. And it's not the design that I had in mind, you know, like it's so much, so big,

Vivek Patel 1:08:53
yeah. And the thing is, I'm not suggesting that you don't do something about it. I'm not suggesting that if they make a decision that that, that you don't approve off, that you just ignore it. I just don't, just don't do something about it. That implies coercion and power. But there's, like, a million other ways to address it, with collaborative discussions, with modeling, like we said, you know, like you said, you talk about being neutral, but the neutral is only in certain circumstances. In a lot of circumstances, we can be completely, deeply invested in our emotions and our feelings, just not when it's about trying to push it on them, but when I share my stories of my life, my own learning processes, when I'm looking at the TV and I'm saying that this show is like this, and it makes me so upset, or this show was like this, show was like this, and it made me so happy. Look at that commercial, like every race was represented in that commercial. We should support businesses like that. And when I can bring lots of enthusiasm and lots of guiding into the relationship and helping, helping our kids to think about things and to understand their own values, I just don't want it to be coercive, you know, like for example. And this. That, I mean, like, it doesn't seem like it's obvious that we're talking about anti racism here, but for me, the way that we engage with power is one of the most critical ways that we can help children become anti racists and social justice activists in general, is to have a power as to have a power lens and ice cream is one of the the examples I use the most, because it's one of the most triggering examples for parents, and being somebody who ice cream, being somebody being somebody who condones that behavior, like I said,

Casey O'Roarty 1:10:32
ice cream for every meal. Ice cream for every meal. So

Vivek Patel 1:10:35
because I one of the, one of the areas that I, uh, teach a lot about, is consent. I'm also a dancer, and so in the dance world, I do a partner dance called contact improvisation. And in the dance world there's lots of consent violations that happen from the micro to the macro. And so I, just recently, I co created with two dance colleagues of mine, an entire Symposium on consent in the dance world. And we had like 100 people there, and eight speakers, really powerful. And consent education starts when kids are really young. It's another power over under power with thing. If a child says, I want ice cream, and you say, No, what's happening is from a power perspective, again, it's the same thing. I'm using my power, my systemic power, my physical power, my access to resources power to deny them their consent to have ice cream in that moment, I'm using my strength, because otherwise, if they had access to it, they would just have the ice cream. But they have to go through me, the power, the power position, the access to resources, and how I engage with that teaches them about power. It also teaches them about their bodies, so if they want ice cream, and some, some parents will say, Well, I get my kid ice cream for breakfast once in a while, which is great, but what if they ask for it three days in a row, or five days in a row, and then at one point is there? Is there consent and their autonomy and the modeling of the power relationship? At what point does it become not as important as the ice cream. And then parents say, well, you're just gonna let your kids eat ice cream all the time. But no, that's not the point either, right? That's not the point either. The point is that I'm just not using that structure to stop them from eating ice cream. I'm going to

Unknown Speaker 1:12:16
tell you. What are you that's,

Vivek Patel 1:12:17
that's what we've been talking about. Yeah, okay, that's that's what we've been talking about. We're talking about the model is trusting in the model guide, friend process. It's trusting in the longer term process and not being overly focused on the short term, especially when we have been using control and we're trying to release control. What happens is kids necessarily are going to go through a phase of adjustment when they're told, because we've always been controlling what they eat, and then suddenly we're teaching them, hey, you know, another way of doing this is that for you to tune into your body and listening to the messages of your body and become really and really tune into your body wisdom and to understand the impact of different foods and to experiment with the impact of different Foods and to figure out what makes sense to you. To me that's a much deeper, much longer lasting process than don't eat ice cream. As soon as I say, don't eat ice cream, ice cream becomes connected to power, not to body wisdom, one of my one of my sayings, which is a little different from this, but it still connects, is, I didn't teach. The question isn't, how do I get my kid to brush their teeth. The question is, how do I get my kid to love their teeth? Right? And it's a very different Thank you. It's a very different system. It's a very different mindset,

Casey O'Roarty 1:13:29
yeah, well, and I'm going to stop you there, because I am recognizing that an hour and 15 minutes of you is not enough,

and I just want to invite because I think this very last piece is probably really challenging for people that are listening. I think that they're probably like, but wait, wait, wait, Casey, don't I don't see this, and I think it's a great example of how we get to be in our own curiosity, like first noticing where we're feeling challenged. Like, how are listeners? Notice how you're feeling challenged. Notice how you know you've felt about this conversation, and then if anything has shifted in this ice cream conversation. And I want you to just be curious about that, and to be open to the possibility that Vivek has even more to teach us, because He does. He does. And so I'm going to pivot right now so that you can share with the audience. How can they find you? Where can they get more of you? What other resources have you created that can you point us to that will help us dig more into this? Because I think it's a really it's a really powerful mindset and a really important conversation. Thank

Vivek Patel 1:14:41
you, Casey. I really appreciate Yeah, so my Facebook page is meaningful ideas, and that's where most of my writing is on. I also have a blog which is meaningful ideas.com, and that was almost entirely from 2015 because in 2015 I made a i. Commitment to myself to write every day for a year, and I put up a blog, and I never missed a day. And so there's almost 400 articles. Thank you. This almost felt really good. And there's almost 400 articles on that, on that parenting page, on my website, and then my YouTube channel is also meaningful ideas. And I have almost 60 videos at this point, and some of them are just 2345, minute videos, and some of them are full hour long, two hour long workshops. I also do a weekly podcast with my colleague, Sujay Johnson, who's the founder of gentle parents unite and and so you can also join gentle parents unite and type, if you type into Google, gentle parents unite podcast. We're just at a year of weekly podcasts now and then we also, I also have the Patreon, which is a paid subscription service that I do with Sujay. If you type in Patreon and type in gentle parents unite, you can find us, and we do such really powerful work in this Patreon space. So part of it is that you're supporting her and I in the work that we do, sharing this philosophy. But part of it is we have continuous live events happening every single week. I do Suja and I both do a coaching call every week where people can come on and share issues, and we share our responses to them, and then give them these kind of tips, impractical tips, and then and you can come on every week, and then the community is kind of there, sharing their ideas as well. I do a weekly meditation for parents. I've designed 15 meditations which are specifically about working with the mind and working with the emotions so that we're more aware and more centered in our parenting life. We also do a lot of social justice education, and we also do and I also go live for an hour or two every Thursday where I just pick a particular topic and I just give a talk on a particular topic. And so there's probably 2025, videos in just in the Patreon, awesome of that as well. So there's a lot of stuff out there. And yeah, I would just love people to follow me and reach out to me if you have questions. I'm

Casey O'Roarty 1:16:59
going to have all those links to all those places that you just mentioned Vivek in the show notes. Super

Vivek Patel 1:17:05
I want to ask you a question. I just want to ask it anyway, because it's been on my mind when I told that story. And I'll ask the listeners too, who's listening to this? When I told that story of the woman who lost her wig and I went chasing it, did you have a picture of that woman, and what color was her skin?

Casey O'Roarty 1:17:23
Oh, Vivek, she was a white woman, of course, when I think about a granny and you didn't make and you did not use any language that, well, you didn't use any language. So why would I think she was white and you didn't use any language, which is exactly how I knew she was white, right, in my own conditioning, right, right, right? And that's why I'm totally keeping this in the podcast.

Vivek Patel 1:17:46
Yeah. Okay, great. And I would really invite all of your listeners, regardless of whether you're white or, you know, black, indigenous person of color, to think about that. What is the image to you of that woman? She was black, by the way, and and when I tell that story, this is the first time I've actually asked that question. So I tell the story a lot. I haven't asked that question before, but I thought because of the focus of this podcast, it was worth bringing that up. And I think that is, you know, when we say when, when people want to say that they're not racist, I get it. You're not a racist. But when I use the word racist again, I'm just talking about subtle things like that, the filters that we have, the assumptions that we have, I think it's worth being able to look at ourselves around those kind of 100%

Casey O'Roarty 1:18:30
Yeah, thanks. So in the context of all that we've talked about, what does joyful courage mean to you?

Vivek Patel 1:18:36
Thank you. Thank you for asking that. That's a beautiful name. I love it so much. Thank you. You know activism contains both joy and pain. I've been doing activism for 30 years, like I said, and I think that it's the ability to embrace both of those things that makes it brings our power. A friend of mine recently asked Vivek, how do I do all this self examination without being completely exhausted and in pain? And I said, you can't really. We have to accept that part of this growth is part of the pain. And then can we find joy in embracing our pain? Can we find joy in embracing the whole of who we are, the pain of who we are, the errors that we have, the mistakes that we make. You know, even you noticing that about the picture you had about the Grandma, can you find joy in noticing that racist lens? Maybe I'll say racial lens to soften it a little bit. And so that's what I feel about, about joy. I think joy. One of my sayings is, it's about I use the word happiness, but I think it implies the same one of my sayings is, happiness is not an emotion. It's a foundation. It's deeper. It's something deeper than the dualities that we experience, the variety that we experience. It's a connection with joy. Is something that's a connection with my my deep self. It's what I call the ocean self. You know, we're all waves on the ocean, and. There's a Casey wave, and if a fake wave, and my see all the different waves around. And I think that each of us as waves really are just different forms of the same ocean. Yeah, and, and so when I'm in touch with my ocean self, that's when I that's when I feel the most joy. And the ocean self can hold my pain and can hold my, my, you know, the transitory type of joy and then courage. I think courage is an inward journey and an outward journey simultaneously. I think, I think courage is the inward journey of of really knowing myself, of being able to face myself and love myself and also be very, very honest with myself and the outward journey is the choices I make in the world, what I choose to say, what I choose to think, what I choose to learn, how I choose to treat people and and and what I choose to stand up for, who I choose to protect. I think that it's that combining of the inward and the outward journey simultaneously, from with the with the experience of knowing our ocean self and our wave self, put all of that together and you have joyful

Casey O'Roarty 1:21:10
courage. Thank you for that. Thank you so much for being a part of the show. Vivek and I can't wait to continue conversations with you, because we've got lots more to talk about.

Vivek Patel 1:21:21
Wonderful thank you, Casey.

Casey O'Roarty 1:21:25
Thank you so much for listening. It is my great honor to create this show for all of you. Big thanks to my producer, Chris Mann at pod shaper, for his work in making the podcast sound. Oh so good. If you're interested in continuing these powerful conversations that start on the podcast, become a patron by heading to www.patreon.com/joyful courage. That's www dot, P, A, T, R, E, O n.com/joyful, courage. For $5 a month, you will have access to a private Facebook group where I do weekly Facebook lives on Mondays and interview recaps on Fridays. Plus it's a great way to give back to the show that gives you so much. Be sure to subscribe to the show. Head to Apple podcast, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Google Play, wherever you are listening to podcasts, and simply search for the joyful courage podcast and hit that subscribe button. Join our communities on Facebook, the live and love with joyful courage group and the joyful courage of parents of teens groups are both safe, supportive communities of like minded parents walking the path with you. If you're looking for even bigger, deeper support, please consider checking out my coaching offer. Www dot joyful courage.com/coaching. Is where to go to book a free explore. Call with me and we can see if we're a good fit. I'll be back next week. Can't wait until then. Big Love to you. Remember to find your breath. Ride it into your body, take the balcony seat and trust that everything is going to be okay.

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