Kati Morton

And the reason I bring that up is because when we're young and we have a parent who is inconsistent, like my dad and your dad, they worked away from home.

They'd come back.

We'd be so excited.

I remember running out to my dad's truck being like, he's home.

Oh my good.

I was so excited.

I wanted him there all the time.

my little kid brain didn't understand that my dad had no say over his work schedule.

He signed up for this job.

He didn't want to lose his job.

I also didn't understand the fact that he believed it was his biggest role to provide, right?

I didn't understand that either.

And so what children do is when we don't understand why the love or the attention is inconsistent with

We make up our own story with the information that we have, which is usually about ourselves.

So even if our parents are around, but they have a stressful job, so they're not really present with us,

We don't understand work stress.

We don't understand all the things that adults have to manage.

All we know is its impact on us.

And we take that information and then we try to fill in the spots in our story with what we do know, which is our role.

And that's why children blame themselves for divorce a lot.