Podcast
Kim's Parents and their children Podcasts
Hosted by Kim Lee · EN
I am a Chid & Adolescent Psychotherapist. The podcast are educational and orientated towards parents. We cover a wide range of sometimes, tricky subjects, in the hope of reassuring parents that no matter how hard things may seem, there are things you can do.
Many episodes run in parallel with our online courses for parents. These can be found at www.thechildrensconsultancy.com.
Please let others know about these free podcasts.
Thank you.
Kim
11episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Adrianna & Chris. Teaser 2,,,,,,,
Mar 1000:10:30Tap to summarizeSend a textWhat if the moment you feel the angriest is the moment you start to heal? We follow Adriana’s raw, unfiltered shift from depression to reckoning after a one-sided relationship with Chris, and we unpack why anger, when named and contained, can be a healthy sign that your center is returning. Instead of chasing closure through confrontation, we explore how validation turns chaos into clarity, helping you see patterns of deceit, half-truths, and self-serving stories for what they are.Across this conversation, we connect the dots that abusers hope you’ll ignore: the grand claims of honesty paired with withheld facts, the insistence on being “not a taker,” and the reframed accounts of past partners. As these contradictions surface, self-blame gives way to sober recognition. We talk through revenge fantasies as symbols rather than scripts, and why you don’t need to act on them to reclaim your dignity. That’s where silence becomes a strategy. Used with intention, silence signals the end of access and the start of boundaries, communicating more powerfully than any argument.Hope enters through practice. Adriana steps into a new connection with care—naming limits, pacing slowly, and choosing mutuality over intensity. We share how to protect your healing while staying open to love: observe reciprocity, keep your values in sight, and let validation anchor your choices. For those who’ve lived the one-way street, this story offers practical language, emotional tools, and a reminder that consequences unfold without you forcing them. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs it, and leave a review telling us the boundary you’re proud you kept.
Transcribe →Children Living in the Shadow of Addiction. Episode 6. Breaking The Shadow Cycle
Mar 1000:15:50Tap to summarizeSend a textWhat breaks a family’s silence when addiction becomes the weather in every room? We open the door with language, boundaries, and a clear-eyed look at responsibility—so children aren’t left carrying stories they never chose. Drawing on years of clinical work with families living in the shadow of addiction, Kim Lee explains how “reality confrontation” works in practice, why it’s not about blame, and how it helps everyone see what’s actually happening without the fog of minimization or rationalization.Across this conversation, we follow the precarious arc of recovery—from crisis that forces a reckoning to the slow repair of trust. We unpack the crucial distinction between support and enabling, and we share the exact words that signal both love and limits: “I will support your recovery, but I will not enable your addiction.” We also map the intergenerational patterns that form when kids adapt to instability: hypervigilance, over-responsibility, and the habit of bracing for chaos. Then we show how those adaptations, once recognized, can soften, allowing adults to tolerate stability, set boundaries without guilt, and build relationships that aren’t organized around fear.You’ll hear how to identify trajectories, anticipate risk, and take action that protects children while restoring agency to the person who must choose sobriety. We clarify the role of safeguarding and why services aim to stabilize families rather than punish them. If you’re asking, “Is this okay?” that question is your signal. Start by saying what you see, seek support through Al‑Anon or your GP, and replace secrecy with small, steady steps toward safety. If this conversation helps, subscribe, share it with someone who needs it, and leave a review to help others find their way to the same clarity.
Transcribe →Children living in the shadow of addiction. Episode 5. Lost In The Chaos
Mar 1000:10:54Tap to summarizeSend a textFamilies don’t simply live beside addiction; they slowly reorganize around it. We open up the hidden mechanics of that shift and focus on the children who learn to read danger, carry calm, and make life look normal when it isn’t. From the organizer who keeps the mornings running to the invisible one who avoids adding weight to thin ice, we map the roles that emerge without a plan and the emotional cost of playing them too well.We share the story of Adam, a twelve‑year‑old praised for maturity that was really survival, and a fifteen‑year‑old wrestling with a aching question: if love is real, why doesn’t he stop? Their experiences reveal a hard truth—love and addiction run on different tracks. Along the way, we unpack enabling: the quiet fixes, the careful excuses, the financial triage that come from love and fear yet keep the cycle spinning. Kids see everything. They notice the contradictions and sense what is required without anyone asking: silence, protection, a show of normal life.Together we explore the psychological split that forms when a child’s inner reality clashes with a family’s public script. Holding two versions of the same story is exhausting, and those roles can follow us into adulthood as overfunctioning, conflict avoidance, or rescuing. But there’s a turning point. When we name the patterns, blame softens and choices return. We point to practical supports—school counselors, specialized services, and Al‑Anon for family members—that offer language, boundaries, and community so no one has to carry it alone.If this speaks to your story, press play, share it with someone who needs it, and leave a review to help others find the show. Subscribe for the final part of the series as we look at breaking the cycle and how real change can begin.
Transcribe →Leaving The One Way Street Teaser
Mar 900:05:43Tap to summarizeSend a textWhat if the sweetest words at the start are the first signs you’re being set up to disappear? Our teaser for Leaving the One Way Street introduces Adriana, a respected music therapist whose five-year relationship with Chris begins in a rush of calls, thoughtful gifts, and intimate confessions. The attention feels rare and generous, the kind that makes a person feel chosen. Then the ground shifts: dramatic stories about a villainous ex, patterns of conflict that follow him everywhere, and a refrain about how “nice ones” make his skin crawl. The early kindness hardens into a contract she never signed.We walk listeners through the mechanics of love bombing and the quieter forms of coercive control. Adriana’s depression isn’t emptiness; it’s inverted anger, a signal that her boundaries have been worn down by constant emergencies and the labor of caretaking. As Chris’s availability narrows, he calls daily but never asks how she is, using the phone as a stage for his latest drama. Meanwhile, Adriana cooks, delivers meals, runs errands at short notice, and rearranges her life to fit his. Her devotion is real. The reciprocity is not.This story unpacks the power of grievance narratives—how vilifying an ex becomes a pre-emptive alibi—and why steady, empathic people are especially vulnerable to exploitation when kindness goes unguarded. A friend’s sharp question, “What’s in it for you?” reframes everything and points to a path out. If you’ve ever wondered where care ends and control begins, or why obvious red flags feel invisible when attention floods your world, this series will help you name the pattern and reclaim your center.Subscribe to follow Adriana’s unfolding story, share this teaser with someone who loves too hard, and leave a review with the first red flag you wish you’d trusted.
Transcribe →Children living in the shadows of addiction. Episode 4. The Damage.....
Mar 900:19:35Tap to summarizeSend a textA quiet house can be the loudest place a child knows. We explore how growing up around addiction trains the nervous system to scan for threat, turns bedtime into a vigil, and carves patterns that show up years later as anxiety, hypervigilance, and hard-to-name shame. Drawing on developmental neuroscience and clinical practice, we unpack why unpredictability reshapes stress and emotion systems—and why these adaptations are not weakness but survival.We follow three lives to make the science human. Leah, a teen labeled defiant, reveals how cutting moved her from chaos to calm and why adults missed the function behind the behavior. Christopher, age eleven, speaks through play: a lone child, sleeping parents, and a crocodile that says more than words about hunger and waiting. Sarah, in her thirties, recognizes the echo between a loving yet absent father and a string of partners who began dazzling and drifted into drinking and distance. Her insight—trying to fix something old through someone new—opens the door to change.Along the way, we examine repetition compulsion, identification with power, and the internal templates that make familiar feel safe, even when it isn’t. We translate “acting out” into what it often is: crude yet effective self-regulation. Then we map a path forward—naming hidden realities, building predictable routines, modeling regulated coping, and creating spaces where feelings can be held without shame. The shadow of addiction touches every child in the home, but visibility is the first step to choice. If this story mirrors your own or someone you love, listen, share, and add your voice. Subscribe for more in the series, and leave a review to help others find these conversations. What part of this journey spoke to you most?
Transcribe →Children living in the shadows of addiction. Episode 3. Guardians Of The Family Secret
Mar 900:11:30Tap to summarizeSend a textSecrets can feel safer than truth when love is on the line. We explore how silence takes root in families affected by addiction, why children become guardians of the family story, and what it costs them in classrooms, friendships, and their own bodies. With clear, compassionate language, we unpack the psychodynamic idea of containment—how a steady adult transforms raw fear and confusion into feelings a child can hold—and what happens when addiction disrupts that process.We share the story of Christopher, an eleven-year-old who arrived with stomach aches and few words. Through play, a hidden narrative surfaced: a father sleeping through the day, rules of quiet, and a private oath to never tell. Christopher feared that speaking would make his dad “a bad person,” revealing how loyalty and love can lock a child into silence. We show how this silence turns inward, shaping behavior as either careful competence or restless disruption, and why somatic symptoms often carry what the mouth cannot say.Together, we name the false self many children build to look fine while feeling unsafe, and we offer practical ways adults can help. Simple, steady containment—naming contradictions without blame, offering predictable check-ins, and treating school complaints as signals not misbehavior—begins to loosen secrecy’s grip. When a child hears their experience reflected accurately, they learn that truth can protect love rather than destroy it. Listen to deepen your understanding of children’s mental health, trauma-informed care, and the subtle signs of family addiction that show up in everyday life. If this resonates, follow the show, share with someone who needs it, and leave a review to help others find these conversations.
Transcribe →Children Living in The Shadow of Addiction. Caught Between Love And Fear. Episode 2.
Mar 800:10:04Tap to summarizeSend a textWe look at how children adapt to parental addiction by becoming the emotional caretakers at home, and why love and fear toward the same parent can last into adulthood. We explain parentification, disorganized attachment, and the quiet grief for the parent and childhood that never arrived.• reversal of care as parentification • ambivalence in attachment when safety and danger share a source • defensive idealization and blame turned inward • conflicted internal objects of the sober and intoxicated parent • adult patterns shaped by childhood vigilance and loss • limits of reassurance and what real support requires • preview of silence and secrets in families with addiction
Transcribe →Children In The Shadow Of Addiction
Mar 800:05:03Tap to summarizeSend a textA home doesn’t announce addiction with a single moment; it changes the air. We open our six-part series by stepping into a child’s view of instability—how the room feels different, how plans fall apart, and how a young nervous system learns to predict storms before they break. Instead of theory from a distance, we ground the story in real textures: louder voices, longer silences, promises made and forgotten, and the quiet choreography of keeping peace when safety is never certain.Across these minutes, we explore the subtle ways kids adapt to living beside addiction. Some become very quiet. Others perform competence beyond their years. Many grow intensely watchful. We trace how these survival mechanisms form to maintain a sense of safety, then harden into traits that follow children into school, friendships, and adulthood. Hypervigilance can look like responsibility. People-pleasing can look like kindness. But the cost is high when a child must organize their inner life around an adult’s instability.We also name why language matters. When a child’s body knows the truth before anyone will say it, confusion grows. By validating what they sense and restoring small routines—meals at regular times, consistent bedtimes, clear check-ins—we begin to return stability to the ground beneath their feet. We connect these insights to trauma-informed care, family systems, and practical steps any caring adult can take to reduce harm and increase predictability without placing impossible burdens on young shoulders.Stay with us as we continue the series. Next time, we look closely at the weight children carry when they’re asked to manage adult emotions and responsibilities that reshape childhood itself. If this conversation resonates, follow the show, share it with someone who needs to hear it, and leave a review with the moment that stayed with you most. Your reflections help others find support and feel less alone.
Transcribe →When conditions collide. Episode 6.
Mar 700:06:38Tap to summarizeSend a textWhat if the traits we rush to “fix” are the very ones a child will one day rely on to thrive? We close our series by shifting the spotlight from deficits to strengths and showing how a few well-placed supports can transform frustration into forward motion. Through a vivid story of Daniel—a boy once labeled chaotic who reveals a notebook of mechanical inventions—we unpack how interest-led learning, movement breaks, and sensory-savvy routines can unlock creativity, focus, and real confidence.We explore why understanding neurodevelopmental profiles like AUDHD changes everything. Instead of chasing elimination of difference, we aim for integration: organizing a child’s experiences so talents can surface consistently. You’ll hear how linking tasks to genuine interests fuels motivation, how predictable structures reduce cognitive load, and how permission to move keeps attention available for the work that matters. Along the way, we draw on clinical principles and the integration model of mental health to show how environments can be designed around the brain’s actual needs, not an imagined norm.Language is a tool, too. Through psychoeducation, we help children name patterns without judgment—attention variability, sensory thresholds, hyperfocus—turning “problems” into navigable features. That shift lowers shame, invites strategy, and gives kids a believable path to mastery. As families and teachers widen the lens, identity builds on originality, insight, and perseverance. Many who grow up with neurodevelopmental differences become adults whose creativity and analytical thinking are their edge; our job is to nurture those traits early, with compassion and clear design.If this conversation sparks ideas for your home, classroom, or clinic, share it with someone who needs a hopeful, practical way forward. Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us: what support made the biggest difference for you or your child?
Transcribe →When conditions collide. Episode 5
Mar 600:09:11Tap to summarizeSend a textOverwhelm isn’t a mystery when you see how the AuDHD brain handles information, interest, and energy. We dig into practical ways parents and teachers can lower cognitive load, spark engagement, and build steady regulation—without relying on quick fixes or one-size-fits-all rules. The throughline is simple: design the day to fit the brain, not the other way around.We start by reframing support as neurological design. Bite-sized tasks, now/next visuals, and clear routines reduce working memory strain and keep attention anchored to what’s happening right now. A school case study shows how a containment plan—only naming “now” and “next”—transformed a child labeled “chaotic” into a calmer, more available learner. When the horizon shrinks, anxiety shrinks, and behavior follows.Then we tap the engine that powers attention: intrinsic interest. By linking a child’s passions to new skills, we move from “I can’t” to “I can, then I can try.” This bridge works for academics, friendships, and emotional tools like naming feelings and recovering from frustration. Movement becomes the third pillar—short, planned activity breaks regulate arousal far better than trying to suppress the wiggles. One student’s shift after scheduled movement breaks was remarkable: sharper focus, fewer eruptions, and a classroom that finally felt manageable.Sensory regulation ties it all together. Quiet spaces, predictable transitions, and right-sized input aren’t indulgences; they’re the scaffolds a sensitive nervous system needs to learn and connect. Over time, children internalize these supports and start choosing what helps: taking a pause, grabbing headphones, or pacing a task. Not every school can do everything, but most can do one thing that matters. Start with the biggest friction—load, interest, movement, or sensory—and build from there.If this conversation helped you see a clear next step, follow the show, share it with someone who needs it, and leave a review telling us which strategy you’ll try this week.
Transcribe →