Five hours working on proposed Oklahoma family-law legislation HB 1082 with @Cody Fitzgerald and it reminded me that meaningful change rarely begins with a headline. It begins when people are willing to sit at the same table, examine the language carefully, and ask whether the system is truly protecting the children it was created to serve.
I am deeply grateful that legislators have shown genuine interest in my work and offered such encouraging feedback regarding my contribution to this bill.
As a mental-health professional, family-systems clinician, author, and advocate, I have spent years listening to the stories beneath family conflict.
Those stories have taught me that children are often harmed not only by the behavior of “warring” parents, but also by legal language that is too vague to distinguish ordinary parental conflict from coercion, manipulation, abuse, fear, and disrupted attachment.
The legislation also challenges the traditional phrase “best interests of the child.” Although well intended, the phrase can become highly subjective because different judges, attorneys, evaluators, and parents may define “best” differently.
The proposed language replaces that ambiguity with a more measurable question:
What arrangement protects and supports the child’s physical, emotional, mental, and moral well-being?
That change matters.
It asks the court to move beyond appearances, accusations, and parental competition. It requires attention to safety, stability, caregiving history, emotional security, developmental needs, patterns of conduct, and the actual impact upon the child.
The goal is not to choose one parent over another.
The goal is to prevent children from becoming the battlefield upon which adult pain is fought.
Oklahoma now has an opportunity to become a national leader in trauma-informed family-law reform by creating legislation that protects healthy parental access while refusing to confuse equal access with equal safety.
I am honored that my clinical work may help shape this conversation, and I remain committed to helping create a system in which children are not merely divided between parents but protected within the entire family system.
A child should never have to carry the emotional consequences of a war that began between adults.
#Oklahoma #FamilyLawReform #ChildWelfare #MentalHealth #TraumaInformed #FamilySystems #DisruptiveParentalAttachment #ProtectingChildren #LegislativeReform #ChildrensMentalHealth