Family Disappeared

Reclaiming Your Family: A Legal Journey Through Parental Alienation - Episode 89

• Lawrence Joss

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In this episode of the Family Disappeared podcast, Lawrence Joss discusses the complexities of parental alienation and the legal system with insights from attorneys and mental health professionals. The conversation covers the challenges faced by parents navigating family law, the importance of self-representation, and the need for child-centered approaches in therapy. Listeners are encouraged to document their experiences, seek support, and take charge of their cases to improve outcomes for themselves and their children.

Key Takeaways

  • The legal system often exacerbates conflict between parents.
  • Self-representation can be a viable option if done correctly.
  • Documentation is key in family law cases.
  • Limited scope attorneys can provide targeted assistance.
  • Child-centered therapy focuses on the needs of the child.
  • Parents should actively seek to understand their children's perspectives.
  • Emotional support is crucial for parents in high-conflict situations.
  • The importance of building trust with children in therapy.
  • Parents need to show up emotionally for their children.
  • The system needs reform to better support families in crisis.

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction to the Family Disappeared Podcast

02:06 - The Challenges of Parental Alienation

04:01 - Navigating the Legal System: Insights from an Attorney

06:53 - Understanding Family Law vs. Traditional Law

09:52 - Self-Representation in Family Court

12:11 - The Role of Limited Scope Attorneys

14:10 - The Importance of Documentation and Support

22:51 - Child-Centered Approaches in Therapy

24:18 - Building Trust with Children in Therapy

26:35 - The Impact of Parental Actions on Children

32:45 - Attachment Issues in High-Conflict Divorces

35:33 - Conclusion and Resources for Support

If you wish to connect with Lawrence Joss or any of the PA-A community members who have appeared as guests on the podcast:

Email-      familydisappeared@gmail.com

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/lawrencejoss

(All links mentioned in the podcast are available in Linktree)

Please donate to support PAA programs:

https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=SDLTX8TBSZNXS

This podcast is made possible by the Family Disappeared Team:
Anna Johnson- Editor/Contributor/Activist/Co-host
Glaze Gonzales- Podcast Manager

Connect with Lawrence Joss:
Website: https://parentalalienationanonymous.com/
Email- familydisappeared@gmail.com

Speaker 1:

Just be in charge of your case. Don't let somebody else take charge of it or persuade you. I mean, what you want is your children back right, so that's right in front of you at all times, so you don't get sidetracked by anyone who's telling you to come to an agreement. That's not going to work.

Speaker 2:

There was a time in my life when I was overwhelmed and underwater. Those days are the inspiration for this podcast. This is by far the ultimate healing journey for all of us. Healing ourselves emotionally, spiritually and physically is paramount to this journey. From this place of grounding, we can all go out into the world and change all our interactions and relationships. We can engage people from an integrated and resourced place. This is a journey of coming home to ourselves. In today's episode we'll start to explore some of these issues. Let's begin the healing journey today.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the Family Disappeared podcast. Hi, my name is Lawrence Joss and welcome to the Family Disappeared podcast. As you can hear, I'm still out here in Hawaii and you got a little bit of my voice and maybe a little bit of ambient background from the birds and the frogs and everything else that's living out in this beautiful space. And today is going to be the second part of our series with professionals Best of from the last year and a half, and today it's going to be attorneys and anyone else that's involved in the legal system, and it's super, super, super powerful and condenses a bunch of different lessons we've learned over the last year and a half. And if you're new to the community, welcome. The Best Love series is just these last four shows. All the other shows are actually full shows, usually two parts with whoever we're interviewing, whether it's a panel or a professional. So go check out that stuff if you're new and there's some super, super content that we've created over the last year you can always reach us at familydisappeared, at gmailcom.

Speaker 2:

There's the 12-step program, which is a free support group wonderful, loving, community, life-affirming, and some people come and stay a long time and some people come and get some resources and move through some really challenging parts in their life and then they go on. But this resource is all available. It's all peer-to-peer, it's all volunteer run. So get involved. You know, if you're in a lot of pain, get involved. If you're struggling, get involved. I know it's counterintuitive, but it's really where the relief has been for me is being of service and, with that being said, we're going to get into our show today, which is going to be the best of attorneys, judges, legal system and anything else that comes up. We're also a 501c3 nonprofit Donate. It'd be wonderful if you could commit to a monthly donation. If you have a lot of resources, we can use the resources to expand what we're offering for folks and everything that we do is free and everything that we create is open source. So there's a bunch of great stuff on our website and if you want to start meetings or you need any of this stuff, take what you like. It's open source, it's free to use, it's free to share wherever you want to share it. That's a foundational pillar of what we're trying to do here is make resources available to anyone and everyone. And with that let's jump into the show.

Speaker 2:

You know, I was really scared to start the podcast. I just want to say this quickly, before we actually get to the best of, because life is challenging. When you're going through parental alienation, estrangement, erasure, disconnection, whatever you want to call it, whether you're a parent, grandparent, child, other family member, it is super, super challenging. And I've been thinking about the podcast for years. I just didn't get around to making it. And then there was enough pain, there was enough discernment, there was enough interpersonal, emotional and spiritual work, and then a time came that it was time to get going and I didn't know what I was doing and hired folks to help out and get stuff started, and now we're mostly volunteer run and I'm getting so much out of the show.

Speaker 2:

I'm getting to talk to people all over the world and tap into parents and grandparents and children that are previously alienated or still alienated, and we're getting to watch the community thrive and grow, and the reason I share this is this wouldn't be happening without parental alienation in my life.

Speaker 2:

I wouldn't have this opportunity to share, be of service and show up, and it's changing me as a person, you know, but I like a perfect, seamless relationship with my kids, a hundred percent, and at the same time, I'm the best version of me I've ever been. I'm the best parent I've ever been, and I say this all the time. I'm parenting without access in such a profound and challenging way as you are, or if you're a kid without your parents, whatever it is like. We're all doing this in a profound, challenging way and it is life-changing and it has expanded my life to the point that I'm in Hawaii hanging outside. I don't know it's super magical, don't know if that made any sense, but I wanted to say it anyway. So let's get into the show. So, as an attorney navigating the legal system, the family court system initially, what did you find to be the most alarming and concerning aspects as a professional jumping in and looking for other professionals to support them in this arena.

Speaker 4:

The worst that I saw most alarming. This is a good question. It's an easy one for me to answer the fact that you're at a conflict with your own lawyer. The way the business part of it and the business of law, particularly the family law business, to me might be the sole biggest responsibility for hard times that parents have.

Speaker 4:

The legal system perpetuates conflict because the financial incentive and the hourly rate system is so destructive to the client and beneficial to the attorney that, as a professional, as an educated professional who came into two separate offices one I found on my own for my own internet research, and the other was a friend recommendation. It was a friend of a friend, so this was someone who had someone else to answer to, and they both treated me the same, listened to nothing that I said, did not care what I requested or recommended, and one gave me no value and the other, my friend or friend of friend, almost gave me less than beneficial value. Neither of them wanted to do a reasonable request of give me a contempt hearing. When I knew I was dealing with a narcissist and a sociopath. They said oh no, you're going to agree to this?

Speaker 2:

I said no, I'm not going to agree to this.

Speaker 4:

I know I need a contempt hearing because she has no interest in letting me see my child, but yet both lawyers wanted handsome fees to do absolutely nothing.

Speaker 4:

And I thought, if this is what they are trying to sell me as competent representation, someone who's educated and was researched and was focused in talking to them, my goodness, what are they doing to their clients, their other clients, their lay people, clients, especially the ones who have money, and then they can bilk or would know what nonsense the bill was?

Speaker 4:

So I self-represented and found a different way, and that's why my journey is what I try to share to others, because it's doable. A law degree gave me the confidence to do it, but I was not a family law attorney. I knew where to look and all the information lay people now can find online, and all the information lay people now can find online. So how I try to empower others is to help you find what was very easy for me to find. But it actually is also easy for you to find in modern times because everything, all this information, is online for free and it's just learning how to navigate it and find it quickly is what the current challenge is for the self-represented litigant. So it was alarming to know how poor the legal system and the legal profession serve their family.

Speaker 2:

So, Larry, like just to give people a little bit wider scope. What's the difference between traditional law and family law, and is there a difference on how the courts are governed and the information that they process and use?

Speaker 4:

The difference between family law versus what you say traditional civil law. Family law is equity court. You're in equity court when you're asking for something other than money. Damages in civil court, where the judge has the power to rule as justice requires, is the standard that we're given in law school or is the legal standard in equity court? And the reason why you're in equity court is because you need the judge to order behavior. It's going to govern conduct. It's not going to be at a damage award like we have in personal injury or civil suit or breach of contract law. You have a dispute that money can fix, but in family court except for support, which actually you also have equitable remedies but in family court you're talking about parenting. So the judge is making a law between two parties that govern behavior. So you can't be in civil court. The only way to get justice, at least on paper, theoretically, is to give the judge broad discretion. So it can be very, very good when you have a judge who is informed, transparent and accountable, or it can be horrible without transparency, accountability or following rules. So it's set up with the best of intentions to enable the judge to dispense justice and have that flexibility to do what's right for this child and this family.

Speaker 4:

Which civil court that awards only money damages certainly can't, because when you're dealing with the heart and you're dealing with the family, you need that leverage. So when you say traditional family court, I want everyone to think is the term equity? You're an equity court and most jurisdictions I know Texas is an exception, I don't know if there's any other exceptions but most jurisdictions I know Texas is an exception, I don't know if there's any other exceptions, but most jurisdictions family court is equity court. And when you hear equity court, that means behavior, injunctions, stopping conduct, contempt and incarceration, things like that. Rather than I award so-and-so from on behalf of plaintiff against defendant, this much money and that's civil court, personal injury contract and other court. That's what you're looking for. That's the difference.

Speaker 2:

Just digging a little bit deeper into that, you don't recommend that people actually go into court themselves. Are there certain times when you say, yes, have an attorney, you have to have it for X, x, x and Y and then A through Z. You can actually do at home by yourself, full to self, full that you don't necessarily need someone holding your hand through the process. Can you give me some kind of delineation so people can have a little bit clearer understanding?

Speaker 4:

Yes, I want everyone to be aware that there's a study that suggests a professor conducted a study, a controlled study, where they gave the same fact pattern to both a man and a woman with a lawyer and without a lawyer, and they requested professionals in the court system to score what they saw, what case was stronger and there was a substantial benefit markup in judges, their perception of the exact same factual case presented in the exact same manner.

Speaker 4:

They gave the benefit to someone with an attorney versus without an attorney. So you're at a disadvantage, not because you're not representing yourself as well you are. It's a social construct being a self-represented litigant that you're at a disadvantage to someone with an attorney if all the facts and all the evidence presented is the same. Because of that, you are better off paying what I call a limited scope attorney, which we can get into later, but I don't recommend that you do it on your own into later. But I don't recommend that you do it on your own, but I do recommend you know everything that that lawyer knows to make your decisions, to make strategic decisions or to be able to fully represent yourself and do right for you as a parent and your child.

Speaker 2:

There's still a part of the question that I'm not quite understanding. Right Like, I'm hiring an attorney, they're filing paperwork, they're doing all different kinds of stuff and we're going to jump into limited scope right after this or as part of this question, and limited scope is hiring an attorney just to do a limited duty. So my question again is, as a parent with limited funds that's struggling, that's been stuck in the court system for a long time, what can they do for themselves and what do they need to hire someone in a limited scope or in some other scope to help them with? I just really want to also bring it really down to lay person's terms so we can really understand what I can't do for myself and what is just not advisable to do myself if I can have the funds or have the resources to ask for help when needed.

Speaker 4:

So I'm going to now risk antagonizing you and your audience and give you a lawyer answer. It depends what it does it does. There's really no way to answer that in this podcast format as a general absolute. But what I want you to realize is what a lawyer, what being a lawyer, means, is that you quote unquote pass the bar and you have a right to represent a third party. As a client, you have the right to represent yourself. So you technically do not need a lawyer, but in my program, what I teach you is to be how the best client.

Speaker 4:

I am not teaching you to be a lawyer. I'm teaching you how to make that decision that you just asked me, how to make decisions for yourself based upon your intellectual capacity, the information that you have, your ability to detach yourself from your emotions and speak for yourself and make business decisions, because my profession doesn't do that for you. So you need to do that for yourself, and so I set a very modest price point and I request a lot of information to be thorough. But I give you an enormous amount of information, but I try and break it down to what you need for your case and your personal shortcomings or strengths, so that then, when you meet a lawyer who holds himself out to be a flat rate lawyer or a limited scope lawyer, you and your lawyer, your limited scope lawyer, can make the best decision for you based upon your particular factual situation and strengths or weaknesses as an individual.

Speaker 2:

When we say pro se, are you saying that this is actually for parents that are going into court by themselves, without an attorney representing themselves, because they've run out of funds or just using an alternative way just to manage their lives? Is that what you're saying?

Speaker 1:

Well, I'm saying that lawyers can really bankrupt alienated parents with their fees and the whole process of the court. So prosay is when one represents oneself in the court, one represents oneself in the court, and so, in part, I've written about if you get to this point and you feel like you have to represent yourself because you can't afford a lawyer, or you decide to do without a lawyer because actually the research says that if a lawyer doesn't know what they're doing in parental alienation, it's a better option to represent yourself, to go pro se.

Speaker 2:

That's an interesting statement. So the research actually says going pro se if your attorney is not educated or has any kind of understanding about parental alienation is a better way to go. And can you expand on that a little bit, like when you say the research says what does that actually mean to you?

Speaker 1:

I don't know who did this research, but it's pretty well known in the field of parental alienation and you know the experts talk about that, because a lawyer can really screw up your case if they don't know what they're doing. Oftentimes they'll make an agreement or get both parties to stipulate something that is not going to resolve the issue and then you get a continuance. You know you get another court date and another court date, and before you know it it's years down the road. So what the research shows is that when these situations occur like your lawyer isn't listening to you or they don't know about parental alienation or they think there's something about what's being advised by a parental alienation expert is wrong then my advice is either get another lawyer, if you can afford one, or otherwise go pro se, or pro per, they call it in some states.

Speaker 2:

And it seems really challenging to represent yourself because it seems like the judge and everyone else in the courtroom is going to be looking down on you, they're going to be frustrated with you, they're not going to really give you the time of the day. And is there a way to mitigate that and navigate that in the court?

Speaker 1:

It is really, really difficult and some people are really good at it and some people are not, and the lawyers for the other side are pretty dismissive, and the judge can also be dismissive. But I've seen people pick it all up and go back at the judge and go back at the lawyer and say, yeah, but I researched this and this is what I found, and you can also get a lawyer to be a specific advice giver, so they don't actually go to court with you, but they may help you with the documents or they may give you advice on a certain procedure in the court. There's a limited number of procedures in the courts. There's a limited number of what's going to happen in the court, like, for example, an ex parte is when you have an emergency and you go back to court and the judge either accepts certain rules for you or against you or says this is not material for an emergency hearing, and so they schedule what they call an RFO, which is basically a call to order, and then what I always advise people to do is ask for an evidentiary hearing and at the evidentiary hearing or the trial I think in some states they call it long-term trial or short-term trial what happens in those hearings is that you're allowed to bring whichever witness you want.

Speaker 1:

So somebody like me who can educate the court about parental alienation can come in at that time and you can ask questions and allow the other side to ask questions.

Speaker 1:

And there's two ways for that to happen. One is that I could be a general expert. Where I go in, I don't know anything about the case and I talk about what alienation is, what the judges can expect from hearing from the children which I always advise against and what happens, how the children get alienated and what my recommendations, reports, doctors reports, even dentist reports at some point. You know, because one of the neglects is that children don't go to the dentist and so when the alienated parent gets them, that's the first thing that happens they go for braces or their teeth need to come out. It's a very common thing that happens, but anyway, when I go to court with that person as a specific expert, I answer first the questions by in this case it would be the alienated parent and then get cross-examined by the alienating parent, who usually has a lawyer, and because I know the material so well, I can usually succeed in that task.

Speaker 2:

So I've heard a lot of parents struggle with their attorneys, but you're saying something here that I'd like you to expand on a little bit. Like you be in charge, you tell the lawyer what to do. Can you give me a couple minutes on what that would look like, or what some of the suggestions would be and how to be in charge?

Speaker 1:

Well, first of all, in my book I list a bunch of the questions that you should be asking your lawyer, which are similar to what you ask a therapist in terms of what training did you get? What do you know about parental alienation? Have you had cases where you've successfully won a case where there has been parental alienation? How do you get the court to determine what parental alienation is? What kind of help do you get if you need it? Because some lawyers they really are egotistical and they don't want to get help. But there are expert lawyers out there in the United States and Canada that can actually get on the phone with your lawyer and for one hour just give them advice on what to do in the courtroom. You want to know that your lawyer is open to that kind of expert advice from another lawyer and you definitely want to be in charge of your case. So if your lawyer is filing a lot of ex partes, a lot of ex partes don't need to be filed and you can tell ahead of time that it's not going to work to go in on that issue, and so the lawyer is actually making a lot of money and you just let him or her file a case that isn't going to go anywhere with the judge, because the way the judge evaluates that is is the child in any danger? No, usually not, and so they will not allow an ex parte. They will say okay, you have to file for an RFO, which is a call to order, and then we'll hear.

Speaker 1:

Whatever it is that you're dealing with, so be in charge, know what you need to be doing and make sure your lawyer follows your instructions and doesn't just keep filing ex partes which I've seen many times and also file a restraining order on your ex if you need to. You know if they're creating a disturbance or doing something, because restraining orders are good to have around in the court. You know. It shows that you're willing to go that far and sometimes you need to have a restraining order, so don't shy away from it. The restraining orders are often given in a different court than the family court, although they get sent to the family court to be dealt with there. But usually you can get a restraining order if something's going on. That's better than filing an ex parte, because an ex parte in family court means that you think your children are in danger.

Speaker 2:

What would you say are the three most important takeaways that you would share in this little tiny soundbile? For people like these are the three things that you definitely need to do if you're going to represent yourself or if you're just going to navigate the court system.

Speaker 1:

Well, I would say document, document, document. Get all your documents together. Keep track of everything that happens so that you can put it in the court documents that you would write. Also, by the way, on my website, I list three different organizations that do free legal work, so that you can get somebody to help you draft one of the documents for the court the declaration. And secondly, I would say get the support you need. Do what you need to take care of yourself, because you're going to be in this for the long run. Get support in the way of a group like yours, which is still no cost right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, which is so great for parents who are in bad situations. And then the third thing I think would be to just be in charge of your case. Don't let somebody else take charge of it or persuade you. I mean, what you want is your children back right, so that's right in front of you at all times, so you don't get sidetracked by anyone who's telling you to come to an agreement. That's not going to work.

Speaker 2:

Can you elaborate a little bit on your child-centered approach when it comes to dealing with the kids and what that looks like?

Speaker 3:

So there's different stages of what we call court and ball family therapy, and the child-centered approach is when I really sit down alone with the kids, as we would anyways, and as a therapist, as an intake. But I go a little bit beyond that and I try to find out why. Why is it that they're rejecting their parent? I don't put them in the room with a parent right away, like some models are like that, where you see a therapist and then immediately the child and the parents in the room together. I spend time with that child to build trust and rapport.

Speaker 3:

I want them to have a voice and I want them to feel safe and I want to really understand what it is that's making them not want to see the parent and so, with that on top of that, so I'm looking at developmental needs and stages wherever they're at, I'm looking at their perspective on the situation, because kids get things in their heads that have nothing to do with the adults in the situation either.

Speaker 3:

So I try to understand, like, what's going on with them and just emotionally and psychologically, where are they at, what are they needing, what are they needing from the other parent, what didn't they get or what do they need more of, so we can help them get their needs met. And so by doing that, instead of just doing traditional family therapy and treating the parties as almost equals, we really focus on the children's needs emotionally, psychologically and perspective developmentally, versus trying to get them to see how their parents are feeling, because they're kids and we've got this power differential and they really need their parents to show up emotionally and see what they're going through. So that's child-centered to me.

Speaker 2:

Love that really centering the child's needs and figuring out developmentally where they are, what they're processing, what's stuck in their head. And is this something that's a court-ordered intervention or is this just like a regular therapy that people would come directly to you for?

Speaker 3:

It's both. I do work with high-conflict divorce and custody dispute cases, though, so a lot of times the cases I work with are court-ordered. Sometimes people seek out my services that haven't even been involved in courts yet because they're already having a rejection happening within the family. So it's both.

Speaker 2:

And, within the court, ordered therapy, because there's a lot of different age ranges of kids that are struggling with some kind of rejection or whatever particular word. Alienation, estrangement or racial whatever word we're going to use is not really important, but just the idea that there's different ages. Does the court let you sit with kids only between a certain age or is it pretty much any age? Child will have the opportunity, if it's court ordered, to actually get to sit with you for this intake and this building of trust with you.

Speaker 3:

Sure, yeah, I've worked as young as three-year-olds and up all the way through teenage only minors. Right now it's rare that I'll have an adult. It's a whole different group of parents with adult children who are rejecting them. But, yes, three-year-olds and up For the courts, I have some paperwork where I stipulate it. It's up to me clinically whether I decide how often I see a child, how often I see one of the parents, and I do have to work with both parents separately because the one parent who may have full custody or most of the time they see more in the center of the child's life, I call them the central parent. I still need to work with them, but I don't put the parents in the same room, especially in a highly contentious divorce. But, yeah, it isn't a matter of them letting me. It's that, that's my requirement, that's my modality and so if they want to work with me, that's how I work and everyone in, at least in San Diego, that knows me knows that's how I work.

Speaker 3:

I'm very clear on my paperwork and I have them actually sign a stipulation allowing me to make the decision on when I see either parent and when I put the child and the parent together. So I don't have court not the court as in the judge, but just the court process interfering with the therapeutic process. I want to keep court away from my therapy room, even though it's court ordered. So I want free reign on how I do this, because every case is different. It's so complex, it's not black and white at all, it's not simple. There's no simple answers to these things, and it takes a lot of time for me to untangle and tease out what the real problem is, because sometimes I get told one thing in the beginning and other things come up later.

Speaker 2:

As you're going through the child-centered approach and the parents and the kids are reconnecting that. Do you find that when parents is that part of the healing process where parents start to acknowledge their own part, and does that somehow help the kids? Or is that not anything that the kids ever really see?

Speaker 3:

Well, if they're in my therapy room? Yes, I mean, that's part of it. So I do try to help parents see how have you contributed to help shift their perspective, not to be blaming or doing anything like that, because we all contribute to a family dynamic. It's, again, rare for me to find a parent who really has done hardly anything and those are the ones who have withdrawn. Right, they haven't tried and they've just given up. That's technically doing something. It gives the child a message that you don't care, but it's not like they did anything wrong. So what I do is I really work with the other parent, the rejected parent, and I call them the peripheral parent. I try to soften the language around it because they're on the periphery on the child's life in the moment, but they're not the out parent. There's a lot of words that are, I was using, rejected because that's the name of the book. But what I do with them is I really try to help them see ways to at least have validating language. Maybe they never used before when we get to put them in the room with a child. So we work on like role-playing and teach them active listening skills, validating attunement, so attachment, parenting, because when we're so upset in a divorce custody dispute, we're emotional, we're leaking our own negative emotions and we, just as parents, don't see what the kids need because we're so much in this crisis and I get it so I try to help them, just like what I do with my boundary to the court. Here's the courtroom and here's your relationship with your child. We have to totally be focused on what the child needs and let's show and talk and say things that will help that child know that you really get them, you really understand where they're at.

Speaker 3:

I was on a case a long time ago and there was a child that wasn't speaking and this happens a lot. We were working with this one parent or I was working with them to validate it's emotion coaching. I can go into that if you want me to Attachment-based emotion coaching and they had some scripts based on what the child had complained to me about, of what they wanted differently, and that's why they weren't seeing the parent Like if I have a child that gives me things, I've got something to work on. If I got angry child, I've got something to work on. It's the silent ones that are hard. When we got to the family session, the child was silent and the parent just read their scripts and they genuinely said things that they needed to do to address the issues that the child had presented. And the child said nothing throughout the whole session.

Speaker 3:

So when that happens I go well, you're seed planting. You're planting seeds in their brain for later. However, in this session there was a tear that came out of their eye, so I knew that that parent had reached them and that's good. We're not going to get like 180 degree turnaround child who's just happy jumping up and down, especially a teenager to see their parent after something like this. But it's a matter of correcting past hurts and genuinely showing that they understand their perspective and that's seed planning that I talk about with the parents.

Speaker 3:

So even if we can't heal or fix things, so there's some contact, you know, after those sessions sometimes a lot of times, I think, because I've been hearing some stories lately in their early to mid-20s they'll come back around if you've actually tried to do things like that. Or if parents keep trying, they don't stop giving birthday cards or presents, or Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever it is. They celebrate and they show up at graduations and concerts and events, without, of course, embarrassing their kiddos If they just keep doing that to show that they still love them, they still care, but not going up after and saying, hey, I'm here just making you know, like send a text, send a note. So things like that make a big difference. It may be not a good time right here to do it, but it'll sit in them for later.

Speaker 2:

They compare like the foster care system, and some of the attachment disorders that happen in the foster care system are very similar to what parents are going through in this high conflict. Divorce and targeted parent alienation whatever word you want to use, but there's a correlation. Do you find that to be true? Haven't actually been seeped in both of these different arenas.

Speaker 3:

So from an attachment standpoint now I understand when children don't want to see a parent. It's a funny thing, is no? For whatever reason, they're feeling rejected themselves. It's an interesting thing. They're feeling like they're not loved, they're not listened to, they're not understood. So there's an attachment that's happened, the attachment rupture, call it. That's happened and the relationship's broken. Basically it's just broken and physically they're not seeing them. So they're stuck in this situation without anyone correcting that. Necessarily Sometimes the other parent does.

Speaker 3:

I've seen some cases where the other parents very supportive but they're stuck here without this rejected parent countering with anything positive what's going on in their brain. And I'll give you an example which could be very similar to dependency cases with foster kids is when one parent ends up leaving the home and I've worked on a few cases where I've had kids actually say my mom or dad, I don't remember, it doesn't matter, my parent doesn't love me. Because they left, and I try to understand this. And they go. Well, they walked out of the door and I don't see them in the morning for breakfast anymore. They don't take me to school anymore. They don't love me anymore. They don't love my other parent anymore. They don't understand that their parents are separated and somebody's got to go, that this is not an abandonment situation and it could be in a situation where this parent is trying to see the child more, but something's going on over here in this home where that's not going to happen. So then this child feels this, this rupture, and then that turns out to be the reason why they're rejecting. See, it gets really very complicated. I've been on a few of those cases and for dependency whoosh, I mean just their independency they're in foster care because someone, one of the parents, have either neglected or abused them in some way, shape or form. So, right, there is an attachment rupture. I mean that you, your caretaker, your safe base, that's what your parents are shouldn't be hurting you. That's just innately something that shouldn't be happening. You, that's just innately something that shouldn't be happening. And so that's a severance. And then if you end up in foster care, then you're in somebody else's care and there's an abandonment. There too, there's a physical separation.

Speaker 3:

Luckily in dependency with foster kids, at least in California I can't speak to the rest of the country, but we're supposed to allow contact almost immediately, depending on the reason behind the removal of the child from the home. So unless it's something that's very severe, and we won't go into those examples because they're pretty not good to talk about. But the average foster kid should at least have supervised visitation with family law. They don't get that and that's what needs to change in the family law system. They're letting kids go like a month, six months a year without even facilitating supervised visitation, which is again contributing to this rejection. The system has now come in and now traumatizing the family because the law is different. They don't have to and they should, and they should.

Speaker 2:

Wow, wow, there's some good stuff there, man, I wish I would have known this stuff when I was in the middle of it, when I was struggling and didn't know where to turn and there weren't very many resources, and definitely not a lot of free resources. So I hope you really enjoyed the show. Next week we'll be back into a similar format. I think we're going to have some more Hawaii stuff out in the jungle maybe, and play with that a little bit. See how that is. And thanks for coming along for the journey.

Speaker 2:

Again, resources in the show notes familydisappeared at gmailcom. If you want to send out an email, we are 501c3 nonprofit, can always use your support. And yeah, I hope to see you in a meeting. I hope to see you on the podcast somewhere or around the neighborhood and, in case no one has told you yet today, I love you. Have a beautiful day.

Speaker 2:

Oh, oh, remember to like, share and comment. Sorry, I forget that half the time, but please like, share, comment. Let folks know that these resources are around. And again, we want to know that this is useful to you. So, whenever I get an email or a comment, even if it takes you five seconds to write something super simple we want to know that we're on the right track. We want to know that we're supporting you in a really useful way. So thank you for coming out to play today, and I'll see you around the neighborhood. Thanks for taking the time to join me on this episode of Family Disappeared Podcast. Do you know someone who can benefit from what we're discussing on today's episode? If so, please share this podcast with them and anyone else in your community that might be interested in changing their lives. Together we'll continue the exploring, growing and healing journey. I will see you on our next episode. Until then, happy days to all.