Chaos didn’t arrive all at once for Charissa; it accumulated.. custody hearings, restraining orders, police lights outside the window, until crisis felt like the only rhythm of home. We sit with her through the memories most people look away from: sibling fights recorded for proof, eighty-plus CPS reports that opened and closed like revolving doors, and a medical maze where stimulants and SSRIs masked trauma instead of meeting needs. What emerges is a rare, unflinching map of how systems miss children when they treat behavior without context and listen to adults more than the kids living the truth.

Charissa explains how overmedication took her childhood offline, sleeping through classes, wired at night, and twice rushed from school with a 160 resting heart rate while suspicions of Munchausen by proxy pulsed beneath the surface. She draws careful lines between control disguised as care, fragmented providers, and a culture that treats children as parental property until eighteen. When an arrest at 18 forced independence, she found a way out: temporary housing, college, and a mission to make sure other young people don’t get swallowed by the same gaps. Today, she’s shaping policy, co-creating a national playbook of best practices, and pushing for adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Across the conversation, we unpack what “best interests of the child” should mean in practice: youth voice at the table for hearings and family meetings, transparent case communication, limits on polypharmacy, tracking doctor switching, and trauma-informed support that tackles root causes instead of staging a calmer scene. Teresa’s ask is simple and radical: believe kids enough to investigate the inconvenient explanation. If we center respect, agency, and safety, we can transform CPS touchpoints from crisis management into real protection—and stop calling survival symptoms “the problem.”

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Producer & Host: Jennica Sadhwani
Editing: Stephan Menzel
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