Christy Keating: Raising Safe Kids When Your Co-Parent Isn't

Christy Keating prosecuted sex offenders for the better part of two decades and then walked away from it, because every case she touched arrived after the damage was done. She now trains parents in prevention, and this conversation is about what prevention looks like inside a household where the other parent is the problem.

Christy is the founder of the Heartful Parent Collective, a certified parent coach, and a positive discipline educator. She sits on the board of the National Coalition to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation, teaches in schools for both professionals and parents, and still keeps the law license she stopped practicing under. Lisa was one of the presenters at Christy's Safe Parenting Summit, and this conversation covers what she was brought in to fill: the relationship piece.

Christy makes the case for a wide definition of safety. Parents are frightened of the extreme scenarios and underprepared for the ordinary ones, so they avoid talking about sex, substances, exploitation, and what a healthy relationship is supposed to feel like. She calls the goal brain safe and body safe, and she is explicit that keeping a body safe is an adult job, never a child's, even though the child still needs language and tools of their own.

A listener asks about co-parenting with a narcissistic mother who is harming the kids' mental health, and Lisa and Christy work it through together. Why having one steady parent shifts a child's outcome. Why self-regulation comes before co-regulation, so the parent is available to help a child process what happened. Why simply telling a child the truth does not counter the kind of influence that resembles cult conditioning. And the research on positive childhood experiences, which parents can deliberately stack against the adverse ones. Christy frames the whole project as breaking the cycle of intergenerational trauma before it repeats.

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

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why a prosecutor of twenty years left the law to work in prevention instead
• What child safety covers beyond the frightening headlines, and what parents skip
• Brain safe and body safe: why body safety is an adult job, never the child's
• How one healthy parent changes a child's odds when the other home is not safe
• Why regulating yourself comes before co-regulating with your child
• Why telling your kids the truth does not, on its own, undo being turned against you
• Adverse childhood experiences, and the positive ones you can deliberately build

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 A Friday pop-up, and what the Safe Parenting Summit is
3:00 Twenty years prosecuting sex offenders, then a turn to prevention
5:00 What safety covers: relationships, substances, trafficking, sex
6:00 Brain safe and body safe, and why body safety is an adult job
8:00 Parenting alongside someone who is harming your child's mental health
11:00 Why telling kids the truth is not enough on its own
13:00 Adverse childhood experiences, and the positive ones that offset them
14:00 Prevention as the way out of intergenerational trauma

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
🔗 Christy Keating at The Heartful Parent Collective: https://theheartfulparent.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.