Dr. Alina Boie: Tools for Raising Resilient Kids Through Divorce

Kids are frequently more resilient than the adults around them, and Dr. Alina Boie has a reason for it: they have not yet built the filters that decide, in advance, what everything means. Adults look at a situation through years of prior experience. Children are still able to look at it directly. That is a starting point worth knowing if you are certain your separation has already ruined them.

Our guest is Dr. Alina Boie, a psychologist who earned her doctorate at St. John's University and has spent roughly eighteen years working with children, from preschoolers to college-age young adults. She grew up in Transylvania, in Romania, and came on to give this community concrete tools rather than theory.

She starts where most parents do not expect: with you apologizing. Children treat adults as a model, and they copy what you do rather than what you tell them, so admitting you got something wrong teaches more than any speech about honesty. From there she gives the hand model of the brain that she teaches to three-year-olds, the thinking part and the safe part, and why naming the fight-flight-freeze response in advance makes it manageable when it arrives. Practice the skill before the emergency, she says, because nobody learns to ride a bike while they are escaping on one.

Alina and Lisa then take the hard scenarios. A young child told the divorce is your fault, and how to answer that in the language of a three-year-old's own friendships instead of your marriage. Triangulation, and the two things she says every child is trying to fill: attention and control. Her ten-minute daily practice, undivided and child-led, and why it fills both. How to tell your child you had a bad day and ask them to help without handing them the details. And what to do about risky behavior in an older child when your co-parent refuses to agree that anything is wrong, starting with the school, which does not need their permission.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why children are often more adaptable than the adults around them
• The hand model of the brain, and teaching a preschooler why they flip into survival mode
• Judge the behavior, not the person, and what that protects your child from
• What to say when the other parent tells a small child the divorce is your fault
• Attention and control: the two needs an alienating parent exploits when they go unmet
• The ten minutes a day, child-led and undivided, that fills both of those needs
• How to name your own hard day for your child without handing them the details
• Risky behavior and a co-parent who says no: why the school is your first call

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Meeting Dr. Alina Boie, and why kids are often the resilient ones
5:00 Apologizing to your child, and modeling what you preach
7:00 Judging the behavior, not the person
9:00 When one parent blames the other in front of a young child
13:00 Teaching a three-year-old how their brain works
17:00 Fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and faint
19:00 Building the toolbox before the emergency
25:00 Triangulation, and the two buckets: attention and control
31:00 Ten minutes a day, and talking about your own hard day
39:00 Risky behavior, calling the school, and raising independence

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.