"Ground Rules" for Psychotherapy with Children in a Divorce

Bringing their children to therapy and supporting them in the therapeutic work is a large contribution parents can make to their children's health and well-being in the course of divorce.  However, like any important experience, therapy must be handled properly in order to be successful. 

The primary goal of child psychotherapy is to help children cope with feelings, ideas, and behaviors that may be troublesome to themselves or to others. Divorce is a particularly confusing experience for a child. Often, children feel they are in the middle of their parents' conflict. 
"If they're mad at each other, whose side should I take?"
"What can I do to make them stop fighting?" 
"Are they fighting about me?" 
"If I want or need something that they would both have to do or pay for, who should I ask?" 

These are among the many questions and worries that the child typically experiences. Parents must anticipate these issues and help their children deal with them.

Because their world has been changed so dramatically, children often worry that their needs will not be taken care of, and they may feel anger and fear. However, they are generally reluctant to tell their parent any negative feelings they may have because they worry that they would hurt the parent and/or that the parent may be angry with them or find fault with them. This is a natural worry for children, and is not an indicator that something is "wrong" in the parent-child relationship. 

It is extremely important that parents allow children the privacy of their relationship with the therapist. Without it, the effectiveness of therapy is severely at risk, because the child feels that their thoughts and feelings are open and exposed to real or imagined danger. While this is difficult for parents, who have the expectation and the right to know as much as they can about their children, therapy cannot succeed unless the child feels safe to express in therapy whatever emotional experience they may have. 

Therefore, parents should not ask children what they talked about in therapy; in fact, when a child spontaneously begins to tell, the parent is best advised to remind them that their time with the their therapist is private, and they (parent) do not need to know what they (child) said or did. Parents need to be able to trust that the therapist will help the child figure out effective ways to talk about problems with their parent. Sometimes, depending on the child's wishes and needs, the therapist will offer to be with them to help them address the situation with the parent, or, with the child's permission, will themselves bring this to the parent in a constructive way. 

Parents' mutual focus on the needs of their children has been identified as the single most important part of the child's healthy adjustment to divorce. For the sake of their children, all other issues and feelings must be put aside. Any time a parent allows their negative feelings about the other parent to be a part of their communication with their child, it is potentially harmful to their child. 

Keeping those feelings out of the children's way is a huge task. Few of us are capable of doing it completely and totally. When we slip up, our recognition that we made a mistake, and the communication of that realization to the child, will go a long way to toward maintaining the child's sense of trust and security.
 

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Please read and think about whether you can agree to the following "ground rules" about your child's therapy. I will review them with parent and child together during our first session. 

1. I agree that my children should be in psychotherapy to help them cope with their feelings and ideas about divorce. 
2. I agree that what is talked about in psychotherapy is entirely private between my children and Dr. Levin, unless the children and he feel that there is something in particular I need to know.  (Of course, if the child is any kind of danger, parents are informed immediately.)
3. I agree that I will respect that privacy, and will not ask the children to tell me what they are saying in therapy. 
4. If my children choose to tell me something they have told Dr. Levin, I agree to talk to with Dr. Levin by phone or in person before I speak to anyone else about it.