Today, I’m writing about a question I get asked very often in my practice. I’ve invited my friend and colleague, Dr. Craig Springer, PhD, to join me in writing this article. Dr. Craig is a brilliant psychologist who worked for years in academia before establishing a flourishing child, adolescent, and adult practice, the Good Life Center for Mental Health (https://goodlifecenternj.com/), in Cranford, New Jersey. We met years ago through a good friend, and now here we are, both in private practice. I was talking to Dr. Craig the other day when I mentioned that parents often ask me why they need to be involved in their children’s therapy. In response, Dr. Craig shared that parents often expect to drop their children off and do not know why they need to be involved in treatment.
While I appreciate that parents want to give their children space and confidentiality, I think it’s important to discuss just why child therapy necessitates parent involvement.
First – Particularly with respect to younger children, it’s incredibly hard for children to change their thoughts and behaviors on their own. There are entire therapies that focus on changing how adults behave and think, and even those can take a while to implement. Young children have limited insight into their thoughts and feelings, and even more than that, their brains are still developing. How many of us have tried to ask children post-tantrum why they were angry, only to receive an incomprehensible answer. While parents find this frustrating to no end, many children truly don’t understand the cause and effect that lead them to be angry.
So, given how hard it is for adults to change unhelpful patterns and thoughts, one can imagine that it’s necessarily even harder for little kids to simply stop their behaviors and change. Teens might have more insight and talk like they know what they are doing, but countless studies have established that the teenage brain is still in a state of development (see Arain and colleagues, 2013, Casey and Caudle, 2013) across many domains – complex reasoning, self-control, and emotional maturity. Given the still maturing brain, it’s developmentally unreasonable for us to expect kids to just learn to change on their own.
Second – Without a question, parents have the most significant impact on their children. Parents are often the main attachment figure (because of this, most children are really motivated to please their parents), have had the most time with their children across different settings and environments, and know their children’s’ strengths and weaknesses the best. Therapists often only have 1 hour a week with a child. Although we can teach and practice skills and tools, parents must be the ones to help them generalize those behaviors and can also set up an environment filled with rewards and consequences for reinforcing effective behaviors. If, in my work with parents, I can teach them the skills and tools to set up a positive environment and model more adaptive behaviors, this change will inevitably trickle down to their children (research also supports the importance of parent involvement, beyond just facilitating how kids make it to/from therapy – Haine-Schlagel & Walsh, 2016).
Third – A supervisor of mine once said that I cannot change children’s behavior without changing the family system. What he meant by that is that every person in a family plays a specific role and that an individual’s role cannot change if the family doesn’t change how it operates. The troublemaker child, for example, has no room or impetus to change her devious ways if the family continues to treat her like a truant. If the parents change how they operate, however, the family dynamic will shift, thereby giving each individual space to behave differently and try new ways of interacting. This significant of a shit can only be achieved through working with the parents.
Finally, change requires safety, trust and understanding. Children use their behaviors to express their thoughts and feelings and to have their needs met. Over time, they establish patterns of behavior to navigate their world and protect themselves from vulnerabilities, insecurities, or to cope with challenges. Trying to utilize a different way of interacting requires incredible amounts of courage. Parents, through their understanding, support, and reassurance can provide children with the necessary characteristics for change to take place.