The Akiona Law Podcast: Featuring Jennifer Keilin

In this episode of the Akiona Law podcast, Ululani “Lani” Akiona speaks with Jennifer Keilin, MSW, LICSW, a Washington-based mental health specialist with over two decades of experience helping families transition from conflict to cooperation. Ululani and Jennifer dive into the nuance of high-conflict family dynamics, distinguishing between justified rejection and parental alienation, and emphasizing why a child’s mental health and trauma-informed care must take center stage. Tune in for an empathetic, deeply informative discussion on restoring family connections.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Aciona Law Podcast wherein we talk about anything and everything that intersects in the areas of family law and divorce. I am Lonnie Aciona, and today I'm excited to introduce you to my guest. She is Jennifer Kylan. She has an MSW and an L I C SW. She is a Washington-based mental health specialist with over two decades of experience helping families transition from conflict to cooperation. She specializes in court-involved family dynamics, high conflict co-parenting, and comprehensive family assessments using a blend of clinical analysis and compassionate counseling. Jennifer has been a speaker and presenter at many Washington family law continuing legal educations. I have used her in cases before. She is great. She has just this wealth of information and knowledge. And I'm so excited to have her on today, especially since this is her first time doing a podcast. Welcome, Jennifer.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Thank you so much. That was so kind. I'm I'm really happy to be here today. It's a pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Well, I've always enjoyed your presentations at our continuing legal educations, our CLEs. And it's just you just, you know, the in the areas of high, oh gosh, I just lost my in the areas of um parent-child contact problems, formerly known as parental alienation. The the wealth of knowledge that you have is just amazing. Can you tell us a little bit though before we get started about like what how you got into doing this work?

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Yeah. Um, so I um let's see, broadly speaking, when I got out of uh my graduate degree program, I started working for um child welfare services, um, doing um child protective services investigation. And through that, I met a forensic psychologist here in Seattle, and I started working um in his office supporting him with um the uh psychological assessments that he was doing. And he did parenting evaluations and GAL work, et cetera. And so I would one second.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

For G A L, that means guardian and lightum.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Yes, thank you. Guardian and lightum work, um, investigations. And so I just received a wealth of training and information that built onto the um practices that I'd already done with families, you know, through investigations, et cetera. And so um in 2003, I went into private practice and I was primarily conducting parenting evaluations and guardian and lightum investigations. Over time in the field, I saw, I like to think I've seen almost every kind of family there is, although families keep changing. So um I probably haven't, and saw just a lot of different problems. And over time, the higher conflict families became an increasing um focus for the legal field and for myself as well. And then more and more the phenomenon of these parent-child contact problems became a more pressing concern. And over time, my practice evolved from doing the investigations to wanting to do the interventions. I wanted to help the families where they were at. And so for the last, you know, five or six years, that's primarily the work that I've been doing, is working with families that are involved in family law cases, um, with a pretty significant percentage of them, ones where a child is refusing or really resisting contact with the parent.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

Oh, thank you for that. And you touched upon parent-child contact problems. And in the legal industry, we love to use acronyms, so it's called PC PCCP for short, correct. Child contact problems. And you know, these these terms have been bandied about, right? First it was um parental alienation, and then it's also justified rejection. Now, does that that all falls under the umbrella of parent-child contact problems, correct?

SPEAKER_00 4:40

Yes, yes. Anytime you have a parent and a child that there's some sort of challenge with their their contact together, um, that's the big umbrella category for the variety of um things that explain that behavior. So justified rejection might explain that behavior. A small, small, small percentage of cases, it is truly parental alienation. Um, a lot of cases, the majority of cases we find it's uh what we call hybrid, where it's a mix of behaviors uh between two parents and a child and other factors as well. But they all go into the category of PCCP.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

Okay. So when when you see these, can can you go a little bit into justified rejection and like what have you seen? What does that mean?

SPEAKER_00 5:37

Yeah, so justified rejection is a category where um a child refuses contact with the parent because of something that the parent has done that is the primary driving factor, like far and away the largest factor. So it might be abuse, um, it might be some sort of really poor parenting that interacts with the child's particular vulnerabilities that create a situation where that you know the child just cannot manage the contact. But it's not because the other parent has contributed to undermining the relationship or um you know behave badly. It's it's because of the direct experience that the child has had with that parent.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

So, so uh let me just try and clarify this. So let's just say we have mom and dad, and let's say dad is a primary parent, and mom, let's just say she has mental health issues, and because of her mental health issues, she is unable to give her child the um, I don't know, I don't want to say the proper parenting, but you know, in a way, the proper nurturing and support that a child needs. And so the child no longer wants to see mom and has nothing to do with dad. Right. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:09

Yeah. And in a situation like that, you could have a parent with mental health issues that's unreliable, that when they are present, they're just really uh difficult personality that is overwhelming for the child, etc. Those kinds of interactions, yeah, that the the child just isn't uh is not able to cope with that.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

Well, because because the child, in a way, when the child has to parent the parent, the child is still safe and secure.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

Okay, so thank you. That really helps in understanding parent-child contact problems and justified rejection, where it is the child in a way rejecting the parent, saying, You're just too unstable for me. And it's nothing to do with, let's say, dad. Okay, so let's flip it around where we have parental alienation. And that's that's a big term that's bandied about in in corpus. And I've used it myself. Sure. Can you and I swear I've only used it when it was when it was justified. Of course. But can you explain to our listeners out there what is parental alienation?

SPEAKER_00 8:21

Um, yeah, so parental alienation, the the concept is that um the that the the the parent and the child that are having the contact problem, that actually, if it were not for the behaviors of the other parent undermining and and intentionally damaging the relationship, they would not have a problem. So it's that you know, this parent has adequate parenting, this child has a you know good experience with this parent, um, but there's the other parent that is manipulating and um undermining the relationship so that the you know child may become fearful or overly aligned, or they so they end up rejecting the parent, not again, not because of their direct experiences with the parent and not because of that parent's you know own challenges or own parenting.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Got it. So to break it down and to do my example again. So again, we've got dad and mom. And now mom mom doesn't have any issues. She's she you know, she's uh doesn't have any substance abuse issues, that doesn't have mental health issues, she's an adequate, capable, and loving parent. But dad is the one who is now, in a way, I guess, bad mouthing mom in front of the child. Um, so when dad does that, dad is in a way manipulating child to see mom as like the bad person. Right. The child now is like, no, I don't want to spend time with you, mom. And has nothing to do with mom. It's because the child is being so heavily influenced and manipulated by the father.

SPEAKER_00 10:11

Yeah, it's generally a full-on campaign.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

It's a campaign.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

Um, yeah, and some, you know, we see it in a number of ways. We see it through false allegations of sexual abuse, um, where a child has um, you know, been um told, so to speak, what what happened to them, you know, by this other parent, by the parent that's um alienating. And so doing the alienating behavior. So it, you know, it's just it can be a whole gamut of ways that a parent um engages in those kinds of behaviors, but it ends up often where a child is, you know, they gotta choose one parent or the other, you know, and so they will uh they can be manipulated in that way. Now I want to be clear that that that's that is a very, very small slice of the folks that we see. It tends to be a very small, very small slice. Yeah, that is not um by any means the majority. Um what what I will say, uh sometimes we have problems with language because if we if um if PCCP is the category and a subcategory is parental alienation, there's another um word that we call or concept that we call parental alienating behaviors. And so that would be that's a subset of damaging behaviors that a parent engages in um through the child that can impact the child, but though it's the I would I would say I would put parental alienation behaviors, um, parental alienating behaviors on a spectrum of, you know, like one to 10. And so a child that's been where it's all parental alienation, that would be a 10. That's a parent, you know, really, really campaigning, really doing a lot of things. Um, but there's a lot of lower level behaviors that we we will see those in cases of where there's um parent-child contact problems, but they don't rise all the way to the full level of parental alienating the child. Okay. So they're not as the behaviors aren't as severe. They might be some. And honestly, a lot of parents engage in, both parents engage in parental alienating behaviors in many ways. Both parents are, um, it's not uncommon for both parents to badmouth the other parent to the child. I mean, technically that's that's a parental alienating behavior, right? We don't want any parent to do that. But it's most people, you know, they're not trying to be a bad person, but they're caught up in their own experience. And so they let things slide, they let things slip, right? So it's so it really has to be um, so so we do see those kinds of behaviors and want as a uh, you know, working with these families. I'm always wanting to clean those up, but truthfully, we do see those from both sides where you know people are just they're making mistakes, but they're not trying to undermine the relationship and have, you know, only this child love only them, and 100% reject the other parent for their own emotional needs. That is that is not where most parents are.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

Wow, that's that's uh so I didn't I didn't realize, well, I guess I should have realized, but it just seems like in family law, you know, it's those high conflict cases that are just you know, they wouldn't be in court unless it's high conflict. And that's normally where I've seen that parental alienation, alienating, the actual parental alienation. And um you, you know, to to be open, I've I'm at the tail end of a two-year divorce um of a 25-year marriage, and uh my husband, my spouse engaged in parental alienating behavior, and you know, just for the listeners out there, what it was it was involving our child who was when the process started, he was 16 years old, he was a junior in high school. It was involving him directly in the proceedings, every single proceeding that happened that he involved um my child in, and it was you and the blame was on me. Your mother did this, your mother this, and it was aligning my child with him. And I was rejected, and it's it's tough, it's tough when you go from being a primary parent to being the favored parent to then being the excluded parent, where you know, three where like a month would go by and I would see my child for two hours. And he was 16 and he was driving, and it's one of he's in one of those gray areas that it's hard to have visits, but it's yeah, it's it's tough. I had I it is I had less time than someone who was going through addiction issues and has supervised visits.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

Yeah. Yeah, it's it is really hard. Um therapeutically, you know, when I work with families where a child is in that age group, yeah. I I think about their developmental stage and you know, where are they at? Where of all the things on their, you know, list of things to do in a day, do they want to deal with mom and dad stuff? Nope. You know, they want to do other stuff. And it's um it's a really it's just a really difficult time developmentally to engage kids in a solution. They they just want it all to go away. And and that's um oftentimes their problem-solving mechanism. I'll just ignore it. And then, and eventually it's not gonna be an issue. And they're right, because in a couple years, they'll be in maybe college or you know, things will be different. And so um it's it's really hard. I have a difficult time engaging kids in that age group with um, but future you is gonna really be grateful that today you was part of the solution, you know. They're uh some kids do it, some kids buy in, some kids less. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

Well, and this is this is what I realized too. And um I'm just telling the listeners out there, you know, it is an incredibly painful experience. And it that's it wasn't the the marriage was ending that caused me that I that I was grieving. It was a loss of my relationship with my son because I was the one that left the family home because I had to get out. But I I see now that in a way my son had to align with his father because he had no choice, he was in that home and he was stuck in that home. And in a way, it was his own survival mechanism. Not only that, I was the safe parent because my son knew deep down inside that I loved him unconditionally and that I would always be there for him, and that's one thing I had to I had to keep on reaching out, telling him that I loved him. Um just trying to trying to see him. And so, in that situation, um, you know, I just had to accept the fact that he was doing what he needed to do to survive.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

Yeah. So it's it's interesting how many kids are so rejecting of a parent and then they're so mad when that parent doesn't try, you know. Why didn't they why didn't I even get a birthday card, which I probably would have thrown away, you know, and and kids are so because they're kids, you know, they want they want to be invited, they don't necessarily want to go to the party. And so, and it's really hard for a parent, a lot of parents. One of the challenges that I see with parents is that there's often what I would call counter-rejecting behavior. Um, you know, parents are human, they get their feelings hurt, yeah. They um, you know, can can engage in I oh you rejected me. Fine, you know, I I'm I'm upset too, you know, and it's human and and it's really hard. It it's um can't it's just not the best solution. No, it's and there's no good solution, right? But that's not that's definitely not a good one.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

You know, I think I'm I'm lucky because what because I do what I do, I was able to connect with some other experienced individuals. Um, for example, Karen Bennell, yeah, really known in the Washington in here in Washington as being one of the forerunners of the um, oh gosh, of being a collaborative. Well, yeah, being just a specialist in in parent, uh parent-child coaching. Yes. And so she she was the one that encouraged me, keep on reaching out to your child. It doesn't matter if your child continues to reject you, keep on reaching so, folks. That's what I'm telling you right now. If you're in that position that you're the rejected parent, keep on reaching out to your child, keep on saying that you love them, keep it keep inviting them to do to do things because your child does need that. Let you let your child know that you love them unconditionally and um let them know that you're you're proud of them. Like I would tell my son, you know, I'm just proud of you for being um an amazing person. I love the fact that you have such a generous and kind, caring spirit. So it's not tied into um his achievements or something because you did work with sports. So let's transition over to in these justified rejection cases, going back to where maybe a parent has substance abuse mental health problems, or they're not there to be that the appropriate caregiver or the show up, you know, there's chaos. What's the challenges that you see when there's legitimate reasons for a child rejecting a parent, but the the trauma doesn't reach the criteria for a CPS involvement or criminal abuse? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

You know, um, we don't we don't have a good path. We have a really good path for, oh, your parenting skills weren't very good and you made some mistakes, but your child, you know, you have some good um, you know, a good relationship structure underneath with your child, and we think that you can um grow and and develop skills and and and do better parenting with your child. There's we feel good, there's hope for that. Uh a lot of hope for that. Um, and then there's this other subset where um a parent has uh you know mostly injured a child enough that the the child says no. And I my experience is that there is inherent pressure to find a way to reconnect these two, um, although we don't have a very good path for it. So um in in trauma informed care, the the person that's been wounded is or injured is the one that leads the the pet the process, right? I seek help, I seek treatment and recovery to heal. And then I'm going to be in charge of the outreach. In the world of divorce, that's really hard, right? Because there, the court wants to put a schedule on it, they want to put a process in place. And it's there's just there's just pressure to come up with a solution. Um, if you have a 15-year-old that's saying, I don't want to see my dad, my dad was violent, and you know, I had all these bad experiences, and um, I just don't want to, and it's I'm not gonna.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

But the violence doesn't rise to the level where we trigger CPS or criminal case.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

It doesn't rise to a level of a criminal case, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

And yelling.

unknown 22:57

Right.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

Yeah, maybe um, you know, I would I would say domestic violence that is not uncommon in our families. Um, it's less common. We let's see, domestic violence is sadly relatively common in our families. Um, and within that, there's a subset of kids that say, because of the way that you behaved, right? I don't want contact with you. Um, you know, for the parent, for the other parent, if there's been domestic violence, the court's like, oh yeah, we're not, we're not gonna make you have contact with that parent. Let's issue read, you know, a protection order or whatever. Right. Um, but then with kids, they look for, well, how can I keep the kids safe, but still allow for contact. And and I I always want to have figure out how to preserve, you know, how to create this physical and emotional safety. So limit the bad, but preserve con, you know, access to the good.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

Um, but if you look at domestic violence and coercive control as an aspect of that, you have someone, you have a parent that's that's you know, been violent and controlling, and now you have a child who's pushing back on that, saying, I'm not, I don't want to be controlled anymore. I'm gonna say no. And again, trauma-informed care would be, oh yeah, you, you need to be able to choose the path forward because you as a as a victim of domestic violence, and isn't this child also a victim? You know, that's what um we would want for them. Um so the so the challenge is how do we how do we put get put the kid on a path to healing, put the parent on a path to intervention, and then at what point how do we figure out how to get them back together? Right. And so I don't have a very good answer for that other than um it's it's just I think for me, it's just the trickiest place because we societally we are more and more wanting to hear from our kids. We want them to put boundaries, we don't want them to just do what adults tell them to do. You know, we want our kids to speak up, right? And then and then we have a problem that they have with the parent. And then we're not, we're just not really sure what the best best path is. And if it weren't for family court, probably they could go away and just ultimately figure out a solution. The parent could get treatment and heal, you know, change, the kid could get healing and then um find their way back together. But that's a lot of ifs, right? Yeah. And so I'm just speaking out into the you know wilderness here that this is where it gets, it's just very tricky. And if there had been, if it had read to let risen to the level of a criminal case, right, then it wouldn't be in question. Yeah if the kid, you know, what what this child had to do, did they have to have contact? We do have kids that respond to forced contact through um self-harm or threats of self-harm. And one of the because we're in the litigation space, a challenge is always who's who's driving that? Is it is it the um the unsupported the parent that doesn't support contact between the child and and the rejected parent, right? Are they are they encouraging the kid, you know, to to self-harm or to act out or to do something so that they don't have, you know, it's a solution for the the parent and the aligned child. Um we don't we can't tell. And so I think I think um when as as therapists, when I have um contact with the kid that I feel like their mental health is not stable, like they might, you know, they might self-harm, they are acting out, you know, there's some vulnerability that they have. I am much more inclined to say, look, this kid just needs to be the focus. This kid's mental health has to be the focus. And I'm gonna worry about repairing a relationship with the rejected parent at a different time. That's tomorrow's problem. Today's problem right now is how do we stabilize this child, get this child feeling safe and um just just solid, you know? So therapy, so fortunately, therapeutically, I just I feel like if I of those two choices, there's not a lot of great choices, but of those two choices, I do think that there's lots of more and more reasons to um be conservative, frankly, and decide with ensuring the child's stable mental health. And yes, sometimes that means a bad actor gets away with bad acting, right? Like another parent that's missed that's not being fully supportive. Um, because we can't we can't handle everything and we don't know everything. So I sometimes bad things happen to good people, right? Kind of like your experience, right? Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 28:33

And so we were just kind of in in we were talking under the umbrella of justify rejection cases. Right. Okay. So the the next that's very I I know such a it's such a hard dilemma. What about what are your concerns regarding cases who have with kids who have experienced trauma or abuse at the hands of a caregiver, but yet they're in court ordered to maintain that contact with that parent. So we're kind of dovetailing off what we just talked about.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

I think that um I think that when we can when we can get a child, when we can facilitate a child to having contact with the parent, I want to do that. I do want to rally folks, um, the parent, the the child, whoever's in the parent's orbit to support that. Um I do, and again, there's a lot of parents, nobody's ever the worst mistake they ever made, right? Like that's that's just not who people are. And so a lot of people make mistakes and they can um learn from that and come back from that. I do believe parents love their children at their core, right? And they want to be a good parent for that child. And so um, so I have a lot of um hope and faith in the the tools to bring people back together. Um, I think the most difficult part is when a child is just flat out saying, no, not gonna do it. And they're court ordered, yeah. And they um, you know, so a lot of a lot of kids. I actually wish we knew the percentage of kids, right? That was that was just flat out refusing, you know, and the the um aligned parent is saying, I'm doing everything I can, I can't I can't get them there.

SPEAKER_01 30:41

Um especially when it's teenagers like a 16-year-old boy.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

Yeah, yeah. I don't um I think that if we if if we in the um field had great confidence that the aligned parent or the favored parent had done everything that they could, right, and the kid just wasn't gonna do it.

SPEAKER_01 31:08

Right.

SPEAKER_00 31:09

Um and I and I've said things to parents like, okay, well, if your child refuses contact with the other parent, you can't force them, but you can't reward them. Your job then is they don't get to stay home and play video games.

SPEAKER_01 31:23

Right.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

Right? Like they don't get to stay home and yeah, exactly. This is not, they are not following your um, you know, your expectations for them. So how do you respond to that? Right. So I do think that, you know, and if if I had 100% confidence that a parent was doing those things and the child still wasn't gonna go, um then and then you know, I that's a different place than if you feel like the other parent, you know, just the favored parent just isn't supportive.

SPEAKER_01 31:58

Right.

SPEAKER_00 31:58

And if you're a rejected parent, you are never gonna believe that favored parent is a hundred percent supportive, right?

SPEAKER_01 32:04

Right.

SPEAKER_00 32:05

So everybody has slightly different points of view, and then you have a kid at the center, you know, and so it's all I always hesitate when I think about, and I'll I will admit I call the legal process a meat grinder for families. I just think that the all the pressures that go on the parents that come down to the kids, um, I don't always know what the right thing is, right?

SPEAKER_01 32:35

So well, what an okay, so so we're in that situation, right, where the favored parent, the aligned parent, is doing everything they can to get the kid to go. And this kid who's a teenager doesn't want to go to the rejected parent because that there's a viable, it's a justified rejection, like you were saying. So let's just say that that parent was emotionally and verbally abusive, and the child's like, no, I don't, I don't want to go. Now, wouldn't the couldn't a solution be that the child and that rejected parent do do counseling together or individual counseling?

SPEAKER_00 33:12

I mean, it could be okay if if the child is willing to consent to that. Okay. Um, you know, a lot of kids are ethically we're you know, they're supposed to consent, right? You can you can say yes or no to treatment. And so if a kid says no, I'm not gonna do it, they're not actually a party to the case, right? They're not under court order.

SPEAKER_01 33:41

Right.

SPEAKER_00 33:42

And so um as a therapist, I if if a child says I'm not, I'm not gonna participate, I can't, I can't make them, right? Right. And so, and this, you know, this happens in cases where it's more more um mixed, you know, more hybrid, right? Where it's some some bad parenting or poor, some un I'll call it unskilled, some unskilled parenting and some, you know, unskilled responding by the other parent, right? Like the it's the waters are a little muddy. And then again, you have a child that's saying, you know, I'm not I'm not gonna do this. And um in the as as there's you know, when they're 16 and older, I am I myself am have greater reluctance to um to engage in behavior that I feel is coercive to a child, right? To to really pressure them or to, you know, if if you if I can't find a way for a kid to buy in, then you know, it's it's tough. And I I have a um like one family have a teen that's 17, and I've just I've asked, you know, here's here's what I think I can help you with, um, with you know, your parent. And I might you might not feel like you ever want to have contact with your parent. You'll probably have a little though throughout your life, right? There's you have a sibling, it'll be holidays or whatever. So you'll probably have some, and maybe the best thing that we can get for you out of this process is for you to develop skills to manage when you do have contact with the parent, when you do have to spend time. So to limit the vulnerability, to maximize your ability to get something good, and then to be able to leave, you know, when you're done with it. And if that's that to me, that's that's worth helping you get, if that's a skill you would like to acquire. Um, and so far, this 17-year-old is is buying in. Not gone well, not like, yeah, I'm totally into this, but I'm not saying no. And I'll take that.

SPEAKER_01 35:59

I like that. I mean, that's a good way to tell your child in terms of the counseling, like, look, this is to help you do like I know you're upset with your, you know, with the other parent, and this counseling, this meeting with this therapist is to help you develop skills. And we all need skills to to handle uh life and situations and problems. Yeah, and well, and a way to develop skills, particularly to handle this parent, because it's all about um, like you said, vulnerability, emotional disregulation when I'm around that parent, and what can I do where if I'm in that space, I can be grounded and and steady and stable.

SPEAKER_00 36:47

Yeah, yeah, secure. Yeah. What I wish I could tell kids was this personality that you're avoiding, yeah, you will you will this personality will find you for the rest of your life and other people in other forms. It's not, it doesn't go away. So you know, and I get it, you don't want to deal with this today, yeah. Like, you know, and that's fine, but it it, you know, it's it's not just that parent, like it genuinely is yeah, a pattern of coping that will just keep presenting itself to you. So you might as well just deal with it now because it's not gonna go away. You're gonna save yourself a lot of therapy dollars later on. A lot of therapy. You could, right? So um, you know, and some kids are yeah, they they kind of get it. They're like, yeah, yeah, I all right. It does, they feel like it's probably best for me. This is probably a good idea. And some other some other kids are what I call spicy and they're just angry. Yeah, they're just you know, they're angry, they don't want to deal with it, they they got strong feelings, and um so and I I'll so a small subset of the cases that we see are justified rejection, but a lot of them are more parents and a a parent and a child that had a number of bad interactions and that that can be solved, you know, that can be remedied, and um trying to find the sweet spot of is is the child still amenable to this process and amenable by age or by personality or anger, what what you know, whatever it is, will they buy into this? And and will their uh you know um favored parent also be supportive and say, this is really better for you long term, right? And I honestly I do find most I find most parents do do express a wish for their child to have a good relationship with the other parent. Yeah. They the other parent doesn't feel that. Okay, they don't they don't believe it, you know, which is fair. It's litigation, everybody's against each other.

SPEAKER_01 39:19

It is, and uh you said it appropriately, it is it's a family court system. When families are in conflict, it's a meat grinder and we don't have perfect solutions. It's not good.

SPEAKER_00 39:32

So trying though, we do try, and that's what I do like about you know the system. And I like that with you know the trainings that I've given that I've gone to about all this. I mean, people genuinely care. This is a really common problem, it's a really common problem, and people care because they don't they hate these cases, but people care because it's touched them, right? Like a lot of people have had this experience or they know someone who is having it, and it's yeah, it's just it's it's pretty, pretty common.

SPEAKER_01 40:06

It's true. And we this is a this is a tough line to be in, and you don't do this work unless you care.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

I would agree. Yeah, I hope we all do work that we care about, but but there is for me, I always um I like work that I call chewy, where it's it's like engages your brain and you gotta think about it, and it's not easy necessarily, you know, it's not just plug and play, but you're always going back to the drawing board with like, hmm, how what what about this family? You know, what what would work for them kind of thing? Um, you know, it does engage me. I do care.

SPEAKER_01 40:46

Yeah. Do you have any? I mean, you've been doing this for 20 years, over 20 years. Do you have any um, I don't know, I guess any any final thoughts or or insights you you want to share about your practice and how parents can parents who are caught in this dynamic of these parent-child contact problems, PCCP. What would you say, I guess, to the parent who is the the rejected parent?

SPEAKER_00 41:16

Yeah. Can I share a success story? Oh, please. Okay, good. So um I have a success success story that um was really early on in my work with with families. So I don't know, pretty early on. And um it was a family where you know, divorced mom, dad, two kids, and there had been domestic violence, there was just a lot of high conflict. This was this is a family that needed like a parenting coordinator to help them, you know, make agreements. And um, it was it a couple of parenting evaluations, like there was um a lot, a lot of problems. And um the the mom was the favorite parent, and she reached out to me a few years ago, so it was maybe maybe like 10 years on. And she just said, Look, I just want you to give an update. Here we are on a beach in Hawaii, and it's me, my new husband, my two kids, my ex, his girlfriend. Yeah, and we're all you know, having a great time. Um, you know, something happened over the amount of time that we worked together, where my ex just, you know, just things changed. Okay, and we were able to work together. He's come, he stayed in my house, he's watched the kids, you know, when I traveled, like um, it's just everything has changed. And again, here we are in this on this Hawaii beach. And um it's a case where there was nothing I could have ever seen in that case where I could have thought, well, that's gonna happen, right? In fact, everything was pointing the other direction. And um it it was such a a treat for her to reach out, you know, and to to send me that um kind of here's how we're ending kind of thing. But so I think I think what I would so I guess maybe that does lead me into what I would tell people is that you really don't know where things are going to end up. And I think a lot of parents are really attached to the childhood period of their children. Uh-huh. And and I get it. I get it. There's a lot of lot of a lot there. Everybody wants to be part of that, the influence, the guiding, the experiences, all that good stuff. Um, your child's lifespan, they're you're you're gonna know your child as an adult for far longer than you're gonna know your child during their childhood. And so I Really, I really want people to take the long view. I'm always what I tell people is I'm trying to preserve a space for you to a path for you to continue to have a relationship with this child. I might not be able to get you the real, you know, the time, the contact, everything that you want right now, but I want to preserve space so that you know you can have the rest of your life as knowing your child as an adult, and them having, you know, then obviously when everybody's an adult, even though you're a parent child, the dynamics do change, right? Adult children get to say what they want, what they don't want, what they'll allow, what doesn't work for them, how they want to spend time with you. And I tell parents, be the person your kid wants to spend time with, right? Like you, that's your job. Just be somebody that they want to spend time with. And uh to the greatest degree, you know, try to let go of the the resentment, you know, against the other parent and the fear, which is the hard part, really hard. Um but you know, when I when I read about family estrangement and you know, the the research as I understand it is that most most people do find a way back. I can't tell you how much time it'll take. I can't tell you when it's gonna be or what it's gonna be over, but there are there are inflection points in people's lives where they they become more open, you know, and and ready to do things that they weren't ready to before. So um, so that's what I want. I want people to take the long view.

SPEAKER_01 45:45

Yeah, and I just want to share a success story based on my own personal experience. And after being estranged from my son for a year, and this is even having a Guardian Lightum come in and make a report, and the Guardian Lightham went against the court's 50-50 parenting plan and said my child should be with the father full time, which was um ridiculous because it that's just a whole nother thing of just the father just heavily manipulating the child so much. Okay, but we're not even gonna go down there. But after a year of being estranged from my son, because I kept on showing up for my son, I kept on reaching out to him, telling him that I loved him, wanting to get together. And the few, you know, showing up to his events, his sporting events and such, and trying to be that safe space was that um he reached this, he reached out to me um one night and said, Mom, are you free for dinner? And I said, Son, yes, I am. You want to go to dinner with me? Wow, yay, that's so great. My son tells me, Mom, if you're gonna be weird about it, just dial it back. Yeah, I know, but because I was so excited that he finally like reached out to me and said, Are you free for dinner? Um so it took a year, but uh we we re-reconciled and uh I just went on my first vacation with my two boys to Hawaii for for two weeks, a couple of a couple of weeks ago, and that was my first vacation in two years since I left the family home. And of course, their father had multiple vacations, but it was it was it was so good. And and I and I told myself too, and again, if you're in this, you you do have to see a therapist to help you process this, and that's what helped me get through it. Seeing a therapist and you know, being that person that I could dump on. So when I was able, when I was spending time with my kid, I wasn't openly trying to, I wasn't bad mouthing the father, I could just be there and be present, and also to learn skills and twos, because one of the things my child was trying to ask what's going on with the divorce, and I had to learn how to set boundaries and say, No, that doesn't involve you. Yeah, um, they don't like that. So see a therapist yourself if you're the parent that's rejected, so you can get that support that you need to be there present and show up for your child. And one thing, too, that my therapist would tell me was that you know, this is a small blip in your child's life, considering the many years that you have ahead. And I kind of have to respond to that. So yeah, yeah, just thank thank you so much, Jennifer. Just thank you for your just your words of wisdom and sharing your insights and your knowledge. You know, every time I hear you speak, I learn something new, and I feel I grow in terms of my understanding and and skills as an attorney in dealing with these parent-child contact problems. Yeah. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00 48:50

Well, I'm yeah, I I just want to say I'm happy for your experience. I think that it's you know, you're incredibly vulnerable to you know, telling people what your experience is, and that's that's hard to do. There's a lot of shame around when a child rejects you. It just it just feels like it's you know the worst thing. And um, and I'm so happy that you um you got the support that you needed, you you were steadfast with your child, and you know, you're being rewarded for that.

SPEAKER_01 49:18

Yeah. Well, and again, it's uh sometimes things happen, right? Yeah, but you just absolutely you just gotta keep on showing up, keep on showing up. And and so now people wanted to contact you to either um to for consulting, uh, coaching, problem solving, or therapy with parent child contact problems. How how do they get a hold of you?

SPEAKER_00 49:44

Uh well, they can email me. They can email me at uh jylin um at comcast.net or they can phone me up at uh 425 526 6556.

SPEAKER_01 49:59

Oh, okay. Yeah. And Kylin is spelt K go ahead and spell it for me.

SPEAKER_00 50:04

Oh, yeah, yeah. Sorry. What? There's no standard spelling. Um it's uh J Kylin, so J K E I L I N at comcast.net.

SPEAKER_01 50:14

Okay. And we'll also put uh your information as well in when the podcast in the in the description. Well um, you know, and oh shoot, I forgot to ask before we end. What's the fun fact that I always like to do this? What's a fun fact that someone wouldn't know about you?

SPEAKER_00 50:35

Oh my goodness. Um, I am a certified scuba diver.

SPEAKER_01 50:41

Oh my gosh, that is so cool.

SPEAKER_00 50:44

How fun is that?

SPEAKER_01 50:45

Wow. That's amazing. That's very cool. It is cool. Well, again, thank you, thank you so much, Jennifer, for joining us today on our podcast. And um, again, for our listeners out there, uh, you can reach her at jaykylin at comcats.net, and we will have her phone number available too. And she is there too for consulting, coaching, problem solving, or therapy with your parent-child contact problems. Um, thank you again, Jennifer, and for all my listeners out there, thank you again for joining us on another episode of the Akiana Law Podcast, wherein we talk about anything and everything that intersects in the area of family law and divorce. I am Lonnie Acciona, and don't forget to hit that like and subscribe button. Uh, thank you, and until the next episode, be well. The information in this podcast is general advice only and should not in any respect be relied on as specific legal advice.