The Dr. John Delony Show - How to Talk to Special Needs Kids About Trauma

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

The Dr. John Delony Show is a caller-driven show that offers real people a chance to be heard as they struggle with relationship issues and mental health challenges. John will give you practical advice on how to connect with people, how to take the next right step when you feel frozen, and how to cut through the depression and anxiety that can feel so overwhelming. You are not alone in this battle. You are worth being well—and it starts by focusing on what you can control. Let us know what’s going on by leaving a voicemail at 844.693.3291 or visiting johndelony.com/show. We want to talk to YOU!   Let us know what you think about the show! Take the survey: https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/6398972/5d46580e08c4   Show Notes for this Episode   John talks to his friend, Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychologist Dr. Michael Gomez, about how to talk to autistic kids about family trauma I need to know how to talk to my special needs son about some horrible family trauma that we just experienced Lyrics of the Day: "Ode to Sad Clown" - Joe Purdy   As heard on this episode:  BetterHelp Redefining Anxiety John's Free Guided Meditation Ramsey+   tags: suicide/self-harm, kids, special needs, parenting, trauma/PTSD, ADHD   These platforms contain content, including information provided by guests, that is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The content is not intended to replace or substitute for any professional medical, counseling, therapeutic, financial, legal, or other advice. The Lampo Group, LLC d/b/a Ramsey Solutions as well as its affiliates and subsidiaries (including their respective employees, agents and representatives) make no representations or warranties concerning the content and expressly disclaim any and all liability concerning the content including any treatment or action taken by any person following the information offered or provided within or through this show. If you have specific concerns or a situation in which you require professional advice, you should consult with an appropriately trained and qualified professional expert and specialist. If you are having a health or mental health emergency, please call 9-1-1 immediately.`

On today's show, we talk about heavy, heavy trauma. So this is not a show for children. We walk alongside a mom working through unimaginable pain, and I peel back the curtain and let you listen to a conversation between me and my mentor as he coaches me on how I should help this woman. Stay tuned. What up, what up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show.

I hope you are doing well. Thanks for choosing this podcast out of the 18 trillion that exist, including your cousins, your granddad probably has a podcast, your mother for sure has a podcast, your mom has a podcast. I bet that's even a thing now. I'm so glad you're here.

If you want to be on the show, give me a shout at 1-844-693-3291. We talk to real people about real challenges, and we walk alongside folks trying to make the next right decision. And life is messy and hard. 1-844-693-3291. Mental health, relationships, parenting, marriage, education, whatever is going on in your heart and mind, give us a shout. Or you can go to johndeloney.com slash show.

Fill out the form and it goes to Kelly and we will get you on the show. This is a very special episode and I'm'm super jazzed about it for two reasons. Number one, I get to talk to one of my favorite people in the world. He's my practicum supervisor, a guy. You know what they told you in elementary school or middle school and high school? If you just worked harder, you could be as fast as that guy, or you could lift weights like that guy. Be as strong as him. It's just because you're not working hard.

And then when you're about a junior or senior in high school, you realize, that guy just jumps higher than me. Like, I could lift all day. He's just faster. I work really, really hard, and that guy's just Stephen Curry. He just makes baskets better than me, right? Well, I didn't realize until I was way too far down the road that that also works academics for brain computational power. I just always told myself the story,

if you just studied more or read more, that you would be smart like these other people. And then I worked with Dr. Gomez, Michael Gomez, that we're going to talk to you today, as my, he's my practicum supervisor. And I realized, that we're going to talk to you today. He's my practicum supervisor. And I realized, oh, his brain just works 10x mine. He's just smarter than me. I could study all day and read everything. Nope. He's just faster and better than me at this. So it's one of my great honors. So here's why I'm calling him today. This is exciting. So one of my meta goals for this show, right? One of the regular goals is to give people practical information they can take home and use to solve some personal challenges that they're experiencing. One of my meta goals is to show people what it

looks like to live a healthier, well life. And so what I want to do is pull back the curtain whenever I can on challenging issues, on regular issues, on just normal everyday life for things that most people don't get to see. And so we got a call for today's show from an extraordinary woman in Texas who experienced some really outside of the box trauma, and she also has a child with very particular special needs. And so Dr. Gomez is a friend of mine, and he's a mentor of mine, and he also is an expert child psychologist in trauma and in autism. And it just so happens that this particular call is about how to talk to a young person with

autism about family trauma. And if you don't have somebody, a young person with autism in your life, this show will still be really important for you. But I knew, hey, I need to get some deeper insight into this. Any good counselor does this. Any good therapist does this. Any good doctor does this. Any good academic does this. When they're faced with something that they want to get some more information and some more depth on, they don't go to the internet and read headlines. They call an expert and they ask hard questions. They do this about plumbing too, by the way, and how to raise chickens and how to fix your tire on your car, whatever, right? So I wanted to give you good folks a ringside seat to a conversation between two professionals talking about the particulars here.

And so we reached out to Dr. Gomez and I said, hey, man, would you mind being on the show and talking me through this and helping me think through this particular question? He said, absolutely, I'm in. And so I'm going to go straight to Dr. Michael Gomez on the phone. Hola, muchacho, how are you doing? Hey, Dr. Delaney, can you hear me okay over there? Yeah, I can hear you great man. You can just call me John. Now I'm back to being one of your students again, so it's good for you. Okay, well you're in the doctor. Also that was maybe the best compliment I've ever been given at any point in time, so thank you for that. You're welcome man.

How are you? Doing well, doing well. Good to hear from you, good to talk to you. Hey, so before we go any further, you just got some big fancy new gig. Tell me about this. Yes. With the Professionally Seedless is one that will be starting in October. I do a lot of work with trauma and autism. I was lucky enough to get offered a spot at Emma Pendleton Bradley Hospital, part of Lifespan Institute in Providence, Rhode Island, which is one of Brown University's teaching hospitals. So wonderful place, amazing team, stellar nationally and internationally, and just wonderful people working there and wonderful kids.

So if you're a listener, this is how two roads diverge in a wood. Yoda gets a job at a Brown teaching hospital, which is one of the most extraordinary academic institutions on the planet. The other guy gets a YouTube show. That's how our paths converge, Dr. Govind. Our separate ways. So way to go, man. All right. Hey, I appreciate you being willing to talk me through this situation.

All right. So here's the story. A couple is married and they get divorced. And my understanding, and I haven't talked to this woman yet, so I'm just going through an email that was sent. They get divorced. The guy was not a good husband, but a really excellent father. He has a relationship with somebody else, and mom and her autistic son go their separate ways. Dad is still super involved in his autistic son's life. He's a great father. They have become friends again, good co-parents. And then rather suddenly he,

for reasons unknown to really anybody, he murders his new girlfriend, their kid, and then he commits suicide. It's all over the news. It's a big thing in the city with which they live. Mom has to tell autistic child this news and grieve herself. And she has did a great job out of the gate talking to her son saying, hey, dad's your dad has passed away. And what is the right next step on talking about how he passed away? It's going to be on the news. His friends are going to ask him about it. And by the way, this child who was murdered in this situation was close

friends with him, right? So now he's got this extra thing. His dad took his own life and dad also murdered one of his friends. And he's a highly functioning autistic young man so man walk me through how we would navigate that conversation um both as a 13 year old and then as the kid grows up absolutely so a couple of recommendations um for both providers whether it's a therapist nurse doctor talking to the parent and for the parent for mom in this scenario um first i always advise providers like if you're a counselor talking to a parent and for the parent, for mom in this scenario. First, I always advise providers, like if you're a counselor talking to a parent, they're going to want you to tell the kid this. And we have to very gently tell them, we will show you how to tell the kid and we'll walk you

through that, but we're not going to do it ourselves. We'll be in the room if you need us to, we'll be on the phone or on the zoom camera. And a lot of parents rightly so get upset. They're like, well, then what am I paying you for? Uh, which is a legitimate question. And so the reason for that is not because we're trying to avoid it as providers, but we're not going to be there when the kid has a nightmare at 2 AM. We're not going to be there when you're just having Sunday lunch and you ask the kid if he wants to catch up and he says, why did daddy shoot Mike? You like the, that's kind of the rhythm it'll happen. And you ask the kid if he wants to catch up, and he says, why did daddy shoot Mike? That's kind of the rhythm.

It'll happen. And we want someone that – the thing we want to emphasize to parents, the first thing is you are the best person to talk to them. So the meta there is the parents got to have this conversation, got to walk through what happened. Okay. Yeah. And now they can seek, just like you said earlier, seek support, seek expertise, practice with a professional, practice with a friend, a colleague, and we encourage them to do that. However, we don't want to kind of give the, like, outsource the conversation, basically. There you go. All right. So what has mom already done? I mean, she did it great. She got beneath eye level with her autistic son. She

communicated dad has passed away. They grieved that together. It was really remarkable. And now what's the follow-up conversation to say, hey, here's actually what all went down. Yeah. I want to also highlight what you just said, which is that that in and of itself is a huge victory and strength for mom. Because like you said, she is in her own grieving process and her own confusion and sadness and anger and fear. And she's putting that like, I'm in this pain, but I have to worry about my little boy here. And so that in itself, we, we want to kind of touch base on, especially as providers saying, Hey, you have that conversation. The other ones you'll be able to have to, if you got through that one, you're going to get through the other ones.

And repetitively kind of let mom know that. That first one is usually the harder one, even if it may not be the most difficult one, which I think applies in this case where your daddy passed away and that was hard in and of itself. Now she has to explain some more of the details for him. But emphasizing that you've already done it. You already kind of ripped some of the Band-Aid off. You can do this again. We're just going to give you some extra tools. Excellent. Okay. So walk us through the hard stuff here. Sure. So a couple of rules that I give caregivers is, first, less is more. And I talk about micro conversations. Um, so we don't,

we also do a similar move when we talk about sex and sexuality with kids. Um, we don't, we're not a fan of the talk, like the two hour talk that traumatized most of us. That's right. I got to talk. I still have nightmares. We want to like, when they're little, like, here's the name of your private parts. Right. They're growing up. Why does she have different private parts? And those are very short conversations. So a lot of parents will want to kind of just laugh and rightly so, but we want them to give them information and then check. And so a lot of times when I'm coaching parents to how to do this.

So I want to tell you, Billy, exactly how your father died. Okay. Okay. I told you he passed away. And also, um, advise parents to give kids as many options as they can within these conversations. So the next question would be, do you want to know how he died? Okay. And nope. Okay. And then she can ask later, maybe like not necessarily that day, but next week, a couple of months. Now, the only time I kind of show the options is kind of this scenario where he's going to see it. So with that particular question, I would say, your daddy passed away in a way that's on the news.

And you might see it or might read about it. So I really want to tell you what happened. But even then you can give options. Would you like to talk now? Would you like to talk on the weekend? Would you like to talk tonight? And like, we're going to do it. It's just how you get to decide how. And it's almost conscious discipline. Like I'm going to give you a set of options and you get to choose. But that's letting a child in a moment that's going to feel really powerless. It's allowing that child to retain some shred of autonomy, right? Yes.

Like I'm holding on to – I can control some of this, right? Yes. Okay. There's a – I don't know if you're familiar with the comedian Patton Oswalt. His wife wrote about the Golden State Killer, and she passed away. She died pretty suddenly. And he was telling an anecdote about – and as a psychologist, I thought the teacher who gave him this advice was brilliant, because this is what we would give advice to for a family, which is, she said, don't tell her in the dark basically told her what happened. And he told her in pretty, but that was unlike this mom, that was their first conversation about that. She had passed away the day before, overnight.

The kid was at like, I guess, an in-laws or something. But giving her options about what she wanted to hear, where she wanted to hear it, how much she wanted to hear. And one thing I do, especially with kids who have trauma, who have any kind of, who are not neurotypical, is I use a one to 10 scale. And if they have trouble with numbers, we do like little, middle, big. But I usually say, we're gonna have a tough conversation, Billy. So I want to make sure that if it's uncomfortable, that I know that, but if it's painful, like you feel like something's snapping, I know that. So it's a one to 10 scale. One means you're totally calm, fine. Five is, whew, it's a little tough, but I'm okay. And 10 is, I'm going to break down. I'm going to start crying or yelling or shut down. And so can we agree that if you get to seven or eight,

that you let me know and that we'll take a, and then we'll finish up at a different time? Awesome. So take your time. And you heard me tell that parents, because when I work in an ER or an ICU, and the mom has to tell them, hey, kid died, your brother died, I'll say, take your time, slow it down. You have time. Even if they may not objectively have that time. In the moment, I want them to go slower, not faster. Gotcha.

And so in the past, you and I have talked extensively. So we're leading up to the moment when it will say, your daddy died by suicide. It's as clear as it can be and simple and direct. Am I on the right track there? Yes. And I always check, not just with kids who have trauma, but also kids with FAS, autism, intellectual disability,

our current name for what used to be called mental retardation. Have you heard that word before? Suicide, Billy? What does that mean? What does it mean? What do you think? And some of the responses are interesting so like we had a family where because i don't know it means they

killed themselves and it was like an eight-year-old like wow that's pretty out the way you learned that and said anything anything else it means it's a very important follow-up but what means my dad's in hell wait a second let's let's and which also signals to me as a psychologist and now i need to get the chaplain in here. Gotcha. This is kind of a little bit above my pay grade. Now it's gone theological on us. Okay.

Yes. And what about the follow-up, which would, would that be a moment to put a period at the end of that sentence, and then to circle back and say, we wouldn't want somebody to wait until somebody at school pops up and says, hey, your dad killed so-and-so, your friend. You'd want to have that at the same time? Or would you want to have some space between those conversations? It kind of depends on the kid and the scenario. For this scenario, it sounds like there's an eminence.

And so the conversation will have to probably occur kind of with shorter gaps. Okay. But a gap is good? A gap is good. And a gap can be like 10 minutes to basically have the kid down-regulate. So you're at a nine. Let's take a second. Let's go play with our dog and come back in and we'll talk a little bit more later.

Okay. And give me the verbiage you would pass along to let somebody know that their dad took the life of their friend. And for parents, I say, what language do you think they would understand? Let's workshop that. Okay. And I would have them generate it. Because especially with kids now, with kind of neurotypical kids who have trauma, I can't really give them language. And the language is based on development. And the very short version of this, which I know you understand this, but just for the audience, I distinguish kind of between three levels of the child development within kids like, you know, young kids to 18.

First one for your kind of toddlers, maybe first graders, second graders, is egocentric, which means the definition of A plus B equals me. I know a lot of politicians that still have that. I'm going to say it's five-year-olds and some 40-year-old men, but that's not the point, John. So the next stage is kind of your mid to late elementary into junior high, which is concrete. A plus B equals C. And one activity one of my mentors taught me was right now now, look around your physical area. Just look around really briefly, and audience, do this too. And if you laughing at me. Well, the kid may be living in a very violent household with a lot of arguing, and so he's not connecting it. For him, a causal thing is they're laughing at me, so it must be they're mad at me. So he's not making the connection from home to school, but he sees the two girls laughing at the joke they told each other,

so it has to be the reason for his distress. And then the last one is A plus B equals Y, abstract reasoning. And this is where it can actually get kind of theological, and then this Gotcha. But again, to practice that in a really good rule of thumb, and when I'm prepping parents, I'll say, I'll do a question that's kind of mean, like, let's say, like, you know, did you hate my dad? And they're like, why would you ask that? Like, well, what would you say? And they stumble, which is correct. I say, you can say, I want to think about how to answer that. And can we talk about it later? Can mom get some time? Because mom also is entitled to her time just like her son.

There you go. I need to take some space. Mom's got boundaries too, right? Yes. And so to go back to your question, so for an egocentric, like a kid, and if you're like for kids who are not neurotypical, if you're confused, like are they concrete or egocentric? I'm not sure. Go to the one below. Right. So egocentric, so go to the lower denominator. And so, for an egocentric kid, would say, for example, your dad shot, it'd be, you know, as concrete as possible,

if they know, or like your dad took a life, maybe too abstract. Your dad hurt them very badly. He killed them. Then he killed himself. And it had nothing to do with you. And then you just got to own that space and that weight and that silence. Yep. Yep. And just silence is probably the hardest part of these conversations. Not what you say, but when you take a break.

For a concrete kid, it would sound very similar, but I would say probably the last statement is that I would say it had nothing to do with you. Do you feel safe right now in this room, in our house? Do you feel safe at school? Like those really super concrete things that kids might be worried about, like, well, is he going to hurt, like someone going to hurt us now? And for abstract kids, what do you think this will have, like, are you worried about kids at high school bringing this up for your buddy? If so, what kind of plan can we generate to make sure you feel like you're safe over there? And you can kind of go, basically, your zip code can enlarge, depending on the developmental stage. Awesome.

But I still kind of, of like work off of that. I love it. It's not your fault. Concrete and then abstract. And again, you can tell the kid, we're going to check in tonight or tomorrow morning. If you have questions, just let mom know. So one last thing, one last question here.

We'll keep it real quick. One of the most common tools I give folks in this situation is to write a letter to the person who died by suicide. To write a letter to the person who died in a car wreck. And it's okay to be angry. It's okay to be frustrated. gently do is to steer them towards often when we experience, when we, our loved ones die in a, in a traumatic way, we get frozen on their current pain that they are currently still hurting.

And there's something about writing a letter to them, letting our feelings be heard and moving them past. They're not experiencing that pain anymore. Right. Yes. That lets us go. My question for you is, does a 13 year old with autism, I've had that backfire on me when working with clients with special needs.

Does that work with a kid with autism? So the short answer is it does. It just works kind of differently. OK. And so one of the things there's some, again, wonderful resources out there. And I think that's a great first step for a family. If they run into trouble, or even if they don't, I usually advise them, like, seek a therapist. That's probably the most evidence-based is trauma-focused CBT, traumatic grief. And it's actually trauma-focused CBT actually has data for kids with autism and trauma. Excellent. Good, good, good. Okay. Yeah. And I think it actually is available in both in Texas and also in your area of the U.S.

Cool. But when we're doing that, I would also ask the parent, the way your son processes information, do you think this would work? Do you think a picture would be better? Do you think he has to do something physical? There you go. Like, how does he, not just with this, but how does he process stressful information like

he failed a test or somebody is bullying him? Something that's not obviously equivalent, but something that will trigger a stress response. How does he best process that? We're going to mirror that stress response in this situation too. I'm going to make it available to him.

He likes writing stories. One kid loved writing stories about Marvel superheroes. He'd just write that he'd fill up journals of them. That was how he coped with stressors. And so when he, you know, when he was in foster care, we, you know, that was kind of our go-to for him when like, if something like, well, the placement didn't work out or court got extended or you got to go testify, we'd say, Hey say hey let's do you need a right buddy and then and so he would that would be his thing awesome i had another kid hated writing he just he wanted to do something more physical more sensory and so like okay let's get you in our motor room you know we'll have you bounce around there for a conversation um i like it how you call it a motor room. That's where my wife wishes I had a motor room.

Awesome. They're great, yeah. And so mom knows her kid, and that's what we keep telling them is, you know your kid better than anyone on the planet. Love it. And so how does he usually process stressful information? Awesome.

Well, hey, dude, I got to run. You are an absolute saint, and so I'm grateful for you for giving up your time. And at your hourly rate, that was probably about $11,000. Just, just grateful for you. I wish. You'll come see me in Nashville here soon and look forward to hanging out. But dude, I'm grateful for you, Dr. Gomez.

Thank you so much, man. Likewise, Dr. Lonnie. You take care over there and keep doing the good work over there. Okay. I appreciate you, man. All right. So, hey, to the listeners, we're back. I'm going to take a quick break.

What I'm going to do during this break is I'm going to interpret the mind of a brilliant trauma psychologist and how I can communicate that to a hurting mom from my home state.

We'll be right back. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. All right, October is the season for wearing costumes and masks. And if you haven't started planning your costume yet, get on it. I'm pretty sure I'm going as Brad Pitt in Fight Club era because, I mean, we pretty much have the same upper body, but whatever. All right, look, it's costume season. And let's be honest, a lot of us hide our true selves behind costumes and masks more often than we want to. We do this at work. We do this in social setting. We do this around our families. We even do this with ourselves. I have been there multiple times in my life, and it's the worst. If you feel like you're stuck hiding your true self, I want you to consider talking with a therapist. Therapy is a place where you can learn to accept all the

parts of yourself, where you can learn to be honest with yourself, and you can take off the mask and the costumes and learn to live an honest, authentic, direct life. Costumes and masks should be for Halloween parties, not for our emotions and our true selves. If you're considering therapy, I want you to call my friends at BetterHelp. BetterHelp is 100% online therapy. You can talk with your therapist anywhere so it's convenient for your schedule. You just fill out a short online survey and you get matched with a licensed therapist. Plus, you can switch therapists at any time for no additional cost. Take off the costumes and take off the masks with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash Deloney to get 10% off your first month.

That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Deloney. All right, so now it's time to go to Hannah in South Texas. Hannah, how in the world are you? I'm doing well, Dr. John. How are you? I'm doing all right. So I hear from Kelly that you have a lot going on in your world. Just a bit. Oh, man. So I have heard third hand, second hand, I don't know, I'm removed, but you and I have never spoken. And you know that you're part of a special episode today where I know enough or a little bit about some of the details that I called a friend of mine and a former mentor of mine,

or a current mentor of mine, who's a renowned trauma psychologist who works with traumatized kids and with autistic kids. And so that seemed to fit your situation. So walk me through what happened. So my son is, he's been diagnosed with high-functioning autism and ADHD back in 2014. So he was about six. We were, uh, my ex-husband and I were stationed overseas. Um, and they didn't have the, I guess the ability to, to diagnose him. So he was a little late on being diagnosed at about six or six and a half. Um, and you know, we, we were working through that. My ex-husband, his dad and I divorced, um, we separated in 2016 and the divorce was finalized in 2017. Um, his dad moved back to, um, his hometown and I moved back to mine. So there was a few hours difference, but, um, in, in terms of the

commute, uh, but he was, he was a rock star. So he was not an ideal husband by any means, but he was a rock star dad. Um, and we'd gotten to a point where we were back to being friends. Um, his dad would call me if, you know, if he needed some help or some suggestions or guidance or just a sounding board. And I would call him because I'm like, hey, this is what we're experiencing with JB. What are your thoughts on this? So y'all are co-parenting together? Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. um y'all are co-parenting together yeah absolutely um like i said we were he was not an ideal husband but he was a rock star dad um and you know our our kiddo just worshiped to the ground his dad

could do no wrong um which is what kind of makes us heart even. So do me a favor. Do me a favor, would you? Take a big, deep breath and hold it for kind of one, two, and three, okay? Take a deep breath. Hold it. One, two, three, and let it out. Okay. All right. So bring us to last weekend.

So I was at work. So I'd gotten a, his dad had called him. His normal routine was to call him at bedtime and they talked for about 20 to 30 minutes. And JB came down and he's like, I get to see my dad. And I was like, oh, nice of your dad to let me know. Okay. And so the next day I was on the phone with one of my girlfriends kind of complaining about how he'd made plans with our son, but didn't check to clear if we had anything going on. at work, I got a call from just to make things easier, my mother-in-law, so his dad's mom, and it was just like ripping a Band-Aid off. She's like, you know, he's dead. And I was like, what do you mean? And I'm thinking it's a car accident or something's maybe happened at work. And she said that she'd just gotten off the phone with the detectives and he was dead.

The girlfriend and her child were dead as well. They don't have all the details. There's an investigation, but the gun was closest to JB's dad. So I called. I've remarried, um, and I called my husband who is a police officer and, you know, he was on shift and I said, I just got this call. I don't know what to do. Um, and he said, he, you you know i'm getting off a shift at this so i avoided going home like i i wasn't i needed to get all of like process it and try and figure it out um my husband came home and i was like i'm still not ready um can you take him out for burgers you know just give me time and the whole time they were gone i was googling how do you tell your son, you know, that his dad's dead or whatever.

Oh, man. Yeah. Were you alone at this time? No. So my boss, I called my boss and my boss was like, you're not driving. I'm coming back and I'm going to take you home. My mom, my mom came to my house. So she was with me.

And it was still kind of one of those everything's in shock. And I remembered a few weeks back, I'd listened to an episode where you had said, get below the child's eye level. Which isn't hard because my kid towers over me anyway. But I had him sit on the couch and I got on the floor and I said, I talked to your grandma today and your dad's dead. And he was just like, what? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And I was like, and I'm just sitting there and I'm, I'm choking up and holding back tears. I thought that I've had all afternoon to rehearse this. I've got this down. This is going to be fine. I can be clinical about it.

And it didn't work. The minute he started saying no, I broke down. Can I interrupt real quick? Yeah. I'm so glad it wasn't clinical. Yeah. A great gift you gave yourself and your son was a shared moment of humanity. And sometimes as parents, we want to make that Band-Aid, we want to tear that thing off perfect in one rip.

And man, grief isn't like a Band-Aid, right? And so I'm actually relieved that that happened that way and that y'all got to share that. However awful and horrible that, that moment will become a stake in the ground for both of y'all to heal together. And so I'm glad that happened that way. So you broke down and. I broke down. JB started asking questions. By this point there, there had been articles, you know, coming out and I was starting to get messages and phone calls. And, um, I just said, we don't know it was an

accident. That's all I could, I don't want to be the one to, to take that hero worship away from him. Um, and I, uh, unfortunately we, we were, we were good with it's an accident. Um, and then, uh, one of the ways that JB kind of self sooth is he plays music and, and sings along to the, to the lyrics. So he had my phone and he was doing, I guess, karaoke pacing and stimming in the backyard. And my mother, God bless her, sent an article that said, confirms, see, sorry. And so, you know, of course, when you post a link, it kind of gives a little blurb and the headline was that. And so, you know, he comes in and he's like, I thought you said this, how did it happen? What? And I was just, I was like, I don't have details, buddy. Um, that article, I don't know what grandma's sending, you know? And so

I'm now trying to trap between a rock and a hard place of, I've never lied to our son. Um, I've never lied to our son. I've been, as age-appropriate conversations go, I've been very forthcoming and everything. But now I'm just like, what do I do? How do I answer these questions? How do I field these questions? What if somebody at school says something? I'm also having to defend him to, you know, my family and my current in-laws because I'm getting the, well, it could have been you. It could have been you and your son. And I'm like, he loved with such intensity.

Like, he loved big, but he also messed up big. Sure, sure. So we just weren't good together. So bring me to right now. Have you just avoided these conversations with your son? No. Um, so when he asks questions, I, I give him the answers that I have. So everything that's coming forward right now is, is what's in the news. Um, the detectives are still doing their thing. They've got to do different tests and all of that stuff. So it's still an open investigation.

So until I have anything concrete, I don't want to answer questions based on, you know, a local news article. I want to get my information from the detectives. In my experience, detectives will they'll say hey here's where we're leaning if you have those conversations they say this is this is what it looks like okay here's here's what i'm getting at um there is the chance like so let's say you're you you hear that that set of facts and one set of like there's a part of you that would dream. Maybe he was murdered, right? Maybe that something happened to him,

or maybe he came to protect that little girl from this, his crazy girlfriend, right? There's those kind of those things that we dream about. And then the detective will say, I mean, it's, we're doing some forensics just cause that's what we do,

but it's pretty clear that this is how this played out. And what I don't want you to do is to put off and put off and put off when everyone around you either believes they have a narrative or is pretty sure that the narrative they've got is relatively right. And then the neighborhood kid is the one who tells your son. Right. Does that make sense? Right. Yeah. Has the detective hinted one way this is what this looks like?

So the last update that and I'm getting the information from, you know, his his mom. The last update that they had was doorbell footage showed his dad coming in to the house, and there were immediately shots fired. They did not anticipate that they had time to defend themselves. Okay. So it definitely looks the way that the articles are presenting. So what I'm going to tell you is if, because there's media out, I would err on the side of telling my son, here's what we best understand at this moment, and not put that conversation off any longer. Because what you don't want to do is to plant any seeds at any point,

at any time, that mom's not going to tell me the truth. Okay. And you mentioned something earlier that I'm going to make sure you tattoo on your heart, which is you will not be the one that takes away his hero worship. That has already been done. You will be the person who volunteers to hold his hand and walk through that pain with him. And being the person who talks to him

and communicates what actually happened to him is not the person who took that away. That already has happened. There's a period at the end of that sentence. What you can do is one of two things. You can continue to pull away from him relationally, or you can lean all in and say,

I'm going to walk with you, however hard this is. And so there's a big gap here that I want to make sure you're processing. And I'm sure someone's told you this, and if they haven't, it's okay to have your whole world blown up that your ex-husband has passed away. You can grieve him too, even though you're remarried and you love your new husband and all that. This guy's a part of you. You created life together.

You created memories together. Y'all were overseas together. It's okay to be devastated. Okay? Yeah. You created memories together. Y'all were overseas together. It's okay to be devastated. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And my husband has given me that space. I mean, I've laid on his chest bawling my eyes out.

Good. And I told him when I came home that day, I walked up to him and I said, I need you to understand I'm going to cry. I'm going to him and I said, I need you to understand I'm going to cry. I'm going to grieve. I don't want you to think that that means that I love him. Or miss him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. I didn't want to, I wanted him to know that it wasn't out of disrespect for him or our marriage or the love that we have. But this was, I was with him, you know, I was with our son's dad for a third of my life.

Yeah, he's a part of you. He's a part of you. That's right. Yeah, and he gave me this perfectly imperfect child. Right. And, you know. Oh, honey, he's perfect, baby. He's perfect.

He's perfect. He is. And for everything. And I've put my husband through the wringer with all of my, you know, crazy trees and all that good jazz. And he's just, he's also a rock star. That's awesome. And he leans in. Good for you.

Good for him. What a stud. He went through, I had a box of memories and keepsakes from my marriage that were all of the photos, family photos and whatnot. Um, and letters from his dad from when he was deployed and, um, you know, in all the different trainings and whatnot that he'd written to JB, but I kept to make sure that he would have those. And when he turned 18, I was going to say, here you go. Or when he was old enough to really understand them,

I was going to hand them over. Um, so when he was old enough to really understand them, I was going to hand them over. So that night when we were explaining it, I took him out to the garage and I pulled everything out. And we just had letters and pictures and memorabilia just kind of thrown all over the place so he could see it. And my husband took some of those pictures and he brought them upstairs in his room, and he's like, where do you want them? And he started putting pictures of his dad and family photos and stuff in his room because he's like, your dad's always going to be there. We love you. We're here for you, and we'll give you the answers as we get them. Awesome.

Wow, you're in a pretty remarkable place. And so as a part of this call, I think Kelly let you know I met with a mentor of mine, like I said, who's an expert in this. And so you'll be able to go back and we'll send you a recording of his recommendations. He's infinitely more brilliant than me. I tend to, he's a very, um, he's an exacto knife and I tend to be a little bit of a sledgehammer.

Um, but a couple of things to keep in mind as you move forward. One is, um, less is more. Be very clear. Your daddy died and he died by suicide. Best we know is your daddy died by suicide.

Are you doing okay? And that silence, that weight of just saying that with a period at the end of it. Do you know what suicide means? Let your son tell you back what he understands about that. Dig into that. Dr. Gomez told a story about an eight-year-old saying, yeah, that means that they killed themselves. And you say, yeah.

Anything else? And then the child responded with, yeah, that means now they're burning in hell, right? And it was, whoa, let's stop right there. So we're going to have that discussion, right? So let him speak to it. And you also know the things that your son uses. So it may be that you're going to play some music, the music that soothes him. A number of young folks with autism have very particular self-soothing behaviors, right?

And it may be that you set that up for him and let him know, hey, we're going to have a hard conversation about, we got some information about your daddy that I'm going to pass along to you. Okay. Always checking in. Do you feel safe now? You are safe right now. Nobody's going to hurt you. Not here. Letting him know that he's okay now. And then moving to what I think will be the hardest, the next hardest part here is, and we don't know why, but it appears that daddy killed your friend too and letting that have a period at the end of it and that might ultimately be we're going to write a letter to dad and we don't have answers to those questions he didn't leave a note we don't know why we know that he really really loved you and we know that he was not well, that he was really not well at the end of his life. And these moments are scary, and they are heartbreaking, but I'm here, your stepdad's here, and we are going to rally around you.

And this will be a really difficult season for your family, but I want you, your son, to see you hurting too. Because that's going to make him feel less crazy. Okay. Give him permission to ask you questions whenever they pop up, and they're going to come up at really weird, inopportune times, right? I would strongly recommend Dr. Gomez. He was one of the founders of the TFCBT, Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. There are some great practitioners in Texas, and I would look for one in your local area or online. TFCBT is the acronym for it.

And they will walk you through a very stepwise program. You do this, then we do this, and then we do this. And we teach young people behaviors on how to process and feel that trauma. And I want you to make sure you're getting the help you need through this whole area, this whole season. If somebody calls you and says, well, that could have been, say, we are done with this conversation. And if this continues, I'm going to hang up on you because it didn't. And we're moving on. You hear me there? Draw a firm boundary there. Nobody's going to be planting these what-if garbage seeds in your mind.

That doesn't benefit anybody. That's somebody else's drama that they're not going to bring to your house, right? Yeah. Two or three years from now, you may exhale and look at your current husband and say, that could have been us. Y'all can deal with that later. That's not for right now, right? And then most importantly is this, I want you and again, whether it's writing a letter, drawing a picture, I want you and your son to communicate a vision of where your husband is now. And often when a kid experiences somebody, adults do it too,

who's passed away traumatically, we still remember them in the car wreck, in that moment of pain with the shot in their body. And that rattles around our hearts and minds and our souls. And there's something therapeutic about doing the exercise of where is he now? He was hurting so bad. He was sick. He was struggling so bad. He died by suicide. But right now he's at peace.

Right now he's quiet and he's still. He's not hurting anymore. And there's something cathartic about that. And the big what if existential questions. Is he in heaven? Is he in hell? That's going to be for you and your particular faith leaders to walk through together. Why, why, why did he do this? Why did he do this? That's going to be between you and a professional therapist. There's

not going to be a lot of great answers to that. But I will tell you this, Dr. Gomez said this, and I'll reiterate it. The fact that you have already met with him and already done the hard things that your daddy died was so hard and it was such an olive branch of trust to your son. You get to share that moment with him, to your new husband. Your son's really, really lucky to have you, Hannah. He's really, really lucky to have you. And I want you to, I want to thank you

for blessing all of us. Very, very, very few of us will experience what you experienced. It's trauma on top of trauma on top of trauma. And it's going to end up in the news and your son's going to get harassed about it at school. It's a big thing. It's one of those before and after moments for you and your family and community. Most of us won't experience that, but all of us will experience hard conversations with our kids. All of us will experience awkward grief when an old girlfriend or an ex-husband dies, and we don't know how to navigate that. All of us will be faced with gut-wrenching conversations. We don't know what's next. I want to thank you for being brave and honest and open with us and letting us walk alongside you during this.

For those listening, man, it's been a heavy one. It's been a heavy one. And I want to harken back, to circle back to the beginning with Dr. Gomez. I got two PhDs. Hundreds, if not thousands of people I've walked through hard conversations with, hard series. I've done these death notifications. I've gone into houses similar to what Hannah's ex-husband was involved with. I mean, I've been there. And even then, when you're dealing with the pain or the hurt or the discomfort or strong emotion of somebody else, I want to make sure I'm right.

I want to make sure that I've crossed all my T's and dotted all my I's. And so I don't care how much schooling you have, how much experience you have. True professionals stop and pause and call somebody. True professionals, true people of character and dignity circle back and say, hey, I just want to make sure I'm right on this deal. And I'm not saying I get it right all the time. I don't.

I know I screw up all the time and I try to be honest when I mess it up. But we live in a culture now, we live in a world now where everybody's so quick to throw an opinion on a fire. Everyone's so quick to judge and to say, it's because of this or you did it because of that. And I just want to give you a glimpse of behind closed doors.

That's not the way most people that I know act. Most practitioners call another practitioner and say, I'm about to have a hard conversation with a hurting mom. I need to make sure I'm walking through this thing the right way. Or I've got expertise on trauma. I've got expertise on meeting with hurting families, but I don't have expertise in hurting families with a young person with autism. How do I do that one?

Walk me through things I need to know about that. Or somebody who's got cancer. Or somebody who, I know what I strongly believe about this political statement, but I haven't had this conversation with someone who believes this way. And so walk me through what this person might be feeling or experiencing. What I want everyone to do is slow down in our lives. Just slow down, be a little more humble, a little slower to judge, a little quicker to be curious, a little quicker to ask one or two more questions, a little slower to judge, to shame, to say, oh,

I know this one. I know this one. I've been that guy, man. And you know what you do? You hurt people. With our kids, oh, that didn't hurt. You're fine. Maybe it did hurt. With our spouse, we should do it like this, right? Where now she has to choose between fighting me or just going along with it, right? We're so quick, so quick, so quick. I hope today's episode has given us all one moment of exhale. We're going to hug our loved ones a little bit tighter today. We're going to bridge that gap between those we love today because it's not worth it, man. You never know. And two, we'll be a little slower to judge, a little quicker to reach out and make sure we're on the right path.

I don't care if you've done something a hundred times, a thousand times, one more phone call doesn't hurt. You're going to be okay being wrong. You're going to be really gentle with people who are hurting. And right now, all of us, all of us are hurting. So let's be a little slower and a little gentler. As I wrap up today's show, man, I didn't mean for it to be this on the nose, but it's one of my favorite songs of all time. It's a slow, quiet song by an extraordinary songwriter named Joe Purdy.

It's off the You Can Tell Georgia album. It was out in 2006. And the name of the song is Ode to Sad Clown, and it goes like this. Darling, I've been down and out ever since you left town. I ain't been the same no matter how hard I try and sometimes we don't get to choose the ones who wear these walking shoes. I'm just a poor

boy with the blues and no, I ain't nothing new. I'm gonna fill this whiskey cup and I'm gonna pick this banjo up. I'm gonna play with the tragedies and sing in good time harmonies and be right, don't you let me down. Play that one called Sad Clown. You know the ones about me. I've been thinking about leaving town. Thanks for being with us today. This has been the Dr. John Deloney Show. you