I'm uncomfortable.'" What would you advise Brenda to do?

First thing I would vi- advise Brenda to do is to pay attention to her child's needs and feelings before even thinking about how to deal with her co-parent, and to let Sally know, "Honey, I, I don't want anybody ever to put you in the position of saying that you have to keep a secret between me and Dad, and I'm so sorry that you were put in that position." And then I would say, "I'm really sorry you were put in that position.

I want you to be comfortable going to Daddy.

Let me think about it for a day, and think about the best way that I can help you through this, and that we can work through this." Because no parent in the moment has the right thing to say.

And from Sally's perspective, she obviously had something on her chest she wanted to get off.

She felt very safe telling her mom that, even though her dad told her to keep it a secret.

And Brenda wants to make sure that she maintains that Sally always has the confidence to tell her things.

So what do you do? How would you advise a client if they are working with you and they're saying, "I am Consistently left in the dark when it comes to stuff regarding the school

Why do otherwise smart people make spectacularly bad decisions during divorce and what can they do instead?

divorce in general, I think defines the battle of the emotional versus the intellectual, right? Intellectually, you kind of have an idea of what it looks like, but then emotions take over because everything that happened that led up to this point is valid.

It's real.

It matters.

But by the time you get to court, and hopefully you don't get to court, but decisions get made based on like 1% of the factors that actually brought you to that point.

but you're at rock bottom when you get there, right? And especially if you have somebody like me involved as a guardian, you're having a complete stranger come into your life to help you figure out what to happen with your kids.

So everybody's at their worst.

This is a me hurting thing, which is totally allowed.

I want to know one other really big thing, Dan, that everybody needs to know.

Do not be the parent who argues over petty shit.

I have parents who will call me and their attorney because the other parent didn't return a jacket.

And so they're going to spend three, four or five hundred dollars on a guardian and an attorney when all they have to do is run to Target, buy a twenty dollar jacket, send a nice message to the other parent on our family wizard or whatever and say, hey, if you still have that jacket and you could send it over next time, that would be great.

Right.

So you're not accusing somebody of doing something.

You're not blowing it up.

Your kids are really attached to that.