Author: Kathy Marshack

Not all of us get to celebrate Christmas with our loved ones. Among those separated from family at this time of year, there are broken-hearted souls who are disconnected from their children and parents due to parental alienation. We don’t often think about these families, especially the lifetime trauma of being cut off from loving parents who love their children forever.

I haven’t spent a Christmas with my children and grandchildren for 14 years. There’s a long story behind this tragedy, which is the subject of my next book, “LOVE GONE BAD.” For now, I want to tell you a Christmas Eve story that gives you a hint of how I manage the loss.

For several weeks my assistant Emily and I have been busy winding down operations at my leased office, preparing to leave December 31st. We have sold furniture, tossed out lots of garbage, filled the recycling bins several times, given away books and toys, and packed the rest with neat labels so that we can unpack at my home office.

Running short of time, Emily and I worked on Christmas Eve. Joseph, my IT wizard, dropped by to pack up the computers for transit. At noon, I took everyone to Christmas Eve lunch, where we laughed and told stories. But soon enough we were back to work.

Julie joined us about 2:30. It was her birthday, so I put her to work of course because we were way behind. She didn’t mind. We continued laughing and telling stories while shredding, sorting, and packing.

My doggy Simon joined us too. He wagged his tail and sat on our feet if we stopped moving for a second. He has doggy priorities, you know.

Larry and his roommate Bryce came by around 4:30 to load up some furnishings for their new house. Larry lost his mother (my cousin) a few years ago to a murder/suicide. He has worked hard for years to hold his family together through this trauma. Now he and Bryce are moving into a house with Larry’s sister and niece, a family home once again. They took a couple of lamps, an old table, a desk, and some electronics.

Then about 5:00pm, a tiny little US Postal carrier showed up with a package for me. He was no taller than five feet and had his hat pulled down over his ears, and with tiny wire-rimmed glasses. He could have left the package in the mailroom, but he brought it up to my office, on the second floor, way in the back of the building. By then we were the only people in the building. All of the other offices were dark and unlit. You need to know that my office building is on a little island, in a remote part of the city. What was he doing there?

The package was a gift from my friend Amy, who lives on the East Coast. Amy is one of those amazing Angels here on earth. She always mails her packages at the last minute. And in fact, I got a notice from the postal service just that morning that Amy’ package was late and wouldn’t be delivered until after Christmas. Apparently, Angels and Santa Claus thought differently.

By Christmas Eve, I had cleared out an old life, shared laughs with my favorite people, and got confirmation from Santa that I am loved. How does it get better than that?

Love around to you all,
Dr. Kathy

When you discover that your child has “Asperger’s Syndrome”, it makes you feel utterly helpless. I know, because I’m a trained psychologist, with a master’s degree in social work and a doctoral degree in psychology and I still felt that way about my own daughter who, by the age of 14, was officially diagnosed with “ASD”.

We want the absolute best for our children and as a result, I became a helicopter mom. Being a helicopter parent is a natural outcome of the crazy-making AS/NT world. Our natural instincts are to protectively hover over our children when they have such a serious disability. You can read about “Lessons I Learned about Helicopter Parenting from My ASD Daughter”.

A few weeks ago, I read an article that piqued my interest. I’m talking about the article from Eric Barker’s blog,  “This Is How To Make Your Kids Amazing: 4 Secrets From Research”.

In this article, Barker mentions two experts (Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. and Tina Payne) who wrote a book on fundamental skills children should be taught to be successful in life. We want our children to know they have more options than the basic “fight or flight” reactions. As a parent, I know you are wondering the same thing: how can we raise happy and emotionally healthy children?

Siegel and Payne establish 4 critical skills children need to learn:

• Balance: when your child has a meltdown (red zone), acknowledge their emotions and make sure they understand that you are listening. This doesn’t mean you cave. After the emotions have died in intensity, you should have a calm discussion and educate your child, by setting limits and holding him/her accountable. Bring your child back to the green zone – a state of calm and happiness. If we are dealing with those issues when we are calm, it’s a lot easier to implement those solutions when things get tense.

  

• Resilience: the next step is to expand the green zone. This doesn’t mean to eliminate the red zone, but to educate your child on how to act and handle certain situations. Here is where a helicopter parent will have difficulties. You need to allow your child to experience negative situations and deal with them in order to grow. Here is a blog I wrote on this topic: “Does Good Parenting Mean You Shield Your Child from All Adversity?” 

 

• Insight: help your child to be aware of their feelings and reactions, so they can know themselves better, have the ability to have an impartial view from the outside and learn to use that information to make better decisions in the future, to monitor themselves better. Help your child name his feelings to help him/her recognize that emotion.

  

• Empathy: children go through a development phase where they are self-absorbed and learn how to behave in society. This is normal, but what we don’t want is for them to be stuck there. You can try to deliberately draw children’s attention to other people’s experiences and their feelings. This can be done during storytime in the evening, not necessarily only when something bad has happened.

 

Of course, when your child has an empathy disorder, they will never outgrow that developmental phase. However, people on the Spectrum can learn rules of engagement, but they can’t be taught empathy. The article, “Can a Person Be Kind without Empathy?”, might be a good read for you.

Let me know what you think about this blog article, specifically these skills that might help our children be happier and mentally healthier. What do you think? Are they enough? How are you teaching your children these skills in a practical manner?