Caught in the Crossfire: Protecting and Supporting Kids with an Addicted Parent

Last week, I heard something that literally put a chill through my body and brought this topic to the surface. When I heard the story of this family, I thought of every single one of you because I know that this could be you. And I'm not trying to scare you, but I am trying to scare you. Last week, on my way home from work, I was listening to true crime like I often do. One of my favorites, who is Stephanie Harlowe— I have a lot of favorites, and she's definitely one of them. She's a great storyteller. I had no idea that this case was going to be relevant at all. It was just her newest video, so turn it on and listen to it. This is the case of a 2-year-old little girl named Parker Schultes. I hope I'm saying that last name right. I may be mispronouncing it. If so, let me know that in the comments. Anyways, this 2-year-old little girl ends up passing away after being left in a hot car strapped in a car seat for hours when the temperatures were over 100 degrees outside. Now, this got my attention for several reasons, but the reason I'm telling it to you is because of the addiction component. So let me tell you the Highlights of the story, but if you really want to hear the story told well, then you need to listen to Stephanie's video. I'm going to link it in the description, but heads up, if you are a person concerned about children living in an addicted household, this may be very triggering for you. So here are the highlights of the story. So can't remember what state these people were in, but it was a hot state. I don't know, like Arizona or something. There's a family, a husband, a wife, and they have 3 daughters, all under the age of 8, 5, and the youngest one I do know is 2 years old. years old, and her name was Parker. The mom was the main breadwinner. She was in the medical profession. I want to say she was an anesthesiologist or something like that. And the dad apparently stayed home and was the primary caregiver for these 3 daughters. So the story starts out where the dad, Christopher, was driving around on this really hot day. First, I think it's like he was supposedly going to a doctor's office to make some kind of doctor's appointment. Then he was maybe stopped at the gas station or something, I want to say. And then He stopped at the grocery store to get some things for dinner. Based on what he bought, sounded like he was making tacos. Anyways, what's important about this part of the story is that you can watch that video footage and see that he actually is shoplifting alcohol. But this is particularly interesting because it's clear that he has money to purchase alcohol. So the first question is, is why is he shoplifting it? Because he pays for other things, but not for the alcohol. Immediately when I heard this part of the story, because you guys know, because of what I do, I have a sketch dart brain. And immediately my thought was, he's trying to get that alcohol in a way that his wife can't see it. I just couldn't think in my mind any other reason because he has the money to pay for it. And I was like, he doesn't want it on that receipt. And so immediately I knew he's trying to make sure that the wife didn't know he was drinking, which let me know that alcohol is a problem in this family. So I think it's on the gas station footage where you can see him go into the restroom and he's holding like a certain amount of alcohol, but he comes out and he has less. So it's pretty clear. That he chugged some of that when he was in the bathroom, which means not only is he shoplifting alcohol, but he is drinking and driving this 2-year-old little child around in a car. Then he goes to the grocery store or whatever. He buys stuff. Sounds like they're gonna have tacos or something for dinner. And he pays for all that, but he doesn't pay for the alcohol that he gets. So again, we have this pattern of shoplifting alcohol. Anyways, Christopher drives home. The other 2 little girls sort of pull up in the driveway right when he's pulling up. I think they had been with a friend or something like a neighbor, and they went to a water park. The other 2 girls go in the house. He takes the groceries or whatever it is into the house, and he leaves this 2-year-old child, Parker, in the car strapped in her car seat. Now, according to him, she was asleep and he didn't want to wake her up, and he left the car running. And a few hours later, the wife, Erica, comes home and she says, hey, where's Parker? And he says, I don't know, she's probably playing. And then they look, and then he's like, oh my God, she's in the car. So the mom runs out to the car. She finds Parker still strapped into the car seat, In the backseat of the car, in the direct sunlight, non-responsive. And of course, immediately she knows what is happening because she's a doctor. So of course, they call 911, she starts CPR. And if you watch Stephanie's video, you can hear the 911 call and you can see the body cam footage of when the first responders show up. But I'm telling you, it's triggering. So proceed with caution here. So when the first responders are asking him questions about what happened, he says, you know, she was in the car, she was asleep. I think she was out there 30 to 45 minutes. left the air running, but my car has this thing where the air kicks off, which is important because it's a piece of evidence that shows that he knows that the car kicks off. He says she's only out there like 45 minutes, but the evidence shows that she was out there for over 2 hours, like a long time in the record heat. It is absolutely heartbreaking. I know this story is bad enough already, but that's not even why I'm telling you this story. I'm telling you this story because of the complicated family peace dynamic. Because this little girl died, there naturally is an investigation, and this investigation shows that this wasn't just a one-time thing, that this whole leaving the kid in a hot car was an ongoing, longstanding problem, and the mother knew about it. I don't think it's happened yet, but I won't be surprised if charges are not going to be pressed against the mom as well. Because as they're investigating, of course, one of the things they do is they take, you know, they look at all the past messages in your phone and all that kind of stuff. So they're looking at messages between this mom, the Erica, and the dad, Christopher. And you could see there was, there'd been a long history of problems with the alcohol, arguing back and forth. Apparently there had also been a cocaine problem. There was a history of him being apparently mean or aggressive when intoxicated, and definitely of making really bad choices. Because there was even a text between the mom while she was in the ambulance going to the hospital with this child to Christopher, the dad, saying, I can't believe you did this. We've talked about this before. I told you not to leave them in the car. You killed our baby. It's just terrible, but it is It is clear that this had been a longstanding problem. In fact, there was some interviews with the older kids who said that this had been a problem, that the dad had left them in the car many times and that they would have to scream really loudly to get his attention to come and let them out of the car. So this had been a longstanding problem, and it was obvious that the mom knew about it. It's complicated and it's hard, and she's working all these hours a week, and he's the one that takes care of the kids. And of course she wants to believe in him. And I don't know for sure, but in my mind, I'm imagining that she's like, thinks that he's dealing with this. And that he's gotten it under control. And the reason I think that is because he's sneaking around to get the alcohol by not purchasing it, not leaving the record of it, which means that she's really watching over it. And so in her mind, like she's watching it, it's better. It's, you know, he's dealing with the problem, that kind of thing. But obviously secretly he wasn't exactly dealing with that problem and it was still happening. This just got to me for a lot of reasons. We deal with these kinds of cases every day with people who are married to someone who has a substance abuse problem. They're trying to figure out how to help, how to set boundaries, how to protect the kids, how to, what to say, what to do. How to find help. And honest to goodness, when I heard the story of this family, I thought of every single one of you because I know that this could be you. When it comes to children who are being taken care of by a parent with an addiction, you have to deal with the safety first. And so when there's a clear and imminent issue involving safety, you just do what you need to do to keep them safe. You physically intervene, you take the kids, you report them, whatever you need to do to intervene to keep a kid safe, you take that action. If your concern is about a parent who has a drinking problem, and maybe even you're divorced from that parent, you're separated from that parent, or you're concerned about what's happening when you're not there. Soberlink is a great option for this. In fact, it is the best option that I know about to ensure the safety of a child when you're dealing with alcoholism. Soberlink is frequently used in court cases and custody situations because it gives you that peace of mind knowing what's happening. What Soberlink is, if you've not heard me talk about that before, it is an alcohol monitoring system. Let me show you what it looks like. Here it is. This is it. This is a Soberlink. It's not just a breathalyzing device. It is a breathalyzing device, but it's more than that. It's a whole system. You can buy a breathalyzing device anywhere. You can order them on Amazon. And yeah, they work. They'll give you the alcohol test number or whatever, but I'm recommending Soberlink because this works as a preventative, which is very important. You're not trying to catch someone making a bad decision, especially When it comes to a situation where children's safety is involved, I'm not trying to catch you after the fact. You're trying to prevent it from happening in the first place, and Soberlink does that. The way that it works is there's a schedule set up for the person to be tested, usually to start out with three times a day: in the morning when they wake up, before bed, and somewhere in the middle. The good thing about Soberlink is it's flexible, so you can make it work with someone's schedule. You can make that schedule different each day if need be. Then the person gets a text message that reminds them that they have to take a test, and they have. You have an hour to take it before it's considered late or missed or anything like that, which is what makes it so doable because you can do regular life and make that work. You know, if you've got a whole hour, you can excuse yourself to go to the restroom or something like that. It gives you the ability to kind of step back, take the test. It literally takes 20 seconds, nothing to it. And then when you take the test, the results are uploaded to the Soberlink cloud, kind of like the iCloud. And those results can then be communicated automatically to whoever is set up as a support system. So maybe if it's a parent and they're separated or something, those results, maybe they go to the other parent. Maybe they go to the person's sponsor, to the person's counselor, whoever it is that's kind of managing the situation. And yes, they can go to multiple people if need be. It has facial recognition inside the device, which means you can't use some kind of alternate source of air. I've had people try. It's taking a picture. It knows it's not your face. You can't have a friend do it. You can't have, you can't do any kind of sneaky, weird thing because the facial recognition is going to pick up on that. There are other systems out But Soberlink is the most locked down, difficult to get around. You're not going to cheat this thing. I'm going to put the link to Soberlink also in the description. And if you use my link, you'll go to a page where I explain to you all of the behind the scenes. You can see how it's set up. You can see how it works, all the stuff. And I think you also get like a big discount. I think it's like $50 or something if you use that link. Anyways, all those resources are in description below. But the reality of it is that sometimes it's not always black and white. Sometimes it's more like, what is the long-term psychological impact of this. And maybe sometimes you're dealing with kids who don't even know that there's an addiction going on. And so it's easy to tell yourself, well, it's not even affecting them. They're not even old enough to know. They don't even get it. But what about the dynamics between the 2 parents? How much is that affecting the kids? It gets really gray, right? It is a big, huge, very complicated issue. And I wish that I had some blanket statement for you, but I don't. What I do have for you is when there is a clear physical safety issue involved, you deal with that first. You take everything else I say and you put it over here on hold and you deal with the safety And then once that immediate issue is dealt with, then you can kind of move back over into my techniques about how to get through to someone, not play the bad guy, all that kind of stuff. I can tell you that more than 20 years of dealing with people who have addictions, when someone's child is upset with them because of their addiction, they almost always blame the other parent and say that the other parent has pit the kid against them. And occasionally the other parent has done some things to kind of throw the addictive parent under the bus. But most of the time, the kid can see it for themselves. They may not know exactly what the parent is doing, but they know that there's an issue and they don't like how the other parent is behaving and they don't like that it's inconsistent and they get upset all by themselves. And it's not necessarily someone like trying to tell them things to turn them against their addicted parent. They can see it. It's just really hard to acknowledge that to yourself, that yes, what you're doing is impacting your kid negatively. And yes, they can see it and they're being upset with you is coming from them and not necessarily some outside source. That's just part of that whole denial mechanism. We have a lot of videos on this channel talking about that. So if you're dealing with that kind of denial, check out that playlist on denial. It'll help you understand all those different layers. And so you're faced with this issue, you know, how do I listen to the kid but not throw the other parent under the bus? How much do I tell them? How much do I not tell them? You know, when do I say, I'm not letting you see that parent anymore? I'm not letting you go over. And, you know, I know, I know it's hard because it's like, well, am I causing them damage by not letting them see the other parent? I know, I get it. You are faced with a million difficult decisions and because each of your situations is slightly different. I don't have a way to tell you on a video exactly what to do. In fact, I've thought of a lot of different safety situations, but I had never thought about how addiction could lead to a child being left in a car unattended. It just didn't really pop in my head. You know, of course you think about, you know, drinking and driving. You think about like domestic violence. You think about some of these other ways about being exposed to drugs, being exposed to other drug users, all these ways. But that's what I mean when I say there's all these situations that can occur that are just frightening. If you are faced with a situation like this and you need a sounding board or someone to think through these situations with, we do have family coaches who are experts in dealing with addictive family dynamics. You can set up a consultation with them and they will be happy to help think through your situation with you, bringing in all of those complicated dynamics, like all the different players involved, the dynamics between everyone, the ages of the children, the specific concerns that you have. If you need some help thinking through that, I will put the links in the description below. I know that this is a very sensitive and difficult topic. I hope it's been helpful for you. Let me know what you think in the comments below and definitely check out all of those resources.