Dr. Frances Malone with Victoria Shaw

Unknown Speaker 0:07

Hi, this is Dr. Francis Malone, founder of the intuitive parents collective. I've been working with children and their families to provide holistic relationship based medical care throughout my career. This podcast is for parents interested in consciously raising naturally Healthy Kids. Here we will dive into topics that spanned childhood, and parenting as well as hosting exciting guests. So whenever you find yourself at the end of her parody rope, tune into the intuitive parents podcast to get new ideas by making parenting fun.

Unknown Speaker 0:44

Thank you for joining us today for the intuitive parents podcast. I'm Francis Malone, I'm so glad you're here. I created the intuitive parents collective in this podcast to reach parents everywhere, and to share creative ideas, hacks, and to provide support for your parenting journey. Today, I have Victoria Shaw with us. In conversation, Victoria is an intuitive parent, coach and a counselor works extensively with parents and children around opportunities of stress and their management. Victoria, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Unknown Speaker 1:22

Absolutely. Yep. So I like to call myself an intuitive counselor, and sometimes coach, because what I really like to do is help people connect with their intuition. And my journey was one where I was a very, very, very disconnected parent, I was overwhelmed, I was stressed out. And I also felt a deep call to, you know, bring my best self to that parenting arena. And I think I was failing. And so for me a lot of my own personal growth and healing journey. And pretty much everything that I do today was inspired by my desire to be the best parent I could be. And a big piece of that, for me, was learning to connect with my intuition and tune into my inner wisdom, rather than all of the noise, and sometimes garbage that was in my head. And so my work now I work with people on all sorts of issues. But my work around parenting, which is a big part of my practice, is helping parents to do the same, and to find that calm, still place within, where we really connect with our deepest knowing, and start to live our lives and herot our children from that place.

Unknown Speaker 2:35

Well, well, so can you begin with how does a person who's feeling overwhelmed with all of the tasks of raising children and working and all the things that come to a busy life? How do they? What's the first step that they can do to start tapping into this inner knowing that they may have?

Unknown Speaker 3:00

Absolutely and I should, I should backtrack to because I haven't really explained what intuition is. And you know, people have different ideas about what that means. Let me start there, I'll answer your very important question. So a lot of him there's a lot of different ways to understand intuition. But the way that I understand it is and it's from a spiritual perspective, you don't have to take the spiritual perspective for this to work. But this is how I understand it and explain it. I like to think that we're all human beings, but we're also spiritual beings having a human experience and your intuition when when we backtrack, when we come into our little physical bodies and have this human experience, we forget a lot of our you know, own divine nature and our wisdom and all the things that our Spirit knows that our small human selves sometimes forgot. I like to think of intuition as our reconnection back to our deepest, highest truth to our souls wisdom to that broader perspective on life that we sometimes forget, in human form. But when we remember it, oh, my God, that everything feels good, it makes sense again, and everyone has intuition, because we all we're all spiritual beings at our core. And so tapping into that intuition is that sense of knowing, right? When you know something, and you don't know how you know it, it's not something you can explain. It's not something you learned in school, it's not something you were taught, but you know it in your bones. It's, and it's 100% correct. And I've yet to meet anybody, you know, I'm always open for a challenge, but I have yet to meet anyone that has not had an experience like that at least once and probably multiple times in their lives. And so intuitive parenting, and I mean, this is the name of your podcast. So you probably you probably have a similar perspective. But for me, intuitive parenting is when we start, you know, parenting from the soul from our higher selves from that place rather than the way most people do it is from all of the pains and all of the confusions and all of the stuff that you know, life has taught us that's wrong with us that's wrong with a world that's wrong with our child. And, you know, we start to bring in that higher perspective. So that's the way that I understand intuition. And you know, it works when we can free ourselves from the mind. And so you know, actionable steps for awakening your intuition, and especially in the parenting realm, and especially when you're overwhelmed. First and foremost, the very most important thing you can do is recognize that it's a thing. Because a lot of people don't know that right? A lot of people just believe, you know, I have to do what I've been on, I'd have to do what I learned in the past I have to do what my parents taught me or what you know, other people think is, is the right thing to do. And then we lose our innate wisdom, because your innate wisdom is always correct. It's always guiding you, and it's operating with what's true for you and your children and the situation in the now. And so the first thing that we need to do to connect with intuition is recognize that it's a thing because then we set the intention to experience it more and more. And then the second thing I mean, there, so I teach about this, this is my jam. But the second most important stuff that you can take to awaken your intuition and to tap into that more is learning to still the mind. Because when it comes to intuition, you have to think of like the mind, mental chatter is like the clouds, right? And your intuition is like the sun, it's always there, it's always shining, it's always connecting with you. But when there's a lot of noise, when there's a lot of mental chatter, those clouds get really thick, really dense. And so even though the sun's still there, the intuition and wisdom is still there, it makes it really, really hard for us to receive that.

Unknown Speaker 6:38

Right? So really, the first step for parents is to recognize that intuition is there. And that that's what that calling is. So like, when they go to make a decision based on what is the school telling me I need to do? What are my parents telling me I need to do for my child? Or what is my society telling me I need to do for my child. But they have a different sense inside their own being listening to that, and saying, Oh, what is? What's that information? And why does this path forward that I'm being told I need to take not feel right for me, number one, and then the other thing would be practicing. I like to tell people, the 10 minutes after you drop your children off somewhere, or gold, because drop them off, and then you have like this moment or six in the car, or you are by yourself, and you can breathe, and you can just try to clear your mind and get rid of a little bit of the chatter of before you launch into what do I have to do next? Right, taking those time, little time chunks throughout a day, actually, overtime, build up to a lot of time where you're not having mental chatter, and my to do list and all the things that I have getting caught up in that rat race of just running in circles. And I think the beginning of it starts with making little tiny snippets of time where you can just breathe, and open your mind to like nothingness or just less chatter.

Unknown Speaker 8:08

Absolutely, absolutely. And I love something else that you said, that is so important. You know, we have so much information in the world. So many shades, so many people telling us what we need to do how we need to do it, you know, it's coming at us all the time. 24 seven, and we also have all this historical voices in our head, right? from your own childhood telling you how you're supposed to do things and what's good and what's bad and what's right and what's wrong. Oh he'd been talking about it gets me a little bit wound up. But your intuition cuts through all of that. And, you know, when someone comes to me for a reading, because that's a big part of what I do, I will always tell them, even in this context, right, I'm going to get some information from you. Because this is what I do. I tune in intuitively, I believe I connect with higher guidance, and then stuff pops out of my mouth. And for you, you know, in the what's going to be helpful for you in this in this moment now. But I also tell people, you're in the driver's seat to see what resonates with you, right, what feels right to you. And that's what you need to go with. And I would say that definitely applies if you go for an intuitive or a psychic reading, for sure, but anything in life, you know, it's always your job to feel intuitive, feel what feels right for you. And when we learn to do that, everything about our life will change. Because you have that wisdom inside of you. And then you start using the stuff in the outside world, you know, almost like as a sounding board, but you don't get caught up in what other people think is the right thing. And you start to hear your own wisdom and truth. And you start to empower your children to do the same, which is so powerful because that is going to create a world that we're all going to want to live in.

Unknown Speaker 9:45

Right. And what are some of the ways that we can empower kiddos to tap into their intuition I believe that children actually are already pretty intuitive and that they because they know how To access it more readily, there are guides in bringing parents back to this place of knowing.

Unknown Speaker: 10:09

Oh, absolutely, they absolutely can be. And I love that they love that so much. Yeah, I agree with you, I think that children are naturally intuitive. And what happens over the course of development up until now, and I see this shifting. But what's what often happens is, you know, as we go on through schooling, as we go on through the world, little by little, it gets chipped away, and we start to think that it's not safe, it's not okay, it's not valuable. And for a lot of kids, they just shut it off. And so, you know, the first step for fostering your, your children's innate, intuitive wisdom is to honor it, to listen to it, to help them tune into it. And you know, a lot of us don't have the language around intuition. So you know, providing that kind of language to talking about vibes or feelings, or, you know, that that sense of knowing in your body, or you know, your gut feelings, like giving them the language around that modeling, using your intuition, right, because our kids are watching us as much as they're hearing us. If they're watching us a lot more than they're hearing us actually. And so, right, when you're doing it, when you're modeling, like, wow, you know, I, I don't have a really good feeling about that, I'm gonna sit with that for a little bit. And just, I got to feel into this a little bit, you know, we're showing our kids that process. And I would also say it comes through to share, don't be afraid of your kids intuition. Because sometimes we are sometimes, you know, our kids are gonna know stuff, and they're gonna know stuff about us, they're gonna know stuff about the world, especially the little ones, right? And they sometimes even feel into stuff that we don't really want to acknowledge, right? How often is your kid come up to you and said, like, are you sad, Mommy, and you're like, I'm not sad, but deep inside Jr, right. And some of us have had this experience with our own parents, too, when we knew something was going on, intuitively, and you know, the people in charge weren't really ready to acknowledge it themselves. And so they shut us down. So don't be afraid of your kids intuition flow with it, honor it, you know, you don't have to tell your child everything that's going on in your world, you know, be age appropriate. But if your child does have a feeling, you know, or an instinct, or out, you know, say, yeah, mommy was thinking about something sad, like, it's so nice of you to notice that and to tune into that, validate it for them. And then of course, you can say, but I'm okay. And you're okay.

Unknown Speaker: 12:28

I think that actually, we should be noticing when we are feeling other than well, and letting the children and possibly adults in our lives know, wow, I feel really off kilter. So I can tell you from my own personal clinic experience, I needed to see a group of families, right, patients lined up for my clinic day. But a friend of mine had really hurt my feelings. And now I'm going to walk into the room with these five and seven year olds, and they're going to feel my jangled nerves and my chaotic emotional state. And for me to pretend that they don't feel that is disrespectful to them. So I entered the room and got myself on their level, and said, Wow, I'm so glad to see you guys today. But you're gonna sense that I feel really chaotic inside myself, and my heart is hurting, because my friend just really hurt my feelings. And I wasn't able to get rid of that before I'm walking in here with you. And I don't want you to feel my stuff. And let it Let it not feel good to you. Because it will, it will actually disrupt all the communication in the room, it will disrupt what we're trying to do, because they're noticing that Dr. Francis feels crazy inside. Because, you know, I my heart was hurting. But those were that was language that they could understand. And they were like, oh, is your friend. Okay? And are you okay? And I said, Yes, we're okay, we're just having one of those arguments about something. And that just helped clear all of it, and we could get on to the productive stuff that we need to do for that family. So I encourage parents to actually own it, dad know, sure. greement we're having a disagreement, and we don't feel good about it. But it doesn't mean anything about you guys. Well, a good family we're working through this stuff is really important. Like I like to give people examples of that kind of thing, because when their parents own it, then the children aren't left wondering what did they do to make their parent feel sad, chaotic, frustrated, and they don't internalize it, inadvertently?

Unknown Speaker: 14:46

Yeah, that's that's beautiful and sage advice. And I would say to a lot of times kids will sense something. If it's not expressed if if they don't have that relationship with the parent to have that conversation or the parent Doesn't kind of explain what's going on, they'll sense it. And then, you know, kids do first of all tend to internalize and personalize everything, because that's how they're wired. But they also often fill in the blanks, right? With the worst case scenario, because imagination can be really brutal. And so a lot of times, I'll tell parents, you know, give your children that age appropriate information, please about what's going on, because what they're creating in their mind is probably 1000 times worse than what the truth is. And even if the truth is pretty bad, still, you know, you want you want to be transparent. You want to be transparent in age appropriate way, but you want to be transparent,

Unknown Speaker: 15:35

right? Even if we can't give them the details of it, because it's, you know, not really respectful to the other person, like, I'm going to give a crazy example, right? Like your partner is cheating on you, and you feel hurt, and sad, and frustrated and angry, all those things. Well, I'm not going to tell most children ever, I don't think that any child needs the burden of knowing that a partner was cheating on a parent, right? That's not really information that we share with kids. But what we can tell them is that my friendship and my trust, and my love and caring for this partner, or your dad, or the other Mama, or whoever, is really, really sore and fractured right now. And so that's what you're seeing in me. And we're working things out, like, that's a big deal. But I'm still not going to tell the child that the person was cheating on me, like that's not appropriate information ever. And a lot of times, as parents, we don't know what's appropriate. So I just like to actually wrap it up and give an example of that's actually not appropriate. And even when I'm 40 years old, I don't need to hear about my dad or my mother and their behavior when we were younger. Like, just because I'm an adult, I don't need to hear about that, because it's not relevant, and not really possibly fair to who they are now as an adult. So, but if we don't tell the child or the person that we're engaging with that our mind and our energetic self is wrapped up in some other thing, then we're not fully with the person anyway, number one, and they can't read us and respond in ways that are healthy for them.

Unknown Speaker: 17:22

Yeah, no, I think that that's so true. And I think it's important to I mean, what you're really doing, at least from an intuitive standpoint, is you're starting to give voice to your child's feelings, emotion senses, and you know, you're you're helping, you're empowering them to trust in themselves, and in their own impressions and in their own experiences. And it's important to that, when you're doing that, that, you know, you always make it like a question. You know, I, I, when I do readings of people, and that's not everything that I do, but it's a big part of what I do, a lot of times the information comes out, you know, as a reading, and I'm telling them about them. And I always stop and pause and say, you know, I'm using this kind of language. But I don't know more about you than you do. Right. And again, you're in the driver's seat to see what resonates and what does not. And I think sometimes with our kids, right, we tell them how we think they're feeling. And we suddenly disempower them. So it's important to, you know, even if you know, maybe you're a feeler to and you feel you're feeling right back into what they're feeling, but it's always really important to make it as a question. As a supposition, you might be on sensing that I'm wondering F, because that also empowers them to tune into themselves and see like, yeah, I am experiencing this or no, actually, Mom, I'm not sad at all, I'm kind of I'm kind of angry, right. And so it's just important, that we're really careful that we don't impose that we listen that we suggest, but we always honor our child's perspective and their experience. Because in honoring your own perspective and experience, that is the fastest and most effective way to tune into your intuition. But it's also just, you know, very empowering and important,

Unknown Speaker: 19:02

right? Just like if somebody if I were to ask you, Victoria, if you're sad today, and you said, Oh, no, no, I'm fine. Then I as your child or your friend, I discount that feeling that I sense that you were, but that that robs me of really knowing or honing into my abilities to read the emotional state of another person.

Unknown Speaker: 19:28

Exactly. And again, there are times when someone may pick something up that you're not, you know, willing, able or ready to share and that is totally fine, like boundaries are a thing. But with your child, I think it's important more often than not, you know, to be honest with them to the extent that that is, you know, age appropriate and an honor their sense, honor their sixth sense. And you know, we have to listen more I think deep listening to our kids too is so important because often they'll start to share something they'll start to tell us something in we what we think is that they want us to solve problem. And so will immediately will tell them what to do, we'll tell them how to do it, we might tell them even suddenly, without realizing it, like, Oh, you don't have to feel sad about that. You don't have your safe at school, don't worry about that. And of course, your child is most likely safe at school, it's not about that. But sometimes we bypass that step of hearing them. Sometimes, because we're a little bit afraid of what they're gonna say, or maybe we don't know how to navigate their feelings with them. Or maybe we don't have an answer to the problem. So we immediately just want to, you know, sweep it under the rug. But I think it's very important that we learn to listen to what our kids are saying to feel into it doesn't mean you have to agree with everything they say, right, a child that's very anxious and afraid to go to school, you don't have to agree with that feeling, if you know that they're safe, and everything's okay. But I think it's important first to listen and to let them give voice to what they're experiencing.

Unknown Speaker: 20:54

Right? And in that listening, be able to figure out with them, what aspects are feeling unsafe. So if that's our example, then we want to understand and allow the person to express to us what feels unsafe, because in the expression of it, they then feel heard. And we can ask them for strategies. Like how could you feel safer, right? Because I think many times the kids know, we just don't stop and ask them

Unknown Speaker: 21:24

exactly,

Unknown Speaker: 21:24

what could help that be better? Oh, if I walk you into the classroom, wow, okay, well, I can do that. Because that doesn't take it takes me another two minutes, sweetheart. And if that's going to help you feel like you safely got into your classroom, let's do that, and see how that feels. Then everybody, right, we've honored my need to drop the child off, and to have them be at school. But we've also honored the kids, you know, sense of distress about entering the classroom or getting in there,

Unknown Speaker: 21:57

right. And we've modeled a process of communication. And again, we've modeled the process of walking our child through not necessarily thinking or stuffing or trying to solve everything, because some problems, you know, we can't even solve sometimes. You know, I've said to kids, yeah, that's really uncomfortable, but you still got to do it. But we're honoring that. We're modeling that process of how do we tune into ourselves? How do we hear intuition? How do we solve problems from there rather than the dizziness of the mind. And so it's huge. And we're also of course, connecting with their child on the level of safety and support, which is also a nice thing to do?

Unknown Speaker: 22:35

Well, Victoria, can you tell us a little bit about how parents could get in touch with you or get more information about the work that you do? I imagine that you do zoom work, as well as maybe over the phone,

Unknown Speaker: 22:48

is that through? That is absolutely true. So in the state of Connecticut, I'm a licensed professional counselor. And so I do regular old counseling, but all through telehealth, and then I have a client base all over the world where I do what I call is intuitive counseling, where I combine my training and background in psychology and counseling. I'm a PhD in cognitive and developmental psychology as well as a licensed counselor. So there's a, there's a big knowledge base behind all of this. But in those sessions, I lead 100%, with my intuition, and I work with people by phone, and by zoom all over the world. I also do a lot of teaching, usually remotely through June through zoom. And I'm also setting up office space here in San Diego where I just moved so that that is coming as well. But the big bulk of my practice is online. And I do everything from individual parent coaching sessions, intuitive readings, intuitive counseling, and then a lot of teaching, I teach a lot about how you can awaken your own intuition and how you can leverage the gifts of your

Unknown Speaker: 23:55

soul. Great. And so please tell us what your website is or how someone would feel. Yes, absolutely.

Unknown Speaker: 24:02

It's Victoria Shah intuitive calm is my website. I also have a podcast, intuitive connection, which is on all the major platforms. And I have a very active Facebook group, intuitive connection community where I do a lot of live teachings and readings and bring all of our amazing podcast guests to for live q&a. So that's a really fun place to connect as well.

Unknown Speaker: 24:28

Great, thank you so much for your time being here. I really appreciate it. I'm sure that many of the parents are going to start thinking a little bit more about the sixth sense that we have and how it can help guide their day and you know, maybe help bring it out in their children as well.

Unknown Speaker: 24:45

Yes, I hope so. Absolutely. And thank you so much for what you do and putting all this goodness out to the world.

Unknown Speaker: 24:52

Thank you. Take care.

Unknown Speaker: 24:55

Likewise.

Unknown Speaker: 24:58

Hi, this is Francis Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of the intuitive parents podcast. We are thrilled to have you here and hope that you enjoyed it. Please share our podcast with others who may benefit and leave us a review. To receive a free gift of the 14 Day Challenge. bringing peace to your household, go to my gift from francis.com. That's my gift from francis.com Take care, I look forward to working with you