Working with Parents: Series 1

This is the official first post of many where we will be discussing our work with parents of child and teen clients.

 I get so many questions around working with parents. 

•  “When should I meet with a parent?”

• “How often do I meet with a parent?”

• “Is it ok to have a parent in the room during a child’s session?”

• “How do I respond to the multitude of emails I get from a parent?”

• “Won’t meeting with the parent take away from the child/teen’s session?”

• “What do I say when the parent….”

 I have presented trainings about how to integrate parents into Play Therapy and EMDR and talk about it regularly in individual and group supervision. 

 Parent work is my Jam!

 I love talking about it.  I love teaching about it. 

I had the privilege of being invited to write a chapter for a book coming out this year called Integrative EMDR Therapy for Children and Teens.  My chapter is on collaborative work with parents. 

Why am I telling you this?  Well, I want you to buy the book when it comes out- it’s going to be awesome!  But also, I want you to know I am passionate about this work. 

There is so much information I want to share with you, so I decided to break this down into a series.  

Why do I love working with parents? 

I will tell you the same thing I’ve told everyone who will listen.  I did not used to enjoy working with parents.  In fact, there was a time early in my career where my belief was that the parent is the problem. 

When I began my counseling career, I worked as an in-home therapist providing intensive services for families.  I was 23 years old, freshly graduated from my bachelor’s program hired to work in an agency where the primary focus was helping at risk families.  Many of the families I worked with were very similar to the family I grew up in. 

Can you say countertransference?!!!!!!!

 I was a young little newbie ready to change the world and had not done the work I needed on myself before I was thrown into the wolves.  It was quite frankly the most stressful beginning to the career of my dreams. 

 I would love to tell you I immediately got the support I needed and great guidance from supervision…

 I did not!

 My experience sent me on another path and passion to become a supervisor who helps support a clinician’s growth clinically and personally…but that is not the point of this story.    

 I stayed in that company for a total of 7 years (leaving briefly and returning to a different program).  When I left for good it was to stay home with my children and then I decided to follow my dream into private practice.   

 During that process, I had drank a lot of Kool-Aid…aka beliefs from previous employment…and ended up working with similar families.  I thought briefly that maybe I was in the wrong career.  I couldn’t do this again!  I then vowed I would never work with parents going forward.  I am laughing at myself as I typed that last sentence.   

 My Journey into Child Centered Play Therapy

I became steeped in Child Center Play Therapy work- read lots of book and soaked up trainings from as many big names as I could.  One being the great Gary Landreth.  Another wonderful therapist I learned from was Pam Dyson.  I loved it and was also understanding my focus was the child not the parent so it seemed to meet my goal of never working with a parent again.  Bahahaha! 

 As time went on, I began to feel like I was missing pieces of a puzzle which is really frustrating .  I found myself being drawn to work with parents and caregivers because I knew they needed help in order for this child to truly meet their goals and sustain them. 

 More connection, more playfulness, more feelings of being heard…

 (Excuse me a minute, my toddler has made me a delicious playdoh pie and insists I am hungry…)

 So I began my journey into integrating parents into the work in ways that felt right and authentic to what I knew the child needed.  I struggled for a little while with the part of me that felt I was straying from the CCPT work I was trained in.  And the part of me that was trained in Multisystemic Therapy (MST) knew that working with the system was also a strengthening factor for children. 

One day, in a peer consult group I was in with the amazing Paris Goodyear-Brown… (Listen, that was a blessing to make those connections with the amazing clinicians in that group!!!  Find yourself some wonderful mentors in this field! I still am unsure how a no name like me from a little small town weiseled my way into that group of superstars).

Anyway, she was talking about her Flexibly Sequential Play Therapy Model…now known as TraumaPlay™ (thank goodness because that was a mouthful to say) and how it included a Parent’s as Partners component. 

 We also got into a deep discussion about Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TFCBT) and how it didn’t seem to fit well with Play Therapy.  I was hooked.  I remember saying…”How do I get into this training with you?!  I need this in my life!”  It was exactly what I had been looking for to make sense of the work I was trying to accomplish in my practice. 

My work with parents as I knew it flipped a switch! 

I know parents are not the problem.  (My parents were my problem.)  The experiences parents have had or not had create difficulties in their parenting journeys and deficits in their skills.

 Really parents are doing the best they know how.  Sometimes it can feel like they are not doing their best but if you read that last sentence again…there’s a reason they cannot meet the needs expected of them.

My learning journey led me on a path of steeping myself more and more in trauma and which then bled into my personal journey of healing my own traumas.  It helped me to better understand myself, my upbringing, and my clients.  Win, win, win!

I teach clinicians that parents are the key to their child or teen’s growth in therapy.  They are the expert on their child.  They are the long-term support for their child and their cheerleader to gains throughout their life. 

Parents are missing pieces themselves…

Many of our client’s parents don’t have the skills they need when we meet them because they didn’t get their needs met when they were growing up.  Something that seems obvious to us about connection may feel very foreign and unsafe to a parent who may have never had their own safe connection to a caregiver. 

But Dayna, are you saying all parents can do this work?!

I hear you…

Stay tuned because we will dive into that question in a later post.

Until then, I want to hear about your beliefs and fears around working with parents.

Questions for you to ponder…

Do you feel intimidated when meeting with parents of your child and teen clients?

Do you struggle with the belief that parents are the problem?

Let me know in the comments.  I really do want to hear you and hopefully be able to support you in your work with parents of your child and teen clients.  It’s important for us to examine our own biases and why we avoid or lean into certain aspects of our work as clinicians. 

Do you have your own hard story when it comes to parent work?

If you read this and are wishing you had more support in this area, I have both individual and group supervision and consultation options.  Just click here to find out how to connect. 

From my playroom to yours,

Dayna

P.S. If there is something specific you have questions about in your clinical, send it my way and I will do my best to incorporate it into this series.