Andrea Dunlop

So you get a lot of that stuff when the children are young.

And then when they get a little bit older, you might switch to something like a behavioral disorder or one of these neurological disorders afterwards.

And yeah, I think in terms of why people do it, what's been really interesting, Jordan, is as I've gotten into these other cases looking at physical abuse, abusive head trauma, which is another issue that there is just an unbelievable amount of misinformation about in the media right now, unfortunately, you see the degree to which even though Munchausen by proxy is this strange and disturbing phenomenon, it's

It is also they are abusers and they abuse for the same reasons because they want power.

Yeah.

It's taken me sort of a long time of sitting with this, looking at different cases, processing all this information to sort of come to this revelation that it's much more about power.

That's what I thought.

And I think like most of us can understand the basic mechanism of what they're getting out of it, which is that like even though we would never lie about our own health or lie about our child's health or abuse our child to get this.

But I think most of us can kind of understand what the basic reward here is.

When you have a crisis, especially if it's something around your children, people rush to your aid.

They treat you differently, and you might have a celebrity come visit your child in the hospital, and you get all this special attention, and you get to have a pass for anything that you're supposed to be doing in your real life.

You see a lot of parents in the situations quitting their jobs and just devoting, though, I have to be at my child's bedside.

And so it's sort of this attention and special treatment and outpouring of love that you get for having a sick child, part of the reward.

But the other element that I think has really become clear to me as I've seen and really talked to people who are survivors and have been in marriages with these perpetrators and really seen what these dynamics are like long term.

And of course, I have a perpetrator in my family, which is why I got interested in this, is that it's really about controlling the people around you.

So, yes, it's about controlling the child.

But obviously, it starts when children are very young.

And I think the child is really an object.

And that's where it shares a lot with other forms of abuse, right?

They're not seeing the child as human particularly, and they're not really feeling a bond with that child.