Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Post Separation Abuse Podcast. I'm your host, Danielle Black. Today we're talking about something absolutely foundational. Something that may very well change the trajectory of your post-separation journey and your child's experience of it. We're talking about evidence over ideology and why you yes, you must be prepared to lead and instruct your lawyer, not follow them. This episode is going to be direct, maybe uncomfortable as well, because we're naming the truth that a lot of people working in the post-separation space or in the family law space won't often tell you. And a quick heads up before we dive in, do not buy the blueprint right now. Next week for Black Friday, there will be a big discount and a very special bonus that I'll tell you about at the end. But for now, settle back and listen up. Take this in, because today's topic is one of the most important conversations that I have with protective parents. The truth that no one says out loud, or that very few people do, not in lawyers' offices, not in mediations, not in court corridors, is that no one else is going to be losing sleep over your kids. Not your lawyer, not your barrister, not the mediator, not the judge, you. You will be the one who wakes up at 3 AM worrying about whether or not your child feels safe. Whether the next changeover will result in more distress. Whether the parenting orders will ultimately be harmful. And yet most protective parents hand over their decision making power to professionals who simply do not understand child development or family violence dynamics. They assume their lawyer understands what children need. They assume that mediators are trained in child development. They assume that the court and court professionals will recognise coercive control. But here's the uncomfortable truth. Lawyers know the law. The vast majority of them do not understand child development or developmental trauma. And most don't understand coercive control, how to identify it, how to assess it, how to document it, or how to use it strategically in your case. If they did, the outcomes in our family law system would be looking completely different. Something that I hear every single week, almost word for word, from clients who finally reach the point of needing to draft parenting orders or respond to a proposal from the other side, is Danielle, I couldn't have done this without you. If I didn't have you, I would have gone along with whatever my lawyer suggested, and now I know it would have been completely inappropriate and harmful for my child. These parents, smart, protective, deeply committed, ultimately realize just how little their legal team understands about child development, attachment needs, the neuroscience of stress and emotional regulation, the research on post-separation parenting, and the impact of coercive control on children. Their lawyers make suggestions that sound logical and reasonable on the surface, but in reality are completely developmentally inappropriate, unsafe, unworkable, and ultimately directly harmful for the children in question. And the parents would have agreed because they didn't yet know any different. And this is what blind faith looks like. And every day it is costing children their stability, their well being and their safety. Let's talk about ideology. So many parenting proposals and even court outcomes appear to be far more based on adult concepts of fairness, so we're talking significant parenting time with both parents, quote unquote balanced arrangements, both parents needing to be significantly involved, and apparently with a view that children need both parents. Now all of this on the surface sounds very reasonable and fair. It might even initially seem like it has a veneer of being very child centered, but it's really none of those things. They are adult focused ideologies, not evidence. Children don't experience parenting in percentages, they don't care about equality with parenting, and caregivers are not interchangeable. Attachment, secure attachment is not interchangeable between parents. Children experience safety, regulation, connection, predictability, and emotional availability. Fairness between adults has absolutely nothing to do with what is best for kids. And this is one of the biggest misunderstandings in the post separation space and one of the biggest contributors to unsafe outcomes for our kids. Now let's talk about evidence. Evidence asks a different question, and frankly it's the only question that really matters. What does this child need to thrive and be safe given their developmental stage and the safety context? Nothing about fairness, nothing about being balanced, nothing about equality. Rather appropriate, safe, developmentally aligned, protective. There is a lot of research, including Australian government commission studies that clearly outlines what children of different ages need post separation, how overnight time impacts infants and toddlers, how high conflict and coercively controlling dynamics affects children, what stability actually means for different developmental stages, and how exposure to family violence, even without physical harm, affects a child's long-term psychological, mental and emotional health and well-being. And guess what? Most lawyers have never read it, most mediators don't know it exists, most professionals applying quote best interests are not actually applying evidence. They're applying ideology. And this is why protective parents must become informed. This is why they must lead. This is why you cannot rely on your lawyer to understand what your child needs and to lead you on this journey. Because they don't understand what your child needs. The vast majority of them are simply not trained to. Your lawyer's job is not to decide what your child needs or to tell you what your child needs. Their job is to translate your instructions into the legal frameworks and the legal language. But what happens if you don't know what your child needs developmentally, emotionally, or in terms of safety? What happens is that you default to your lawyer's ideology, to what your lawyer might or might not understand, to your lawyer's suggestions. And lawyers commonly default to suggesting what seems reasonable, standard, common, or quote, fair, none of which is evidence-based. You simply cannot outsource this part of the journey. You cannot hand over the decisions that will shape your child's developmental future to someone who is not trained in developmental science. Your child needs you to be the expert, not the lawyer, not the mediator, not the barrister, not the family report writer, you. And all of this is exactly why I created the post-separation parenting blueprint. Not to overload you with more information, but to give you the evidence, the research, translated into real-world practical decisions that you can confidently take to your legal team. The blueprint helps you to understand age-appropriate parenting arrangements. It helps you to identify risks to safety and development, to build child-centred parenting plans and proposals, to understand, identify, and document patterns of coercive control. And to advocate with clarity and confidence, not fear. But again, don't buy it this week. Next week is Black Friday. There will be a discount and also a very special bonus for anyone who joins before the deadline. And I'll be telling you more about that soon. So make sure that you keep listening to the future episodes of the podcast. Next week we're doing a deep dive into coercive control. And I'm going to say something else that might be hard to hear, but you do need to hear it. You cannot rely on your lawyer to understand coercive control. Because most lawyers don't, most mediators don't, most family report writers don't, many psychologists and therapists don't. Coercive control is invisible by design. It's subtle, patterned, cumulative, strategic. And unless you become an expert in recognizing it in your own situation, in your own case, you won't be able to connect the dots for anyone else. Protective parents must understand coercive control better than the professionals that they are working with, because professionals will miss things. They will minimize things, they will focus on incidents and not patterns. They will treat both parents as being equally responsible for quote conflict. And they will push for compromise and fairness when compromise and fairness is extremely unsafe. That's why next week's episode is so important. But here's what I want you to walk away with today. Lawyers get paid the same no matter the outcome. Your barrister will get paid the same no matter the outcome. Professionals will move on to the next file, the next case. But your child has to live in the outcome that gets created. This is why you must become the expert. This is why you must lead. Because you are the one who knows your child. You are the one who understands their fears and sensitivities. You are the one who sees the impacts that the professionals don't. And you are the one who will stay awake at night worrying, not them. You will also be the one who will ultimately be accountable to your child. One day they will be old enough to ask you very direct questions about how things ended up the way that they did. So not only do you want to be able to look yourself in the mirror and feel comfortable with how you navigated this journey and what the outcome was, but you also want to be able to look at your child and know that you did everything that you could. Evidence gives you authority, and authority allows you to lead. And when you lead, your legal team finally has something that's worth following. This isn't about being difficult or high conflict, and it certainly isn't about being anti non-primary caregiver. It's about being pro-child, pro safety, pro development, pro-truth. So please lead, don't follow. Your kids need that from you. Thank you so much for joining me today. Next week we're diving deep into coercive control, what it is, what it looks like post-separation, and why protective parents must become experts in identifying it, documenting it, and articulating the patterns clearly to professionals. Next week I'll also be announcing our Black Friday offer, including a discount on the post separation parenting blueprint and a very special bonus for anyone who joins before the deadline. So, don't buy anything now, wait until next week. Until then, please take care of yourself. I'll look forward to chatting with you again soon.