people welcome to the dr joy show your prescription for total wellness and i'm your host after joy question for you what does barbara walters john coltrane elvis presley elizabeth montgomery paul young haven't come and give you some of the think about because you know we're going to answer that question but before we get started we're going to do our three deep breaths are you ready inhale have you feel i know i feel great well my guess reader protest silliman will be able to answer that question as she is the co author with dr abigail brenner and she's you thank you for having me thank you for appearing here today to talk about this fascinating under discovered topic of replacement children and affects a lot of people now what do people most think about it most people think that it is replacing a child who has physically died with another child but in fact a child who comes into the family after a death is not automatically a replacement child that's totally false and should not be called a replacement child a replacement child can happen at any age and it's not only because of a death but it could be an accident it could be the loss of a pregnancy and it's actually if a parent has trouble grieving for a loss of emotional loss even and they can't get on they can't move forward a lot of times the pain echoes with another child and it's very unconscious but it child tries to or has the burden of trying to make things ok in the family and so my question now is replacement children the unconscious script this is your book coauthored with dr abigail brandt it is what gave you the impetus to write this book well i didn't realize i was a replacement child i had never heard the word and when my son was very young i was having lunch with another mother and she had one child a girl who was treated very different that her other two younger children and you know we always kind of wondered why because it was the same parents and she mentioned then that this child was not her first child that her first child in fact had been a little girl little infant when it was diagnosed with leukemia when the child was ten months old now does she cheery this she treat the her daughter you said different right as a favorite or not as a favorite she was bell went off because what happened is the doctor said you're going to lose this baby go home get pregnant have another child and she wasn't ready she had not really grieved at the fact that this child w going to die so what happened is she lost the child and shortly afterward her other baby was born and she said you know i wasn't ready this isn't the child i knew this is the child i wanted to come home with right i was a very different mother and i realize then that you can't be the same parent that you know where you were very excited and happy and self sufficient and all of a sudden you don't your sense of self just goes blooey you know  they were grieving they didn't have the same sense of joy even though they very much wanted this little girl right and so they were very i'm even with her so replace me child or replacement children the coin term who developed it where did it come from well actually the term was developed by these two psychologist in the one nine hundred sixty and it was a piece of a smaller i was a small piece of a bigger study right and they coined this it's an actual syndrome ok ok it's an actual psychological emotional syndrome so it really is an experience of a child living in the shadow of a loss if the parents cannot kind of come to grips with it it's where happens and the child is burdened in a way very and consciously it's not the parents fault there's no bad guy good guy right everybody is swept into this cycle and you know we in the book we're trying to make parents realize that they need help grieving you know that this could happen this can fall on the child just because they may not be able to be the same parent to even the older children now you stated additionally when when we first open the show that this isn't just when a parent loses a child what are some of the other scenarios read of that this could apply in many ways we have you know one thing about our book we have many different stories right and so we have death or different scenarios and we have scenarios where there is a van lee that's you know the kids are eleven twelve teenagers age and all of a sudden one child starts getting into drugs and acting out ok and the family becomes lopsided and this girl and this story is these are all true stories all written by these people or interviewed by us and starts being superwoman ok she becomes like the person who's the saving grace in the family the one that was on the drugs no no she's ok her brother is a brother ok to make things not fall apart in the family unconsciously she becomes the person who does everything right she wins swim meets she does everything she's perfect a perfect protocol if you want to convert a perfectionist ok and later on in life she has to understand what has happened to her how she's become an enabler to a lot of people so her condition or her situation was a result of one of her and his mother always said he had to make up for his brother that all idea had this burning urge to succeed so you know there are so many different scenarios with it so would a doctor's parents fall into that category han you see the thing is if there are that we always say it's not instead of if you're adding to the family right ok not instead of but in addition to write so in other words if somebody has a death in their family a leg a baby  then a baby is born right ok if they can't it doesn't matter there's no timing that's right if the family decides it's right for them to have another baby at the time it's right for them but they need to see the baby that's in addition to the family and not instead will have her on at another time right right so we'll table that but let's talk about similarities and patterns discussed in the studies that you describe here or even the some of the scenarios maybe not the studies but the scenarios what is what is the thread the common thread that runs through each of the scenarios rita well here's the thing this existence lighting scale right some people like will say oh my god i had so much going on because of the loss of my brother or sister there was some which put on me right and i know you know what was going on and because of that i have survivor's guilt and i'm a perfectionist a other people go oh you know this happened in my family and i can understand why certain things are happening but i don't feel it as much as maybe the person and point b feels that so what are some of the top characteristics that one would be able to discern in themselves if they fit into this particular care one wit or viber is guilt they feel even if they didn't know the other child that they feel like wow why am i here and my brother or sister isn't  or am i here and did i do something that cause this like elvis presley always felt like you know worried that he may have caused the death of his brother and it was totally unfounded but a lot of that's what we call it the unconscious script right perfectionism is another one ok a lot of times it's somebody adopts a child ok now has a lot of adoptions are perfectly fabulous right but if they have an idea in their head that my child is going to be just like this and they adopt a child and the child is different ok but they keep trying to make the child but are around peg in a square a square peg in a round hole wonderful parents but the child may feel sometimes children take this on themselves i'm a dad oh they wanted this kind of kid and i've got to behave a certain way and rice super person and accomplish everything right to themselves that they have a whole new and they're living under the shadow of somebody else but ok so now when let's take that point where you say people pleasing or they cannot be themselves right do you know that that's really how can i say that's everlasting into adulthood as a child well that's the whole winning will cause a person if they cannot be themselves as a child then they go through every stage in life every chapter ok so they're in elementary school they can be themselves now they're in jail high school they can't be themselves high school you know after high school whether it's college post grad blah blah blah into adulthood and they're functioning as adults in mainstream society that is so impactful and it could be not a good impact not a positive impact but a negative and well that's why a lot of adults replacement children people who are realizing this is what was taking place in their family are becoming aware when they read about we have gotten such incredible feedback saying oh my god i didn't realize it was a name for this right is what has happened to me and it's becoming aware is that it's letting go of who you are not and becoming who you are actually i have an example in this book if i could yes you can read the example and then the following that i want to discuss the challenges for the parents sure ok so you go ahead well the voyage that the reason this is so good this is written by a woman who was was a sister was run over before she was born ok born right after the father never got over it and kept trying to make her into the sister you know your sister love ballet why don't you love ballet and it was really forced upon her and she wrote this and i think this explains everything go well clear for the view ok think self it says until i was contacted for this book i never understood that i had been telling myself i am a failure because i am not perfect i am not like jennifer and i have convinced myself that being perfect is the price i must pay for being born i had been through years of therapy with a very good therapist but not once have we talked about jennifer except as one of the many tragedies in my life we've talked about my fear and obsession with death but in the context of me being afraid of failure we've talked about how i was never listened to as a child but not because i was always being looked at as someone else i have gone over how my parents were well meaning but unable to help me because they were dealing with their own grief after the loss of their child but not how the loss of their child kept me from finding my identity you know what works really amazing about that story and i did really i have read the book  has been calling saying this isn't so helpful because usually they just how are you feeling ok let's go through they get to be part of the s s because you know the mother when that child was born may not have been to the same mother with the other children that's right how were you two what was happening with the parents in grief when you were born right was there an accident was there something that happened with another sibling right what was going on at that time and let's go back to that because that's key that's why this book is so important for anyone who deals with children not only adult replacement children but families who've lost a child so if they can become aware and cognitive of you know wow you know we may have to handle this a different way and the parents need to get help because the parents who have lost a child are survivors right so you know as i said everybody's swept agenda a cycle and they sweep it under the rug when they don't know it they don't know but the emotions are hidden and then they surface and different times what about when they're ok so there's one there's a daughter that exists ok parents have a daughter and then they have a set of twins and one of the siblings has asperger's or autism with that fall and take care it definitely can because a lot of times in twins it's very interesting with twins because lots of times one twin who has you know a child brother or sister sibling when who has autism who was born that whatever because they have to make up for it or we have to be twice that person and we have that in the we have every single scenario well now that would explain why that would explain why maybe the twin that doesn't have the challenge and the older because of their action ist yeah and they run they run at when they can when i say when they run i mean if the eighteen they decide to go to college or way from the sibling that has that is dealing with the challenge or gets a job you know far away it could work the other way that they feel they have to be there to help their live a ali year because it's the added pressure for them all right so let's talk about is this a question for you and or dr brenner about the four stages of grief and forms of unresolved grief well that that would be a good one for her to answer your highness save that for her because that is going to be a part too so  don't want to say everybody grieves differently yes ok there ya know time period that somebody gets over grief you don't get over it it's just being able to move forward ok and be aware of how the grief is affecting your other children and what you can do for it because parents need to be able to grieve the nation have to hide the grief but they need to be very aware that they need to talk to their children even a little children they need to say look i'm very sad but you're going to be all right and we're going to be all right and we're always going to take care of you so how does the healing process begin for replacement children we could talk about it from the parent parental space and then also from the child well i'll tell you it's awareness that's why we wrote the book it's being aware that this has happened and what has come out of it for each individual right ok that each individual is going to have something else to deal with and say oh i now  understand sometimes we've seen such forgiveness so as a moment of recognition recognition that we've had like people who write something and they're very angry with one lady who was writing about how her father you know just sort of ignored her and she didn't understand it and and then after she started writing this and realizing what grief there was for him she started to be able to forgive and talk to him and they write to him what happened in that story which  very interesting this is a double whammy for her the day she was born ok ok he had been married before and he had a five year old stepson the day she was born the steps and died in another happened and he was not able to understand that she felt rejected and that was a real coming together and when so you know i'm very proud of things like that that have happened because of the book no reader are there any positive that can come out of being a replacement child absolutely and what are they well you know look at the famous replacement children yeah ok well i am some of them and know there was going to so many more and the like can one have for now yes you know all these people but everybody that is a replacement child of course you know as i said everything defers and write a scale but resourcefulness that they learn to live a life where they are recognize where they do things maybe differently right that i've seen a huge sense of strength with them and talents that come on a lot of people in this book are real movers and shakers in their field they not be knowing they may not be famous names but they'll say oh well i do this this you know their heads of this there are but what happens is they are either kind of the movers and shakers of the world because they have to be or they have something you think that is because they have something to prove i think so ok i think they're conflict with the individual there's a lot of conflict well and a lot of like identity issues like wait a minute why am i doing this oh i'm doing this because i was sort of forced into it because my brother my sister was going to do right i don't want to do it this isn't me you know this is like the one passage i just read you know she was doing a lot of things she was forced to do a lot of things that most of her and she felt she had to please the father and the only way to please the father was being like her sister jennifer and is like wait a minute she's in a box at that point so how i know you've written a new coauthored the book replacement children the unconscious script you guys need to get it everybody should get a copy and every psychologist and  one increase awareness the book is here but what what's next well i think the book is a big thing because this is on the job training for us each story reflects something different  different piece of being a replacement child or what the family goes through you know we learned so much because there's very little done on this there's almost nothing and that and that is the reason why and congratulations to you a so let's wrap up in a way i want you to wrap up now and i want you to provide a vice for parents experiencing the loss what are your what's already but i need help don't be afraid to get help don't think you're handling it well because one day you will and the next day you won't and you need to be very aware if there is children in the picture already origin planning on having children because it will affect future generations ray i mean it's very important to be aware ok what about for parents who adopt it's the same thing they need to see the child as their own individual person and know that they're coming into the family they're joining in the family is their own person they have to not have expectations this is a little with their own personality you said something that is very very important that's paramount not having expectations for life and i we do this we do that subconsciously end with the adoption it's bringing a child not instead of somebody else right ok but in addition to your family in addition the addition to what about the adult replacement child that is trying to now gain their own identity what advice do you have for them well again it's awareness that they are a replacement child and what happened and see the parents point of view to that you know everybody was hurt and everybody was hurt and having to seek therapy as they're calling in therapy or they can talk to their parents and say i understand now that's what has happened in a few cases in the book that they really said i understand my parents they didn't mean to do this this is what happened i didn't understand what grief could do write well this book like a set on chartered waters it's a first of its kind out of our love it's kind congratulations on your award and it touches i mean the dr joy show is about wellness but total wellness and this book here touches on physical wellness the most and eliminate the social spiritual i mean so if it's at all a get it hits it hits it hits a lot even touches on financial too right because of the fact that is one is spending more time with a child that has a challenge then more money may be spent in that right and then the other child resents in there oh oh yeah the other child reasons why didn't well you always spending time with them don't you care that i get a's too and you know when a parent is so overwhelmed yeah know i mean why it's good to have somebody be objective and say let's talk about it what problems are you having and the last time you get to see it when you're talking to somebody to be a counselor could be your best friend but somebody who kind of helps you through the grief lets you see things from more objective lee rhiannon allows you to understand what's happening in the family into the children read a where can we find a book on amazon now ok and amazon dot com and where can folks contact you we have a website and i will give you the website is w w w dot replacement children dot com oh wonderful wonderful  they can write in and they can write their stories oh that's great that is really great and i hope next time because there will be a part too because there's a lot of questions that i would want dr brenner to ask as well of course you come back a lot more we would love to be here in california we'll get her end but thank you for being a guest on the dr joy show before we close out i have one thing that i want everybody to repeat viewers and you read and the one thing i want you to repeat is after me i am who i am i am who i am and it's great to be me and it's great to be me and no one can replace me and no one can that said so i am who i am