Parenting Through Betrayal: Helping Children When You’re in Chaos (Episode #57)

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Welcome to the human intimacy podcast. Dr. Kevin Skinner with Marianne Michaelis. Marianne, it is a beautiful winter day outside. How are you doing?

I'm doing great. It's a beautiful spring day where I live right now. My bees in my backyard, I noticed this week they made it through the winter and they're outside buzzing around. We've got a lot of sunshine. So I'm thrilled and happy to be here today.

So you say spring and I've got winter forecast here.

So anyway, I think it's a little milder here.

Yeah, for sure. To our listeners, we want to welcome you and we appreciate your time. We are going to be focusing on something I think is probably one of the more important topics that we get related to parenting and as it relates with betrayal and parents who are trying to deal with children who can often fall in the background. Because as you're going through the discovery process, as you're going through your own trauma, trying to make sense of what your partner has done. Then we have the children and really we want to be talking, or at least we want to talk today about what it's like for parents going through this process and really trying to make sense of how do I help the children when I'm in my own chaos. What are your thoughts? Marianne?

I am so glad we're talking about this because this is a topic mom shame or parent shame comes up so often for my clients. I hear them say, I feel like I'm such a bad mom. This has changed me. I haven't been able to focus on my kids. And one of the biggest impacts that I See, for my clients from betrayal is their belief about themselves, about how they are as a parent, and possibly in reality, how they parent because of the shame. I've got two illustrations of this that just the minute you talk about this, that come to mind. Years ago, I was running a group, and a gal who lived in another country was attending the group, and she said, you know, Marianne, I get up in the morning and I put my trench coat on over my pajamas and. And I drive my kids to school and I drop them off and I come back and I. I get in bed and I spend my whole day in bed until I put my trench coat back on over my pajamas and I go pick up my kids, and then they come home and they watch tv. I have a. I haven't opened my mail for six months. I just am so gutted I'm not functioning.

Interesting word, gutted. So I'm shut down, right? In this situation you're describing, just shut down.

Oh, frozen.

And so. Yeah, frozen. Right. And so when we look at it from an autonomic perspective, you're either in the fight or flight response, or you're in the completely dorsal vagal shutdown response. And it's not in any of those. It's really hard to function in any aspect going to work dealing with children. And today we want to talk specifically about the children aspect of it. But I also want to incorporate. You talked about the betrayed, also the betraying and their role in parenting after discovery, because you also see the shame in the person who is acting out, feeling like they've let down not only their spouse, but their children. Just this week, I was talking with an individual, and in this situation, he was absolutely weeping because of his behaviors, and he said, I might lose my entire family. And so we have this concept of maybe the betrayed shame in parenting and feeling like a failure. But we also have the other side of it where I've let down. I should have been the protector. I should have done this. And my behaviors have caused the loss of my children, and they don't even. They don't even want to talk to me anymore.

I've often seen the betrayer step into a place of powerlessness. Like, I, I, I really messed up. I really hurt people. And now I, I don't even know what to do to fix it. And so they kind of step into a backward position, and then the betrayed is shut down and not functioning. What we're really talking about here is a whole entire family system. And so many times in our work, we're talking about the betrayer. And we're talking about the betrayed and we don't even think about or really talk about the kids. And, and the ripple effect, the dribble of how this is really impacting the entire system. What's happening for the kids when they sense to tension in the air, but they don't know what's going on. What happens when parents are more curt or don't respond that the way that they're expecting to, or Mom's driving and kids are in the backseat screaming or clamoring for attention and mom's just zoned out because she can't think of anything. She can't even hear what's going on. So kids may start acting out more or they internalize and say there's something wrong, something's wrong with me, mom and dad are mad at me, it's my fault. So there's, there's a whole lot of what, what I like to call secondary trauma. Kids get betrayal trauma as well, but they might not even know it. They don't know that it's betrayal trauma if the parents haven't talked about it. But they often end up with the same impacts or similar impacts as the betrayal.

And what I hear you talking about and really what I personally in my own life have experienced, we, we haven't, we don't talk a lot about this because really, even, even in our field we talk about, you know, the betrayal and we don't really explore the whole family system.

Yeah.

And, and so being trained as a marriage and family therapist, I've been trained to look at the whole system. And recently, well, within the last year, I was working on a project talking about relationships and how betrayal influences relationships. In fact, in May, I'm going to be talking at the American Catholic Psychological association talking about the burden of betrayal. And I'm going to be talking about how to. The burden that it puts on the system, the family system, what we're talking about here. And the children often are, you know, the parents are so involved as you describe that it's hard to deal with the emotions of a child. And yet the children are observing, they're picking it up. In my own life experience, there were experiences that I didn't know how to talk about because I had, you know, my dad betrayed my mother and I didn't know certain languages and certain things. I felt them. And that's what I hear is, talking about here is the children are picking, picking these things up. But maybe they, you know, they don't necessarily know the dynamics or why Things are happening and what's happening. And so that like you said, the internalization, like is it my fault and if I was better, would they get along better or, or would this not happen if I was better? And so I think what we're hoping to get across today is how to help communicate how to do this in a healthier way rather than avoiding or ignoring these conversations that really need to be had.

Yeah, thank you for sharing that. Just about your own experience, Dr. Skinner. I think it's, we all come to this field with our own experiences, with our own lived perceptions and, and hearing you, I think it's really powerful to hear you talk about being a child and saying, I don't know what's going on, I don't understand this. I can see and tell and sense that there's something going on, but I don't know what it is. And this is often for, for children especially where we create these core self beliefs. They're fighting because of me or I need to be better. You know, so maybe I didn't get a good grade on my report card and my parent maybe snapped at me more than they norma would or they weren't as supportive as they would normally be. And so rather than realizing this is because of their stuff they're going through, I might internalize that and say, oh, they're, they're disappointed I'm not good enough.

Well, and the stress on the system, I mean, if I was to give a little bit more of this story here, you know, as my mother, you know, became the single parent mother, she was, you know, working for the first time in her life for pay she had, you know, so she has to, you know, go out and get a job. And she's working at that time, maybe making 350 an hour, I mean, trying to survive, trying to. And my dad was very financially supportive and very, very good at that. And yet my mom would go to work and so now she's in this role and my brother, older brother and I are at home. And I remember, you know, coming home from school and it was kind of odd that my mom wasn't there. And I remember those first memories, trying to get used to that. And I remember one day she was just exhausted and worn out and we hadn't helped with the dishes. And I just remember the emotion of her of just feeling, I can't do it all, I can't do it all. And I re, I, I'll very vividly remember that day because it was an emotional expression that I hadn't felt or seen from my mother and she, she expressed it right. And it was one of those times like, oh man, I need to step up. But it was one of those times where it's just the, the weight of everything was on her. And I remember that feeling thinking I, okay, I need to step up. I need to help here. I don't know if I got any better, but I just rem.

Thank you for sharing that. And what I, you know, as you're talking about your mom who was stepping into the workforce for the first time as a, probably as an, you know, an adult single mom before she even got to that space, there's so much what I see from my clients so many times there's this freezing. I feel so stuck. I don't feel like I have the skills. How am I going to do this? What am I going to do? I don't know how I'm going to survive. They're so much debilitating fear and self doubt and it's so heavy and so big. So before your mom even got to. To the job of finding the job and trying to figure out how to do all of that, I know there's so much backstory to what she had to have been experiencing, even like and, and that grief. I didn't choose this and now I have to leave my kids. I wanted to be home for my kids. And now I don't get to be the mom that I, I feel robbed because I don't get to be the parent and have the role that I was maybe promised or that we had agreed on or that I've wanted.

Yeah. And while that's no question you just described, I think if you, if my mom could have spoke, I think she would have said almost exactly what you just said. And looking at it from my father's perspective, I don't get to be with my children because of my behaviors. And so it's this shame of I have let them down. I felt them and that, and I think that also was a part of my experience as well because I've observed and watched my dad, who's tried to, in so many ways, tried to repair, tried to be there as much as he possibly could. But I've heard from many betraying men in this situation, that feeling of I man, I failed them and let them down. And so we look at this parental shame associated with betrayal and we really haven't talked a lot about the. That dynamic. And so that's why this topic, I believe, is so important because it's not one of those things that we really have thought about. But as we bring it to the forefront, I think we can do better at it. And last year, when I was speaking at the International Institute of Trauma and Addiction Professionals conference, I actually was part of a panel, and they asked me some of my. What I thought was really important moving forward. And one of the core things that I said, I think we need to start focusing on how to best help the children. Because if even adult children are trying to make sense of the information that they're getting, that maybe one parent was unfaithful, and now it's like, okay, even adult children are trying to make sense of this experience.

I can't agree more. As you were talking about that shame of the betrayer, I don't know if this is your experience, but one thing that I often see is shame often creates avoidance. I don't want to go into that situation because I feel so much shame. I don't want to see my kids in that space because I know that I created it, and so it might feel easier just to avoid it. And not because I don't love my kids, but because my shame is so intense that I just. It's just this constant reminder Every time I see my kids fighting or not doing well or I interact and I see how hard it is for them, I just want to avoid it because I know it's all my fault.

Yeah. And that's where the profound shame comes in, is. Is I felt this. I've let everybody down. And again, it's not given a voice. And so in many situations, they carry that burden with them because they don't know what to do with it. They don't know how to repair, how to communicate, how to open up and talk with the children about, you know, their regrets, so to speak. And for. And again, going back to my own personal story, I don't know if my dad had that language, but it has happened. My dad has apologized to me and my siblings and again, in the best way that he knew how to. And so when I look at my own story, that actually happened many years, many years, in fact, decades after it actually happened. And so the repair process, if we look at this, hopefully it can happen sooner. But in my mind and in my experience, the fact that it did happen speaks to the importance. And for me personally, hearing my dad apologize to me and acknowledge it, that was a big deal.

Yeah. You know, Dr. Skinner, since we're talking about your story, and I know you've shared parts of your story in different places, I Don't think we can underscore enough the impacts, the lasting impacts that betrayal and a betrayed system have on children. I know you've talked about doing, you know, when you were getting trained in EMDR and doing some of your own work based on that experience of seeing your mom be betrayed and hearing you talk about years and years later, dad apologizing, that impacted you, you scars from that for years and years even. So that when you started doing your training, I don't want to tell your story, but I remember talking about doing your, your EMDR training. Just kind of, I think you said you just burst into tears or you shut down. It was just so profound because it was being able to release something you've.

Been carrying for, because there wasn't a language. So just. If I share the story, the story is, you know, we were heading into town from the country where we lived and I, mom and older brother in the car and my dad is in a truck with another woman and we stop at this four way stop and in southeastern Idaho, it wasn't a very busy intersection because they both got out of the car, as my memory recalls, and, and they talked for a period of time and mom comes back crying and then we turn around and go to my grandma and grandpa's house. That story wasn't talked about for 35 years. Yeah, right. So there was no language for what that boy experienced in that moment, that.

Moment that changed his life completely.

Well, and, and because all of a sudden there's a story that's that he's experiencing, but everybody has to interpret this experience. And, and children have to experience, they have to interpret the meaning, give meaning to these experiences. And so because it was not talked about, it was, in my experience, it was kind of just put down, shoved down. And I don't know what my parents would have said at that time. I remember that I felt something, but I did not even think about that memory until 2013. So that would have occurred probably in 1970, 1977, 78, when that memory would have that experience. Right. That's when it would have occurred. So whatever, do the math on that. 2013. And, and I'm doing this training in Toronto and they said, you know, what we call trauma egg. And they were having, you know, look at key events from your life, traumatic events or difficult experiences. You're saying it another way. And I thought, well, I had a good childhood, because I did have a good childhood. My parents loved me and yeah, they were divorced, but if divorce can be good, my parents did it well and so that story is not talked about. 35 years later, I'm in Toronto and think, okay, parents divorce. And then the question was, what other memories go with this experience, the divorce? And I'm like, well, what memories? And there came the memory. I was in Toronto, Canada, and up came that memory. I'm like, oh, wow, okay. And is this an accurate memory? Did this right? So I came home and I was. My mom and brother happened to be in the same. They were at my mom's house, and I said, can I ask a question? And I brought it up and they said, well, yeah, that happened. And so a few months later, I was being trained to do emdr. And I'm like, I'll just bring up this memory. And so I bring up this memory, and all of a sudden, water works. And. And when you do emdr, you. You try to identify a belief that goes with that specific memory. And I wrote about book Treating trauma from sexual addiction and also treating sexual addiction. I put that story in both of those books because it was illustrating a concept. And I'm there. The belief is I must not be important or I'm not worth it. And in particular, if I was worth. If we were worth it, then dad wouldn't have done this. That was the belief that that little boy me adopted. And as I'm doing the MDR and this point, it's just. I mean, I'm waterworks. I mean, in fact, so much so that the supervisor had to come over, you know, and. And. And basically say, okay, he's not able to track because the tears are. I mean, like I'm Niagara Falls here. And so, you know, I'm getting tapped on the hands. And in that 40 minute of EMDR experience, the memory cleared. It was. The only way that I can describe it is it was gone.

Carrying this emotional energy trapped. Related.

30, 35 plus years. Yeah, 35 plus years. And. And that that experience now has a voice and I can talk. I could not talk about that experience before it happened. I couldn't. I. It was. There was. And not only that experience, but I didn't have a real language to talk about. My parents. Divorce. Yes, they were divorced, but I couldn't talk about it. Interestingly, when I wrote about it in my 2017 book, Treating Trauma from Sexual Betrayal, my dad read my book, and that's where the apology actually came from. Is he. He read the book and he said he didn't remember that, but he did apologize. He said, I need to apologize. And it wasn't just me. He sent A message out to all my siblings apologizing for his behavior.

What's Beautiful about that, Dr. Skinner, is because you were able to work on that, because you were able to find language to speak to that, because you've been able to share that story. It sounds like that was the door for your father maybe to find some language that he needed and to create that apology for you and your siblings. It sounds like. Like some healing was able to happen for your whole system.

I think so. I. But again, I think part of it's because I did the work I had. I had to go lean into that work to make sense of it myself, because it was. I think it had influenced my life in many ways, like trying to figure out in marriage and how to be married and how to communicate. And there were so many different aspects, maybe worries and fears inside of me as a child that I never had a voice for. And my hope in sharing this story is that as parents, I know that we're talking about the parental shame, but there are things that parents can do to help give their children a voice. And part of it is being a space where these conversations can be had, especially if children are picking up. Because children pick up emotions, they pick up experiences, and being able to talk about those experiences and be able to share. Sometimes children don't have a language for it, but being able to allow the child to say, are there thoughts or feelings or there's things that you're experiencing as we go through this, and being able to create that space where children can talk is going to be really important.

Oh, I love that. I. I know part of our conversation today, we wanted to talk about how to disclose the children, then how to have the conversations with them. What you talked about was a. What we call, like a forced disclosure. It was right there in your face. Like, there it was. Whether it was spoken about or not, it. It was apparent that there was something going on. Because there's different types of disclosures. There's, you know, the ones that happen from the news, the media, or, you know, here it is right in your face. It wasn't planned. It wasn't intentional. But the research also shows when we discover betrayal or acting out, it's more traumatic to us than if somebody shares it with us. Regardless of that, I can't think of a client who's been through divorce, even when their parents have sat down and said, hey, we want to have this conversation with you. For so many of my clients, that's still a point that they come back to, to do trauma work in because of, just because their whole life changed at that moment. But I think it's important to, to really recognize the purpose of what we want to do with a disclosure. Why are we doing it and how. Matt, how much do we need to, to share? I, I, I take some notes or some of the comments that I want to share today with this come from Stephanie Carnes book Mending a Shattered Heart. She has a chapter in there where she talks specifically about determining what and what to disclose to children and when to disclose to them. But one of the things that she says that I think is just paramount is to remember that the child's needs always supersede the parents needs. So it's okay if I have shame, it's okay if I have pain. But I've got to make sure that my child's needs are being met. I can't say I want to avoid this. This is too hard for me. So I'm not going to address it with my kids. And I think it's also really important to recognize that the secrets that we carry in our system keep us sick. What we teach our kids is if we continue to deny or hide the problem, we teach our kids some messages such as this is so shameful I can never talk about it. We can't talk about difficult things in our family or sexual acting out is okay as long as it's kept secret in the family. And 67% of kids already know about the sexual acting out before something's been disclosed. So it's not in every single case. But a lot of times kids will see things or hear things or pick up on things and then those children become secret keepers and they are keeping information, they're betraying their parent as well. They get, they become triangulated into including against the other parent as well when they're keeping secrets. I know we're not going to even go into the damage of that impact right now but what are your thoughts on just as we're starting down this road?

Yeah. So what you just described is children pick up. They know they might not know, but they know, they know there's something, there is something. And, and because they understand there is something. And if it's not being talked about, what you just shared with, they don't have a language for it. There's no language. Which means that we aren't having these hard conversations which in many ways is teaching a child that we don't, we.

Don'T talk about these things, that there's shame around them. Yeah, but you can't handle it.

And that is truly something that manifests in my life because when my wife and I would have challenges early in marriage that I did not have the language for it. And she. I mean, I. I mean, if she was on this podcast with us, she would say, yes, what he's saying is absolutely true. I have had to learn to communicate in ways that I was never taught. And again, I'm not trying to blame my parents because my parents didn't know. It's interesting. They didn't know how to do it, but I knew they loved me. And if there's an interesting concept here. So I didn't learn how to have difficult conversations, and I didn't learn how to do these things. But I'll tell you what. I can tell you. My parents loved me, both my mom and my dad, but that does not take away from the fact that I did not learn how to communicate.

Yeah. Just before you talked about that, though, what I heard us talking about was gaslighting our own kids. When they are picking up on a reality or they have information or they sense that they know there's something in there, and they. We say, no, everything's fine. That. That's gaslighting. Our kids know it's not fine. They can feel it's not fine. They sense the energy, and then we say, no, everything's fine, or we pretend like it's fine.

And. And if I make a distinction there, I don't think my parents ever said that any. Anything was fine. Right. It was. Again, sometimes silence is actually the challenge. It's just not. There's no communication. It's not good. It's not bad. It's just. There's no. There's no language. There's no conversation around this. And when there's not a conversation you don't have, how do you make sense of this? How do we, as a system make sense of it? And we don't.

That sounds like a really good recipe for a lot of anxiety, for a lot of internalized confusion.

Right. You're picking up something and you don't know what to do with it.

You don't even have a name for it. And nobody. Nobody's saying anything about it, but it's there. So there. Maybe there's something wrong with me then, because I don't understand this.

And so again, that's one of the reasons why communication. And again, there's. It doesn't mean that your child. Again, if you're a parent listening to this, your child might not want to have a conversation or. And this is where we have to be really careful to bring the child into a parental role and treat them as if they're helping you make this decision of whether I should stay or whether I should leave. And that's where we have to have a very clear distinction. Because you as a parent can create trauma in your child by parentifying them or bringing them into a parental role rather than letting them be a child.

Yeah, I think that that's so important that triangulation of bringing the children in can get so messy. And it's tricky to say I need to share with my children, but my children don't need to carry this burden. And so some of the. The tips that Stephanie talks about in this chapter, she talks about the parents sitting down together. No matter how difficult this is, once again, the children's needs supersede my comfort and saying, what is it that my children need to need to know? My children need to know that we are struggling with some things between us and it doesn't have to do with the children. And we love the children and we're going to be there and we're going to take care of the children. But depending on how old the child is, we can give more information or less information. Part of the betrayer's recovery is to take that responsibility and say, I hurt Mommy or I hurt Daddy. I did some things that broke their trust, and I'm going to be working on trying to fix that if I can. And because of that, I know that Mommy's sad right now. And so if Mommy's sad, it's not because of you, it's because I did some things. But coming in together, we have decided how much information we need to share. What's developmentally appropriate for the child is going to be really, really important.

So real quick, before. Before you go on to what you're going to the next part, what you just said, I think is so important because had I had that experience, it would have helped me because again, I didn't question whether my parents loved me. But I'm trying to make sense of now. My parents are divorcing in. In my parents case. But if. Whether they were staying together, if that had not been talked about, then I would have been confused. Like, what happened during this phase and why is mom feeling this way? Or why is mom crying or what. What is this dynamic, the ability for the person who's acting out to say, I need to take some responsibility. I've created some through my behaviors. Pain in your mother in this situation or pain in your father if it was betrayed the other way. And acknowledging that is a, an accountability not just to your spouse, but it shows to your children a model of I can own my mistakes. And that is a very good model.

For healthy parenting and for any healthy relationship anywhere. It's okay. We do make mistakes and when we make mistakes we feel bad about it and then we try to repair and we try to change. And that is a really important formula with this. I think it's also really important to recognize disclosure usually isn't just a it's not a we talk about this one time and then it's done. It's a we talk about it and then kids are going to have questions and we talk about it and we continue to talk about it because we want to validate reality. And I know I'm jumping over here, but as we're, as you were talking on the divorce part of it for a lot of kids, the number one question they'll go to is what does that mean for me? Okay, one of my parents betrayed my other parent. What does that mean for me? Okay, you're telling me something immediately. Does that mean you're getting divorced? Who am I going to live with? That is where kids brains go because they, it's a survival instinct, right? Like okay, what happens next? What does that mean for me? And so being able to recognize our kids need to know as we disclose how that impacts them, what's going to happen for them. And when we're looking at preschool ages 3 to 5, they've often witnessed fighting but they don't know what happened. So they're going to say are you going to leave me? Are you going to die? Am I in trouble? Do you love me? Those are the questions they're asking. Five to six year old kids are thinking, is this my fault? Will something bad happen? Who are you? Now 9 to 13 year olds are thinking am I normal? Will I get this addiction because I have sexual feelings? Am I going to be an addict? Because you are what will happen to me if you get divorced? And teen and adult year questions are how could you do this? How could you do this to mom or to the family? How does this relate to me specifically? And how could you ruin my life? And so they're very different perspectives. Yes. And so understanding what age is my child? What are they going through developmentally and emotionally? And really we also really want to validate our kids emotions. And you know, when we come from a systems place as a therapist and kids start acting out at school, we Always have to look and say, what's going on in the system at home, what's going on in the family? And so I think one of the things we've talked so much about today is that this is an entire system issue. It's not just a mom and dad issue or a parent issue. This a betrayal of the entire family system. And so recognizing we have to look at how do we heal the entire system.

And if we go along with what you're just describing there, and I think it's really important, is that there are different developmental stages, that the children are going to have different questions based upon where they're at. And I think being aware of that, and that's why I think Stephanie's book Mending a Shattered Heart can be so helpful, is just talking about that. But. But let me talk about it in another way for a second. I talked earlier about parentifying a child. Questions like, what do you think mommy or daddy should do? Right now, I'm putting the burden on this child to make a response of, well, you should leave or you should stay. And I've heard many parents talk about, you know, or children like, my mom brought me in, or my dad brought me in. Do you think I should divorce her? Do you think I should divorce him? And so it's almost, again, that's the concept of parentifying, Bringing them into a role that really, it's not their. Their role to make a decision of whether you should stay or leave. And I've heard that throughout my entire career. And I would really caution parents about talking with the child, because let's say, just for example, one child says, oh, you know what, if you guys divorce, that's totally fine. You should do that. What about this younger child who says, I don't want my mommy and daddy to divorce? Now you've got one child saying this and another child saying this. And now the children are in opposition. And really, as you as a parent are making this decision, bringing them into what their opinion is, I believe it's a very important thing to avoid.

Yeah. And as we're Talking about that, Dr. Skinner, I have to acknowledge, I also. This is. This is such a fun place to be. As we're having these conversations, just to kind of notice, like, where I get a little bit of, like, ooh, if I were a client listening to this, what. What emotions would I have? Or what. What question would I have? And one of the things I. I think it's. I really want to validate is when you've been betrayed, it can be the hardest thing in the world to say, oh, great. Now let's sit down together and let's in a way figure out the best way to tell this to our kids. Just that thought I can, I know that there can be some rage that comes up. There can be so much hurt and so much pain about, oh, not only am I trying to deal with this and now you're asking me to sit down in a very nice, very thought out way, sit down with this person who's hurt me and sit down and talk to our kids about it. I just want to validate the emotions that may be coming up for some of our listeners with that because it's incredibly painful. It's the last thing that you ever want to do.

And I will always remember as a child when my parents sat me down and told me that they were divorcing. But there is an element of I knew something was going on. And I'll never forget that conversation. And truthfully, they probably won't either. The element as a child versus being a parent, those are hard conversations. It takes courage to stand up and say, I hurt your mom or dad. My behaviors were wrong and you didn't deserve that. Those are really important. Those things are hard to do, but when you do it, you're showing courage and you're also showing that I want to make amends or I want to repair some of the hurt that I've created. That conversation, whether you're going to stay married or not, and you need to prepare for and if there's anything I want to emphasize here, you don't wing that conversation. You might need to talk with a professional just to get the feedback of how do we do this appropriately so we don't harm the children. Because it's not one that you just go into willy nilly. This is a conversation of, you know, are we on the same page? Are we going to communicate the same things? Because if you're not communicating the same things, you really, you're going to go in and fight in front of your children.

Exactly.

And so making sure that again, put your children first, the things that need to be shared is we both love you, you matter. And there are things that are happening that are hard that we're trying to figure out and we might not have.

All the answers right now. If I can add on to this, and you talked about this a little bit earlier, making sure that I'm not putting my emotions on my children is paramount. It's not my kid's job to be my support. It's not my kids job to really hear about my emotions. I can say I'm feeling sad and I can teach my kids how to own my emotions, how to honor my emotions. And, and I'm gonna play some music right now because I feel sad or I'm, or I can. I want to model working through and regulating my emotions. But my job is to have appropriate support groups of my own age that I turn to with my emotions for my emotional support so that my kids, kids don't get developmentally eclipsed in their own development of oh, I gotta take care of mom, I gotta take care of my parent and their emotions. If the parent is taking, if the child is taking care of a parent's emotions, that means that child doesn't have the parent to pick them up when they fall down.

Which is why it's important in really that parents get support, outside professional support, a group support, a sponsor to make sure that you're sharing these deeper emotional challenges. So then when you are with your child you're able to be present and purposely there rather than trying to help, trying to navigate through your own emotions when your child is you know, obviously going to have their own emotions and their own experiences. And so a really important. I like this concept of making sure we've got outside support so we can be present with our children.

I want to bring one concept into that. And, and I love the way you phrase that Dr. Skinner Because I remember sitting in a support group and I remember the therapist saying ladies, sometimes all you can do is order a pizza for your kids for dinner and it's okay if you don't even, you know, you might just like say here, here's the pizza. They might sit on the floor and eat it while they're eating, while they're watching cartoons because you are so overwhelmed that you might just need to spend some time in your room crying and your kids are going to be okay. And hearing that in a support group situation from a therapist, it was like, oh, I have permission to not always be okay. And to know that yeah, I want to be present with my kids, but there are some times that I don't that, that I can't.

Yes.

Because there can be a lot of shame in that. And so having that validation of this is really, really hard, really important.

And you're going to need some time. You're going to need some time where you just simply do some self care because if you don't, it's really hard for the best. May have heard this. It's really hard to Give water when your bucket's empty. We need to do some self care to make sure we get some water ourselves.

Yeah. This is such a. I know this is a hard topic and I think it's such an important topic. I know as we get ready to close up that there is grief. This is a topic that we're talking about that is full of grief. My clients. So as I, as we started out, just the thing I hear so much is this is not how I want it to be. This is not what I imagined. And we have to grieve the loss of our hopes and dreams. We have to grieve where we're at.

And if I was to say from my own life experiences, I turned out okay, I think. And if I could give any advice is just don't quit. And more important is your children know that you love them and whether you're the person who is acting out or not. I love my parents. I love my mom and I love my dad. And there were elements that, no question, they hurt me as a child. But I remember a mom who was consistently, she loved us and she did the best she could and a dad who hurt us deeply, who never gave up. And so you might, as a parent, you might not have the language. You may not know how to do it. Hopefully today we've given you some insights on things that could be helpful. Make sure that you keep your internal self saying what's best for my child. And if you keep that at the forefront, you will focus on what questions, how to listen, how to understand. There'll be times where your children don't know what to say. And they may say I'm fine, but today they may be fine. And next week or next month they may be struggling. And so it's not a one time event, it's not a one time conversation. It's something that we continually to do over time. And to me, that is one of the more important concepts is we're consistently there. And when we have these hard conversations, we're not afraid. We're not afraid to say it's okay. We can talk about these hard things.

Even if we don't have the right words.

Even if we don't have the right words, love is powerful. Conversations are important. And we just consistently have these.

Yeah, I think as we wrap up Dr. Skinner, I want to just leave our listeners with hope. In the book the Power of Attachment by Diane Poole Heller. I think I got that right. I hope I did.

Yep.

She talks about some research that says that if we're there 30% of the time, like, if we're present with our kids 30% of the time, that. Not that that's all it takes, but you can still have some pretty good outcomes. It's about 30%. And so as we're saying, yeah, this can be overwhelming. It can be. It is devastating. And recognizing, as you said, if you can show your kids love, if you can show up, I'm hurting. I'm having a hard time going through some hard things right now. And I care about you. If we can show up even 30% of the time, we're doing a pretty good job.

Yeah. Well, thank you, Marianne. It's been very insightful. Hopefully, hopefully to our listeners, it's been insightful to you. And now as we get ready to close, I just want to invite everybody. This will be the last podcast before the Human Intimacy Conference and the Human Intimacy Conference, March 14th and 15th. If you have not signed up, this is your last opportunity to get 50% off. So 50 off, type it in, you'll get 58 off. Or actually, why don't you do this one? Do podcast 50 and do podcast 50 and I'll throw in one of a free course, any course on human intimacy that you want. You send me the name of the course and I will send you a registration for free if you sign up. So podcast 50 and I'll give you 50% off and any course on human intimacy that you want. So last opportunity for the conference, Michelle Mays, Dr. Sherry Denham Keffer, Marianne Michaelis Costa, Petra, George and many, many others are going to be presenting. Please join us. I'll tell you, you'll get a recording of it. You'll be able to watch the sessions that if you're going to miss any of them anyway, we invite you to come join us at the Human Intimacy Conference, healing and renewal, March 14th, 15th. And if you want more registration information, go to humanintimacy.com where you can learn about registration and we will look forward to having you join us again. Coupon code podcast50. Marianne, thank you so much. I appreciate you being with us in this topic. Really, really important topic.

Thank you, Dr. Skinner, and thanks to all of our listeners.