Sol (00:01)
Welcome back to Co-Parenting Beyond Conflict. I'm your host, Sol, founder of the BestInterest App for Coparents. At BestInterest and on this podcast, we help co-parents find peace. Today, I'm joined by Dr. Karalynn Royster, a child psychologist and co-parenting expert who helps moms navigate the emotional storms of divorce and high conflict co-parenting. We talk about how to recognize the signs of gaslighting and alienation, why validation matters more than perfection,

and how modeling calm can transform the way your kids experience conflict. If you've ever worried about how the tension between you and your ex might be impacting your children, this episode will give you both clarity and hope. Let's dive in.

Sol (00:40)
Hi, Dr. Royster, welcome to the podcast. Good to have you here.

Dr. Karalynn Royster (00:43)
Thank you for having

Thanks.

Sol (00:45)
So I'm really excited about today's episode. We're going to be talking about some really deep and challenging topics. Before we get into it, how are we finding you today?

Dr. Karalynn Royster (00:55)
I'm in Colorado. It's beautiful here. We've got the nice fall colors and all that good stuff. You're finding me a little tired. My own children gave me a run for my money last night. So we all know how those nights are... You and I have talked before and so I'm excited to connect and talk about this deep issue. It's gonna be great.

Sol (01:13)
Great,

Dr. Karalynn Royster (01:13)
Yeah. Thanks.

Sol (01:14)
So you've dedicated your life to helping moms especially navigate divorce and co-parenting in high-conflict situations. Can you share a bit about what led you into this work?

Dr. Karalynn Royster (01:22)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it's so interesting because when you say that, I think, well, begrudgingly, right? It's work that I, for a long time, was indirectly advised against doing. When you train as a therapist or a psychologist, there's a lot of talk about staying away from high conflict and two parent families and

how litigious it is and that it's really challenging work. For a long I was like, maybe I'll take a few of those cases or here and there. As I've grown older and gotten more into my own healing journey from my experiences,

it has felt like inevitable slide down into what I really love doing. So it started as working with children in a therapeutic sense that were into homes. And then over time, really becoming known in my community here in the Denver area, as someone that can navigate

trickier two-parent home conflicts well. And then as I was doing that work, I started to really see that there was another role that was needed of being able to support parents with how to support their kids. Because what happens is

parents go through these really high conflict, difficult dynamics or post separation abuse or domestic violence, whatever has happened in the relationship as well. And they get told "your kid needs to have a therapist." But there gets to be a lot of tricky dynamics with how that person gets pulled into the dynamics and into the courtroom and whether they can still work with both parents. And as the therapist, you're there to support the child.

And so you have to be neutral and supportive of both parents' relationships with the child. As a coach, you can do a little bit more directive work. So if both parents don't participate or if one parent is getting a lot of emotional material they don't know what to do with, then as a coach, I can be like, well, this is what I would say or this is what I want you to say. It's a really long answer to your question, but.

That is kind of how we got here.

Sol (03:25)
Yeah, and what I'm hearing in that too, it's, it's, this is deep work that we're doing in supporting co-parents, just as it's a very deep and difficult journey to be a co-parent, especially in a high conflict situation.

Dr. Karalynn Royster (03:35)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I agree. And so for me, I am a parent. I've not had the experience of going through a separation or divorce in my own marriage, but I was that child. And so my parents were really high conflict. They both remarried. They both divorced again. And so there were several layers of what it was like to be that child.

Early in my career, I don't know that I was ready to look at those parts of myself in my work with children. And as I've gotten older, I've kind of grown into like, this is why it's so important. And there's something about the lived experience that's really key to this population.

Sol (04:15)
Oftentimes we give from a place where we ourselves were lacking and it sounds like you're coming in to support the little version of you in others.

Dr. Karalynn Royster (04:19)
Mm-hmm.

yeah,

like our younger selves, it's... And that's, why it feels like a slide, because we want to pretend like we're really healthy and we don't have these wounded younger parts of ourselves that need that attention. a tricky line in the therapeutic world, because if you are trying to heal yourself through your patients, that's...

not good for anybody. But there is this piece of having a lived experience that definitely lends itself well to my work and to the intricacies of what these family dynamics are.

Sol (04:56)
Absolutely. One of the topics that I'd love to cover with you is gaslighting. You did a recent episode on this topic and I know many of our listeners are probably already somewhat familiar with the term gaslighting. in your podcast, I know you had mentioned it's overused. So...

Dr. Karalynn Royster (04:56)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Sol (05:13)
what is your clear, parent-friendly definition of what gaslighting is?

Dr. Karalynn Royster (05:17)
Gaslighting, in my view, is attempts to undermine a child's reality. The way they see things, the way they experience things, the way they feel, it's the action of convincing someone that that wasn't the case. Sometimes we talk about what isn't gaslighting and

those are things like just genuine misunderstandings. And then there's kind of a spectrum all the way up to alienation or poisoning, which is gaslighting almost to the extreme. The goal of it is to undermine the relationship. Where gaslighting in itself, it isn't always about undermining the relationship.

And you can have gaslighting outside of co-parenting dynamics.

Sol (06:01)
Speaking of mislabeling, there situations where a well-intentioned parent ends up gaslighting our own kids unintentionally?

Dr. Karalynn Royster (06:10)
Mm-hmm. think that this is a huge part of where the movement around validation attunement comes If your kid is upset, they're crying about, I don't know, you gave them juice instead of milk. And you say to them,

"There's nothing to be sad about here." One could make the argument that that is gaslighting them out of what they feel. "I feel sad, I wanted milk, and you're telling me it's not okay to be sad." That's a very subtle example, but that is where the validation literature comes from because we want kids to know and trust their felt experience.

It leads downstream to all sorts of things. If you can't trust what you know to be true and what you're seeing with your eyes, we're going to have issues. that make sense?

Sol (06:57)
And what they're

in their bodies too.

Dr. Karalynn Royster (07:00)
What they're feeling in their bodies. Yes. Because your body's giving you really important cues. And we as parents, one of our key jobs is helping kids understand what those cues mean. Because you don't just know that. So we teach you that through emotion validation over time. "I noticed when you went, I wonder if you were scared." Not only are we validating the emotion,

we're connecting that feeling you felt in your body was fear. Your face got bright and you took a breath in, that was fear. So then when we're not there and you have that physiological experience again, you can "maybe I feel afraid."

Sol (07:38)
back to that example you gave, the child who didn't get the juice they wanted, what would be a better way of handling that situation?

Dr. Karalynn Royster (07:43)
Yeah.

Typically I would coach parents to just say very simply, "you're sad. I didn't give you the drink you requested. It's annoying when mom gives you milk instead of juice. It's okay." The key part here is that

feelings aren't good or bad, they just are. You're just labeling it. You're just saying like, "that surprised you, that made you upset, that's annoying, that's frustrating." And then you move on from there.

Sol (08:10)
Jumping into the parent's head in that moment, I'm guessing what might be going on is there discomfort arising in us as the parent when our child is throwing a tantrum. We want to fix it and that the gaslighting may actually be just a response to that feeling. Does that

Dr. Karalynn Royster (08:21)
Hmm?

think people get nervous that all sorts of narratives start playing. We start thinking to ourselves, "I don't want to raise a spoiled brat. Why can't they just tell me politely? We need to have manners. What are we going to do if they do this at school or at grandma's house or..." It just goes on and on. Or in our heads, we're seeing from the adult perspective,

"What are you talking about? It's just milk. Calm down." And you're allowed to think that toddlers, preschoolers in particular, are very irrational little humans. The fits we've had about a blue cup versus a purple cup. It doesn't have to make sense to you. What you're trying to do is tell them it's okay that it upsets you. We don't get to judge whether something upsets you or not.

We get to be with All feelings are okay. All behaviors are not. If you then take that cup and you throw it across the room, as a parent, you can say something like, "you can be mad and not throw your cup, or you can be upset and you can ask me for juice next time you want it" or whatever and however you decide to handle it.

Sol (09:31)
As co-parents, oftentimes we have this experience of, and in the realm of gaslighting, "what is going on at my co-parent's house? Why are they saying these things?" What are some examples of what a co-parent might be doing

also gaslight their child?

Dr. Karalynn Royster (09:50)
Some toxic,

really unhealthy gaslighting patterns that we see are certainly undermining emotions. An example of that would be: "I told dad that I didn't want to go visit him this weekend or go to his house. And that I was upset and that I missed you, and he said, 'no, you don't,' or

'she's off doing something fun,'" because they can't tolerate hearing that the child might be upset missing an outright dismissal of the emotions. "No, you don't feel that" or some sort of sending the message that "I don't want to hear that. I didn't tell him because I knew he'd get upset" or something like that.

Or very over exaggeration of positive emotions. Saying to you the co-parent or sharing on your communication, however, only the positives. "I don't know what you're talking about. They were happy all weekend and then they come back and they're kind of a mess or I never see any of these behaviors at my house."

So kind of an undermining of emotion is probably the biggest I see and typically around fear, anger, and

Other forms of gaslighting are around accountability. "I didn't say I would call you on FaceTime tonight," or "I didn't say I'd be available. What are you talking about?" I didn't say I'd come to your game, that kind of thing. You're misremembering that I said I'd be at your dance recital and I'm not there, because we can't tolerate the pain that the child's experiencing.

And then a lot of very subtle changing the narrative around the divorce story, shifting of the story.

Right? "That's not what happened exactly," or, "actually when you heard us arguing so-and-so started it.... I haven't seen you for this long when it's really not been that long." You know, rewriting history a little bit. often very subtle to start. Alienation is very overt, I would say.

Gaslighting tends to be more subtle. It's water over a stone, wearing it down and chipping away where alienation is more like a sledgehammer. aim is to crack it as quickly as possible. Gaslighting is a little bit more subtle and over time takes its effects.

Sol (12:03)
That's a helpful distinction. co-parents recognize when alienation is happening to their children?

Dr. Karalynn Royster (12:09)
There are some really important keys with alienation that we watch for. There's a couple of really good books. Bill Eddy has a great book called, Don't Alienate the Kids, as well as the folks at Been There Got Out just published a new book on avoiding alienation. Typically, alienation is much stronger.

There are resist-refuse dynamics. There's outright saying, "I don't like this person." And then when you ask the child why they're real flimsy, "Well, once he served me macaroni and cheese and I wanted spaghetti." And you're like, that feels like a really strong reason to really hate someone so intensely. Or they respond with adult information

that they shouldn't know. "Because dad had an affair, then we had to leave and it's all his fault." And you're like, whoa, whoa, Kids can really naturally get stuck in that good guy, bad guy dynamic. That's where they are developmentally. this whole shifting towards only the bad guy dynamic, but the undercurrent of it is very flimsy. If someone has really hurt you,

if someone has abused you and not shown up for you, and the level of dislike for that person matches that, then we don't necessarily call that alienation. But even children who have been abused by a parent, still have a part of them that loves that person because of how attachment works.

To just be so against one person often points towards alienation.

Sol (13:39)
that gaslighting is far more subtle, what are some signs that a co-parent might recognize in their children that that's going on?

Dr. Karalynn Royster (13:42)
Mm-hmm.

Gaslighting is a much harder dynamic to pick up on. Depending on the age of your child, I would say it's largely verbal. The things that you're hearing and the things that they're saying. So that's fortunate if your kid's a little older and more communicative, it's a little harder when they're younger, they may not be talking as much and also they say

weird, wild stuff. But you're listening for those cues that we had talked about, like the rewriting history, the subtle checking in, the things that they're asking you, the questions that they're asking that you're sort of in your gut, like, hmm, I wonder why you're asking about our finances, or wonder where this idea got planted,

and paying attention to that.

Sol (14:29)
As a co-parent myself, I know how difficult communication can be. That's why I created Best Interest, the co-parenting app that uses advanced AI technology to automatically filter out all negativity, promoting positive communication and helping you create a healthier environment for your family. Try it now and get 10 % off with code Beyond10. Link in the show notes.

Sol AI (14:52)
And now, back to the show.

Sol (14:54)
you've talked about adult accountability on your own podcast. What are examples of taking accountability as a parent?

Dr. Karalynn Royster (15:02)
Taking accountability looks like when your child brings you something that hurt them, made them sad, upset them, wasn't what they expected, being able to hold that. When your co-parent brings those things to you, ideally if you have a relationship where you can communicate pretty you can hold that, you can hear that,

and then you can make the changes for it. So if your co-parent is saying to you, "I think every time this conversation comes up, you get a little defensive and you have a hard time owning your piece of it. I get that. I get where you're coming from. And also it's really confusing our kid." If they can meet you in that, that's very different than "well,

you are the one that made this an issue and you changed the narrative and what you're telling them is not true." Accountability is also a physical process, the way you literally show up in the room. You can't just say, "I'm okay when you get angry and I can handle your tantrums" to your child,

and then completely lose your mind when they have a tantrum. You have to regulate and be able to be present and attuned to that.

Sol (16:09)
In these dynamics, it becomes a bit of a can of worms when we start talking about a high conflict co-parent. At the end of the day, our number one goal should be to help our children thrive and succeed, focusing purely on what we can do, what we can control as co-parents, perhaps in that dynamic.

How can we help a child sort some of these memory issues versus manipulation without bad mouthing or... how can we help them avoid the loyalty binds?

Dr. Karalynn Royster (16:37)
Sometimes when people ask me about this, the parent is saying to me, "there is literally no way I could go to my co-parent and say, I have this concern" or

they are well aware the co-parent is doing some of these They know what gaslighting it, they know what manipulation is, they're already worried about it. So they're saying, okay, I know this is happening, how do I help my kid with it? And so some of the stuff that I teach almost assumes that you don't have a collaborative dynamic.

The first step is exactly what you talked about, letting go of the idea that you're going to change your co-parent and that they're just going to have this awakening and be like, you're right. I am manipulating our child.

So resisting the desire to put so much energy into convincing them what they're doing is hurting their kids. That's for them to work out on their own healing journey and with their own therapist and with the courts if we need to. So that's not even step one. That's like pre-step. Step one is what we've already been talking about.

A lot, a lot of validation. It's almost validation on steroids is what I kind of joke about. You have to be really good at it. And I think the trick here is to really validate the confusion and that you're happy they're talking to you about it. Because if you're not having the conversations, if it's all happening up here in their heads, it's a lot harder to interrupt it.

So sometimes parents have a hard time with this because validation is one of those things that is so much easier said than done. Like it sounds so easy to just be like, validate their sadness. When a really difficult dynamic, it gets a little bit harder because you don't want to talk poorly about your co-parent. The key is to validate what you think your child is bringing. So a lot of times in this situation,

It's validating the confusion, or the wondering. So they bring to you "Mom says, you're the reason that we have to move, that you were the one that didn't let us keep the house. And I really hate living in this new house," whatever. Maybe you know this already. But he said, you're the reason why.

You might be thinking to yourself, like, are you kidding me? Why are we talking about this? It's so inappropriate. The first thing you want to say is, wow, that is a very big question. Or, wow, that is really confusing because that's different than what you've maybe heard me say. That's not throwing mom under the bus at all. That's just validating like, it seems like you have a lot of really big questions about this. Then,

we validate: "I'm really happy you brought this to me. Really, really happy to talk to you about it. You can always ask me when you're confused." So that's the first piece. The next piece that I teach is around teaching kids to start looking around and developing their own expertise, their own data,

their own knowledge of Teaching them how to check in with themselves. "I felt really sad. Mom said it wasn't a good reason to be sad." So you're saying, "wow, that sounds really confusing because it sounds like your body was sad. What did you think about that?" as they get older, this is a real slow burn.

I would say, this is not a quick, you're gonna do it once and boom, we fixed gaslighting. This takes a lot of time and a lot of practice. asking questions like, "is that how you remember it? Is that what you know to be true or is that kind of what you're thinking about?" And they might say, "well, I don't know." And you can say, "that's okay. Sometimes we remember things differently." And then finally, this is less of a doing step and more of a don'ting step.

We really want to avoid putting them in the position of then correcting your co-parent. So we're not going to say things like, "you should tell him not to ask you that." Or "mom says you need to talk to her about who moved out of the house." The only thing that's going to happen there is they're going to stop talking to you about it because they're being

put in an awkward position. So we teach kind of these three strategies to start working on it. And often folks require a little more individualized support if it's pretty high level and long term to tailor it to their unique dynamics.

Sol (20:47)
At the end of the day, what we're doing is parents, well, any parent actually, is helping our kids launch and have a successful life. And they're going to be met with so many different types of relationships in their young adult, adult life. So we're helping them develop the skills that they will need for the rest of their life. It's not just about this one parent.

Dr. Karalynn Royster (20:55)
right.

It's funny you say that because I was talking about this recently and I got on this whole side about how we raise girls and how we raise boys. Boys are often gaslit out of their emotional experiences and boys don't cry and kind of these really harmful masculinity narratives. And girls are often taught

explain away their fear, explain away their big feelings to not take up too much space. This is a topic that applies in a huge way to all areas of life. Sometimes I'll talk to parents about, imagine that your kid is coming home from school and says a teacher said this to them, not your co-parent. A teacher said, well,

Boys don't cry. What would I tell my child then if there's no emotional valence to it? I'd say, "well, next time your teacher says this to you, maybe you tell her, it's okay that I, my mom says it's fine if I cry." Or "I'm allowed to cry. I'm allowed to be sad." I may still circle back with that teacher privately and say "what are we doing here? I have some concerns."

I'm not going to do that in front of my kid. I'm not going to march into the classroom and throw a big fit. I'm not going to tell my child to march in there and say, you better call my mom because she's mad at So it helps in some ways in the high conflict scenario to take it and map the situation onto a less conflictual dynamic, a more professional dynamic perhaps.

Sol (22:33)
Yeah, and in that scenario, you're not telling your kid to go and talk to the teacher...

Dr. Karalynn Royster (22:38)
I would be weighing the relationship my child has with that teacher. If it's someone they're really close to and they have a good, solid, long-term relationship, I may say to my child, well, this is how you, I wouldn't say it like this, but this is how you would advocate when someone tells you something you don't like. You can say,

"I disagree," you can ignore them, you can get help from another person. Because again, to your point, we're trying to teach you how to be in the world with difficult people. And you will encounter people in your dating life, in your work life, in your friendships, who sort of undercut you and undermine you. And we want you to know how to handle that.

Sol (23:18)
A very positive frame on this entire experience, I believe, is that our children in a way are very blessed. Obviously, every situation is different, but they're getting the example of a parent who is on their healing journey, decided to get out of the dynamic. Maybe this dynamic has carried through the generations, but they're now finally getting out. And so now the child gets to see this is what this home feels like. This is what this home feels like.

And we might be giving our kids a ticket out of these dynamics.

Dr. Karalynn Royster (23:48)
lot of what makes me a good psychologist comes from being raised-- that sounds like I'm talking about my trauma, but-- are some really good things that came from this. There's flexibility, there's movement between two environments. There's a lack of rigidity in the way that I move throughout the world.

I also got to see two very different parenting styles. In a lot of ways that really helped. I do think there are some real gifts to this. I think you do learn a lot of conflict resolution skills. You see people taking care of themselves. And the thing about gaslighting too that I sometimes remind parents is that it all comes out in the wash.

If you are doing these things and really trying your best in your home and in your relationship to show up and attune and continue to teach good skills around emotion regulation and stuff like that, eventually you will be a safe place where your child can try out and explore where that may not be as safe. They will see

these manipulative acts as they get older, if you make it safe for them to see them. lot of times parents get really caught up in, "I really need them to know that she's lying or he's lying" or that this is not okay. And you are right, it is not okay. But you have to wait a little bit before you do that. You build the blocks.

And then they come to you and they say, "I realized that dad lies a lot." And you're like, "well, thanks for telling me that." You're not going to be like, "yeah, he sure does. I've been logging it. I'm really good at documentation." You're just saying "wow, I wonder what makes you think that. I'm curious about that feeling."

You've done all the legwork to be the person that they can bring that observation to.

Long hard work.

Sol (25:32)
Yeah, it really is. And being a co-parent, you're balancing so many different things, especially when you're in a high-confit situation. I know on your own podcast, you talk about how parents don't need to be perfect. Can you speak to that a bit?

Dr. Karalynn Royster (25:38)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

I think that we all maybe struggle with this a little bit. I think that divorce and separation community does even more because they often guilt themselves that they've done something wrong or hurt their kids in this way. hear that a lot. Like I put them through this and I'm like, well, a healthy parent is so much better than an unhealthy dynamic, but whatever, that's a whole other thing.

There's such a standard in today's world with social media and what we see, all aspects of our life around perfection that you have to attune perfectly. You have to validate perfectly. You need to be a gentle parent who's healed your own inner child, who also does yoga, who also works, who also saves a ton of money and takes your kids on vacation, but keeps them in school and they're perfect students.

You know, there's just so much pressure on everyone and I feel it too. I'm sure you do. I wish I could just shake moms sometimes and be like, it's okay. We don't have to be perfect. And I say we, because I also struggle with it. There is no perfect parent and there's no perfect kid and there's no perfect parent-child dynamic.

So releasing ourselves from that is a lot of heavy work,

Sol (26:57)
When children are in these sorts of dynamics, kind of caught in the middle, what are some of the signs that they're struggling?

Dr. Karalynn Royster (27:01)
Mm-hmm.

The very first sign that I talk a lot about is a big change in behavior. And that can be in intensity or frequency or duration. So take a tantrum. Tantrums, very typical. A kid that is post-divorce is gonna have tantrums. All children have tantrums. But what you're watching for is

Wow, these tantrums used to calm down in 15 minutes. Now they're pretty consistently taking 45. Or they're happening much more often. Or the length of time. Like now we've been having more tantrums and it's been four weeks.

Any sort of skills that we had that we then lost is concerning for us as parents. So if we were night potty trained and now we're having bedwetting accidents most nights or just accidents in general.

Not eating, not sleeping, any of their like major functioning. The best way to tell if they're struggling is really to listen to your intuition because you as a parent typically do know. We have that little spidey sense that's like, ooh, they're not, doing great. And I don't love this. And it's not just a day or two.

The other piece that's important for parents to know is that the research tells us that most kids level out post-divorce in about two years. It is a major stressor. It will affect them across the board. Just like a death, just like a move, just any major event that happens in a child's life. We would be concerned if we didn't see a change in the behavior.

Knowing that some of that is typical and some of that is healthy and good, we want to see them processing and moving through the stages of grief and all of that, is important to keep in mind. Just because they're struggling doesn't mean we 100 % need to get them a therapist yesterday. Although I love therapy.

Sol (28:57)
Besides the therapeutic intervention, what are some ways that a co-parent might help their child self-regulate?

Dr. Karalynn Royster (29:04)
There's a lot you can do. It depends on the age of the child. But I think one of the greatest gifts you can give is modeling your own regulation. There's a really neat phenomenon we see where, let's say I like shake my hands when I feel angry, like, whoo, shake it off. Or I do that noise like, whoo. Or take a big breath.

You don't even have to articulate that to children and we'll see them do that. I'll see a kid in my therapy office shaking his hands and I'm like, hmm, interesting, where'd that come from? And then I'll meet with the parents and I'll see them do that when they get overwhelmed. I'm like, wow, that's so beautiful, right? So a lot of modeling for yourself, even modeling that out loud where you might typically just like take a breath, count backwards from your child gets older, you can say out loud,

I'm feeling upset. I'm going to take a breath before I respond to you so that they're connecting what they're seeing with what you're doing. So your own regulation is beautiful. The typical things that we know really help kids: prioritizing sleep, prioritizing good food, getting them to move their bodies. These are all parts of just healthy self-regulation. I am a very big fan of books. I love to read

books that are just so happen to be about the topic that they're struggling with. Picture books or placing these books in their room. I have a huge list of books on divorce and changing families and step parents and moving and new school. So if you're thinking in your head, this is something we're really struggling with, you know, just plant a couple of books in their room, read a couple of those, use those to talk about their emotional experience.

Sol (30:43)
Children can sometimes say the darnedest things, we'll hear things that'll get our assumptions going wild. How do we respond when a child says something like, "I don't want to go to dad's house" on exchange day. How do we respond to stuff like that?

Dr. Karalynn Royster (30:57)
Mm-hmm.

I think it's always a good thing to take a beat first if you can. Just pausing if you're able. The power of a pause is really crucial and often overlooked.

In high conflict, you don't usually have a choice. So in that situation, that's not something that you can be like, "well, let me text him and see if you can push back your time." So again, we were talking about applying it to a non-loaded situation. If this was a friend, you might be like, "sure. Okay. I'll text your friend. You don't have to hang out with them today. Not a big deal." You don't get that option.

Sol (31:28)
Careful,

Dr. Karalynn Royster (31:29)
I think the first thing is that validation. So you say something like, "thanks for telling me that. That's a big feeling. You're feeling a little bit nervous" or maybe you know it's sadness or anger "about having to make the transition today. It's really hard." And you leave it there. That's an invitation from a child to tell you what's going on if they need to.

They may say, I don't want to stop playing Legos." Then you're like, okay, this doesn't have anything to do with that. It's just we are enjoying what we're doing here. We handle that differently than, for example, "dad's really mean and I don't want to go You say something along the lines of, "we both really care about you.

This is the schedule we've worked out. You can feel free to share how you're feeling with your dad, and I'm also here to listen. But we are gonna go today." All feelings are okay, all behaviors are not. We're saying to them, "it's okay you don't wanna go. It's okay that it's hard, I'm happy you told me that." And also "we still have to go. You can't throw your Legos at me,"

or whatever might happen. Very similar to if you have to go to school. It's fine you don't want to go to school, but school is your job and you need to go.

Sol (32:37)
A theme that comes up a lot in your work, I imagine, is talking about what co-parents can control versus what they can't control. Can you give a listener some parting wisdom about what that looks like when they feel so powerless?

Dr. Karalynn Royster (32:51)
We know that it takes one regulated, attuned, securely attached person to change a child's life. We know that. We know that children in horrible abuse, neglect, the worst things that you can imagine will grow up and tell us, " grandma was so lovely and she really saw me and she really got me." Or "my mom,

she was a flawed person, but she just loved me so deeply." It takes one person. You can't control what they're doing and what craziness is happening over there and what toxic water your kid is swimming in. But you absolutely can control how you show up for your kid. And when you do that well, it gets carried with them wherever they go.

And so that's your goal. What you can control may feel like it's not enough, but it actually really is. So that's the piece that I really try give people hope about. What you're doing really, really matters a lot to your

Sol (33:51)
Thank you. That's beautiful. Thank you so much for being on today. can listeners who would like to connect with you and find you online, how can they find you?

Dr. Karalynn Royster (33:53)
Thanks. Thanks.

LearnWithLittleHouse.com is my website. It links to all of our, free master classes. We have some lower cost classes folks can take. I'm on social media, so Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, you can watch our podcast on YouTube or across, Apple and Spotify, it's called The Kids First.

Co-parenting Podcast. And I'm just so grateful to talk to you. I really, really appreciate it. So I've really enjoyed it.

Sol (34:29)
Now I'm not letting you go quite yet because we have our action round. So here are a few short quick fill in the blank style questions for our listeners to give them some takeaways. So you ready?

Dr. Karalynn Royster (34:40)
I don't know. Yes, I'm ready. I'm

Sol (34:42)
One sign a child is struggling in a high conflict divorce is:

Dr. Karalynn Royster (34:46)
distress.

Sol (34:46)
When my child repeats a confusing claim, my first words are...

Dr. Karalynn Royster (34:51)
"Thank you for telling me that."

Sol (34:52)
The biggest mistake parents make during FaceTime calls is...

Dr. Karalynn Royster (34:57)
not letting kids be kids.

Sol (34:58)
When a child repeats something that feels like gaslighting from the other parent, the best first response is:

Dr. Karalynn Royster (34:59)
It's okay.

"I'm so happy you told me that. That sounds really confusing."

Sol (35:08)
The single most powerful thing a parent can control in their home is:

Dr. Karalynn Royster (35:12)
their attachment to their child.

Sol (35:13)
If I could give every co-parent one mantra to repeat in moments of conflict, it would be...

Dr. Karalynn Royster (35:19)
Hmm,

I'm in charge of me I can control how I show up for my child.

Sol (35:23)
Love that. One sentence parents can memorize for that car ride home after a hard handoff is:

Dr. Karalynn Royster (35:29)
I would say "that was really difficult. I'm here with you."

Sol (35:33)
Now, finally, what's one takeaway that you'd like to leave our listeners with, especially those that might be feeling like they're drowning in conflict?

Dr. Karalynn Royster (35:41)
You really don't have to do it alone. There's a lot of really good people and support that can help you. There's tools, there's your app, there's live coaching, there's support groups. Please find a way to not feel so isolated is what I would say. Yeah, it's a lot for any person to And they definitely shouldn't be doing it alone.

Sol (36:02)
Yeah. Thanks so much for all of your insights today. This has been such a great interview and talk.

Dr. Karalynn Royster (36:03)
Yeah. Yeah.

I'm so happy to be here. Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Sol (36:14)
Thanks for joining us on the Coparenting Beyond Conflict podcast. To support our show, subscribe or leave a rating. Links for all books and resources mentioned on appear in our show notes or on CoparentingBeyondConflict.com. See you next time.

Sol (36:32)
The commentary and opinions available on this podcast are for informational and entertainment purposes only, and not for the purpose of providing legal or psychological advice. You should contact a licensed attorney, coach, or therapist in your state to obtain advice with respect to any particular issue or problem.