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Walk a Day in My Shoes 👠

This is a true undercover story. I decided to become as one of the disadvantaged members of our society to gain compassion. Well, I wish that were true. But the sad truth is this is a story about my life.

I went to law school, married a man there with a similar level graduate degree. We married, had five children. He was the breadwinner. I was the stay at home, homeschool mom. And one day he quit his job. Just quit. With no intention of finding a replacement position.

One day my husband is top dog at a huge international company and my family has full medical and dental coverage. And the next he quits and we have NO insurance coverage.

I jumped through hoops and was finally able to get the other two covered. It took so much time & energy. Then in 2020, we’ll what can we say about 2020? “Bad year” would be an understatement. The kids were kicked out of Healthy Kids and down to Medicaid. I was mortified. Here I am an attorney and my kids are on Medicaid!

When we divorced a few years after living this way I agreed in our settlement to provide their health coverage because he refused. After paying private insurance for a while I applied for Florida Healthy Kids. Since my ex has three kids for tax purposes while I have the other two, the two who are under me did not qualify because of my income. The other three qualified because his reported income made it possible (while he took at least 5 international trips).

The two kids who I had worked so hard to get covered under Healthy Kids now ended up in a version of Medicaid with a $3,000 per month deductible. Not a misprint. Y’all, that’s $36,000 a year one could spend before coverage would kick in! Is there any private insurance that would rival that kind of cost?

Before the change in coverage I had been seeking medical answers to an issue my oldest son was having, while at the same time exploring natural options. We had been issued cards bearing a new PCP assignment. I contacted them at the number on the card to restart the process of investigating the issue.

After giving my address , the receptionist asked me which office in a city at least 5 hours away I would like to visit. What?! How did we get assigned to a doctor there?!

Remedying this situation took more calls and time which involved going through an automated system to try to change the PCP which did not list the old PCP…whose office said they are a provide under the coverage.

Now I will tell you another story. It is called Going to the Medicaid Dentist. A new experience. Three children and I arrive. With the above shuffling we had been required to switch to a different dentist. I complete massive amounts of paperwork of course. Then I am informed by the receptionist that today will be x-rays, then we will come back for the cleanings. Have you ever heard of such a thing? This is the way the Medicaid contract works they explained. Finally B is called back. The girls & I are told to wait. I have never been asked to separate from a child before and didn’t like it one bit. We wait. Wait. Wait. And Mama Bear erupts and demands to be shown to her child this moment! I tell them we are All coming back this time. Oh, there was a machine malfunction. Great. So someone couldn’t come and let me know? And what exactly does a machine malfunction mean when that machine is a special machine that targets radiation at your body? (Oh, BTW, this dentist requires 6 x-rays every 6 months!)

The x-Ray visit took 3 hours! Three hours of missed school instruction, and three more to come at the cleaning!

What it brings to light is…INEFFICIENCY! Seriously, no wonder poor people can’t work! They spend their days waiting at the freaking doctor & dentist!

Yes, but more. Here I am an educated mom who is having to use every brain cel possible to figure out how to get through this system. How does the average Medicaid mom do it? I’m a lawyer & I can barely figure out how to move forward on behalf of my family. Meanwhile, of course I am using my education and abilities to adjust and build up and be able to provide without any government support. But not everyone has that.

Shame on my kids’ dad. Shame on our government for mucking up this health care system. I believe it is one of the systems we will be seeing come down and I celebrate the prospect. This is not the way health care should look.

Below is an update from a s he dukes dental office visit for 4 of my children. After taking them out of school for the appointment I was told by the dental office manager that we would need to separate, the children being taken one by one into the back for treatment and others left in the waiting room. I politely asked if we might all stay together and assured him we would stay out of the way. I was told that if I wanted to do that I should have brought someone else with me. I have never had a pediatric practitioner insist on testing my kids without my presence or worse leaving them in a waiting area alone. So I wanted to share. Do not settle for this type of practice. I can tell you as a mom and trained lawyer this is Not right.

Video from dentist visit where the dental office manager demanded I separate from my kids
The dentists
(None of them talked to us about this policy, only Jorge Perez, the Manager. He gave me the number for Daisy his boss in another office, but she has not returned my call.)
The office. Scary that they have a sign that warms people not to threaten the staff…why would I leave my children alone in a waiting room if people have been threatening the staff?! This is not a normal dental office.

#healthcare #dayinthelife #family #singlemom #undercoverstory #medicaid #dentist #customerservice #parentalrights #familyfirst #momlife #teamkelly #standup #savethecountry #savethechildren #commonsense #kindness #dowhatsright

The unbelievable letter I received yesterday

On Healing

This past weekend my lovely college friend was visiting me. We’ve been friends for 30 years now. It was a very healing visit. She was here to heal from a broken heart combined with exhaustion from caring for an aging parent. I am continually seeking to heal from the loss of my boys and a divorce, together which shattered the dream of my family life.

Throughout the weekend we listened to Taylor Swift and Clean became a bit of our theme song. (No hate please.)

For me it was very re-centering to be with someone who has known me my entire adult life. So much of my self perception over the last eight years has been influenced by the high conflict nature of co-parenting with a covert narcissist and the continual attempted alienation of my children. I have so many times seen myself through the eyes of my hateful ex, his mentally unstable girlfriend, and my moody teenagers, all of whom cast me in an angry, volatile, or simply weird light.

Don’t get me wrong. I have so many local friends who have known me since I moved here and even adult friends in the state in which I lived for twenty years, but there is something different about being with someone who has known you the longest.

Perhaps other people experience this through family relationships. Mine are quite few as I have lost one half of my family of origin. When my dad and I spend time together it is mostly present focused. If we reflect it is more on my childhood, our memories of a nuclear family, not really who I was as a singular person.

When someone knows you that long and loves you just as much or more and is your strong supporter it lifts you out of whatever has happened To you and reminds you that before all those life experiences battered and bruised you you were a person, kindhearted, generous, polite, educated, and stylish, and that those same core traits are there at your center, honed through the experiences of life, and together forming a strength that propels you forward.

I am super grateful for the time with her and the light feeling I am left with in the wake of her departure, feeling refreshed and renewed.

How to Recognize Parent-Child Alienation

I have been seeing a lot that suicide prevention is for year round not just one month of the year. Having lost two sons to suicide, I subscribe to this. Alongside this, I think about child-parent alienation and how it can be a factor in suicide. There is no evidence that it is a direct cause but it certainly plays a role, whether suicide by the parent or the child. Having experienced both of these unfortunate occurrences, I want to create space for those who may be experiencing the same, or who have experienced either in the past. If you have not, I hope you will still find this perspective helpful.

Parent-child alienation typically appears in the wake of a particularly high conflict divorce. However, it could certainly occur within a dysfunctional marriage. I am not a mental health professional. I write from my own personal experiences.

Sometimes when we are going through something it can feel isolating. We might experience embarrassment that exacerbates this, as we believe we may be alone in our experience. Fortunately, one of the bright sides of social media is that the accessibility to information has increased so we can more easily learn from the privacy of our home that there are others out there even if not in our immediate sphere who have like experiences. And fortunately it is that which allows me to share the following with you.

So very simply I wanted to share what parent-child alienation can look like, but there are many more possibilities and it is a wide category into which your individual situation can fit. These are just examples from my own personal experience and to help others who may be sharing similar life experiences.

It can look like one parent showing adult conversations among the parents to the child and using these to sour the child’s perception of the other parent (for instance if the parent writing to the co-parent was advising about the child’s school performance or behavior, seeking a joint solution).

It can look like one parent placating to the whims of a teenager to the detriment of his or her relationship with the other parent.

It can look like hiding substance abuse or other dangerous behavior from the other parent.

It can look like dangling incentives in front of a child to entice him or her to spend more time at the other parent’s house or to prefer that parent. For teens the purchase of a car is the number one incentive provided, whereby the child now has freedom from parental constraints as well as the ability to come and go freely rather than spend time equally with each parent. Of course receiving one’s own car is a privileged right of passage for teenagers but parents need to be cautious to discuss this together first and not allow it to become one parent providing it for the wrong reasons.

It can look like twisting the narrative and rearranging facts to support the alienating parent’s aimed storyline and position.

Sometimes alienation can occur alongside narcissistic abuse but again, I am not a mental health professional. It can certainly occur in any dysfunctional co-parenting situation.

The bottom line is that it should be avoided. But of course you can only control your own actions, you cannot control the other parent’s. What you can do is continue to show love to your child, stay calm, resist the urge to beg your child to spend more time with you or enter a competition over material provisions. Most of all, exercise patience, because hopefully the storm will pass over, pray and focus on keeping yourself healthy and happy.

A Tale of Child Estrangement

Likely you are reading this because you are possibly experiencing it. I’m not sure who would research the subject otherwise. In fact, I certainly did not know of this situation before experiencing it. It might be something you think occurs in extremely dysfunctional families, those other people…until it h happens to you.

Child estrangement, sometimes referred to as parental alienation, is more common where the parents have divorced. This creates a perfect petri dish for when a child reaches the teen years and becomes disgruntled with the boundaries one parent establishes (curfew, rules about driving immediately after obtaining a driver’s license, being home for family dinner a certain number of times per week, saving money for college, contributing to car expenses, going to church, you name it) because with two separate residences it is easy to decide to “run away” to the other parent’s, at least if that parent permits it. Where there is healthy co-parenting this may not occur because the parent would encourage a healthy relationship with the other parent and there would likely be more consistent rules between the households. But let’s face it, in many situations, the parents have divorced because they didn’t exactly see eye to eye. Many times the division that existed in the marriage can deepen once the couple are separated or divorced. It can also occur more frequently when the parents still reside near one another because the change for the child who decides upon one home over the other as their “permanent” residence has little impact. They are still near their friends and their school. This is why this may be less likely to occur where one parent has moved to another city or state. Despite any differences the child may have with the parent who they live with when they attend school, the difficulties they would encounter in leaving their friends and school outweighs the perceived burden of the parent’s rules.

While the notion that the mental health community purports that as long as children have stability and the parents never speak ill of the other, children will not suffer from divorce may be true, the hard truth is that people who could not stay married because they did not agree on many things are unlikely to all of a sudden align on parenting and be able to present a neutral or positive face to their children with regard to the other parent. In the most egregious scenario, imagine you divorce an abusive person (whether physically, sexually, psychologically, financially – these cannot be equated or compared but just take any that resonates as an example here). Are you going to be able to speak favorably about this person to your child if he or she is spending parenting time with this other person? No, you are going to be concerned about your child in this person’s sphere of influence and physical care. You are going to want to point out the traits that do not align with general moral principles. You are going to do everything to ensure your child’s safety and also to make sure he or she does not follow in the path of that parent to become like him or her. That is an extreme example but it exists for many people who still have to share equal parenting.

I’m going to take an unpopular position here and say that I for one am not going to be persuaded to falsely prop up a person who I believe is acting wrongly, parenting badly. Some say, oh, the child will see this. Well, maybe, but it might be too late by then. Just like I would use as a teaching example someone making a bad choice and using drugs and ruining their life, so too would I point out that a parent who provides no supervision or no financial support is not acting like a responsible grown-up. Obviously, this must be age-appropriate. But once our children are becoming young adults and developing their own sense of what it looks like to be an adult, a parent someday, don’t you want them to see what the ideal is rather than believe that their might just be two different but equally as good ways of parenting?

In my experience the estrangement began in the teen years early in highschool. As I provided reasonable oversight of academic performance and other activities, a reasonable curfew, and questioned when actions didn’t seem to align with the goals of future success, the other parent stood ready to coddle any complaints about mom, which were then reframed to the child in a way that placed us on equal footing rather than a supervisory/authoritative role, describing it to the child as a difficult relationship (as you would in a friendship), and ready and wiling to bribe the child with anything from a bigger room, more freedom, a car, or other “goodies” to beckon them to live with them full-time. In my experience, as soon as this occurred, the lack of supervision and excessive freedom resulted in a substance abuse problem that was hidden from me since I rarely saw my child after he left to live with the other parent.

What about the court-ordered parenting schedule, you might ask as someone new to this experience. Forget about it. With a “wayward” teenager the only recourse you have is to have them picked up by the police and returned to you. Do you think this will help repair the relationship? Unlikely. In fact, this would have the effect of turning them further toward the other parent. So what Can you do?

Well, the popular advice is to take a hands off approach and let the child be. Don’t force. Suck it up. Keep supporting them. This can feel extremely unfair especially if you have been the main source of support and yet the one being rejected when the child is choosing the other parent over you.

You may be in dismay, thinking, okay, kid, a few years back, when you were so distraught in middle school and told me you would kill yourself if you had to return to that school another year, I went out of my way to find an online alternative to get you through middle school, against the other parent’s active opposition. I supported your mental health journey, helping you find a therapist and medical support when the other parent was outright opposed to any counseling let alone medicine. I single handedly financially supported your expensive support, not just the practices but the weekends away. I sent you to a camp you requested that cost umpteen dollars. I bought you a vehicle. In short, it can feel like complete and utter betrayal. It can make you MAD. And this is reasonable.

So, what would I recommend in retrospect? I guess a middle ground? I think it’s important for your child to know you have supported them, that you have certain expectations of them, that you are there for them. But forcing or bribing them to come back home is probably not going to work so you are going to have to sit on your hands, vent to others, and wait it out. Prayer also helps. Mediation, And focusing on yourself and your work in the meantime can help to fill the void you are likely feeling. It is also normal to experience a range of emotions because this a loss. It is a grief.

The hard fact is our children as teens are a few years away from becoming independent adults and the goal has always been for them to be fully functional away from us. So the best we can do is support this and demonstrate what a responsible, successful adult life looks like.

If you are experiencing this, my heart is with you. I pray for you and support you. You are not alone. Hugs to you and may it all be just a short phase and turn out ok. May your relationship with your child be stronger on the other side of this challenge.

Home

I met with my accountant recently and she was speaking about the importance of preserving my home and never leveraging the equity. She described it as the little nest for my kids and I. I liked that description.

Home came up again in a morning yoga class my daughter and I attended. The instructor described down dog position as coming home, a place we rest and recover, a standard, stable base, a known quantity.

Home should be a peaceful oasis. There is a Bible verse that says “Better is a dry morsel with quiet than a house full of feasting with strife.” Proverbs 17:1 (ESV). To me this means that peace is more valuable than wealth if you have to choose between the two.

I have lived in two homes where this was not the case. In my home growing up my parents often fought and I was always on edge for fear that the very delicate peace could be disturbed. I never wanted to experience that as an adult. Unfortunately, no matter how much our reasonable brain attempts to avoid something we have learned is not positive, something within us can be drawn to something that is unfamiliar even if it is unhealthy. While I thought I was making a good decision, I entered a marriage that would have many of the same characteristics of my parents’, periods of peace, happiness and stability that would be rocked violently by an altercation out of the blue. Repeat for 20 years.

The oldest of my five children was 13 and my youngest was 6 when I finally made the difficult choice between preserving a marriage and choosing peace. I made the choice to establish a separate household for my children, experiencing the torn heart that occurs when you go from a full time, hands on, stay at home mom to only seeing your babies every other week. But the home I made for them, I hope, sets the stage for them to see the difference. I bought the home shortly after divorcing. We had all lived scrunched into a tiny apartment and they were so happy to spread out in a two story home. I filled that home over the years with a golden retriever puppy, cuddly kittens. I filled the walls with our family photos and children’s artwork. We have comfortable, simple furnishings including two couches to spread out in wtih our pets, and a large dining table for meals together. We have a lot of books, and I cook comforting home cooked meals.

Unfortunately, intentionally establishing a peaceful home does not prevent every negative situation that can occur. Individuals are all built with free will. Over the years we have experienced our share of teenage whim, parent-child division and even alienation, substance abuse, and unfortunately suicide. This proves that no amount of intentionality and provision can prevent every ill. But I maintain that a peaceful home is still the base for a happy life. Can it ensure a perfect family? Certainly not I have found. But I will never again compromise and live in an unpeaceful home and I would caution others to stand firm on this principle as well.

Understanding Parental Alienation and Its Impact on Children

Few experiences are more painful for a child than feeling that they have lost a parent who is still alive.

After separation or divorce, children may sometimes become resistant to or fearful of one parent for legitimate reasons. But in some families, a child’s relationship with a parent deteriorates in the context of persistent hostility, denigration, pressure to choose sides, interference with contact, or repeated messages that the other parent is unsafe, unworthy, or does not love them.

This phenomenon is commonly described as parental alienation.

The consequences can reach far beyond a disrupted parent-child relationship. A growing body of research examining family dysfunction, parental attachment, and adolescent suicidality raises an important warning: when a child experiences severe disruption of attachment, belonging, family stability, and access to a loving parent, the child’s psychological vulnerability may increase.

This does not mean that parental alienation causes suicide. Suicide is complex and almost never has a single cause. Mental health conditions, trauma, bullying, social isolation, substance use, genetics, and many other circumstances may contribute to suicidal thoughts and behavior.

But the research makes one point increasingly difficult to ignore:

The quality and stability of a child’s family relationships matter to suicide risk.

Children are biologically and emotionally wired to form attachments to their parents and other caregivers. Those relationships provide a sense of safety, identity, belonging, and continuity.

Research examining parental attachment and suicidal ideation has found an inverse relationship: adolescents reporting lower-quality parental attachment tend to report more suicidal ideation. Particularly strikingly, a 2022 three-level meta-analysis involving 31 studies and more than 12,800 young people found that suicidal ideation was more strongly associated with parental alienation than with parental communication. (PubMed (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34964432/?utm_source=chatgpt.com)⁠)

That finding should not be interpreted as proof that alienation causes suicide. The studies cannot establish that causal conclusion.

It does, however, underscore something important for parents:

A child’s relationship with each parent is not merely a custody issue. It can be an important part of the child’s emotional world.

What happens when a child feels forced to choose?

Children caught in intense parental conflict can experience a painful psychological dilemma.

They may feel that loving one parent betrays the other.

They may worry that enjoying time with one parent will hurt the other parent.

They may believe they must reject one parent in order to remain loyal to the other.

They may begin suppressing their own memories, feelings, or affection in order to avoid conflict.

Over time, this can create profound emotional strain.

A child may also lose more than a relationship with a parent. They can lose access to grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, family traditions, photographs, stories, holidays, and parts of their own personal history.

For a child, rejection of a parent can therefore become intertwined with questions of identity:

Who am I if half of my family is unacceptable?

That question can become particularly painful during adolescence, when young people are already developing their identities and searching for belonging.

The broader research on family dysfunction and suicide

The connection between unhealthy family dynamics and youth suicidality is not limited to parental alienation.

A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis of 38 prospective studies involving more than 101,000 children and adolescents found that negative parenting and family dysfunction were associated with later self-harm and suicidality. Family dysfunction was associated with an increased likelihood of combined self-harm and suicidality, while negative parenting was associated with increased likelihood of combined self-harm and suicidal ideation. (PubMed (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40812960/?utm_source=chatgpt.com)⁠)

Another systematic review and meta-analysis of 12 cohort studies found that adolescents experiencing family dysfunction had substantially higher odds of suicidal behavior than adolescents experiencing normal family functioning. (PubMed (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39542110/?utm_source=chatgpt.com)⁠)

And a 2026 systematic review of 94 studies found that adolescents exposed to family hostility and poor family communication were at increased risk of suicidal ideation, while emotional support within the family was associated with lower risk. (PubMed (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42420943/?utm_source=chatgpt.com)⁠)

Taken together, these studies reinforce a fundamental principle:

Children need relationships in which they feel loved, accepted, heard, and securely connected.

Alienation can attack a child’s sense of belonging. One of the most concerning aspects of severe parental alienation is that it can affect a child’s fundamental sense of belonging.

A child may hear, directly or indirectly:

“Your father doesn’t really care about you.”
“Your mother chose her new family over you.”
“You don’t need him.”
“If you loved me, you wouldn’t want to see her.”
“Your other parent is the reason our family was destroyed.”
“You can’t trust that side of the family.”

Sometimes these messages are explicit. Sometimes they are communicated through behavior: refusing to facilitate parenting time, becoming visibly upset when the child leaves, withholding information, interfering with telephone calls, repeatedly discussing litigation with the child, treating the child’s affection for the other parent as disloyalty, or ridiculing the other parent.

The child can become responsible for managing the emotional needs of an adult.

That is an enormous burden for a young person.

One of the strongest protective factors for a child in distress is connection.

When a child believes that one parent is unavailable, unsafe, unwanted, or forbidden—and simultaneously feels unable to talk honestly about loving or missing that parent—the child’s support system can become smaller.

The child may stop talking.

They may become angry.

They may withdraw.

They may develop anxiety or depression.

They may begin self-harming.

Or they may insist that they do not care about the rejected parent at all.

That last response can be particularly misleading.

A child’s apparent rejection does not necessarily tell us what the child is experiencing internally.

Children are remarkably capable of adapting their behavior to survive difficult emotional environments. A child may reject a parent because that rejection feels safer than expressing love for that parent.

That is one reason adults should be cautious about interpreting a child’s words in isolation from the circumstances surrounding them.

Parents should take significant changes in behavior seriously, particularly when they occur in the context of family conflict or disruption.

Warning signs can include:

withdrawing from family and friends;
sudden loss of interest in activities;
significant changes in sleep or appetite;
declining academic performance;
increased anger or irritability;
substance use;
self-harm or unexplained injuries;
statements about being a burden;
expressions of hopelessness or worthlessness;
talking about death or not wanting to be alive;
giving away possessions;
saying that people would be better off without them.

A child does not have to say, “I want to kill myself,” for adults to take the situation seriously.

If there is concern, ask directly and calmly:

“Are you thinking about hurting yourself or killing yourself?”

Asking the question does not put the idea into a child’s head. It creates an opportunity for the child to tell an adult what is happening.

If the answer is yes—or if the child appears to be in immediate danger—do not leave the child alone. Contact emergency services or call/text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the United States.

Parents cannot control every aspect of a high-conflict family situation. But they can control how they respond to the child.

  1. Do not make the child choose

A child should not have to prove loyalty by rejecting a parent.

A healthy message is:

“You are allowed to love both of your parents.”

  1. Do not use the child as a messenger.

Children should not be responsible for communicating adult grievances, financial disputes, legal issues, or parenting disagreements.

  1. Protect the child’s relationship with safe family members.

When a parent is safe and appropriate, maintaining that relationship can provide continuity, identity, and emotional support.

  1. Listen without interrogating.

A child needs a safe place to speak honestly.

Instead of asking, “What did your mother tell you about me?” consider:

“How are you feeling about everything that is happening?”

  1. Obtain appropriate professional help.

A qualified child or adolescent mental-health professional can help assess depression, anxiety, trauma, self-harm, suicidal thinking, family conflict, and attachment issues.

Importantly, the child’s mental-health needs should not become another battleground between parents.

  1. Treat suicidal behavior as a health emergency—not a custody strategy.

If a child is suicidal, the priority is safety.

Arguments about custody, blame, litigation, or who caused what should never take precedence over stabilizing the child.

Families experiencing alienation often become trapped in competing narratives.

One parent says the child has been manipulated.

The other says the child has independently rejected the parent.

The child may be placed in the position of proving which adult is telling the truth.

But when suicidality or self-harm enters the picture, the focus must shift.

The central question should not simply be:

“Which parent is right?”

It should also be:

“What is happening to this child’s emotional safety, attachment, and sense of belonging?”

Research increasingly supports the importance of family functioning and attachment in understanding youth suicidality. (PubMed (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42420943/?utm_source=chatgpt.com)⁠)

That does not mean every estranged parent-child relationship is the result of alienation. Nor does it mean every child who rejects a parent has been influenced by the other parent. Children can have legitimate reasons for distancing themselves from a parent, including abuse, neglect, or other harmful conduct.

Those possibilities must always be taken seriously.

The point is that the child’s voice, safety, mental health, and relationships must be evaluated carefully rather than reduced to an accusation by one parent against another.

The goal should be restoration, not victory.

In the most difficult family cases, adults can become focused on winning.

Winning the custody dispute.

Winning the argument.

Winning the child’s allegiance.

Winning the court case.

But children do not need one parent to win.

They need adults to protect them.

They need permission to love without choosing sides.

They need adults who can separate their own anger and grief from the child’s emotional needs.

And when a child is showing signs of depression, self-harm, or suicidal thinking, they need immediate support and protection.

If your child has become distant from you, do not assume that the relationship is necessarily lost.

If your child is rejecting you, resist the temptation to respond with anger or pressure.

If you believe your child is being alienated from you, document concerns appropriately, seek qualified professional guidance, and continue communicating a consistent message:

“I love you. You do not have to choose between your parents. I am here when you are ready.”

And if your child is showing signs of suicidal thinking, do not wait for the family conflict to be resolved before seeking help.

The relationship can be repaired later. Safety comes first.

⸻

Important note

Research concerning parental alienation and suicide is still developing. The available evidence supports an association between parental alienation/low parental attachment and suicidal ideation, as well as stronger evidence linking family dysfunction, negative parenting, poor communication, and disrupted attachment with youth suicidality. It does not establish that parental alienation is, by itself, a direct cause of suicide. Suicide is multifactorial and requires an individualized assessment of the child.

If a child may be at immediate risk of suicide, call or text 988 in the United States or contact emergency services.

On Feeding Teenagers

When your children are little you have a lot more control over how they eat. I liked to feed my kids healthy. Vegetables, fruit, home cooked as much as possible. I always had some picky eaters so I did need to disguise a little and leave some things more plain, hold the sauce, etc.

But fast forward to the teenage era, it is a whole other ballgame. First of all, you need to get comfortable with the fact that your kids are going to eat some junk. Ok, probably lots of it. You can’t be too restrictive because this will just make those things more attractive. Especially once they can drive they are going to gravitate to the fast food restaurants that give them an affordable opportunity to exercise their freedom.

One thing that helps combat the potential effects and concerns surrounding this is for your teens to be involved in sports. Mine are student athletes so I feel they can withstand some junk because they need a lot of calories in a day and as long as the foundation is healthy they are going to be able to maintain a healthy body even with a good amount of junk thrown in.

If you have little kids, try not to freak out. When mine were little, I used to be so concerned because every holiday seemed to involve candy.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t supply a lot of junk at home. I do provide snacks. You want to make your kids friends welcome. You want your house to be the house to be as much as possible. So you’ve got to have some hands on food like frozen pizzas and things like that. But you can gravitate toward the fruit snacks rather than actual candy, capri sun or flavored sparkling waters rather than soda, healthier chips.

Control what you can control. Stock your fridge and pantry with mostly healthy foods and staples will allow you to provide healthy options alongside the inevitable junk.

Where we live high school starts super early so the kids are starving when they get home. Sometimes they don’t feel like much breakfast when heading out but I try to have some on hand breakfast bars or fruit they can grab and go. Smoothies are great too. We have some from Costco that my kids love. But if you make your own at home you can sneak a lot of good stuff in there.

On a good day, depending on my work schedule, I will try to have some healthy food prepared when they return from school. Crockpots are great for this.

And there you have it. My tips and tricks for feeding that difficult breed, teenagers. Let me know yours!

On Unaccompanied Minor Travel

Typically my family travels together so this has never arisen for us previously. But this summer I learned everything I needed to know about minors traveling as unaccompanied minors. I wanted to share in case it can help anyone else unfamiliar with this term and what it means in the travel context.

Here is the background. In the U.S., carriers will not let children travel alone until they are 15. This could vary airline by airline but this was the understanding I gathered from our experience.

In Europe children can travel alone at age 12. I don’t have an understanding of the ages that would apply in other areas beyond this.

So as you can see, there is a three year gap.

The way we discovered this issue was through my 14 year old daughter’s travel to an E F language program in Germany this summer. Note that she is one year under the U.S. requirement.

The program had recommended against using the unaccompanied minor status.

We reserved travel from Florida to Germany through Lufthansa. No problem.

However, on the way home, my daughter’s flight that was supposed to come directly back Germany to Florida was canceled at the last minute. She was rebooked by Lufthansa on a flight from Germany into North Carolina. From there she was to fly the last leg home on American. She made it back fine to the U.S. But while she was en route over the Atlantic, a lovely Lufthansa representative from North Carolina was helping me to try to head off the issue that had reared its head. Since American would not fly a child without unaccompanied minor status the last leg of the flight was in danger.

I contacted American but they said I needed to address it through Lufthansa, the airline that I had booked through. I called Lufthansa and they said I could not add the status because the flight was already in progress. Can you see the dilemma?

Well, in the end, I had to fly from Florida to North Carolina to collect my daughter. As you know, last minute flights can be extremely expensive. Lufthansa is supposed to reimburse but I haven’t seen it yet.

So, moral of the story, if you have a child under 15 you will most likely want to add the unaccompanied minor status when you book their travel.

Ahead of time you need to figure out who will be collecting them at the other end of their travel because the airline will need this person’s name. (This is why the language school does not recommend it because they are organizing a lot of students arriving and may not have the exact person assigned to pick up ahead of time.)

For departure, when you drop your unaccompanied minor at the airport you need to go through the security with them and wait at the gate until their plane is in the air (or some airlines require 10 minutes past takeoff).

And that is everything you need to know about flying unaccompanied minor status, or at least all I have learned so far….

On How to Find a Lost Pet

Recently we lost our sweet little kitty Farah, who slipped outside while I was taking the trash out. Here are the steps we took, many shared with us by those who have helped to bring lost pets home over the years.

  1. Take your flashlight in the morning before it is light and at night just after it grows dark and shine it into the bushes and even the trees. The light will reflect off is or her eyes.
  2. Walk your neighborhood and look in every nook and cranny. Even if you’ve already looked in the same spots, keep checking. Talk softly to your pet and if it is a cat, meow.
  3. Go door to door and show your cat or dog’s picture to your neighbors and ask them to contact you if they find him or her.
  4. Make brightly colored fliers that have a couple of photos of your pet, including his or her face. Include your address.
  5. Post your fliers throughout the neighborhood. Post online on neighborhood groups like Nextdoor and Facebook. Get the word out however you can.
  6. Call your local animal welfare agencies, humane society, and county animal agency/pound.
  7. Put some of your pet’s items like favorite toys outside. Also put out some items of your clothing or laundry to make your scent present.
  8. Leave your garage door open a crack, or in my case, I left my lanai door ajar.
  9. Put out food, treats and water.
  10. List on Paw Boost.
  11. Most importantly, never give up! I found my baby after two days in the same area I had been searching several times daily. I believe a neighbor had taken her and only let her go once they saw my signs and knew I was searching and would not stop.

On Mental Health – Part III

Quite honestly, when I begin writing my Mental Health awareness posts, I knew there would be three and stated this. Parts I and II came easily. But I struggled a bit with Part III. That is why it took me this long to post. I really wanted it to be encouraging not depressing. And finally I believe it has been revealed.

There is a book I used to read to my children when they were little. It’s called We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury. The mantra throughout the repetitive structure is: “We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. Oh, no! We’ve got to go through it!” And I think of this often with regard to living in the wake of my family members’ suicides. And it applies as well to many of our challenging situations in life. It is the thing everyone needs to know. Sometimes there is simply no easy solution. Life can be crappy. Really crappy. I’ve experienced many of the common crappy experiences that affect our human society. You know of my experience with the death of family members. By the way, my sister’s death occurred between my two boys’ if I did not mention that previously. She was 46 and died in hospice due to liver failure. I’ve also experienced the financial difficulties that can affect single mom providers and business owners.

I’ve been sued. I’ve lost money in business. I’ve woken up feeling the panic and oppression of debt. Each instance was super stressful. Everyone has such experiences. And every time life presses us down all we can do is make our way through, step by slogging step.

Don’t get me wrong. The loss of my two boys dealt what I thought was a death blow to my lifelong Christian faith (Catholic for the 9 years prior to their passing). I am only just now starting to allow myself to be open to the idea of a caring God again, which was for so long a foreign concept to me in the wake of my overwhelming grief.

I met with my priest earlier this week and he prescribed a book for me, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, by Rabbi Harold S. Kushner. I have only just started but the priest believes it will help and I have to trust him because I don’t know what to do but accept the help that comes my way in whatever way it comes. I cannot be choosy. I have since the passing of my first boy taken any advice, any suggestions that are offered because I have felt that nothing can hurt. In the beginning many people offered the Bible, or verses of it or other faith based commentary, as well as other books that I politely thanked them for and then put away because I was in a faith crisis. I think many people thought that I maybe hadn’t had a strong enough faith but the fact is I was a practicing Christian all my life, doing all the things one is “supposed to,” and had sought to raise my children in the faith as well, reading them bible stories, blessing them at night, praying ceaselessly for them. And then one died. Inexplicably. And then 10 months later another one was lost, even more inexplicably. And I was lost along with them. I questioned my once deep, strong faith. It was shaken to the core. How could I continue to believe in a God who is said to care and who is supposed to answer us when we call, and most importantly, is said to protect our children when we ask? And yet he had ignored my nightly prayer, my daily repetitive mantra to watch over my children, to protect their once tiny, then more grown, minds, bodies, spirits, souls. I felt he had completely abandoned me. How do you go on in faith after that kind of a blow, that kind of a perceived betrayal by a God who in the Christian Bible is likened to a father. What kind of father refuses to answer such a pure prayer? That has been my struggle, but I am trying one step at a time to dig out, to trusts blindly beyond what my reason can do. We will see how that ends.

So, today, what I want to say is, in answer to my own question, which is “What do you do when everything makes you sad? Cooking because you remember the meals you cooked for your loved one….going to the school because you remember your happy senior about to graduate…eating because your table was once full of happy, laughing children…watching a movie because you last watched it with your lost loved one… reading because it is a book that was on your loved one’s to read list and he never got to read it… working because it is where you were when your loved one died even though you didn’t know it yet…. going to church because you had to plan two funerals in one year….and I could go on. There is only one thing you can do. You can’t go over it. You can’t go under it. You cannot escape it. You must go through it. But you can slowly begin to trust and hope and maybe even pray a little. And maybe just maybe there is a God who will hear. You can look at one thing of beauty in nature like a flower or a beautiful sunset and you can find focused enjoyment. You can accept the hug of a friend or family member. You can help those who need someone in their life. You can just put one foot in front of the other and get good sleep and eat good food and breathe good air and try to open your heart to love even when it brings pain. You can just go on, one tiny step at a time.

On Mental Health Part II: Firearms and Suicide

Warning to readers: This article addresses a very serious and disturbing cultural trend.

In our last article, Part I, we addressed mental health generally with encouragement and (hopefully)helpful ideas. Now we will address a specific area of mental health which is suicide prevention. This is a bit of a misnomer and I generally prefer the term suicide awareness. However, for purposes of this article, you understand the gist.

The fact is we cannot always know when someone is suicidal and many people take their own lives without having a history of what we might consider suicidal ideation or behavior. In my experience with my family members, this was the case. It was sudden and out of the blue. Especially in the case of teenage boys or young men, who disproportionately comprise the suicide completion statistics, multiplied where firearms are used, the decision and action can be very impulsive and seemingly sudden. And yet there is a period of premeditation in which the plan is put into action. It can be minutes, hours, days, even longer. Oftentimes these plans may be concocted in secret but there are still actions we can take as family members, loved ones, or even members of society that can help reduce the likelihood of a completed suicide act.

Of course we can talk to the person and ask if they are ok. Maybe share a meal or treat, spend time with them. Maybe we have the answer to whatever is troubling them. Or even just talking with us can help them feel better enough to continue on, to press forward through the life challenges that have presented, real or imagined.

We can also take the practical step of removing harmful objects from their sphere that are typically used for suicidal purposes. This could be lethal medication or other substances, toxic cleaning products, sharp objects and most obviously firearms.

Especially for teen boys and young men, firearms are a very common form of suicide. And where firearms are used, the completion rate is 90% as opposed to a much lower rate with other methods. In my opinion and tragic experience, it is extremely inadvisable to have firearms in a home with teenage or young adult people even if they seem happy, normal, healthy. In my situation, my sons obtained both of the firearms they used from their father and his girlfriend’s home. The firearms were unfortunately not securely stored. Even though I reasonably requested that they safeguard their home after the first tragedy, they refused. Even after our second son lost his precious life, in a court hearing the girlfriend argued in her testimony in support of keeping her firearms: “if it is not a gun, it’s going to be something else. Do I need to lock up a knife or rope or a dog leash?” This, as we have illustrated above, begs the question because the point is that a firearm increases the likelihood of success of the plan. Keeping firearms in the home when you have teens at home, especially males, compounds the risk of suicide, and is, pardon the pun, simply a Russian Roulette.

Preventing suicide death in teens and young adults is different from preventing firearm accidental death, especially with younger children. With young children, perhaps storing the firearm unloaded with ammunition separate may be sufficient. With teens and young adults, if they have access to the firearm they may be able to obtain ammunition separately on their own. They are also smarter and more observant, and unfortunately, able to keep better secrets, than younger children. You may not be aware that they have observed how you access your firearms and ammunition. In fact, perhaps you have even shared that with them and they have used your firearm with you at target practice. Familiarity with firearms may help to prevent accidental death but it is not going to help prevent death by suicide and may even contribute to it. One does not have to be expert at firing a firearm to compete a suicide when the intention and impulsivity is there.

I myself used to maintain a firearm and was properly trained to use it, and kept up to date with the intention of protecting my family. However, since my first son passed I no longer keep a firearm in my home, recognizing the risk for my other children is greater than the potential good. I have some other methods of security such as cameras and a watch dog (well, he is a golden retriever but hopefully a potential intruder would not realize this). I also have pepper spray for when we are out. I live in a state where firearms can now be carried openly, but I see it as too much of a risk for our family and would caution others with teens or young adult children in their home to avoid it as well.

I understand nostalgia of firearm culture in our country is strong but we are living in different times right now when our young people are facing such strong negative influences. They are still affected from the shutdown that caused so much isolation. They are facing the pressures of constant social media attention. And the environment for attaining college is very competitive.

I hope my personal narrative has been helpful to you as you navigate this heavy issue and that we can continue to improve the state of mental health of those around us and prevent needless tragedies.

In a crisis situation, call 988.

For more information you can see: Means Matter, https://hsph.harvard.edu/research/means-matter/means-matter-basics/firearm-access-is-a-risk-factor-for-suicide/; https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10233739; https://www.uchicagomedicine.org/forefront/research-and-discoveries-articles/firearm-related-suicide-trends; https://publichealth.jhu.edu/center-for-gun-violence-solutions/data/annual-gun-violence-data; https://www.medpagetoday.com/psychiatry/generalpsychiatry/83665

And please visit the blog my friend started in the wake of my son’s passing, which has more practical information as well as more personal stories. teensuicideandguns.com

Be safe. Be well. Come back for what I hope will be an encouraging Part III.