JANESVILLE— It’s not your job to manage your parents’ emotions.
That’s the central message in Janesville native children’s author Lisl Detlefsen’s new work: “My Mom is Like a Kite.”
The new book focuses on teaching kids how to navigate the big emotions of an adult — or more specifically, the emotions of adults who deal with serious mental health issues such as bipolar disorder.
The book touches on a commonality in how families deal with mental illness; often, children take on the role of “fixer.”
Detlefsen said the inspiration for the book comes from her own experience. She has dealt with her own mental health, and years earlier, she watched how a college friend navigated living with a parent with bipolar disorder.
“Just hearing stories of children feeling like they can’t go to a friend’s house to play because their mom is sad, or feeling like it’s their job to help mitigate a parent’s emotions. It was thinking about, how would you explain mental health up and ups and downs through the eyes of a child?”
That’s when the imagery for her new book came: The idea of a kite flying in a sky where the winds constantly shift.
She said a kite is a positive thing but if it flies too high, too quickly, it can get pulled out of reach.
Other days, when a parent with mental illness is going through more depressive emotions, Detlefsen uses the image of a boat that can be rocked by waves suddenly, or even start to sink before people notice.
Here’s an excerpt from “My Mom is Like a Kite:”
“Sometimes Mom soars like a kite. Other times the kite turns into a sail, and she’s like a boat, bobbing along the waves, until water spills over the sides and she starts to sink. ‘I try to bail the water out,’ the child says, ‘but my bucket is too small or has a hole in it.’”
Detlefsen said the main goal of the book is to try to normalize therapy and help a child understand that when person has physical pain, they go to the doctor. It’s the same for dealing with emotional pain that can come alongside mental illness.
“The therapist in the book says to the main character, that’s not your job — meaning it’s not your job to help your mother feel better.
She said a vital message in the book is that as the characters learn to deal with mental illness of a parent, there is no loss of love between the mother and child. It’s not a neglectful relationship — just a mother who needs help, and a child who needs help to navigate their own feelings, and to learn and understand their role is not to heal their parent.
In th book, the mom is “just really struggling, and she’s able to recognize that her struggle is impacting her child,” Detlefsen said. “I think it’s important not to shame parents who are struggling with mental health problems and to make it clear like there’s nothing wrong with not only getting help for yourself, but getting help for your children too.”
Detlefsen said she’d never written a children’s book with such a serious theme. She started the writing with trepidation, because she was unsure if she was qualified to tell the story.
She said her publisher pushed her to continue writing the book, it and meanwhile cross-checked the work using a panel including a child psychologist who helped make sure “My Mom is Like a Kite” was aligned with standard therapeutic practices.
“It just felt like a story that I felt compelled to tell,” she said. “Every story I’ve written has a little piece of me in it, and I think this one just is maybe coming from a different part of my heart,” Detlefsen said.
Detlefsen’s love of writing began in Mrs.Baranski’s first grade class at Janesivlle’s Madison Elementary School. She said the teacher had little blank books in the back of the class that students could write in and illustrate if they got done with their work early. Baranski would then edit the students’ work.
Detlefsen credits a lot of her love of writing and desire to be an author to that first-grade classroom experience.
More information is available on Detlefsen’s website: .
