Co-parents often find themselves at a stalemate with one parent distrustful of the other. Trust can be rebuilt, and returning guest Dr. Michael Saini has some tips on how to do it.
On today’s episode of Children First Family Law, Krista welcomes back Dr. Saini, a Toronto-based renowned psychologist who has authored more than 200 publications, including book chapters, government reports, systematic reviews, and a vast number of peer-reviewed journal articles highlighting research in the area of family law and its impact on children. Dr. Saini is a passionate advocate for children’s rights.
Krista and Dr. Saini begin their conversation by explaining the importance of establishing boundaries around trust and repairing trust violations in the context of a divorce situation. Dr. Saini outlines the research on trust as the number one dynamic for co-parenting success, emphasizing the importance of accepting who your co-parent is and building trust despite any disputes you may have with them. He shares why coming to terms with “good enough” parenting can be helpful, how the erosion of trust can lead to additional conflicts as co-parents, and why the conflict is worse for your kids than getting your way in the fight you’re having with your co-parent. You’ll hear Dr. Saini’s method of using mini goals to rebuild trust with your co-parent, the foundation childhood creates for trusting or distrusting in future relationships, the importance of exposing kids to new romantic partners carefully, and learning to become comfortable with your new roles post-divorce. Finally, Krista and Dr. Saini explain when trust-building models aren’t appropriate and how to figure out what each parent is willing to do to demonstrate their trustworthiness.
Trust is a complex and significant topic in divorce, and Dr. Michael Saini’s tips can help you rebuild trust with your co-parent and foster a healthy relationship for your children, thereby breaking intergenerational conflict tendencies.
In this episode, you will hear:
- Building boundaries around trust and repairing trust violations
- Research about trust being the number one dynamic for co-parenting success
- Dr. Michael Saini’s take on viewing trust as a bank account with a positive or negative balance based on experiences
- The importance of coming to a place of acceptance of your co-parent, thinking beyond the dispute, and building trust
- “Good enough” parenting and not placing your standards on the other parent
- Why emotional processing is like an iceberg, because we only see a small portion of it
- How erosion of trust leads to additional conflict in co-parenting
- For your kids, the impact of the conflict is far more harmful than who ‘wins’ the argument.
- Anger and fear as secondary emotions to fear
- Using mini goals to rebuild trust
- Childhood is the foundation for trusting or distrusting future relationships
- When conflict is modeled poorly over generations,kids can repeat the same unhealthy patterns rather than learning how to resolve them
- Exposing kids to new romantic partners very carefully
- Boundary ambiguity post-divorce and becoming comfortable with new roles
- When the trust-building models are not appropriate, especially considering the dynamics of violence
- What each parent is willing to do to demonstrate trustworthiness
Resources from this Episode
www.childrenfirstfamilylaw.com
Dickie 2015 Trust and Conflict Resolution
Saini 2025 Trust in AFCC CA Handouts2PP
All states have different laws; be sure you are checking out your state laws specifically surrounding divorce. Krista is a licensed attorney in Colorado and Wyoming but is not providing through this podcast legal advice. Please be sure to seek independent legal counsel in your area for your specific situation.
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Incremental Trust Building for Co-Parents: A Challenge from International Expert Dr. Michael Saini Podcast Transcript
0:00:00 – Dr. Michael Saini
A problem is only a problem until you find the solution. And so, in that case, I would want to know how would they want to get past that barrier, because parents don’t want to be stuck in conflict. If they had a choice, I always like to ask parents what will you do when you no longer have to deal with conflict? What will you do with your time? What hobbies will you take to replace the amount of time that you’re spending on the conflict? What will you do with your time? What hobbies will you take to replace the amount of time that you’re spending on the conflict? You know, knowing that they would rather not be in this situation if they could.
And the opposite of love is not hate, but it’s a place of acceptance. And so if they’re still hating each other, then there’s this emotional connection that’s keeping them engaged in court. And so how to start thinking about beyond that dispute, beyond that conflict, what do you need to see happen, you know, first, and then second, and then third, to really have you start thinking about trusting this person, at least in a way that you’re okay with the child, spending that time with them. It’s not going to be perfect.
Intro/Outro 01:11
Welcome to the Children First Family Law podcast. Our host, Krista Nash, is an attorney, mediator, a parenting coordinator, and child advocate with a heart to facilitate conversations about how to help children flourish amidst the broken area of family law. As a child advocate in demand for her expertise throughout Colorado and as a speaker on these issues at a national level, Krista is passionate about facilitating and creatively finding solutions to approach family law matters in a way that truly focuses on the best interests of kids. Please remember this podcast is provided to you for information purposes only. No one on this podcast is representing you or giving you legal advice. As always, please enjoy this episode and be sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast with others you think would benefit from this content.
law matters in a way that truly focuses on the best interests of kids. Please remember this podcast is provided to you for information purposes only. No one on this podcast is representing you or giving you legal advice. As always, please enjoy this episode and be sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast with others you think would benefit from this content.
0:02:00 – Krista Nash
Today on the podcast, we welcome our very first second appearance guest, dr Michael Saini of Canada, president of the International Association of Family and Conciliation Courts and worldwide known psychologist and prolific researcher on issues in families of divorce. We are grateful Dr Saini is willing to join us again this time to speak about the important topic of incremental trust building with parents of divorce. When parents go through a divorce, their bank accounts, if you will, of trust are depleted to zero or are in the negative. Yet they are then asked to co-parent together from a basis of trust. This is a nearly impossible ask, making it essential to children’s outcomes that parents figure out how to rebuild that trust. Dr Sayeni’s research provides details as to why this is so vital and how to approach it with real ideas for parents and those of us who work in family law arenas. We hope you enjoy this insight from Dr Sayeni to help families, help kids, flourish despite the devastating life event of divorce.
Welcome to today’s episode of the podcast. I’m so glad you’re here and I am thrilled today to have the esteemed Dr Michael and I’m going to say his name right this time Saini, correct, perfect, yes, I said it wrong last time. I’m going to keep practicing this until I get it right every time With us for my very first second time guest. So thank you for doing this and welcome back.
0:03:27 – Dr. Michael Saini
Thank you. A pleasure to be here. It’s wonderful. Thank you for inviting me back.
0:03:30 – Krista Nash
For those of you who didn’t listen to the previous episode with Dr Sayini, I appreciate. No, I said it wrong. Yeah, did I say it right or wrong, sayini?
0:03:38 – Dr. Michael Saini
You said it right, no it’s good With Dr Sayini.
0:03:48 – Krista Nash
I first talked with him generally about alienation and Caden’s Law and a whole bunch of different research that he is working on.
He is out of Toronto and has a lot of worldwide influence and, I think, is doing research in virtually every area that we discussed. I think I joked last time that you must not sleep because every topic I even brought up you thought, oh, I have a research paper on this and a paper on that and a study on that, so very fortunate to have you here back on the show. Last time we talked about how Dr Saini had done some work on incremental trust building, and I have seen through so much of my work that that is such a core problem for co-parents because the trust one of your most intimate relationships has eroded, and so the trust has understandably completely been broken down usually, and so I thought it was very interesting to hear that Dr Syeney had done this work. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. So give us a little intro, tell us why you maybe did this research and some initial thoughts on what people need to think about in terms of introduction to this.
0:04:46 – Dr. Michael Saini
For sure, so when you think about what we’ve been trying to accomplish in terms of high conflict and putting boundaries around the conflict when parents separate, we haven’t really been able to move that far in the last 40 years. We can put boundaries around the conflict, but we don’t actually do a lot to change the dynamics. We can try and put structure. We use the courts, we use clinical professionals, we use forensics, we try everything we can to put a boundary around the conflict so it doesn’t spill over to the kids and we tell parents don’t involve your children in the conflict. But then they do. We haven’t really moved that far in the last, you know, 40, 50 years, since we’ve been really studying separation and divorce and so on. The other side of conflict is really the lack of trust. And so what if we were going about this the wrong way? What if, instead of focusing on putting boundaries around the conflict, what if we were instead trying to address trust violations and try and repair those in some sort of incremental way so that they can hopefully, with some assistance, create some more foundational trust or at least have some foundational trust? If there’s no trust left in that relationship, then when we do ask them to take on a parenting plan or we give them parent education that we hope that they’re going to apply to their family and to their children, that they’re more likely then to integrate it, because now we have a foundation of trust, and so it’s really been an area that I’ve been excited about, and you know, when you do this work for a long time, it’s always good to find things that get you excited and focused on thinking about doing things differently, and we have a bit of research on this right now.
Marsha Prude and I we developed a co-parenting tool. We developed a co-parenting tool, and the number one factor that really is related to positive co-parenting is this trust dynamic, and so it really brought me deep into the literature, and I’ve spent a lot of time reading about trust. And what do we actually know about trust? Because we always say we have to trust each other, but what does that actually mean? Who has studied the trust and the various formations of trust? And what does trust violations mean? And what does trust building look like? And even if you go to the literature, the word trust is everywhere, but no one really defines it and no one’s really spent any time trying to figure out how to build it when it’s been ruptured.
0:07:44 – Krista Nash
So is it fair to say that you make the assumption, I mean that we can make the assumption that there’s some level of trust before the divorce or breakup? I mean, maybe at some time during the relationship trust was probably violated because we see this family unit breaking up. But is the idea that and maybe you can define trust force but that you had it at one point and maybe that’s even more injurious right If you had it at one point and then you lost it, versus never having it and still not having it?
0:08:14 – Dr. Michael Saini
Yeah, you look at a relationship where they’ve had conflicts and if you think of a bank account, you know you open up a bank account and you start putting money into the bank and you start saving and saving. And that’s what you do with trust in a relationship. You keep on saving trust into your relationship Because one day you’re going to have to withdraw from trust, you’re going to have to withdraw from that bank account and you want to make sure that there’s some money in the bank that you’re withdrawing from and you want to make sure that there’s some money in the bank that you’re withdrawing from. What happens is that sometimes you withdraw so much, like an affair, for example or you withdraw over time, a little bit at a time.
Every single time you criticize, every single time you have those small micro trust violations. They start depleting the account and so by the time they separate, there’s nothing left in the account. So we ask them to trust that. You know the child is going to be fine at the other parent’s home, but there’s nothing left in the bank for them to withdraw from. So they’re in overdraft by time. They separate and they’re involved with us and yet we’re asking them to trust each other.
0:09:27 – Krista Nash
And I suppose if people are litigating or even just that’s part of why I even have the podcast is people can get this information, because so much information is conflict ridden. You know, when I go look for divorce lawyers, I see websites that have we’re gonna win, or the picture of a bear, angry bear, or caution tape like we gotcha, we’re going to win for you. You’re like we’re going to war, and a lot of times the cases are going to posture that way. Right, I have a hard time, even myself being as amicable as I am, not being in that seat when you’re confronted. That’s what we learned in law school. So the people that are leading these people, often if they’ve got attorneys not a lot of people do not have attorneys but what does that add to that conflict dynamic? Does that fuel the conflict, then, or the lack of trust?
0:10:13 – Dr. Michael Saini
Yeah for sure. I think every time that you move into a situation where you’re eroding the trust through additional conflict and you know, position yourself to win against the other and not take the opportunity to recreate some trust if there had been trust or, if not, then put trust into that relationship then you’re just prolonging the conflict, You’re prolonging the inability to trust each other and oftentimes you can have the best deal. You really think that the parties are going to agree Like. This sounds perfect, why would you not agree to this?
But they still walk away from the deal, they walk away from settlement or they walk away from the opportunity to come to some sort of agreement on their case because they just don’t trust. They don’t trust the other person, they don’t trust the process, they don’t trust themselves, they don’t trust the system at large, and so they walk away because they just don’t feel that they can trust. You know whatever’s going to come from that. And so if we’re not addressing their trust propensity or their propensity to trust as they come into these situations and deal with the potential trust violations and how that’s having an impact on their feelings about the agreement, then they’re going to break down and we see this happen, unfortunately, far too often. So even when we have in the lawyers who are friendly and trying to resolve, you may still have parties who decide that they don’t trust the lawyers, they don’t trust the other person and therefore don’t follow through with what we would think would be an otherwise good deal for them and their children.
0:12:06 – Krista Nash
I think it just points out to. This is a slightly off topic, but I’m dealing right now with a client who, where I’m representing the parent and we have a perfectly good plan ready to go, not just for parenting time but for the division of all the money and all the things, and there’s a hang up emotionally right Over a very small thing, like it’s a very small thing and it’s just like I have to say it’s irrational not to do this. But I understand, like you, as long as you understand you’re operating out of emotion and operating out of kind of vindictiveness, right, I I’m trying to encourage this person not to do that because it’s a huge waste of money. But people are willing to spend a huge amount of money over something very trivial because they’re so caught in this web. So I don’t know, that isn’t necessarily about the trust, but I mean I suppose it could also erode the trust, right, because the other person receiving this is like, oh, they’re just trying to stick it to me.
0:13:12 – Dr. Michael Saini
I mean it does fail to think that we’re going to get through this amicably right Makes that other person feel that way. It could be trust related, because if they don’t trust whatever, that piece is in the overall plan.
That could be the barrier. Like, since I’ve been doing all of this research on trust, I have changed the way I do parenting plan evaluations. Because now I’m asking parents you know I’m asking about their propensity to trust so how trusting are they as individuals, generally speaking? And then how much do they trust the person in which they’re in conflict with? And then I want to know, from a calculus-based trust, what will it take specifically for you to start trusting the other person? And it may mean that before anything else happens, they need to see the other parent show up on time at least three times. Well, now we can measure trust building. Now we’re making progress, now we’re looking for solutions and we’re not stuck in the problems of the past, like a problem is only a problem until you find the solution. And so in that case, I would want to know how would they want to get past that barrier, because parents don’t want to be stuck in conflict.
If they had a choice, I always like to ask parents what will you do when you no longer have to deal with conflict? What will you do with your time? What hobbies will you take to replace the amount of time that you’re spending on the conflict, you know, knowing that they would rather not be in this situation if they could. And the opposite of love is not hate, but it’s a place of acceptance. And so if they’re still hating each other, then there’s this emotional connection that’s keeping them engaged in court. And so how to start thinking about, beyond that dispute, beyond that conflict, what do you need to see happen, you know, first, and then second, and then third, to really have you start thinking about trusting this person, at least in a way that you’re okay with the child spending that time with them.
It’s not going to be perfect, and Winnicott’s good enough parenting concept is a really nice model to use, because we typically assess parents as being experts. And well, no one’s an expert. I’m not an expert parent, but I’m good enough in terms of Winnicott’s good enough parenting. As long as I’m not harmful, I’m not abusive, then good enough is just okay. Abusive, then good enough is just okay. And so how do you get parents to trust that the other parent is good enough to take care of the child when they’re not around? That’s the real key of what’s often missing in what we’re doing.
0:15:56 – Krista Nash
Okay, so we’re going to take a little detour here because I’ve not heard of that, winnicott. So first of all, how do you spell it?
0:16:02 – Dr. Michael Saini
It’s W-I-N-N-I-C-O-T. Okay, and who is Winnicott? So Winnicott is? She looked at object relations about 100 years ago. It’s an old theory. Okay, it’s before Bowlby, and Bowlby, of course, is the attachment dude. Yes and so. But when I was talking about what is good enough for parents so that their children can adjust, ok, and the idea here is that typically, especially in child protection, child dependency and in family law, we often hold parents to too high a regard. We expect them to be perfect parents when none of us are the perfect parent. We’re all sort of good enough. And so, from a child protection standpoint, when I do training with child welfare, I talk about that threshold of as long as it’s not abusive or neglectful. Where it’s now contrary to their safety and well-being, then we need to be thinking about these allegations in context of good enough. For example, the child eats Kraft dinner at dad’s place on Wednesdays it’s not perfect. Or mac and cheese? Do you have Kraft dinner in the?
0:17:20 – Krista Nash
United States. I was going to say we probably just call it mac and cheese, but it is Kraft and it is Kraft mac and cheese. Yeah, for the Americans Is that what you just call it? Mac and cheese, but it is craft and it is craft, but it is craft mac and cheese. For the Americans, don’t you Canadians call it, it’s just craft dinner. It’s just craft dinner yeah we just call it mac and cheese.
0:17:32 – Dr. Michael Saini
Yeah, but if they have it on Wednesdays, it’s not great but it’s not harmful, right? Especially if they’re having, you know, broccoli and other vegetables on Monday, tuesday, thursday, friday, whatever. And so, yeah, it’s not great but it’s not harmful, it’s good enough, it’s fine, your child’s going to be okay. And actually, you having conflict about this and you making this an issue in the courts and exacerbating the conflict because of this is actually making it worse than the food itself. And that goes with routines and what kids are watching, and I mean there’s always you look at, you know, in the video that kids play, some of it is harmful, but most of it is fine. It’s not going to.
You know, we have to make sure that they’re not on it for too long, but some of it is fine, it’s not going to. You know, we have to, you know, make sure that they’re not on for too long, and but some of it is okay, everything in moderation. And so, you know, when I learned about this concept, I felt relieved as a parent. I also felt, you know, good for my dad, who I thought was a good enough parent. So on Father’s Day I gave him a card that said thank you for being a good enough dad.
0:18:51 – Krista Nash
I love that. I know I think I’ve shared. You know I’m open book on this, but I’ve got four adult kids and over the years they’ve said we need a child advocate. You know, like, can we call a child advocate into our house? Because I’m just good enough to right and I’m not trying to tell parents that too, when I’m talking with them. It sends me back these comments to. I guess I’ve trained under this Winnicott theory and not even known it. But when I first got engaged, right after college, probably even during college, I was a CASA volunteer, court-appointed special advocates. Not sure if that’s in Canada at all, but in the United States the dependency neglect court started using lay people to come in and basically take one case at a time. Just go lay eyes on this. The caseworkers are too busy and I know you used to do that work yourself when you first started.
They’re too busy. We need one person to be on one case just to give me, the court, some more information, right? And I remember when we trained way before I became a lawyer or anything like that they would say your standard is not the standard Like it’s good enough. I mean, that’s not what they said, but they said you know, if the kid is safe, if the kid has a bed and the kid has food, it’s okay, and I remember going to my first home visit with that and the kids eating hot dogs like cold hot dogs, I think, even you know, not on a plate just grabbed out of the fridge. There are a lot of things that I might not have agreed with, that I might want to take that kid away from, but I just had that kept running through my head. Right, that’s not the standard Right, the standard safety Right.
And so now, though, when we look at these family, you know now we’ve got people who’ve got oh, this is how we did in our family. Now the other two families are doing it differently when they’re broken up, and there is a huge tendency to come in and say I’m hearing that they’re not getting this, or they get to stay up too late or they’re playing the wrong video game, and I agree with you, some of them are truly bad and we can just agree they’re bad. But I hear that a lot in conflict. So I love that good enough idea because I think you’re right that the conflict over it injures the kids more than whether they get an extra serving of broccoli, right, okay, well, that diverted us, but I think that was really important because we’re all only good enough parents you are, and same with me, okay, so we were going back into the trust stuff, so I’m actually, are you going to let me put you can just announce during our recording Are you going to let me use your slides?
Can I share those with people? Like sure, okay, so I’m going to put on my show or on my website some of these slides that people who are interested in. There’s a presentation that we have here that I’m kind of flipping through, that we’re not going through exactly, but I’m looking at a slide that is about emotional processing and this iceberg of emotions, so maybe you could talk about that a little bit. As we get in more into the trust conversation, you’ve got a triangle for those just listening that say anger above the line, fear below the line, and it talks about how only one ninth of these emotions are visible and basically eight of the nine are hidden. So tell the audience about that a little bit.
0:21:33 – Dr. Michael Saini
So anger and hostility are secondary emotions, and they’re brought to the surface by unacknowledged fear, worry, concern, and they’re expressed in ways that protect you from your vulnerabilities. So you use your secondary emotions because it’s your amygdala hijack that is pushing you into a fight or flight or freeze. So you’re activated and you’re now emotionally dysregulated because of the concerns and the fears and the worries. But what that tells us, though, when we intervene with folks, that these secondary emotions, if we can tap into the underlining emotions, the primary emotions, what’s really upsetting? Like, for example, if you criticize somebody and you say, well, you’re lazy, and all you do is sit on the couch, what you’re really doing is talking about so that’s an angry, you know comment towards somebody else. But what that is your own fear and concern and worry. So the concern may be that you wish you had more leisure time, that you are really busy and you wish you had more time to relax, and so it’s more about your own concerns than about your anger towards somebody else. It also, as professionals, it allows us to be much more empathetic. So when somebody’s angry, when I worked in child welfare and they would bang their fist and yell at me, I didn’t look at the anger I looked at. Well, what’s the concern? Why are you showing this anger display? What’s going on underneath that? What are you worried about? What are you concerned about? You know, a peacock doesn’t show their feathers unless they feel threatened. And so if we were to address the fear and the worry and the concern, then we would be able to move much further along in trying to help people out. So, instead of what’s wrong with you, why are you so angry? The question would be what are you concerned about? What am I not getting? What do I need to understand? Why are you emotionally feeling unheard by this?
And so it’s just another way of trying to again be empathetic in our approach and not get caught into the conflict, because I think we can exacerbate the conflict, because when somebody you know is angry, they may be accusatory towards us. We then get defensive because we’re trying to do a good job and we don’t understand why they’re angry at us. And now we’re now upset, and now we’ve just escalated the situation, and so we’re now, you know, we’re arguing with a client or we’re now labeling them as being uncooperative. We see that a lot. There’s a lot of labeling around, you know, people being uncooperative, or because they’re angry, and really, to me, that’s just a sign of them not being able to articulate their feelings. It’s like a child who is having temper tantrum in the grocery store. It’s because they can’t articulate their feelings and so they’re acting out as a way of trying to get their message.
0:24:59 – Krista Nash
Oh, interesting.
I mean I was telling you, as we were preparing for this today, about a situation where a father has been acting in a way that the kids are reacting to and in that situation one of the kids has said to me in a visit that I did.
The kid said one of the kids who used to not see a parent but now is seeing the parent much more regularly this child is describing and I thought this maybe he should be a psychologist because he really had some very poignant things to say. He said well, I stopped getting caught in the tone trap of my parent and I started realizing that what my parent was doing was the intention of my parent was based on love and care and fear that I don’t succeed and fear that I don’t. You know that I, that I’m not going to make something of myself and all of these things, and this parent would almost have this temper, tantrum or react in a way that was bad. But the kid really could parse through that. But you know, I don’t know if this parents really just was learned to act differently, but the trust was eroded. We’re talking a lot about trust between co-parents, but the trust was eroded between the children and the parent as well, which I think is an interesting dynamic.
0:26:13 – Dr. Michael Saini
Typically it’s harder for children in high conflict situations to be able to identify emotions and also mood repair, so they also may move to a dysregulated state because they’re taught that. And so if you have a child who, even though their parents are teaching them to dysregulate rather than to regulate, and still can make sense of that and articulate a response, you know what is really happening there from an emotional standpoint and that says something about that child. Yeah, it’s pretty rare.
0:26:54 – Krista Nash
I mean this kid’s on the verge of adulthood, but still, I mean I thought it was very rare. This kid also said that his mother paints a painting without naming the painting, like you know, which I also thought was really interesting, right, it’s like we’re painting a painting of something, but we’re really interesting. Right, it’s like we’re painting a painting of something but we’re not going to tell you what we’re going to call it, but it’s very clear what it is, and in sort of this way. That is like I’m going to paint a monster and not tell you it’s a monster. You know what? The way?
0:27:21 – Dr. Michael Saini
I want you to think about your other parent right, you name, you name the painting, and then I’ll say it’s your idea.
0:27:28 – Krista Nash
Yeah, right. So I’m affirming, I’m completely affirming, right, this sort of thing and the kid’s like, well, you know, sort of sort of sort of so just interesting dynamics about.
You know the in the field kind of situation, so all right. So then I think it’s true what you said about parents teaching their kids, modeling dysregulation right, and how we expect a different outcome from that. You mentioned, like the. Let’s come up with some actual ways to rebuild trust. Like what would trust look like? So what are some of those mechanisms? How do we like add to this bank when the people aren’t together anymore?
0:28:05 – Dr. Michael Saini
So I think it’s first of all figuring out what is their level of trust. Do they have any trust? Did they have any trust before? If so, was there a rupture, or were there many ruptures, and what do those ruptures say about their ability to trust in the future and the types of trust that they would need to establish to start trusting the other?
So, for example, you know, you look at, I’ll just be using a mom and a dad and so let’s say, mom has been in the relationship for 10 years. She thinks she knows dad, she thinks that they have a good relationship, she thinks that she can trust him, she thinks that he’s a good dad, that she knows him and knows that he would do no harm to these children. And then she finds out that dad had an affair with a younger person, and now she feels that this is a complete trust violation. It’s been a rupture of trust. She doesn’t know this person anymore. She thought she knew him, but he’s been sneaking around behind her back for the last you know year, two years or whatnot. So she, the person that she thought she knew, she doesn’t know. And so now we’re asking her to just to trust that he’s going to be a good parent with these children that they share. And she’s saying I don’t even know this person, I have no trust in this person at all, and how am I supposed to allow the children to go to a stranger Because this person is now a stranger to me? And then what happens is then she gets accused of being an alienator and it gets really complicated and the courts get involved and then they get stuck in that false binary of is she an alienator or not, and it becomes a really bad situation.
But what if we looked at it from a trust perspective and said, okay, well, would you need to see happen for you to start trusting him, not as a spouse, because that relationship is done, that’s not coming back, but can he still be a co-parent, can he still be a good father? And what would that look like? What would be the first thing that he would have to prove to you that he could be a good father? And it may be again, he will. He has to, you know, make sure I get to call them when they’re over there, and so there may be some hyper monitoring that is needed in the very beginning. Maybe that there needs to be a hyper focus on consistency. So we can’t even be a second late, because that’s going to throw off the feeling of trust.
And so it’s that calculus-based trust and it’s I trust you because I know that you’re doing A, b and C, and as long as you do A, b and C, I can start trusting you again on these things.
I still won’t be able to trust you on other things, but I can trust you on these things as long as there’s a pattern that we can now start establishing, which is why consistency and predictability and having a structure that everybody follows is so critical for these families when they separate and they’re trying to rebuild trust.
And so once you understand the rupture, once you understand what’s keeping them from being able to trust, then you can start looking at, you know the type of trust that’s needed. And then you put a plan in place for step up parenting plans, or you put a incremental situation where over time, they go OK, well, you got that one, we’ll see about the next one, but so far so good. And you put money into the bank, into their co-parenting relationship, where over time, hopefully they don’t need us and they can do it on their own Because at that point at least they trust each other for being able to maintain a parenting plan, because, again, we’re only asking them to trust specifically to the co-parenting relationship and what’s required for a child to go back and forth.
0:32:13 – Krista Nash
So when people don’t have a parenting plan evaluator or custody evaluator we call these different things in different places involved in there. Maybe they’re just listening to this and they’re in a bad co-parenting situation Generally. What do you think or what would your suggestions be for parents who don’t have these helpers to help them? How can they? I mean, it sounds like almost impossible and very difficult, but how could parents approach, trying to reach better levels of trust without having a lot of money or helpers or people actually guiding them through it and hand-holding them? Because it’s one thing to you know, for example, in another situation I’ve got a really broken child. I’ve got high, high conflict over many, many years.
One of the main things I did in initial problem solving was to say this kid has to have the gizmo watch going back and forth where the kid can contact the other parent. Because you know, probably the one parent isn’t sleeping much on the times that the parent is not with the child because there’s this monster in her head that is, you know, really, really concerned and she doesn’t have any contact over the course of this week and the kid can’t contact the other parent back either. So you know it’s like, okay, let’s, can we at least do that? Can we at least within reason say let’s let the child have the charger and have the watch, and can we at least do that? Can we at least within reason say let’s let the child have the charger and have the watch, and can we at least start with these small things? So what would be something that parents could do on their own, you think agree to do on their own?
0:33:39 – Dr. Michael Saini
Well, I think individually. First, I think parents can make note of the areas where they perhaps don’t trust the other parent. So what is it? Specifically? Because I think the more concrete we can be, the more that they can identify those points in the parenting plan that are going to create a rub. So is it the sleeping? I don’t think my child is going to get their eight, 10 hours of sleep while the other parents are. And you say it there, but I don’t trust you because you haven’t been able to do that previously and I’m concerned about the child’s overall sleep habits because if not, then they can’t function well at school. To your point, with the watch you can get them like a Garmin watch.
0:34:29 – Krista Nash
That shows your rest time, yeah.
0:34:31 – Dr. Michael Saini
Show your rest time. There’s things that you can do and again, highly monitoring won’t work out forever, but let’s say, in the first six months I’d say to parents like it’s counterproductive to hope that you’re going to trust the other person. Let’s be realistic. You cannot trust the other person and they probably don’t trust you. And so what do you need to do in your relationship? What are those conflict points that if you don’t address, if you don’t write it down and agree to, then they’re going to be points of concern. So I’m concerned that the other parent is going to cut their hair. Well then you make sure that that’s part of your agreement that you make with the other person. Let’s have a plan for cutting their child’s hair. So then we don’t have to worry about that’s one thing, with less we have to worry about. And as long as you don’t violate that, then we can start building trust in that area specifically. And now let’s move on to the next one, and then the next one, and then you, over time, you’re building a, an overall plan to trust.
0:35:45 – Krista Nash
And so making parenting plans really specific. That, like, what are the things you need in here to build trust? I will make. I keep thinking, as you’re talking about I’ve done five episodes on this already, but about sobriety problems as one of the huge, huge problems that we have in these situations with families, because when you’ve got a history of a parent knowing the other parent has in Colorado, a lot of issues with marijuana or with drinking is the more common one or with any other drug it’s so hard, and understandably hard, you know, to for the other parent to trust, which is why we do all these testing protocols and things like that, you know, but it’s still. You can see how difficult that topic would be calls and things like that, you know, but it’s still a very.
0:36:29 – Dr. Michael Saini
You can see how difficult that topic would be. Yeah for sure. When I worked in child dependency, you know when I worked with parents who were using and we needed to intervene. I mean, I think people are, you know. You know parents are doing the best they can with what they got. If you give them more, they do more.
I don’t think you know parents typically say I’m going to drink so I can be a bad parent. Think you know parents typically say I’m going to drink so I can be a bad parent. The drinking gets the better of them and they know that they struggle with this control issue with substance. And then it gets exacerbated because the other side also knows that you struggle with that substance and so you know it’s invitation to responsibility. So it’s not just accusatory, it’s not just saying you know you have to change.
But I would also speak to the person with the substance and just say, like you know, you know that even the conflict itself around substance misuse can have an impact on your relationship with your child. So why don’t we just come up with a plan? You know, does it write it out in a contract I will not drink while my child is in my care and you don’t even have to agree to it that you drink or that you have to Right, as long as that’s put out there and you agree to follow that, then you can start eventually building trust around you, having more control over substance issues.
0:37:53 – Krista Nash
I was looking at one other thing that I, as I’m skimming kind of some of these slides, I thought this was an important thing to talk about. Again, a little bit of a segue, but it makes me really sad to see the part that says childhood is the foundation for trusting or distrusting future relationships. I mean that should hit parents right in the heart, right.
0:38:14 – Dr. Michael Saini
Yeah, well, that’s the intergenerational problem with the conflict, and the way that this all gets played out is that they’re not just combating or, you know, they’re not just in conflict with their ex.
They’re teaching their kids how to regulate, how to trust or not, to you know, whether somebody is trustworthy or not. Children are building their propensity to trust, and that can create problems, either by trusting too much or not trusting enough. And we’re trying to, as parents, have children grow up with a realistic propensity to trust, that is, you know, slightly suspicious of others. You don’t want them to be blindly going in and trusting relationships, but at the same time, you don’t want our children going into relationships thinking that it’s going to end in a big blow up, because that’s what they expect to see anyways, because that’s what you get when you have a fearful attachment style. You avoid close relationships because you’re afraid that it’s not going to work out anyways.
And so what we’re doing is we’re teaching our children to go into their young adult relationships with severe skepticism and with fear and concern, or the other side, with the hope that things will be different in these relationships. And so they overtrust and now they’re in an abusive relationship and rather than see the signals for what they are. They think that they can make it better because they trust that they have the skills to do so. I mean, either way, it’s still adaptable and it’s functional. We’re actually doing our children a huge favor, and anything less than that is problematic.
0:40:40 – Krista Nash
I wonder too if this has to do or impacts I’m sure it does, but maybe you can tell us, if you agree, the percentages of failed second marriages. You know that it’s higher, right? I mean, what’s happening to the parents who they had this trust bank building up, to use your analogy? Then it gets all depleted or trashed all at once, or a little over time, or all together once, and then it kind of goes up and down and way down and then they get remarried, right? What’s that person going through? Does that have to do with why we see so many failed secondary relationships? Probably after that.
0:41:16 – Dr. Michael Saini
Yeah, I do a divorce group, and you know, one of the key messages that I focus in on is using this time to figure out how they got to be where they’re at right now and to forgive themselves for allowing this to happen as it did. Even if, for example, they say, well, it wasn’t me, I was married to a narcissistic jerk, well, you still have to forgive yourself, because you probably saw the warning signs a long time ago and you chose to ignore those for whatever reason, and so you have to come to terms with that and forgive yourself and learn from that. Like, did I overcommodate? Was I too trusting? And where does that trust that without reflection, without concern, come from? Or was I too reserved and I did not allow myself to open up? I could not trust? Is that because of previous relationships with my own parents or a previous relationship that I had? Did I bring that big bag of weight from my previous relationships into this one and then did that big bag of weight ultimately become too heavy for the relationship? And so if I keep on adding to that bag of failed experiences and I bring it to my next relationship, well, of course it’s more likely going to fail and your third marriage is even worse it’s 70%. And so you just keep on adding to the wrongs of the past and you just carry that bag from relationship to relationship until you take the time to unpack it and see, well, what’s in there, like what’s holding me down from being happy, from having a more balanced propensity to trust with me being able to appreciate myself and like myself in relationships.
Oftentimes, when people separate, they stop liking themselves in the relationship.
They don’t like what they’ve become in that relationship, and so you need to figure out how did that happen that you no longer liked yourself, and how do you start liking yourself for who you are?
So, for example, if you were in a relationship and you were accommodating and accommodating and accommodating until finally you could not accommodate anymore because your needs were not being met, you know then from that experience that it’s really important for your needs to be met. So the next time you’re in a relationship and you’re sitting down with somebody who you’re maybe interested in, you’re going to start negotiating your needs right from the very beginning and say this is what I need in a relationship, and you’re going to practice asserting your need, because you know if you don’t, you’re going to just accommodate. Again. You’re going to repeat that same cycle and so you’re really just trying to learn from the past, to make a better version of you for the next relationship, and then you can go against that statistic. But if not, yeah, it’s more likely to be doomed before you even start because the bag that you brought into the relationship of your previous relationship is too heavy to really bring in.
0:44:26 – Krista Nash
I have other kids. I see who I just say. There’s another consistent thing I see with kids which is their lack of trust. That they get hope in a new partner who oftentimes also has children and oftentimes gets brought in right away and starts living with people, with their mom or their dad, and so the kids are not just dealing with the loss and trying to like build their own trust back with their parents or a parent that maybe was injurious If there was a lot of fighting or drinking or all these different things. Whoever they’re more attached to or loyal to, and that whole dynamic they’re working through that. Then we’ve got another layer brought in from a different family, right, and then a lot of times those sometimes can be very abrupt, right. So somebody moves in, somebody moves out. We see this a lot. The kid is just left, sort of deer in the headlights, it seems in terms of okay, I can’t trust any stable relationship.
There’s no such thing as a stable relationship.
0:45:19 – Dr. Michael Saini
Well, I mean, if you think about bubbles in your life and who gets in that inner bubble, that inner circle, you only allow a few people into that very, very tight inner circle of your life. You may have a lot of people on the outside, on the second level, on the third level, but those people that you allow in, those are your attachments and so you need to, you know, to really have good self-identity and good sense of self, those people in your inner circle need to be positive influences in your life. And so when we expose children to new partners because we think it’s good for us and therefore, by extension, it’s good for our children, that may not be the case and we need to allow children to have that time to figure out where do these people fit into their bubble? How much do they actually want to bring these people into their bubble? Maybe they don’t trust that they’re going to be around for much longer. So what’s the point? I’ll be nice to you, I’ll treat you like a second level person, but don’t force me to think about you as a, you know, inner person into the inner circle, because then I’m going to resist that.
You know, I was doing parent coaching one time with a dad who he had an affair, and I was coaching him and his new partner from that affair and he wanted to know when should I tell my child about my new partner? And it only been a couple of months and I said well, here’s the thing. Is that because you’ve been created by an affair, because you were like the mistress and now you became the partner, you have a 7% chance of making it. And so the question for me is that, not when?
0:47:18 – Krista Nash
you should Seven right Like single digit Single digit yeah.
0:47:22 – Dr. Michael Saini
Okay, 7%, that’s right, you have a 93% chance. So we talk about 60% for second marriages and 70% for 30, but it’s 93% chance of separation if you try and make it a go with the person you’re having the affair with.
0:47:39 – Intro
Yes.
0:47:39 – Dr. Michael Saini
It’s doom. And so the question was when should he tell his child? And I said that’s a long time away, because your priority right now like forcing your child to have a relationship with this person, when the reality is, this person probably, statistically speaking, will not be in this child’s life that much longer. So I don’t think that’s really the way to go. What you really should be doing is try not to be a statistic with your new partner. I mean, that’s the goal right now and then see where things go.
0:48:13 – Krista Nash
Okay, this might be our next topic in the future, right? Something about this whole thing about bringing new people into your life, this blended family piece, that’s just a lot. Have you done specific research on that too?
0:48:24 – Dr. Michael Saini
Yes, I’m writing a paper on it right now. Of course you have. Why do I even?
0:48:27 – Krista Nash
ask Okay, well, tell me when that paper’s done. Okay, cause I think this is a very big topic for people. They just think, oh, I need somebody and so it’s totally fine. I feel really. You know, we get back in the spiral and I have a bunch of cases where kids I don’t know I had this one kid one time say she said you know, I don’t, I don’t have as much problem with my mom having somebody she’s seeing, because this was somebody who had been, you know, primary caretaker, was her mom. I don’t have as much problem with that because it’s just somebody cool to hang out with. But I have a real problem with my dad, with this person he’s bringing in because it’s like he wants her to be my mom.
You know, which was just so interesting and I think that bubble analogy is really really good because I don’t know, it adds all this complexity. And then you know, oftentimes parents are in a fragile place, they don’t really know what they need, and so you know they’re just in. I don’t know they’re trying to put it back together too, too fast, but okay.
0:49:21 – Dr. Michael Saini
Go ahead.
0:49:22 – Krista Nash
Tell me what you were going to say about that.
0:49:25 – Dr. Michael Saini
Yeah, the big thing there is the boundary. Ambiguity is so critical because until there’s proper boundaries around relationships and roles where everybody feels comfortable with those roles roles where everybody feels comfortable with those roles those relationships will continue to be strained. So until there’s a negotiation with the dad and the child of saying this can be your partner, but they cannot be my mom, and as long as we understand this, then I then can accept them for them being your partner, but they’re not my partner. And so it really does require a lot of work to make blended families work, because you really have to negotiate all these relationships. But unfortunately what happens is that parents, they get caught up in this new relationship and, frankly, they become self-serving in the way that they think of the relationship and they think that their child should just follow along and they don’t think to have that relationship.
And so some of the work that we’ve been doing is looking at children’s perspectives and trying to figure out, from kids’ perspectives, how to strengthen these relationships. Trying to figure out, from kids’ perspectives, how to strengthen these relationships. And that’s what they’re telling us Like go easy, go slow, go clear. Make sure that we understand what these roles are. Don’t assume that we’re going to be able to figure it out. If you’re going to introduce somebody as your friend, make sure you know and I know what you’re talking about in terms of friend Don’t let us be the ones to figure it out. Don’t draw the picture. I love that. That. What that kid said you don’t draw the picture without naming it and make us name it because we don’t want to name it. We’d rather just avoid it to try and be forced to name it.
0:51:12 – Krista Nash
Right, right, let’s talk for a minute just about. You’ve got a few things where you talk about. Well, two things I want to talk about. One is you mentioned there’s a few areas where the trust building model is not appropriate. Right, tell us about those a little bit Like there are some situations where we don’t. We shouldn’t be trying to do this.
0:51:30 – Dr. Michael Saini
What are they For sure? So I think you know one of the concerns around trust building is that we’re going to put people in unsafe situations where we’re going to demand that they need to trust somebody who has been abusive to them and safety needs to be paramount. And if trust has been violated because of violence, it’s not for the person who has been harmed by that violence to be responsible for trusting the person who’s been activating in that violence. It would be instead an invitation to take responsibility. Ellen Jenkins wrote a wonderful book about working with perpetrators of violence and sexual harm and talks about perpetrators of violence or those who act in violence or harm need to be invited not shamed or blamed, but invited to be part of the solution. And so in there we could work with that person to help them understand why the other person doesn’t trust you.
Yeah, but still, I’ve done anger management and I’ve done this and I’ve done that. Yeah, but that’s not enough. You have to understand that we need to do baby steps. We’re not going to get to where you want to get to right away. You’re asking for 50-50. That’s not going to happen. In fact, the more you push it, the more they’re going to be resisting because with power comes resistance, and you need to understand that that resistance is because you’re taking too many steps forward. You’re feeling that you should be forgiven and everything should be forgotten, and that’s not going to happen. We need to make sure that things are safe and we need to make sure that, whatever we do, we acknowledge the harm that the violence has created, that it doesn’t just happen once. It has that ripple effect and we need to be thinking about trust along that ripple effect.
0:53:37 – Krista Nash
Yeah, I think that’s a really good way to put it. I see that a lot. We’ve got a lot of range in what we see in terms of this right. So sometimes we’ve got the kid who has, we’ve got a founded abuse claim, we’ve got another where a kid has more, you know, all the way to kids getting yelled at. But it may be, you know it’s a question of like what is the allegation? I mean in Colorado we’ve got any allegation of domestic violence is now on the radar and elevated, which has good and troubling hard aspects to it, because we end up being able to address this better and more carefully, which is always good. But we also end up with a lot of elevation of sometimes more minor complaints, and so you know just the spectrum that we’re trying to deal with and navigate. I think that’s probably true across the board in places that are now elevating this to something that we’re looking at a little bit more closely, but for sure, recognizing those ripple effects.
I mean because I say to people a lot, reality is kind of in the eye of the beholder, right, like it doesn’t matter really if you’re a kid. I mean the days where we’re going to take a kid and just move them over to somebody else. It’s just such a rare outcome that we would do so a lot of times. We’ll have a kid who genuinely believes based on truth, not truth, reality, not reality. They generally believe something. I use that eggshell plaintiff analogy all the time from law school of you’re responsible for the injury. The person in the car accident you had had a fragile skull. That’s too bad, it’s not. It’s not their fault. They had a fragile skull and they did, and so you gave them a traumatic brain injury just because you barely touched them, going five miles per hour.
But you’re still responsible for the payment of that injury, right, or dealing with that injury. I use that with parents a lot. It’s like, yeah, the kid, a human, fragile being, through all of life experiences, through both of you, through the divorce, through all of the things in this kid’s life, is how the kid is right now. Right, and we want to make sure we’re not still fostering any sort of poison being poured into this kid. If that’s going on, we want to carefully, carefully consider that. But we’re stuck where we are, with where the kid is positioned, right. So that’s where those ripple effects of this like okay, let’s say there was no abuse, let’s just go back and agree with you there was no abuse, okay, well, now where are we right?
0:55:52 – Dr. Michael Saini
it just doesn’t move us forward right, that’s right and I think yeah. Around violence, we’re getting stuck in false binaries. Is this bidirectional, unidirectional? Is this control? Is this other forms of violence? Is this situational violence? So we’re spending a lot of time arguing what type of violence is this?
But at the end of the day, a lot of the remedies look the same, in the sense that if there’s been any violence, then a highly structured parenting plan is the preferred approach, like don’t put yourself in a situation where there’s a chance of somebody feeling frightened. I think a trauma-informed perspective really teaches us the approach that I think is the most helpful, because there it’s about. You know the five principles of trauma informed. Number one is safety. If people don’t feel safe, we may think that you should feel safe, but they don’t feel safe, and that’s what we have to work with. And how can we create plans that ensure that people feel safe when they’re having to do exchanges or when they’re having to communicate? It’s not about, at times, even validating the violence or the abuse. It’s about you don’t feel comfortable to communicate.
Well then, we have apps for that. We can use a structured communication. We don’t even have to validate or substantiate the violence if one person feels unsafe. So why don’t we just use a structured communication law until eventually there’s more trust in that relationship where things settle down and perhaps you know things, can you know people can articulate what they actually need to feel safe.
So we have mechanisms in the courts like structured communication, ensuring that drop off and pickups are not having the parents be in front of each other and fearful of the other. We have information sharing through a parenting coordinator or others who can help negotiate. We have wonderful lawyers who can assist in helping parents, you know, deal with their parenting plan issues. So we have a lot of resources and so sometimes we get stuck into you know what type of violence is this? Instead of saying how to come up with a plan to make sure that they’re safe, regardless of the type of violence. Of course, you do have to still assess for the severity and the frequency and the risk of harm, but sometimes we get too stuck in trying to differentiate instead of figuring out how to actually think about a plan that’s going to keep people safe and be able to help them move forward.
0:58:37 – Krista Nash
That also reminds me that one of our other next steps will have to be about your research on exchanges, because you talked about in that research how that’s such a critical time and the kids experience the most stressful time often in their week or however often they’re exchanging, right So-.
0:58:51 – Dr. Michael Saini
That’s right. Yeah, I’m doing a bit more work on that. Since the last time we had an approach how to go about those exchanges and things to be considering approach how to go about those exchanges and things to be considering. I’m doing right now a review of case law, of judge’s summations of what they consider to be considerations for exchanges, and I’m still surprised every time I see. You know McDonald’s being a friendly place.
0:59:15 – Krista Nash
Right, right, right. You said that’s typical. I know you said that’s typical in Canada, right?
0:59:43 – Dr. Michael Saini
Right, right, right, you said that’s typical. I know you said that’s typical in Canada. Right, we do Starbucks a lot. I see police stations, all the courts or they’ve gone through the police or they’ve had police interactions that they have felt to be unsafe. And now we’re asking folks to do these exchanges at police stations.
Not only is it not safe for the child, but it makes everybody uneasy because they don’t have that propensity to trust the police and therefore our location creates a non-trusting environment, which then exacerbates the emotional commotion and the toll this is having on the family. So we need to be thinking about how much do people trust the system, how much do they trust the courts, how much do they trust us as professionals? If they feel, because they’ve been talking to their friends, that we’re all in it for the money and we don’t care about them, and that’s the feelings that they’re coming in with, then it doesn’t matter what we offer them. There’s going to be that barrier of being able to get through. And so until you identify, you know, that lack of trust of what we’re able to do with them to help them move forward, we’re still going to be stuck at the same spot and then scratching our heads why we can’t get through to them.
1:00:57 – Krista Nash
Yeah, and I think if there’s other ways to do exchanges in other places, by going to a place like a police station where there really are other safe choices, right. But you’re doing what that kid said, which is painting a picture without name, you know, without naming what the picture is, by saying every time we got to go to dad, we got to go to the police station, you know, and it’s like you don’t even have to say police, bad movies, bad, dangerous, we need to play, right. I mean, it’s just so obvious that that’s a link that’s going to be made and a lot of times that’s the link that the parent wants to be made, because that’s the impression that parent has, or maybe their lived experience, and maybe it’s fair. But you know, can we do this at a place that’s mutually safe, that’s also safe, that isn’t labeled police station, right? Okay, I know we only have a couple minutes, so I want to.
I did see one other thing I wanted to point out in your slides on this topic. So you talked about, on the trust building, this calculus-based trust, about like let’s pick some, if A, then B, then C, like okay, if you’re on time three times or if you blow in the sober link device, whatever. We’re going to build some trust that way. I also really you got two others knowledge-based trust and identification-based trust. Maybe just mentioned both of those, but for the identification-based one, I really like this rebuilding trust through shared goals, because I do see that a lot as very effective with parents where I’m saying, okay, can we both agree that this kid stealing credit cards from extended family and buying extra cell phones is dangerous behavior, right, okay, what are we going to do about it? What are those consequences going to be?
Because our shared goal and I actually I recently did a meeting actually where these parents have been at it for years and years and years and this kid has done these things and I’m like, okay, all three of us are going to be team X name of the kid and we together are all going to get on the Zoom and we’re going to say we’ve been working in separate silos and we’re not doing that anymore. Here is our shared goal and here’s how we’ve agreed to come about it. And you can see the kid like what is happening here? I’m in a horrible twilight zone. These parents are getting along, you know. So, even when there’s massive broken trust, why is that shared goal, something that’s good to work on, because maybe that’s even easier than some of the other things, because like, yeah, I can agree, she shouldn’t do that or he shouldn’t do that.
1:03:09 – Dr. Michael Saini
Yes, but no, you’re.
You’re moving into some potentially dangerous territory by going too quickly into identification-based trust.
Because, for example, you’re a mediator and you sit down with a party and you say, we’re all here for the best interest of your child.
Well, they don’t trust that the other person’s there for the best interest of the child, so they’re going to be saying, yeah, right, so they’re not going to accept that as being a shared goal. So, until they’re able to understand that this is a shared goal that they have, that’s where you want to start off with calculus-based trust first and then move up to, eventually, the identification-based trust. Because once they’re able to see that, yes, you are in fact here for the best interest of your child, you may come at it differently than I do. We may not like each other as spouses or as people who once had a romantic relationship, but I can start seeing the value of you being in the child’s life and it’s important to the child to have a relation with both parents. Now we start moving into identification-based trust. But sometimes you have to do the other stuff first, so you have to see it to believe it, for sometimes so what’s the knowledge base then?
1:04:26 – Krista Nash
if it’s stair-to-step, is one, two, three what we have to do? So calculus is little steps.
1:04:33 – Dr. Michael Saini
So, for example, using our family wizard or civil communicator or whatever those programs may be Talking parents.
1:04:39 – Krista Nash
yeah, all those things.
1:04:40 – Dr. Michael Saini
Talking parents. I’m not suggesting one or the other, yeah, but any of those apps. If you start seeing on there that the other parent is responding in an appropriate way, I see that through my knowledge of your actions I start getting the sense of that you’re in it for the long haul as a co-parent, that you seem to have the child’s best interest. Because of your actions Now I can identify as a co -parent with you and so it’s not necessarily linear, but it is sort of linear how you want to move into this. I’ll give you the example where I think people get it wrong. They ask you know those who suggest forgiveness. If you’re asking for forgiveness and there’s not even calculus-based trust, you’re expecting them to forgive the other person for the wrongs of the past and trust that they mean well for moving forward. That’s never going to happen. It’s only going to backfire. What you really want to do is focus first on a shared understanding of what trust building looks like and then start doing that plan so you both see that you have good intentions and can follow through, so there’s the consistency and the accountability, and through all that then you end up with that sense of shared meaning and at that point. Then you could apologize for the process and you know I’m sorry it turned out this way. I didn’t. This is not what we wanted as parents. We wanted this to be. We never had you with the anticipation that we were going to separate, divorce and spend all of your college education fund on this litigation. So we’re sorry, but I mean that happens too quickly.
No one believes it. It just further perpetuates a problem. Because if you’re stuck in calculus-based trust, if you have a parent who’s saying I need to see it, show me the money, show me the action, show me the consistency, show you say you want to be a good parent, I want to see you do A, b and C, and it does seem like jumping through hoops, but sometimes you’ve got to jump through those hoops to show that you are trustworthy. And you know the question that I have for parents and that’s the other question that I like to ask them in the work that I do what will it take for you to be trustworthy? What are you willing to do to be trustworthy? And I think it’s an important question to be asking, because it’s not just about what you want from them, it’s what. What are you willing to do to be more trustworthy to the other parent and to the child as well.
1:07:25 – Krista Nash
It’s really interesting Cause when I went to journalism school at Northwestern year decades ago, they always taught you show. When you’re doing great journalism, show me. Don’t tell me right Like, don’t just say it was a nice day. It’s like sun is shining, there’s no clouds, there’s birds in the sky, it’s people sunbathing, you know whatever. It’s like painting a story. Good journalism does that. Good storytelling does that. And it’s interesting because we get a lot of kids who are saying you know they’re saying exactly what you’re saying. Parents are saying that too, but kids are saying you did all these bad things. Don’t just tell me you’re sorry. Don’t just tell me you want to see me again.
1:07:58 – Dr. Michael Saini
show me exactly yeah, all right, building again. We’ve learned a lot from trust unfortunately not from humans, but from technology to humans, because we’ve had to figure out how to get people into cars, to drive them. You know, have cars drive by themselves and so they’ve used in the whole area of technology has really moved our understanding of trust forward, and now in psychology and family law, we’re now borrowing from what they’ve learned in human to human relationships. We have a lot to learn, but I think you know I’m really excited about what this has to offer.
1:08:34 – Krista Nash
Well, once again barely scratching the surface. I feel like I’m spinning a little. I’m sure anybody listening is probably like wait a minute, there’s probably more to talk about. I am going to send these, I’ll produce the slides, which thank you for sharing your work, as always, and I will share that so that people can look into more of that and we’ll part ways until the next time. I so appreciate all the work you do and thank you for being on this. I’m really grateful.
1:08:57 – Dr. Michael Saini
Yes, thank you, chris. Always a pleasure. I’m really grateful. Yes, thank you, chris. Always a pleasure. I’m always happy to come back again.
1:09:01 – Krista Nash
I appreciate it so much and I think people are going to learn so much from you and I’m really glad I’m learning so much. It’s making me a better practitioner. So I hope people are listening in and sharing with their friends, and especially parents. I hope parents are listening. Excellent, all right, we’ll talk to you next time, thank you. Thank you All right, bye-bye, bye-bye.
1:09:19 – Intro
Krista is licensed in Colorado and Wyoming, so if you are in those states and seek legal services, please feel free to reach out via childrenfirstfamilylawcom. That is our website, where everyone can find additional resources to help navigate family law. As always, be sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast with others you think would benefit from this content.