Seeker, Parenting Type Series #62

Find out YOUR Parenting Type CLICK HERE

In this episode, Jon introduces the Seeker parent: the caregiver driven by curiosity, depth, and a longing for what feels real and alive. Centered on the tension between freedom and responsibility, he explores how authenticity can become both a gift and a hiding place, especially when big feelings or obligations feel suffocating. Parents will walk away feeling deeply seen, with language for their restlessness, insight into how emotional intensity shows up in parenting, and reassurance that their unfinishedness is not a flaw, but a source of connection, creativity, and trust. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Series Context And The Seeker Type
• 2:37 Why Curiosity Is A Core Seeker Strength
• 5:10 Freedom vs Escape In Modern Parenting
• 9:45 Authenticity As Worth And Its Risks
• 15:20 Flexibility Or Avoidance? Naming The Difference
• 20:57 Emotional Depth, Intensity, And Containment
• 26:05 Consistency For Kids Amid Seeker Instincts
• 33:16 Trust-Based Parenting And Child Autonomy
• 37:56 Integration: The Seeker’s Path Forward
• 43:26 Closing Reflections And Support Requests

Transcript

Jon @WholeParent: 0:00

Welcome to the Whole Parent Podcast. I am so excited that you have decided to spend some of your time hanging out with me today. This is a little bit of a different type of episode unless you've been listening to the last few. This is the fourth in a series that is dedicated to the four parenting types that come from my quiz, my parenting types quiz. If you are interested in that, finding out which type you are, you can go to the show notes at the bottom, the description, whatever you want to call it, and it is the first link on all of these uh episodes. And you can look back at the previous three episodes that have been published, and these are all episodes dedicated to the types. How did I come up with these types? Well, uh I've done a lot of different personality trainings and things like that, personality typing trainings, and I sort of synthesized a lot of different ones into a typing system that is specific for how we relate to our kids coming from our own childhoods. And I spent well over a hundred hours kind of synthesizing and trying to find different personality typing systems that integrated well with one another. And I the quiz went through many iterations and I had it tested by a lot of different people who I've worked with. It's been available in my membership for a while, used to be based on animal typings. Uh, and then I came up with these names that I feel are much more effective at describing what they are. And I've now been putting that quiz out into the world to be taken by the whole parent nation in mass to learn more about themselves and how they relate to their kids and how they relate to their partners and things like that. Uh, interestingly, if you are not the seeker, which is the type that we are talking about in this fourth and final episode devoted to these types, uh, I still think that you should listen to this because there's very likely a seeker in your life, or more importantly, there's a seeker in your children's lives. Maybe it's one of your parents, maybe it's another caregiver, maybe it's your partner, maybe it's your in-laws. There are a lot of different people who you come in contact with and who come in contact with your kids. And my guess is at least one of them is a seeker. And so, to understand them better, to understand yourself better, especially if it's one of your parents or if this is your type, I think we should talk about it. And if you're ready to do that, let's get into it. Welcome back out to the porch. Oh man, it is a beautiful day today out here as far as temperature and just quietness. It's been kind of a rough day for me personally, but I am excited to be here and diving into this episode with you. So if I seem a little bit quieter, maybe it's not because I don't like seekers. It's not because I'm it's just because sometimes I come to this uh porch differently. It's just different, and I I have different feelings and and days. It's one of the I when I'm recording this, it's one of the darkest days of the year. And that feels like kind of where I'm at right now. Kind of a dark day. Anyway, I'm excited to be jumping in and talking about seekers anyway, and I think it's gonna help me take my mind off a lot of the stuff swirling around. And so I want to jump in with a strength of seekers, first and foremost. Uh, I've been trying to start with strengths as much as I can because I think that a lot of this stuff can come off and feel more judgmental or it can feel more critical. And I think that that's a helpful tool for us to view ourselves through, you know, somewhat critical lenses, to always be growing, to be transforming ourselves, to become better parents. I don't think you'd be listening to this podcast if that's not something that at least partially interested you. That said, I think it starts with understanding our strengths and how we can leverage those to balance out our struggles. And so every type has strengths and every type has struggles. Every type has what we call growth edges, places where they can grow and places where through that growth they can become amazing transformative parents, that they can actually transform their weaknesses to be strengths. That some of the weaknesses, as we were talking about yesterday, especially with drivers, some of the weaknesses are actually strengths in disguise if they can learn to uh flip them on their heads. And so the same is true here with seekers. And I want to start with the strength of just amazing, expansive curiosity and imagination. Uh seekers have the most kind of imagination and whimsy and curiosity. Oftentimes they in the world of uh outside of parenting, they can come across as artists or performers because they they have amazing abilities to kind of see the world in artistic ways. And they ask different questions. They see the world through alternative, non-traditional paths. They resist living on autopilot. I live with a seeker. My wife is a seeker, and I've experienced this curiosity and imagination just explode in amazing ways. The things that she thinks to do with my kids, uh to solve their problems, but also just to give them a kind of a magical childhood. We're around the holidays right now, and we think I think often about how uh parents make the holidays magical for kids. My wife does that. And it's not just like me defaulting to like, oh, well, you know, moms always do that. No, my wife does that in a unique way because she has a real expansive ability to be curious. She just like runs towards projects with my kids and in my home. She runs towards projects, she can see things and like from a top-down view and do amazing things. We have a children's book coming out. That is only because of her like amazing seeker abilities that that she has this imagination that can just kind of explode. And she also has some tendencies of of really being able to get stuff done when necessary too. So that's that's helpful too. Not all seekers can do that, but she really can. And so that's kind of a good example of how a lot of these things they they interact with one another, but you know, just because you're one type doesn't mean that you're gonna be exactly the same as other parents that are also that type. And so understanding that you can see solutions that other people don't and that you can see possibilities that other people don't means that you're less likely to go into just kind of old patterns of parenting with guardians, with nurturers, with drivers, especially drivers and guardians, there is a real tendency to just kind of do what was done to you, especially if you feel like you turned out pretty okay and it worked pretty well. You can feel like, oh, well, you know, I, you know, I was fine, and I'm sure that my parents probably did a decent job. From what everything that I've seen of seekers, like they that's why we call them seekers. They're like seeking out novelty and wonder and and beauty and depth and realness in a real way. And and that realness that they're seeking out means that they're they often don't just go down the same neural pathways that they were given. They are willing to question it, they're willing to do things differently. And that can come across in really healthy and adaptive ways. And also sometimes when parenting, like autopilot is kind of what our kids need because the routines are what are the most helpful, right? The guardians know this, right? That you get a you get a bedtime routine, don't mess with it. But seekers are like, no, but there's what if there's magic to be had somewhere to be sought? And oftentimes they'll just kind of go off and do things in this way. I think that a lot of us wish that we were seekers. I think a lot of people we don't we don't see this the drawbacks that we're gonna talk about today in seekers. It's kind of the opposite of drivers, where a lot of people look at drivers and they go, ooh, I don't want to do that. That that that looks a little tough for me. I don't know if I want to be that kind of parent. A lot of people look at seekers and they're like, Oh my gosh, you see how that parent just like made that experience so magical and amazing, and they just like really went above and beyond. I wish I was that kind of parent. Uh yeah, so do all of us. We all wish that we were seekers at some times. Like, that's okay. Um, and so as we get into the pillars of what makes seekers seekers, and those come with challenges, and we talk about some more of the strengths, know that if you find yourself listening to this and going, oh man, this is me, and this is so hard to hear because yeah, this is me, and I just avoid hard things, and some of the other kind of common things, escapism that comes with seeker kind of mentality or characteristics, if you see that and you go, oh man, I'm so bad, just understand that like your your strengths as as with all of these, your strengths greatly outweigh your weaknesses. But that thing that you focus on is going to be the thing that feels the most dominating. And so if you focus on the negative parts of this being a seeker, if you focus on the negative parts of being any of the types, you will feel negatively about it. Versus if you focus on all of the places where you can do amazing things because of your natural inclinations towards ways of living and being, I think that you're gonna have a really amazing time as a parent. And I can tell you, uh, as someone who lives with a seeker and as someone who watches their kids grow up with a seeker, my kids absolutely love my wife and the magic that she makes for them and the way that she can make them feel. And so I want to get to pillar number one, and that is safety through freedom and escape. And so here we're using two terms, right? And this is we we common, we've been doing this in all of them where we say safety through, right? Safety by means of and worth by means of. Um, but the the big one with with uh seekers is that uh there is simultaneously this desire to be like a wandering spirit, to go out into the world and just say, you know what, hey, all that structure just feels cons it just feels constricting to me, and this predictability, just like kind of the daily drudge of being going through life feels suffocating, and like all of the commitments of life, they just feel like not good to me. And so when that happens, when you feel that kind of itch to explore, you often find your safety out there in the world, in experiences, in novelty, in adventure. The problem is you can also find those same types of freedom or that same safety through distraction or just constant movement or obsessing over possibilities. And in this way, a seeker, when done in a healthy way, seeks freedom and adventure and exploration when they're not in a good place, but they're just as likely, if they're in a good or I'm sorry, when they're in a good place, that's those are the things they seek, they're just as likely when they're not in a good place to seek escape. And unfortunately, the world that we live in now gives us so many easy ac so much easy access to escape, whether that's scrolling on a device, whether that's like just constantly you know doing the next thing or streaming the next thing or going to the next thing, like escape can be at on your at your fingertips now, where maybe in generations past seekers really had to go out into the world and adventure, and it probably was good for kids to experience that. Now, these moments of monotony and mundane life, and sometimes big emotions, and we'll get to that, can be reasons why you just want to go bury yourself in your phone. And that's not a healthy coping mechanism for any of the types. It's not a healthy coping mechanism for anyone. It's just that seekers, and and this is true of all the types, but seekers especially will find themselves going to that more and more and more. And it's because of that experience of kind of like this constant dopamine drive. It's not, they're not always adrenaline junkies, uh, although they can be, definitely. Um, they're not always adrenaline junkies, they're just kind of like novelty junkies. They're just looking for those interesting experiences that make life feel magical. That's why they're seeking all the time. Uh and the other piece of this, too, becomes that responsibility feels like a cage when you find safety and freedom and open spaces. Then anything that's tying you down, anything that's forcing you to commit to it, things like, oh, I don't know, being a parent, can feel like they're kind of trapping you. And it can feel like you kind of need to escape from your kids sometimes, and that's okay. It's okay to get up and go out and do things on your own. Guardians, nurturers especially, really have a hard time with that. You may feel guilty for doing that, but it's actually a good adaptive response. Your kids need you to be healthy. And so when responsibility feels too suffocating, it's it's time to go out and go on a ski trip or whatever you need to do to feel like you or go delve into a hobby that you so deeply love and that you're passionate about, so that you can feel like you have purpose outside of that. Because if your only purpose is just in raising these kids, where that might feel like warm and fuzzy to a driver who feels like the leader, or that might feel warm and fuzzy to a guardian who feels like that means that every well, look, I got everything, systems for everything, and that makes me feel good, or a nurturer who wants to define themselves within that nurturing role. Oftentimes a seeker, it's not that they love their kids any less, but it's that they have to have meaning and purpose that that go beyond simply, and it may be meaning and purpose by going hard into parenting and treating parenting like its own version of a hobby that you can fixate on and really delve into and be creative and imaginative with and explore, but not always. And that can be a struggle. Pillar number two, and here we're gonna hit on uh both pillar number two and also strength number two, which is worth feels like it is earned through realness and authenticity, and just like grit. I don't know what the what the term is, I need just realness, being true to yourself. Like, grit is the wrong word. It's it's it's just this feeling of like I need to feel aligned and real and inspired. And you look at people, and it's kind of like Holden from uh, if you are familiar with the book, The Catcher and the Rye, he calls everybody phonies, they're not really living, right? They're not really doing anything, they're just kind of faking it their way through life. And he sees all these different people who he feels are phonies in the catcher and the rye. It's a very beautiful coming of age story with lots of problems laced in there. And uh, you know, people have strong opinions about it. Is Holden this or is Holden that? I did a whole episode on it actually, or I did it as a as an analogy in one of my previous episodes that was scripted out. But Holden, uh, whether you love him or hate him, he he does have this ability to call out how fake people are. And I think in the world of Instagram now and TikTok and curated brokenness and you know, filters and all of this, it it's easy to say that that people are just kind of putting up uh putting on a show, that they're not really being real. And the seekers in us, they're seeking realness at all times, not only for themselves, but they're seeking out people who are real and who are who are authentic and relationships that are authentic. And so they look at their kids and they seek that realness and authenticity. And part of that is that often they don't feel from childhood like they were accepted for who they were, and I don't want to like dredge up your childhood wounds here uh and make you have to go to therapy after listening to this episode, but but often it can feel like I people didn't really understand me, or people didn't really see me the way that like as this authentic real version of myself, and so because of that, it can feel like oh man, I really I I didn't get along with my parents or I didn't feel seen and valued. But that also comes with the other piece of this, which is the strength, which is deep existential and emotional depth. Like seekers like nurturers have this ability to co-regulate, but seekers can go to like this crazy extreme depth. And there's a risk in that. There's a risk with being overwhelmed in that emotional kind of depth and existential depth. They're the ones who, you know, when you're hanging out with them late at night, they're just they're talking about the most interesting philosophical questions. They're brilliant minds who can really ask what the the purpose of the meaning of life is and things like that. And that is a wonderful thing for a child to grow up with. A person who deeply wants to connect with them emotionally and exist in this deep existential level. And this health that when when healthy, this can become this crazy emotional literacy where you can name your child's feelings with them, you can help them put words to that. But the struggle is when it's not healthy, and that's where you can feel like you're not even being true to yourself. Sometimes, and I'm not saying always, but sometimes seekers can struggle to feel their own feelings because those feelings can feel overwhelming to them. And this is where we get sort of into pillar three, and today I'm gonna take the break after pillar three instead of before pillar three, because that word throughout authenticity and realness, that's really, really important, and it's good. And you'll notice I didn't like couch that like I did with the other ones because authenticity is genuinely a good thing. Like that's a good reason to feel valuable because you are really yourself. Brene Brown says that the difference between fitting in and belonging is that fitting in is changing yourself so that the group will accept you. Belonging is being yourself, having the courage to be yourself, knowing that the group will accept you. And that when you truly belong, you get to bring your full authentic self to bear and have people accept that version of yourself. And that that is like the truest way of being in relationship. That constantly just fitting in and just changing who you are so that you fit in with the group, like that doesn't lead to the same level of fulfillment. In this way, like worth being authenticity means that like that's a good thing, like that that's a positive. Your worth should. Be in your authenticity because your worth being in your authenticity just means that your value comes from who you really are. And that's beautiful. That said, it can become a challenge to say, like, Am I authentic enough? Am I authentic enough? Am I authentic enough? And this is where there's this constant avoidance of like distress. And it can be disguised sometimes as just being like a silver lining person or being flexible or being regulated when actually it's just avoiding those deep emotions. And so, how can the person who has the greatest emotional depth also be the person who is the best at avoiding those emotions? It's a real challenge. And this is where I had to harmonize this in my own understanding of what seekers were. And I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. My wife was like, I don't know if you know enough to do the seeker episode because I don't know if you can thread this needle. And I was like, I'm gonna try. I'm gonna really, really try. But from what I understand of being a seeker, I'm not a seeker, but from what I understand from seekers, is that in that deep emotional depth, you know that your feelings can really knock you off kilter. That hard things, deep uh failures, deep struggles can be so because you because your emotions run so deep, they can be so wounding. And so it's often easier to just uh avoid those things, to numb those things, to distract yourself away from those things, to focus on your art, to pour it into something else, because just sitting with the feelings can feel overwhelming. And with this crazy thing that we call parenting, where we are constantly practicing this personal differentiation and also this enmeshment with our kids. I talk about this a lot in the book. I have a whole chapter on enmeshment and grow becoming conscious of our enmeshment with our kids. We when they bring their big feelings to us, though those can feel overwhelming and we can feel like, okay, look, the way that I have dealt with these distressing things is by avoiding, is by just going out and and making, you know, having a great time. Um there can be a tendency and a proclivity here for for some even some numbing, like substance abuse stuff with with seekers where it's like, yeah, I don't want to think about my problems, I just want to drink about my problems, right? And oftentimes that can be rationalized. And this is where, again, pillar three is the avoidance is uh the avoidance of like difficult hard feelings is disguised as flexibility, or avoidance of even your own constraints can be described as flexibility. You often won't feel like you're doing that. You will just feel yourself being easygoing or non-controlling or adaptable or easily, you know, go with the flow. And probably other people are willing to like lean into that with you. They're willing to say, yeah, you know what, you are go with the flow because you're an adventurer. You you are. That is true to an extent. But when your fear is there, when when when you're running up against something that's that is actually distressing, that is causing those deep existential vibes in you that can pull you off kilter, that flexibility just becomes non-commitment. And so you drift instead of making choices, and you delay instead of anchoring yourself in a choice and just kind of going with it. And you keep your options open to avoid feeling like you're stuck. And often life is just climbing up a mountain towards a goal with your kids, like potty training, or like something terrible that's coming down the pipe, or some struggle that's that's that you know is on the horizon, teaching your kid to read. Like there are so many pieces of parenting that are just kind of slogs that you just have to kind of grind through. And often the grind is just so challenging for the seekers who are always wanting not just to make things feel good, but they want they want to seek novelty and they want to seek joy out in the world and they don't want to do boring stuff. And so instead of like just doing the potty training thing because it's just got to be done, or instead of just you know, locking yourself into starting whatever program with your kid, like you don't because you don't want to feel that that feeling of like I've I've locked myself into this. And so and it's most positive. Your flexibility is going to be one of the most adaptive parts of what it is to be an effective parent. Your ability to pivot and go with your kids and follow their lead. Things that drivers, as we talked about yesterday, struggle deeply with just going following their own kid. Like following your kid, you might find that really really easy, but you're gonna have to follow them through the through the mess and through the peanut butter and through the grind and through the grit, and not pull away. And that's gonna be tricky. Let me take a quick break, and then we'll be back with pillars four and five. Alright. Back at it. We're on pillar four. And as you notice, a lot of these pillars kind of go directly along with the strengths, and this one's still sticking on that strength of being deeply emotionally deep, deep emotionally, emotional depth. I was gonna say deeply emotionally deep. And that emotional depth can become emotional intense uh intensity for kids with with kids. The problem is it can also uh break out of containment. And that is where we need to find some balance. I said before that oftentimes seekers did not feel understood as kids, they did not feel like their parents really got them, or that their caregivers got them, or that maybe that their friends even got them, they just didn't feel understood. And that's a typical thing. It's not it doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you. But often that experience of feeling that way can come from a couple of things. One of them is that they just felt very deeply, and parents did not used to be great at saying, I can see how deeply you feel about this. Um part of it is that is that maybe that is their experience. Their parents were dismissive. Their parents were just like, What do you gotta worry about? Why, why are you bothering me with this? And with both of those things, and with really any reason that you feel dismissed, what matters is not the intention of the parent. What matters is the experience of the child. And the experience of the child in this case is that they did feel dismissed. And because they felt dismissed, they were not what I can tell you without any, you know, reservation is that they they were not taught how to deeply feel their deep feelings. If they were taught how to deeply feel their deep feelings, they wouldn't feel misunderstood. And they wouldn't feel like their parents didn't get them, and they wouldn't feel like they were constantly seeking out that that experience of life. I'm not saying that it's a that this is maladaptive. Again, that some people just that this is just how they are, and maybe their parents could have done nothing to ever make them feel understood. There's nothing that they could do, but my guess is that they, you know, e no matter what happened, the parent did not teach them how to deeply hold on to their feelings. And so when the emergency emotions do come and they're not avoided, and you don't run off to that, you know, escape or that and bear yourself into that hobby or avoid, avoid, avoid, and pass it on to somebody else. When it comes and you allow it to come, especially the negative emotions or the or the challenging emotions, they will surge and then they will spill over the top. And that chasing of those experiences of deep experiences can mean that this happens more for seekers than for the other types. They struggle with boredom and frustration and emotional like flatness in their life. They're looking for connection and inspiration. They're chasing it. That's one of the things that they're seeking. And so their nervous system actually prefers intensity, this kind of intensity, this um extremes, oscillating, quickly changing, emotional, wearing your emotions in your sleeves, rather than the steadiness, because that can just feel boring and empty. And again, this is one of those places where safety feels like freedom. And so steadiness can feel like a cage. Like being just normal, like not having any, like a seeker might seek out a fight, not a fist fight, but an emotional fight, because they're looking for that intensity. They're looking for that big feeling, but but then but then they don't want to go there necessarily, and so they might pivot off of it quickly and find the silver lining and move on. And this can feel to kids very uh unpredictable. And so this is one where that emotional intensity that has no containment, where it's emotional intensity that just spills all over and you wind up bleeding on everybody else around you, even if you're not necessarily feeling deeply, like you just you you chased something and then you caught it, and then boom, and you had this huge experience, and then you're you kind of bleed all of your kids with that. That's a place where you need to learn how to not necessarily contain, but how to regulate and how to hold those feelings that you were not taught to hold. And so it's not that you can't chase after big feelings, it's that when you experience those big feelings, you have to learn those skills that you were not taught as a child, which is how to regulate, how to not, you know, explode out with your feelings all over everybody. And and the beauty of this one, as it relates to the strength of feeling emotional depth, is that you actually are going to model this for your kids. So your kids are gonna see you getting dysregulated and then regulating, they're gonna see you feeling things deeply and not just being kind of consistent, consistent, consistent. And by the way, the other three types, oftentimes they just kind of they can feel a little bit predictable. They seekers often don't feel as predictable to kids, and that can, in some ways, help them adapt to the world. It can also be really challenging, and this is something they're talking about on the podcast all the time because kids need to feel like they know what's coming next, they need to feel like they have an idea of like how their parent is going to show up in any given situation. And because the seeker doesn't want to be held down and confined under such terms, and they want to, you know, they don't want to be stuck in the routine, much less the emotional routine of just doing the same thing the same way every time. Uh that can feel tough for kids. I think the good news for seekers is you can be really, really, really effective as parents at helping kids process their deep emotions and their emotional swings and their emotional tides. Like when your kid is 15, 16, even 10, 11, you are going to be able to show them the path through the storm because you drive through the storm all the time. And you're often out on the waves and you know how to get through. The challenge is when your kid's a toddler and they need you to be more consistent. And so my encouragement to you is seek out that emotional intensity places that doesn't have to be always constantly around your kid. And I know how hard that is because I got four kids. They're always around.

SPEAKER_01: 35:27

It's hard to seek out emotional intensity when they're not there because they're always there.

Jon @WholeParent: 35:31

But my encouragement to you is find places where you can let it spill over and let it surge out and change quickly with the winds that don't drag your kids into the hailstorm and maelstrom with you. It can be challenging, but you just got to remember that what your kids need is consistency. And so even though you're seeking novelty and adventure, and you're seeking depth and authenticity and to truly understand yourself at a deep level and to existentially process what your purpose and meaning is in this world and universe, your kids aren't there with you yet. Like it's so beautiful that you're gonna be able to go there with them someday. I wish that every parent had the capacity to go there someday. Most parents do not have the capacity to go there someday. You're gonna be a great conversation partner for your daughter and son at 25, 30 years old for sure, probably when they're in teenagers. You're gonna be a great conversation partner. They're gonna love having these deep conversations with you. It's just can we can we make bedtime routine just the same every night, though? Can we just never mess with the responsibility pieces that keep kids feeling like steadiness is what life is? Because remember, for your kid, everything is novel. They're experiencing the world for the first time. So things that are boring to you are not boring to them at all. And so that's where that fourth pillar, again, it's a strength. I don't want to I don't want to lay on this like it's a weakness. That uh that that ability to just feel deeply and and it comes all out, spills out all over over everything. That's a beautiful, that's a beautiful skill. That's a beautiful part of your personality. It's just kind of hard for a kid sometimes to deal with that part. And so we have to learn how to regulate. And then they can watch us do that, and they can learn to do that too. Pillar number five, and this goes along with uh the third strength. The third strength here I want to highlight juxtaposes the pillar five. And so pillar five is this, first and foremost. There is a deep fear that you will lose yourself through responsibility. Obligation feels like a betrayal of yourself. Consistency feels like the death of possibility in this way. Seekers are not they are not so worried about getting kicked out of the tribe like the rest of us. They are often worried about seeing the tribe, like making the art for the tribe, and like having the adventures for the tribe, and they see that their value is in being truly true to themselves, and it's not this is not selfishness, this is like self-love, and also I I've never known a seeker to not want to take you along with them on this journey if you let them. Like, yeah, maybe they want to try skydiving, but they'd love for you to come with them. They want to just like my best friend is a seeker too. They they might want to just like throw you in the back of a taxi and take you to Machu Picchu, but like, or jump in the back of a taxi and take you to Machu Picchu take go to Machu Picchu, but they want you to come with. Like, if they're gonna drive across the country, they want company. They want you there too. It's not it's not selfish. But it's like there. And that's where this this uh final strength comes in. If they can move through that fear of being held down, then they can see that they can truly be present through freedom and be present with people wherever they are. So just like a seeker doesn't want to be held down by their own responsibilities and obligations and what people are placing on them, they don't want to place those obligations on others. And this is massively important, y'all, if you're a seeker, in how adaptive this is for your kids. Kids need to become their own unique selves. They need to delve into their own interests and desires, they need to learn what they like, they need to learn what fires them up, what they're passionate about, where they're gonna make their mark on the world. And one of the biggest problems that parents have, again, I wrote an entire chapter on this in my book about personal differentiation and becoming conscious, is this idea that often we live vicariously through our kids. We want them to be just like us. We want them to have the same political opinions and have the same religious persuasions and and and live a life that we've laid out for them. And we want them to do these things because we want them to have a good life and we think we know what that looks like for them. And so, my goodness, they just need to fall in line.

SPEAKER_01: 40:45

And the drivers among us are the ones who are going, trust me, bro, just do this. And the guardians among us are going, look, if you just go on this laid-out path, you're gonna be fine. I promise, you're gonna see it, you're gonna see this through. And the drivers are saying, look, this is how you're gonna achieve well. And the nurturers are saying, I don't, don't go out there, don't go into that freedom. I don't want you to go there because I'm I'm afraid for you.

Jon @WholeParent: 41:06

And the seekers are like, go and I'm coming. You want to go and climb Mount Everest? Like, let's start training. You want to go and uh learn the bassoon, like let's go, let's let's look up on my phone right now where we can find a used music store and we can go find a bassoon. Seekers want others to be themselves too. They are seeking authenticity in their kids. They value autonomy and individuality and inner truth, and this becomes a very trusting parent. You see, the the opposite of fear in parenting is trust. And a trust-based parent is what a seeker is at their most amazingly beautifully authentic selves. They see their kids as full human beings, often because they didn't know whether somebody saw them as a full human being. They're not a project, they're not a kid that needs to be X, Y, and Z. Before they're loved and cherished. They're not, you know, this is what a well-regulated seeker who has done their work extends what they want from their for their life to their kids. Not in an unhealthy way of saying, I know what's good for you, but in a beautiful way of saying, I want you to have the same freedom that I have. Now, life is also full of obligations. Life is also a place where consistency matters a whole lot. And so just because you want to resist being pinned down doesn't mean that it's always going to you're always going to be able to resist it. You're going to have to find ways as a seeker to feel free in a life with kids that often does not feel free. But, and this is the good news before I hit the conclusion, if you can do that, if you can lean in, if you can process your childhood, man do you make an amazing partner for your kid. Here's my conclusion. Each parenting archetype has a posture, a way of being that brings them back to themselves. For a seeker, it's integration. Bringing it all to yourself, your longings, your sensitivity, your restlessness, your brilliance, into the present moment. Can you sit in the mundane and not try to escape? Can you hold your own pain without needing to repackage it as growth? Can you feel all the way through without rushing to the lesson? It takes practice. But when you're able to stay in the moment without judgment, something sacred happens. You start to realize that what you were looking for is already here. Not in its final form, but in its hot, messy, holy, ordinary, middle-of-the-road moment kind of connection. When your child reaches for you after a tantrum, when you make eye contact during bedtime, when you laugh at something that surprises you, you both feel seen. That's it. That's the authenticity you are chasing. Not a perfect family, not a polished identity, not an idealized version of you. Just this. You are a seeker. Your child doesn't need you to find the right path, but they need you to walk the path with them. Even when it's winding, even when it's wild, even when it leads you deeper into your own unfinished story, because here's the truth. Your unfinishedness is not your flaw. It is your gift. And if you can learn to enjoy, if you can learn to stay right here, as you are, your child will learn to stay too. Nothing has to be perfect to be enough. That joy or completion and love doesn't live in the future. It lives here, in this breath, in this room, in this sacred messy moment with you. Catch you in the next one. Thank you for your time listening to the whole parent podcast today. I hope you got something out of it. I have a couple quick favors to ask of you as we end the episode. The first one is to jump over on whatever podcast platform that you are listening to right now and rate this show five stars. You'll notice there are a lot of five-star ratings on this show, whether that's on Spotify or Apple Music or Apple Podcasts. We have a ton of five-star ratings and it helps our podcast get out to more people than almost any other parenting podcast out there. And so it's a really quick thing that you can do if you have 15 or 20 seconds. And if you have an additional 30 seconds, I'd love to read a review from you. I read all the reviews that come through. If some of you particularly like one part of the podcast or you like when I talk about something or whatever, imagine that you're writing that review directly to me. The second thing that you can do is go and send this episode to somebody in your life who you think could use it. Think about all the parents in your life. Think about your friends, your family members who could use a little bit of help parenting. It's vulnerable to share an episode of a parenting podcast with them. I get it. But imagine how much better your life is as a result of listening to this podcast, of following me on social media, of getting the emails that I send out. You can share that with someone else too. And so I encourage you, just go over, shoot them a quick text, share this episode with them, or share another episode that you feel like is particularly relevant to them. The last thing you can do is go down to the link show notes at the bottom. And like I said, in the mid-roll, you can subscribe on Substack. It's$5 a month or$50 a year. Uh I don't have that many people doing it. And yet the people who are doing it have made this possible. And so if you like this episode, if you like all of the episodes, if you want them to continue, the only way that I can keep making them is through donor support, free will donations to the podcast. Please, please, please, please, as you're thinking about the end of this year, as you're thinking about your charitable giving, I know I'm not a 501c3. You can't write it off on your taxes, but if you'd like to give me a little gift to just say thank you for what you've done this year, the best way to do that is over on Substack. Again,$5 a month,$50 a year. It's not going to break the bank. It's probably less than you spend on coffee every week. Definitely less than you spend on coffee every week. Maybe uh less than you spend on almost anything, right? Five bucks a month is very, very small, but it goes a long way when it's multiplied by all of the different people who listen to the podcast and sending that over to me. I get all of that money. It's just my way of being able to produce the podcast, spend money on equipment, spend money on subscription fees, hosting fees for the podcast, all of that stuff. Email server fees, all that. So if you're willing to do that, I would love it. Thank you so much for listening to this episode, and I'll see you next time.