Systems are Failing Parents of Kids w Mental Health Challenges

Episode Transcript

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the show. I’m Dr. Nicole, and today we’re going to talk about the real lived experience of parents raising children who have extra needs or challenges, particularly in the realm of mental health. There is so much stigma, not only around mental health issues in general, but also around parents who have children with these issues. As a professional who has been in the trenches with parents for 25 years, I see the reality of what goes on in families, and the immense struggle parents face when trying to get their children the help they need. I’ve also seen the pain and struggle that all of this creates in the lives of parents, and how these disorders and challenges can literally take over the entire family. It’s something I really believe we need to be much more transparent about in order to provide more effective supports for individuals and families, and ultimately to develop systems of care that actually provide what families need. To explore this with us today, I’ve invited Cheryl Cardall on the show.

Cheryl’s a parent and a parent coach who has been focusing on these issues personally and professionally for many years. She has so many important insights to share. I’m going to tell you a little bit about her. She’s a parent, coach and host of the Fight Like a Mother podcast. Her mission is to advocate for and educate around mental health, as well as provide support and resources for parents raising kids with extra challenges. She has a bachelor’s degree in Family and Human Development from the University of Utah, and loves to speak and teach around helping to strengthen families. Cheryl and her husband, Dave, are the proud parents of five children. Cheryl, welcome to the show. It’s so great to have you here.

Cheryl Cardall

Oh, I’m so happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

You and I, I think first connected on social media, probably Instagram or something. We’ve had several conversations. I was on your show, I’ve been meaning to have you on this show. I just am so excited to have this conversation with you because I know that so many parents and even professionals in our listening community are going to resonate with this and just feel supported by this. So I want to start by having you share a bit about your story, how you came to be a parenting coach, and what has led you into not only this work, but also the advocacy that you’re doing based on your own personal experience.

Cheryl Cardall

Okay. Well, it’s interesting, because I’ve always been fascinated with families. From the time I was in high school and took a class on human development, and that was my major in college. I’ve read hundreds of parenting books. It’s kind of a hobby and a passion. And I started coaching moms about 10 years ago, well longer ago than that, probably, and just loved providing support and encouragement for them. And my degrees in early childhood education, but as my kids have gotten older, and we’ve dealt with more older challenges with kids, I really studied a lot about teens and some of those challenges as well. And then about seven or eight years ago, one of my kids started having some real struggles; struggles in school. I think we’d known from the time he was about six or seven that he had ADHD, but it didn’t really become an issue at school until probably fourth or fifth grade. He really started to struggle, and we really started to have some things happen at home. It just blew me away. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know where to turn. We were looking for a therapist and had a hard time finding a therapist, and there weren’t any resources. There wasn’t a community because you can’t talk to just anybody about these struggles. You can’t just talk to your next-door neighbor about some of the struggles that these kids are having. Because they are going to look at you like, “Well…” I’ve had people say to me, “Well, my kid would never do that. I’d never let my kid do that. They would never talk to me like that. I could never allow that in my home.” And so you don’t know who to talk to you. So I started to read and look for resources, and my Instagram account slowly shifted to focusing on mental health and parenting kids with extra challenges. We deal with a lot of mental health issues and neurodiversity in our home, and I just decided to create the resources and the community where people could find help and support. So that’s why I started the podcast and the Instagram community.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I love that you’re using your personal experience to support other people. I think oftentimes when parents are going through this kind of stuff on the personal side, there is a tendency to feel like they need to keep that hidden, to your point, who can you talk to about this? Who can understand? There’s such stigma for the kids around the diagnoses and the issues and whatever, but then so much stigma for the parents, to your point about like, “Well, you must be a really awful parent that your kids are having these issues, or that this is going on.” And it just can lead most parents to want to curl up in their bed and never come out. And yet, you have decided to use this as an opportunity to really share with people around “Yeah, this is the reality of this”, and also to build community around all the other moms and parents who are dealing with the same thing, but haven’t felt like there’s a safe place to go with that.

Cheryl Cardall

Yeah, stigma and shame are the same thing. And there’s a lot of shame with parents. You get it from the school, you get it from neighbors, you get it from church members, you get it from extended family, and all of a sudden, you start believing that there must be something wrong with me, it’s my fault. It’s my problem, if I could just be a better parent, when really, I will tell you: The parents I work with and coach are some of the most intentional, brave, and involved parents there are.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Same. And that’s not saying that all of us as parents don’t have things we can improve in, of course, we all do. Every single one of us. However, I agree with you that by and large, the parents that I work with clinically, man have they been working hard. And they have been reading and they have been researching and they have been going to therapy; they have been trying. And so it’s easy for people on the outside to look at these situations and go “Well, this is just a problem with parenting or whatever. And I think it’s really uncomfortable for all of us to have to face the fact that sometimes kids have extra challenges and needs because they have extra challenges and needs. And that it’s not necessarily a failure of the person or the people caring for them or whatever. But I think that’s not a neat and tidy story. We like this sort of neat and tidy story. “Well, this kid’s blowing up at school and hurting people and doing this at home and whatever, because of bad parenting”, oh, what a neat and tidy little story, and then I can tell myself that, “Oh, well, if that kid just got the therapy, or if those parents just did x, y and z, then that would be fine.” We like the package of that, we like how neat and tidy it is. And yet, when you are a parent going through it or a professional working with, you realize it’s anything but neat and tidy. That story just doesn’t hold up, does it?

Cheryl Cardall

It’s messy. It is messy, and parents who are doing this day in and day out, we are exhausted. We are exhausted because there’s not enough support. And we do have some. I share a lot, but I also share about 5% of what happens with my family, because there has to be a sense of privacy for my children’s sake, and for my sake, and for our sanity. So we’re exhausted. We’d love it if we’d take our kids to therapy and it fixed it. We’d love it if we found the perfect medication or if anything simple could fix their issue, but it’s just not that simple.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

You know, there’s several things that brings to mind that I want to talk to you about, but let’s go here next: This is something that comes up a lot now during times when someone famous has a mental health crisis or there’s a suicide or something like that. And suddenly social media and regular media and everything is flooded with this messaging around, “Check on the people you care about. Take your medications. Get your kids in therapy. Go and do your treatment. Don’t be stubborn. Make sure that you’re letting people know that you love them and support them. Call the suicide hotline. Do X, Y, and Z”, all these things which are well-intentioned, but again, really stem from this desire to have a neat and tidy story around all of this. And the reality is really different. And there’s something that really bothers me when all this stuff gets out there. We had one recently, where suddenly you’re just flooded with all these messages everywhere you look on social media around, “Here’s the number for the suicide hotline, check on the people that you care about”, all these things. And I get that it’s well-intentioned, but what bothers me about that is so, so often people are doing these things, this idea that suicide happens because no one let the person know they cared about them, or suicide or an inpatient episode because of depression or whatever happens because the person refused to take their medication. Those are tidy stories that just aren’t accurate, the vast majority of the time. And so, I get sort of defensive around that on behalf of the patients and the families that I work with, because I’m like, wait a minute, the vast majority of the time people are doing these things, and they’re still struggling. And so I’m curious what that stuff brings up for you.

Cheryl Cardall

I feel much the same way you do that, like you said, those are nice and tidy things. Everyone feels better when they post about the suicide hotline and they put something on Instagram or something. And here’s the reality: Sometimes I look at that as performative activism, like, “Oh, see, I posted about suicide, I said how sad I was when so and so died, or attempted, or had a mental breakdown.” But that’s not what it looks like. It’s messy, it is hard. We’ve had a couple of suicide attempts at our house and we were doing all the things: Going to therapy, talking about it in my home, we have just had a conversation about it a couple of days before, taking the medications, I mean, it’s just not this tiny little solution. And often, the systems set up aren’t actually support for families. One of the times we took my child to the emergency room of the children’s hospital, they were scrambling to find a bed because they have six beds for mental health issues at the children’s hospital, which is the only children’s hospital in the intermountain west, in my area, and six or seven beds. So they were getting eight or nine a night, they said, and all they basically do in the hospital is monitor them medically, and then they send them home. So the systems are really overwhelmed, and not as valuable as people think.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

It’s so true. And I have seen that happen over and over and over again for families. I’ve experienced that as a professional when I have tried to access services in crisis situations for patients, where I am trying to find them a bed in a facility for safety, or access a crisis team to go over to the house. It is an uphill battle at best, and sometimes an impossible thing. And these crisis lines and things are great in theory, except that they’re so disconnected from actually providing the kinds of care that are needed. I’ve had many parents who have had the experience of calling their local crisis team or calling a hotline and being told, “No, we don’t have anybody who can help you right now.”

Cheryl Cardall

Right. We’ve had that experience, too. “Oh, we’re two to three hours out.” Well, by that time… In two or three hours, we don’t know what’s going to happen. And the suicide hotline, I know people who have been helped by texting or calling the suicide hotline. Now it’s 988, it’s easy to remember. And I know people who it’s helped, and that’s great. My particular child will not talk with anybody when he’s in that state. Won’t text with somebody, it’s a stranger. They don’t know. And so yeah, and I know that the mobile crisis team, they’re severely underfunded. The people working there have good hearts and they want to help. They felt terrible that they couldn’t help us. But they didn’t have money, they only have two people for the entire area that I live in. So yeah, those nice and tidy things. I wish they were true. Don’t you wish they were true?

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I do. I mean, I wish they were, because we wouldn’t have the vast amounts of problems ongoing that we have, if it was as simple as calling a number or going to therapy or taking a pill or checking on people. I just think we need to really step back and look at the fact that in the vast majority of these situations, people are aware that the person is struggling, in my experience, far more often than not. They have been receiving available services. The problem is that we have such an issue in the field of mental health and medicine in general around how to really help people. And our focus is so narrow and so limited. I’ve done so many episodes of the show around this, and our systems of care are so broken, and so not a system, so disconnected. They put parents in the situation of trying to piece things together. There isn’t good case management, in most cases, there aren’t a variety of supports and services available, things are dictated by insurance, not necessarily what the person needs. So just everywhere you turn within the system, there are barriers to really getting individuals and parents and families what they need. And to your earlier point about exhaustion. I mean, that’s a very real thing. Burnout and exhaustion, not just for the child or the person experiencing the issues, but for the support people around them. I mean, it’s a profound issue.

Cheryl Cardall

The entire family. Yeah, I just wanted to share something really fast. You mentioned, “Check on your loved ones. Your family, they have to know you love them.” Well, I know of a family, a young mom, she had diagnoses, she had medication, she’d been doing therapy. And she knew she was loved. She had a great support system. She had kids that loved her. She had a great husband and extended family, and a church community and all those things. And yet, she still took her own life. And it’s so tragic. But I think we have to look at depression, just as we would cancer. The chemotherapy doesn’t always work, it’s not always successful, can’t always save them. And it’s the same thing with mental health. It’s just as valid. She died from depression. And so I think that we have to have that in mind, too, that you don’t know that this person didn’t feel loved. I mean, the recent celebrity suicide, he was beloved, all over. Everyone you hear talk about him said he was the most loving, happy, friendly, talented person.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

And the assumption that the issue was just that no one was aware — Look, mental health issues affect people in so many different ways. There’s so many different varieties of things. There’s such a lack of effective treatment across the board, especially for these really severe chronic issues, because guess what, if these people were going to be helped by the typical treatments, they would have been helped. They’ve been to therapy, they’ve taken the medications. So I think this is a really important piece to talk about, especially when we’re talking about children, and I’m talking about children of any age. Our children never stop being our children, whether they’re five or they’re 35. They’re still our kids. This issue around parents taking on the responsibility for their child’s issues, especially in the long term, as kids get older, and parents sort of taking in this message that I believe is pretty pervasive in our society of “If you would just do something different, if you would try harder, if you would do something else, you would figure out how to fix this, how to make this not an issue.” I think parents really do, whether they realize or not, take on that message and that expectation, and hold themselves to the standard of “If my child is continuing to struggle here, this is my fault. I’m doing something wrong, I need to figure it out.” And that, I find, gets especially problematic as kids grow in age into the young adult years, where we cease to see them as their own human being. We develop this enmeshment with them where we are trying to control and manage and hold ourselves responsible for what happens with them. And man, is that just tough for everybody. And so I’m curious about your thoughts on that, because I feel like you’ve done some posts around this recently, and maybe even are experiencing this yourself as your kids are getting older now. And so I’m curious about your thoughts around that.

Cheryl Cardall

Oh, I absolutely am experiencing that. I’m in the middle of this right now. And it’s messy and it’s difficult because we are so involved with our kids. I mean, my podcast’s name is Fight Like a Mother. That’s what I’ve done for years and years. And so you’re so involved in the processes and the treatments and everything, that it’s impossible not to feel like “If I just did more, then we could fix this.” And our children don’t have to be fixed because they’re not broken. Neither do we, we’re not broken either. And so I think that recently, I’ve really been working on this. My therapist said, “Cheryl, I want you to start working on detaching from the outcomes, from the results, from your desire and need to control this and fix this and smooth this out.” That’s not easy to do because we just want to find something that works because we love them so much, and we hate to see them struggle. And it’s really difficult to detach ourselves from that, but I will tell you, that as I’ve been working on that, it is very freeing, and it helps me love my kids better because I’m not connected to their choices or behaviors or struggles. I am connected because I’m their mom, always will be, but it’s a healthy connection because I tell parents all the time: Their behavior has nothing to do with you being a good mom, you’re not in control of their behaviors or their choices. Even when they’re young. We think we have so much control even when they’re young, but we just really don’t.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

We can only ever control ourselves. And we fail to realize that.

Cheryl Cardall

Right. And so I think that detachment from our expectations or what we think should happen, or their road to success, we can just be a support to them and walk alongside them, instead of trying to force them onto a path or do what we think they should do.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

It’s so profound. I’m thinking about this from my own experience as a mom. What’s so hard about that is again, this sort of implicit messaging in our culture, around our kids’ behavior, choices, the path that they take in their lives being a direct reflection on us, and who we are and how we’ve done at this parenting thing. And I think that is what makes it so hard for us to detach and let our kids be their own person, have their own experiences, struggle with their stuff, do things the way they want to do it. It’s tough because we have this sort of subconscious bias around that being about us, actually.

Cheryl Cardall

Yes, we do. And I was raised in a very structured religion, and kind of was taught all the way through my life as a young parent, “If you do these practices in your home, then your child’s going to follow your path of faith, they’re going to be successful, they’re going to do all these things.” And it’s this very narrow set of behaviors. “And if you do it right, then this will happen, this will be your result.” And it’s just not true. It just isn’t. And I think that’s so hard. And I don’t think it’s just religions that do that. I think it’s society in general: “If you do this, if you enroll your kids in this, or if you are this kind of parent, you have this kind of parenting style, then your kids are going to be successful adults.” And so we have this very narrow view of what successful is for us and for our kids. And we have these expectations of what we should, we “should”, whenever we use that word, it’s an expectation, be doing and what our kids should be doing.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah. And that that sets us up for issues ourselves with our relationship with ourselves. It sets us up for issues with our kids, our relationship with our kids, this idea that there is one right path or that they are a reflection of us. Boy, I mean, there’s so much out there now around the idea of codependency, but man is that at the heart of it between parents and kids, right? You’re a reflection of me, I need to control you.

Cheryl Cardall

I think there was a podcast I did with somebody, where I was like, “I’m codependent!”

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

“Oh, wait, that’s me!”

Cheryl Cardall

Yeah, and there’s no shame in that, because it’s how we were taught a good mom is. And so I think that just being aware of that, that, oh, having to smooth everything out, having to fix things, being rescue-mom and all that. That’s all codependent behavior. And just being mindful of it and recognizing it is the first step.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

That’s right and we all have that to a certain extent. It kind of amuses me how pop culture, that term has gotten in, and I’m like, look, all of us have codependency in some way, shape, or form. You get through a human life without having that in some way. But I think to be aware of that, again, is good, but to realize that fundamentally, our kids are not us; they’re their own person. And I think that’s really hard for a lot of parents to really come to terms with, that they are their own person. I think this gets to be especially hard, and I’m curious about your take on this based on your personal experience, is when a child has extra challenges or diagnosed issues. This idea that, “Oh, my child got a diagnosis of something, and somehow, now that’s reflection on me and says something bad about me”, or “Oh, my child is struggling with this, and boy, there’s got to be something I can do to just box that up real tight and put that away. Nothing to see here, kids”, and some of the things that our children are struggling with are going to be lifelong issues. I mean, again, that doesn’t fit in the nice, neat little tidy box we would love to have this stuff in, but I’m real frank with families that come in. My clinic sees a lot of really significantly impacted kids. It’s like, “This isn’t going away. This isn’t going away. There’s going to be no neat, tidy, tie the bow at the end of this chapter of the story kind of situation. This is a part of who your child is, this is a part of the fabric and the story of their life. And now also your life as a family. And that can be so hard for parents to come to terms with, but I think it’s profoundly important if they’re going to really be able to support their kids.

Cheryl Cardall

Yes, yes, it is absolutely so important. That acceptance of, okay, these are the circumstances we’re in right now. It can improve, but it can also be the up and down. And it can be a constant thing, especially if they’re going through adolescence, and things are changing all the time. And so I think that acceptance is so, so important. And one thing I want to share is I think often, like we talked about before: If you do these things, your kid will turn out right. It’s almost like we put our kids as a product or a commodity, that if we just follow this path, the product is going to turn out. And they’re not a product, and they’re not results. They’re not a trophy to hold up and say, “Look what I did!”, and I sometimes when I see college scholarships and acceptance letters and football scholarships are offered, and all these things, you see in the comments often, “Oh, of course, they did so great, look at who their parents are.” And I’m like, “What happens with my kid who might not graduate high school? Are you going to say, “Oh, of course so, because look how crappy his parents are.” I mean, these kids have their own journey, and there are some kids for whom that path to success that everyone thinks is the right way is easy for them. And they do it. And even kids for whom it’s not easy, they still can persevere. Kids with extra challenges often can’t jump through those hoops.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Well, it’s this idea of who defines success in the first place? We have such a narrow definition of success without realizing that success can mean a million different things depending on the context of the person and their situation. And I think we forget about that. But that messaging is so insidious, everywhere. I love that you brought that up around the “Oh, yeah, well, of course, look at the parents.” Also just an aside around that: What does that say to the kid? “Oh, well, of course, look at your parents”, as if your child didn’t have agency and the critical role to play in whatever it is that they achieve, right? So I think this can just really become dysfunctional, this whole attributing all the good stuff, all the hard stuff, whatever, to a parent, which isn’t to say that the parent role isn’t important. It’s critically important. But it isn’t the defining thing for any of this.

Cheryl Cardall

You see lots of successful people who had really toxic childhoods. You see a lot of people who really struggled, who had fantastic parents. And so it’s about each of us, individually. And that’s where we have to differentiate from our kids and come up with and find our own identity and be comfortable with who we are, so that we’re not so enmeshed with our kids that our identity is all wrapped up in all the choices that they make. Because sometimes I think parents love to talk about their kid being on the honor roll, and their kid doing all these accomplishments because it feels good. We don’t get very many strokes as a parent, right? And that can feel good to say, “My kid gets all A’s, so that must mean something good about me.” And it feels good when our kids succeed if we’re all tied up in our thing. We can be proud of them, there’s no harm in that. We can be proud of them, we can share that with people. But I think we have to really be mindful of: Is this because it feels good to me? Or is it that I’m proud of all the hard work and everything that they’ve done?

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

That’s right. In all the areas, even the ones that don’t come with trophies attached, right?

Cheryl Cardall

Exactly, exactly. Well, in progress. It’s like “You passed the class, it might have been with a D minus, but you passed that class. And last time, you failed that class.” And so I think it’s working on the progress with kids and knowing what is successful for them.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

But one of the challenges around that for parents, that you raised early on, when you were telling us your story, is there’s nowhere for parents of struggling kids to go with that. Who do you share that with? No one is making a Facebook post saying, “Hey, world, guess what? My kid failed chemistry the last three semesters, but he passed this time with a D minus, and we’re having a real party over here.” Nobody’s making a post like that because there’s so much perceived stigma and shame around that. So I work with parents on celebrating those things. Those are successes, those are progress, whatever, but there’s still that isolation that parents and even the kids themselves feel around. “Oh, nobody else gets it. Who am I going to share that with?”, right?

Cheryl Cardall

Yeah, it is such a challenge too. Sometimes during all the college acceptance and scholarships, I just get off social media for a while because it can be a challenge to see what looks like the perfect kid and the perfect family. And I just, I can’t, you know? I have great kids. I love my kids to pieces. They’re amazing people, they deal with more struggles than seems fair for kids. But like you said, I’m not gonna get on and say “We made it to therapy today! That’s progress!”

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

That’s right! But I think that’s a great self-care tip because social media can be a real issue with that, of parents feeling worse about themselves. They did want five minutes ago when they sat down in front of their phone or the computer, but now they feel terrible because of the comparison piece. So I love that tip. Right? You just shut it down. If you notice that’s happening for you, that every time you’re scrolling stuff, you’re noticing that you’re or just feeling crappy about yourself and about your kid, shut that down. Take a break from that, or take those people, hide them from your feed or whatever, because that can become really problematic. And I think it’s an issue that we deal with today as parents that certainly, parents didn’t deal with 10, 20 years ago. But that’s a real issue for people. So I love that a tangible thing you can do for yourself and your child, to not expose you to things that are inherently going to trigger negative feelings.

Cheryl Cardall

And that doesn’t mean you can’t be happy for them. You can congratulate them, you can be happy for them, but you don’t have to take that on that it means something about you that your kid isn’t doing that, or isn’t going to college, or whatever it is.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I think also that’s why it’s important that communities like yours exist so that parents do have a place to go with that, with other people who get it. To be able to comment. You being transparent, putting up like, “Hey, here’s something we’re dealing with”, and for parents to feel like, “Oh, these are people who get this, like, I can say, boy, I have been there, here’s what you’ve been dealing with. And here was a real step in the right direction, we have.” And for people who understand that to rally around and go, “That’s amazing. You’re doing awesome.” Because that community is really important to feel like we are not the only ones out there dealing with this. There are a lot more parents than people realize.

Cheryl Cardall

And on the flip side, when your kid is having a real struggle and struggling in school, you have people to say, “I don’t even know what to do here. This is such a struggle.” And sometimes there’s nothing to do, you just need support from people.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

That’s right. Yeah, the “nothing to do”. I think a lot of things that parents of kids with extra challenges face fall in that category, actually. And I think this is, again, part of the self-preservation. How do we detach? How do we care for ourselves and support our kids? It is to realize that actually, not everything is an emergency or an issue that we need to do something about, right? Our kids are going to have their breakdowns, their challenges, things are gonna go well, things aren’t. But to realize that every failure, every problem, every whatever, isn’t something that necessarily requires our attention, energy and focus. I’m curious what you think about that?

Cheryl Cardall

Well, I think with that, instead of giving the problem your energy and focus, give it to your child. Work on the connection, the relationship with them. There are so many things that happen at school, in different places that they can’t necessarily control. But people look at it and think, oh, my gosh, why can’t they just behave at school? But in reality, school is not set up for kids like them. And so they feel like an utter failure. And so we don’t punish for things like that, because they’re lacking a skill, they’re lacking an ability to do that. Fortunately, our high school has been really great at recognizing that, and so I just think rather than harping on the problems all the time, because you’re going to be doing that a lot if that’s your focus. I let school take care of school issues. When they come home, they need a place where they can know that they’re loved and accepted. And we put that energy into our relationship and into connection. It doesn’t always work because they don’t always want me around, they don’t always want to talk to me. But I can still take that worry and focus instead on connection and the relationship.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Hmm, I love that. That’s a powerful shift for people to make to, to channel that into connections. That’s what our kids need when they’re going through that, and so that’s really an important insight. And you mentioned something earlier around our kids needing us. Yes, they need our support, they need our guidance. They don’t need us controlling and fixing and micromanaging. I’d love for you to say a little bit more about that, especially in this vein of detaching, which some people might think of as “What do you mean you’re detaching? Your kids need you.” But there’s this idea, especially as kids get older, of being a guide on the side, not in there, managing everything all the time, but letting them become their own person, but still being there as a guide and support. It’s a tricky thing, but I’m just curious how you’re navigating that.

Cheryl Cardall

It’s really tricky, and I’m certainly not doing it perfectly, because I tend to want to be all in there and knowing exactly what’s going on and everything. But as they get older, they have to start to know how to do that. They have to start to learn how to advocate for themselves. Also, like I said, we don’t punish for things that happen at school, but I also don’t prevent the natural consequences from happening at school. At school, consequences happen. And I don’t prevent that, but I also don’t harp on it too much at home. So I think that’s the thing, it is stepping back and allowing the natural consequences of their behaviors to happen instead of trying to control it with, clamping down with control. And a lot of people have told us, “Oh, you just need to do more tough love and things like that.” And actually, with the kid with ODD and other challenges, that doesn’t work. Doesn’t work at all.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, and that actually is a whole other episode that could be done at some point, around why the whole tough love thing doesn’t work, but yes. And so it’s tricky that as a parent, to even navigate, you’ve done the research, you’ve done the reading, you’ve had experience with your own child, you’re handling things in a way that you believe is effective and appropriate. But then you’ve got all this sort of peanut gallery input around “No, do it this way. I don’t really know your kid or anything about you, but I saw this post you did. And if you would only do X, Y, or Z”, that whole peanut gallery situation gets exhausting too!

Cheryl Cardall

It is absolutely exhausting. And I get parents all the time, almost every day, that are like, “I know, I know, in my heart, this is right.” But people just say, “Well, if you would just take away all their privileges, take their door off their bedroom, take away all their things, then that would turn them around.” And I’m like, “Punishing doesn’t cure mental illness.”

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

It actually can create more challenges. And what it does is it distances your kid from you more so that you’re not able to be a support and a guide to them.

Cheryl Cardall

Sometimes our only influence is that relationship and that connection.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Especially as they — I mean, relationship is important from birth on, but especially as they get older and they start to individuate. And naturally, as part of their developmental process, start to pull away from us more. Cultivating that relationship. And hi, if taking a door off or putting more punishment solved things like depression, anxiety, bipolar, suicidality, whatever, you think parents haven’t thought of that before? If that’s the problem, we’d have the problem solved.

Cheryl Cardall

We have it all solved, we have all solved. I just think, like you said, you don’t know what you don’t know. And unless you are in the circumstance and you’re the parent of that child, and you’re dealing with it 24/7, you just really have no idea. You’ve never parented a child like that. Even if you have similar experiences, you’re not the parent, you’re not the child, you’re not living in the home. And so it has to be just so individualized for us. This is what we have chosen to do. It’s fine if you have differing opinions than me, but I don’t need to hear them.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

That’s right. That’s right. And boundary setting around that is hugely important and healthy. So I know we have to wrap up, and there are so many more things I want to ask you, but let’s end on that note around: As a mom dealing with that staff, what are the things that people that you wish that people would either understand or would say or would do that would be supportive to you? So much of what goes on is not supportive, right? It’s the well “If you would just”, or whatever. So as a mom, dealing with this, what do you wish people understood? Or what do you wish people would say or do as a support?

Cheryl Cardall

That’s a really good question. I wish people would be willing to listen more and judge less. I wish people would give parents the benefit of the doubt that they are doing their very best. And are we perfect? Absolutely not. We will all admit to the mistakes that we make. Every parent is imperfect, or human. I wish that instead of jumping in with advice, they’d say, “You’re doing such a great job. I don’t know how I would do this.” Instead of saying “How can I help?” say, “Why don’t we go to lunch next week?” Offering what you can do instead of saying, “How can I help you?” I’m like, “I don’t know. I don’t think you can help me.”

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I’m in crisis. I can’t think about anything.

Cheryl Cardall

Exactly. Offering what you can help with, “I can bring you dinner tonight.”

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Can we bring a meal? Can we go out to lunch? Yeah.

Cheryl Cardall

So offering specific things, but I think mostly just being willing to give people the benefit of the doubt, recognize how hard they’re trying. Now just loving them, instead of judging and jumping in to fix them.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

That’s beautiful. And that goes for both the individuals experiencing the challenges as well as the parents who are caring for them. And I can’t think of a better note to end this conversation on. I know that resonates so deeply with so many of our listeners. I want to make sure that people know where they can find you, Cheryl, you’ve got this great Instagram account and things, where’s the best place for people to get more of you?

Cheryl Cardall

Well, my community is so great. I’m on Instagram, just under my name, @CherylCardall, and my podcast is Fight Like a Mother podcast, you can find it on any of the major platforms. My website is under construction or I’d send you there, it’ll be up in the next couple of weeks. But those are the best places to find me. I am in the process of creating a parent support group, it will be virtual. So anyone from anywhere can join it, because I really think that it is absolutely essential. So many kids are dealing right now with mental health challenges, and parents are feeling this anxiety of not knowing what to do or where to turn. So that’s coming in the next few months.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Fantastic. We’ll keep an eye out for that, and I’ll let people know when that becomes available, I’ll make sure to let people know about that because I think it’s so needed. And I just want to say, Cheryl, that the things that you are going through on the personal side are so challenging. You do it with such grace. And then to be willing to share that with the rest of the world to help empower other parents, to advocate. It’s just really a gift. And so I’m grateful to you for spending time with us today, and I’m just really grateful for the work that you’re doing in the world around this. Thank you.

Cheryl Cardall

Thank you for having me. And I’ve learned so much from you as well, so thank you.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

And thanks as always to all of you for being here and for listening. We’ll catch you back here next time.