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Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today I'm going to be sharing a success story that a parent submitted to me actually quite a while ago, but I finally was able to get back to her

and ask her if it's okay for me to share. She suffered from an issue that

that's pretty common actually when there are two parents

that one seems to be preferred by the child over the other, perhaps vehemently

the other parent is rejected and this can go on for quite some time.

It's obviously discomforting for parents, it's discouraging. It's worrisome and so the parent I'm going to share

from today she had that issue. She was the non-preferred parent for years and she's thrilled to have discovered that there's a

mental shift that she could make that helped her to see the situation totally differently and it gave her

tremendous relief. So I'll just start right off with this note. Dear Janet

more than a year has passed since you saved my mental sanity.

And since it has been so long, I can now fully say that it worked.

And I really need you to know this because it is so profound.

Here's the story. From birth, my son was more attached to my husband than me.

I had an emergency C section and was shaking so much when they stitched me back up that I didn't dare hold my son

until after half an hour or so because I was so afraid my shaking would give him brain damage and nobody told me that was nonsense.

I know that piecing these things together, the rough start and the preferred parent

thing is not really helpful in hindsight because these create a narrative and keep it

firmly rooted in my mind and what goes on in my mind is perfectly readable to my child.

Anyway, up until my son was almost is perfectly readable to my child.

Anyway, up until my son was almost four years old, every day I felt this dark cloud on my shoulder.

...