Dinalynn Rosenbush: What Helped Her Kids After Every Handover

Two children get dropped back at their mother's house after time with their father. They do not talk. They lie on the floor and cry, and it goes on long enough that she has no idea what to do with it. This happens after every exchange. The mother in that story is this episode's guest, and the answer she was eventually given was a bathtub.

Dinalynn Rosenbush is a speech-language pathologist with more than thirty years of experience, most of it in schools, working with children whose communication did not come easily. She left that role to build a coaching practice for parents and to host the podcast The Language of Play, where she teaches parents how to teach their own kids at home. She has also been through a divorce with young children, one of them with ADHD, so the material here is not theoretical for her.

She and Lisa start with the assumption that a child protected from the details does not know what is happening. Rosenbush's answer is that children register the change in a household's energy long before anyone explains anything, and that they tend to sort it into right and wrong. That matters more than it sounds, because a child sees themselves as made of both parents. Tell a child that one parent is bad, and some part of the message lands on the child.

On special needs, she declines to generalize, and the reason is useful: the label covers everything from a brilliant kid with unmanageable ADHD to a child who is tube-fed and nonverbal. What she offers instead works across the range. Explain the separation with objects rather than sentences. Draw the two houses. Walk the stuffed animals between them so a child can see the shape of what happens next. Say the factual parts without emotion attached, and choose language that gives a child something rather than imposing it.

The last stretch is about the transition itself. Rosenbush describes the daily bath she instituted: swimsuits, no conversation until everyone was in the water, toys for pouring, and a rule that she would not speak first. She scripted the few phrases she allowed herself, wrote them on the counter, and practiced before the kids walked in, because her actual feelings about the weekend were not something they needed. She saved those for a phone call from her car after bedtime. She then adds three more sensory routes to the same result, including the handful of snow that stops a grandchild's meltdown, and closes on the question underneath all of it: what do you exude when your child tells you they had a good time.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why children register a separation through your energy before they hear a word of it
• Why calling one parent bad lands on a child who sees themselves as made of both
• How to explain a separation with toys and drawings instead of sentences
• Why the factual parts should be delivered flat, and how word choice changes the message
• The daily bath routine that settled her kids after every handover, and the rules inside it
• Why scripting your own phrases in advance beats trusting yourself in the moment
• Three more sensory resets: wind, sand, and a sharp temperature change
• What your face does when your child says they had a good time, and what it teaches them

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why kids know even when you think you have shielded them
3:00 Black-and-white thinking, and why "bad parent" lands on the child
5:00 Special needs is a range, and what that changes
7:00 Teaching without words: toys, two houses, and showing the plan
11:00 The prop effect, and why moving eyes settle the nervous system
13:00 The bathtub, and the four months of it
15:00 Scripting your own words before they walk in the door
17:00 Wind, sand and temperature, and what you exude

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
🔗 Dinalynn Rosenbush at The Language of Play: https://thelanguageofplay.com/

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.