Supporting Children Who Have Been Affected by Divorce

Editor’s note: This text-based course is an edited transcript of the webinar, Supporting Children Who Been Affected by Divorce, presented by Sybil Cummin, MA, LPC, ACS.

Learning Outcomes

After this course, participants will be able to:

• Describe the effects of divorce on children based on different developmental stages.
• Identify how best to work with children impacted by divorce.

• Identify assessment tools for working with children impacted by divorce.

Introduction 

I specialize in working with what a lot of people consider high-conflict divorce. That term actually really is intimate partner violence or domestic violence by another name. But we are not solely looking at those really contentious divorces here or abuse here. We are going look at a little bit of that, but also just in general children and how they are affected by divorce, and what you can do in your work with the children or work with the parents to help them get through that and to be a protective factor for them.

Limitations/Risks

This presentation is an overview of how children and adolescents are affected by divorce, by different developmental stages, and how to treat them. However, if you are going to go into the world and you are going to work with kids or parents, make sure that whatever clinical work you are doing is within your scope of practice. So if I am sharing about play therapy today in some instances, but you have never taken a play therapy training course, your supervisor is not trained in play therapy. You need to do more training before you hop in with those children.

Divorce in the United States

 I assume that you all know a little bit about divorce and that it does affect children, but I am hoping that you walk away with things that you can better see when it presents to you and know some of the research around what is actually causing the difficulties for our children and how to work with that.

Divorce in the United States was 2.3 per every 1000 marriages in 2022. This is a decrease from the previous years. There has been a little bit of a decrease for five or six years. I do not know all the reasons for the decrease. I know there was a pretty good uptick directly after COVID, but not sure if there is a continued decrease in that. Not sure why, but the APA still estimates that between 40 and 50% of all marriages are going to end in divorce. What we are here to learn about is the risk to our children. So research shows that there is a 16% increase in the risk of behavior problems for children ages 7 to 14 when their parents divorce. This age group, the elementary age group, seems to be the most negatively affected.

Children of divorced parents are one and a half to two times more likely to live in poverty and to engage in risky sexual behavior as they get older. So we know divorce does affect kids.

Why is This Important?

Why is it important to know the numbers and know the stats? Because guess what? If you are working with kids, you are going to work with divorce, and a large percentage of the kids you work with have had this experience. And whether it is divorce or separation, I am using the term divorce as a catchall for that. There are some legal things that can cause some issues with our children. Specifically with divorce, but really any separation of the family.

 But I want to point out that there are a lot of things that we can do, that parents can do, that our schools can do, that everyone can do that will offer protective factors so that they do not have long-term negative effects. And so I think our goal as mental health professionals is to offer those things that will allow them to process what they are going through and thrive later on in their lives. 

Is it Really the Divorce that Affects Them?

Is it really divorce that is negatively affecting our children? Actually, no. So it is not the process of divorce or families being separated that really has a long-term negative effect on our children. Will it affect our Children? Yes, absolutely. So if you have the most amicable separation and divorce, the kids will still have some effects. They have to figure out new scheduling, where they'll live, and different things like that. But they typically adjust really well, and there are no long-term effects.

So what actually is causing these long-term negative effects is what's going on right before or before the separation and divorce, what's going on after the separation and divorce. Research shows that pre-divorce and post-divorce behaviors by the parents is more likely to be the cause of longer-term negative effects on a child with high conflict relations before and after having the greatest negative effects.

It is the behavior of the parents. That feeling in the home, or the arguing in the home. The stuff going on in the home before the separation happens, and then the talking trash about the other parent, or counter-parenting, and all of these things that happen after the separation and divorce that are causing problems.

So that is really important for us to know, especially if you are working with parents because these are the pieces that really need support. We need to support the kids through and hopefully, like fingers crossed, that parents will be on board to make changes in their behavior because it really negatively impacts the Children. So I bring up ACEs, which are adverse childhood experiences, because if we look at why those, especially those pre-divorce behaviors, are negatively affecting our children, we can see it through the ACEs because one of the questions on the ACEs is about, you know, have parents been separated or divorced when you were a child? It is one of the ACEs, but if we look at some of the other ones, so did you often feel that no one in your family loved you or thought you were important or special, or did they spend time with you? Was there domestic violence in the home? Was a household member depressed or mentally ill?

So that is what the parents are going through, maybe before or directly after the abusive relationship, or not an abusive relationship, any relationship, right? If they cannot connect with their children because they are distracted, they are anxious and depressed. If they are not able to meet their child's needs and meet their child's attachment needs, they are going to be impacted.

 I will talk about it throughout, but it is really important for the parents to get their work done and do their own work because it is their stuff that will negatively affect the children for the most part. And this is really the spillover hypothesis. So this is when negative behavior patterns and emotions, those high levels of emotions within the parents, spill over and cause problems with their children.

So, again, as I mentioned before, their parenting quality may decrease because they are dealing with so much within the marital or romantic relationship. This happens a lot in domestic violence-related cases. The protective parent or the victim parent, the target parent, or whatever you want to call them, is needing to focus on survival.

So they may have really inconsistent discipline, and the discipline is solely around, "I need my kids to behave so that my partner doesn't harm us, and so maybe I will give in when I wouldn't have given in because I just need them to be quiet." So things like that are what actually negatively affect our kids.

Common Reactions to Divorce 

What are some common reactions to divorce for children? We will go through the different ages and stages of children. I'm going to point out that I am not doing infant mental health care. I am trained in working with ages three and up. Infants to two years old have different reactions to things, and you need to look out for things in a different way.
Ages 3-6

We are going to start with preschool age. They are going to experience fear because their home base is changing. Maybe they have a primary attachment figure, a person who is with them all the time that, kisses their booboos, gives them the Band-Aid, feeds them, and does the majority of the care. And if all of a sudden, they are not going to be with that person all the time, that causes a great amount of fear. Or if the parent is acting weird, that causes fear. They will have pretty extreme confusion because this makes zero sense. They do not have the cognitive structure to understand marriage and divorce, and "we do not love each other anymore."  These conflicts are above their level of understanding.

No matter how well you explain it, there is going to be confusion. They may experience some guilt because, in their minds, they are to blame. They might pair, "Oh, I always had a tantrum, and now my parents do not live together,” They may pair things because they are trying to make sense of their world.

At this age, we are looking for regression. So very often in this age group, you will see separation anxiety and potty problems, like they have been potty trained for a year, and now they are not potty trained anymore. Maybe an increase in acting out, and it is because their whole world is a mess right now, and they are not sure what to do.

They have no sure way of getting their needs met. So they are going to try these different ways to get their needs met. So, I talked a little bit about this, but there is so much uncertainty for these children. They do not know what it means. The change in the family might be considered their fault. Change in the family is hard for anyone, but really hard for children of this age because, again, there is not really a way to explain it to where they are going to really understand. And when we do explain it, we need to be almost as black and white as possible, very specific. This is going to happen, this is going to happen, and this is going to happen.

A lot of times, we talk about the number of sleeps before you go to the other parent's home, things that they understand. Although, what I see most often in my practice are attachment concerns. And that is because very often, as I mentioned, these children do have a primary attachment figure, and their world goes to pieces when they are not with that attachment figure all the time. And the way our family court system is set up is that they will not get to most likely be with their primary attachment figure all the time. Okay, so moving on to this tougher age group, ages 6 to 12.

Ages 6-12

This age group starts to experience different things. They are going to start experiencing grief, and this is because they will be making more meaning of what is going on. They have ample cognitive processing and understanding to make some meaning out of this. They also remember potentially when the family was together, and so there is grief of that togetherness that they might experience. They also will experience guilt. And I tell parents this very often. Until they can fully understand it, they are going to try and find a reason why. Because not knowing the reason why is actually scarier than if it was their fault. And so very often, they will still, as many times as you tell them, they will still take on some of this as their fault.

They will experience anxiety, maybe, right? They do not always. And what does that look like? Because in this age group, we need to be aware it does not always look like they are nervous or scared. It could look like they are really aggressive, they are acting out, they may have blow-ups or a lot of parents come into my practice, and they are like, "Oh, my child has really big feelings." Or, "These explosions, and we're not sure where the explosions come from." Very often, that is anxiety based.

We also really need to pay attention to those physical and somatic symptoms, headaches, stomach aches, and a lot of restlessness. Teachers might notice that they are really tired in class, struggling with executive functioning, or they cannot concentrate. Because in their nervous system minds, their world is kind of a wreck, and they may not or do not feel safe, so they might be in that hypervigilant state.

And so, guess what? When you are in that fight or flight state, your thinking brain goes offline. So those are some of the things we see with anxiety.

With depression, we see similar things with regard to lack of concentration and struggles with focus. We also will see a little bit more of the withdrawal or irritability and really pushing people away. They have moved down into that lower level of our nervous system, which has shut down. And so they may seem not to care. And in a school setting, it is like they are giving up really easily or they are not trying. We will see a lot of that. They may show a lot of anger, they may act out to get their needs met, or they may completely withdraw.

A lot of the research that I have been reading and in my experience, this is the toughest age, and it really is because they have some memories of good times. Even some clients that I have worked with, whose parents have been divorced for four or five years, still have this desire, this wish that their parents would be back together, even though they know things feel fine separated and they are consistent with their schedule, and they understand the schedule and they kind of understand the thing, they still have that grief and that desire for them to get back together.

If we think about what is the life of an elementary-age student or an elementary-age child, their lives are in the home. They are doing things with their parents, with the family, hopefully. If they have athletics or sporting events, the family is with them, or the parents are with them. If they have friends, friends come to the home, or they do these play dates, right? So it is, their lives are really based within that home, that system in the home. And that will start to change as we will see their lives kind of move more into a friendship world where friends and peers are more important. So moving on to our teens.

Ages 13-18

I love my teens, just to put that out there. They are a lot of fun. They also will experience that same grief. Their anxiety may look different than elementary age because now they actually have language for what they are going through. They will be more aware of their bodies for the most part. So, if their hearts are racing and they are in that fight or flight, they are more likely to have panic attacks because they are really aware and noticing, "Oh my gosh, my heart and I'm feeling this way." So you might see a little bit more of that. You still will see struggles with concentration because their brains are in fight or flight. They may be more embarrassed, which adds to that anxiety of, "What is going on in my home?" And not wanting people to know that because fitting in is the most important thing, And developing those peer relationships.

With depression, we will start seeing more self-harming behaviors in this age when they are having these really big feelings about the divorce. You might see more anger directed toward their parents, or they can be directing it inward with self-harm. Outwardly, you might see this a little bit more at school, some withdrawal, but that is actually somewhat normal depending on if they are just withdrawing from the family. But what you will really start to see in this age group, which is actually a protective factor for this age group, is a relief. They will be able to often point out that they feel relieved that they do not have to live in high conflict all the time and that their life will be better when their parents separate.

So that level of relief that very often my teens feel, I think, kind of prevents it from being as hard as it is for elementary-age children. They can also understand things a little bit better. They can understand some of the nuances of divorce and some of the nuances of a romantic relationship. And unlike elementary-age children,  teens' lives are more outside of the home. Developmentally, they want to be with their peers more. That is where their connections are going to be. They will have a little bit less of a connection with their parents at home. They do not want to be at home. And so as long as they have those outside supports, they will actually do a little bit better than those elementary children who can not go hang out with a friend on their own, they can not ride their bike to their friend's house and just be on their own, right? And so that is really, really helpful.

What Can You Do to Help?

What can we do to help? So I want to talk a little bit about assessment because you are going to assess these children differently depending on age and depending on situations.

Assessment

These are some of the actual assessments, like pen and paper type assessments, that you can do with them:

1. Pediatric ACEs and Related Life Events Screener (PEARLS)
2. Positive Childhood Experiences (PCE)
3. House Tree Person
4. ACEs or PACEs with teens
5. Parent Intake Information

I use the PEARLS assessment in our practice as opposed to ACEs, especially with our younger ones, because ACEs is technically meant for older teens who can fill it out for themselves. It is not meant for parents. PEARLS is very specific. The PEARLS questions are almost identical to the ACEs questions. They are worded differently and from a caregiver's perspective.

Since we are going to get the caregiver's perspectives on things, then it is really important to focus on a strengths-based approach and a strengths-based assessment. So I really like looking at Positive Childhood Experiences (PCE). These are the protective factors that children are going to have. If children have several of these, they are going to have fewer negative long-term effects from the divorce. Some of the questions on the PCE are:

• Did they feel comfortable?
• Does your child feel comfortable, or do they feel comfortable talking to family about their feelings?
• Do they feel like there is a sense of belonging at school or outside activities?
• Do they have other adults in their ecology that pay attention to them and take an interest in them?

 So if you want that protective factors look, I would take a look at that assessment.

When you are working with younger children, I do this sometimes with younger teens, but I do this all the time with my ages three and up or 3 to 11 and 12; the House-Tree-Person assessment.

As I said in the initial disclaimer of risks, do not do this assessment without further reading just based on what I say here because it is not enough.

There are specific ways to assess using the House-Tree-Person, which is an evidence-based model. But basically, what it looks like is you are going to hand the child a piece of paper. There is a specific way to hand the paper over, and they are only using a pencil or a black crayon because we do not want to add colors into it because then you are assessing all types of things, and we want to make it pretty specific about what we are assessing.

You are going to ask them, "Please draw for me a house. Let me know when You are finished." That is all you are saying. And they will draw a house. You are going to do the same thing for tree and person, "Please draw for me a tree. Let me know when You are finished. Please draw for me a person." They are going to do it.

 I actually add to this, based on a training I went to that was amazing. I ask for them to draw a person of the other gender, and that is what I am looking at, or I sometimes say, "Another gender," or "A different gender" because when I learned it, things were not as gender-fluid as they are now. And so that is not how they talked about it, but that is kind of how I do it. You really look at who they are connecting with, who do they kind of relate to in that person. And then I ask, you could ask this without doing the whole House-Tree-Person, "But please draw for me your family doing something together." I get so much from that assessment, from just that one piece of the assessment.

So what you are looking at is how do they feel within themselves? That is actually the tree. How do they feel within their system? That is the house. And there are specific questions I ask for each picture to assess. So, again, if that piqued your interest, go do some more reading and learning on that because it is a really cool assessment.

With older children, I do ACEs or PACEs, and PACEs is just adding the protective, so it is the protective and adverse childhood experiences scale.

And then, one of the areas you are going to get the most information in is parent intakes. So I highly recommend that if the parents are separated, you do separate intake sessions with each parent if your work environment allows that because you are going to get so much data from this. What parent is talking about the child and how the child's been affected? What parent is talking about how horrible the other parent is? What did it look like? And you do not even have to ask this question because you will know, based on how they talk about the other parent, how they talk about the child. But in asking about their child's experience of the divorce, you will get so much information about what life looks like for the child.

I almost always do them separately because, typically, one parent, if the parents are together, they are not going to feel as open to sharing all the information as if they are with their co-parent. On occasion, we have that because there is a really comfortable relationship with them, but we very often do it separately. And some of that is to protect yourself, to CYA. And I am going to talk about that a little bit later.

Goals

Okay, what is our goal? So the goals for therapy or your time with your children. So I get lots of time. I am in private practice. I get to see children for a long period of time should it be beneficial to them. So if your situation is you get them for just a little bit of time, or you get to see them in a school setting, or hospital setting, it may look different.

Ages 3-6

In general, your goal for this age is really to provide a safe place, provide a safe place for your kiddo to provide you as a safe person and a safe vessel for them to figure this out and to realize they are safe as long as they are safe and to help them get safe if they are not. So You are going to, it is your job to also, one of the goals is to give the parents the skills necessary to support a child in a developmentally appropriate manner And really focusing, again, this is my bias because this is how I view children but really reinforce the secure attachment.

And if there is not a secure attachment with one parent, both parents, whatever it might be, is to really support improving that and then to help build the child support system and protective factors around them outside of the family unit.

So how do we do this? We play. Trying to do some talk therapy with ages three to six is, in my opinion, not very helpful. We are not even going to teach coping skills. We are not even going to use that language. We are going to use ourselves. We are going to use them for play. You can use art. You can do some directives because this group is in preschool, so they can follow some directions and things.

It is my bias that we do non-directive play, but play. And so some of the themes of play that you might see are themes of power and control, where they really want to take control of the session because when their world is muck, they have no control, zero control. Why is it so important to get the blue sippy cup instead of the pink sippy cup? Because they have no power and control in their worlds. So maybe they have not had that freak out in a long time about the sippy cup or about the specific spoon that they want to  use, and all of a sudden, they have regressed, and they are back to "The blue cup is the only cup that will work, and I am going to have a huge tantrum." 

That is power and control. So in the play therapy room, they are probably going to tell you what to do, right? That my imagination is usually wrong in these cases, and they would like me to do things very specifically. I give them that power in the play therapy room. That is the wonderful thing about working with children is I get to give them some power.

They may play hide and seek, and this really is attachment-based. So this is actually something I share with parents to do with their children, is, right, that hide and seek when they are little, and it is like, "Oh my gosh, my littlest is Garrett, he is eight. So we do not play hide and seek anymore, really, but like, gosh, I really hope I can find Garrett. Where is he? I am going to miss him so much if I can not find him. Oh, I love that he laughs this way," or, "He's such a good hider." 

All of those things are all about attachment and them feeling like you want them and you would go out of your way to find them and do anything for them. You will see that in the play therapy room all the time. They may bury things in the sand, and usually, my question is, does it feel safe under the sand, or does it feel scary under the sand? And so sometimes it is habitual, sometimes it is anything, and they are just going to keep doing their work, and we are a safe person to be there while they do their work.

Nurturing play is really common. So making me food in the play therapy room, being with babies. If they are having a really hard time and they are feeling a lot of that angst and aggressiveness, I did not put this in here because a lot of places do not have these items in their room, but I sword fight all the time with this age group, and again, in that power and control dynamic, I let them win, or we have fire, you know, play guns in our office. And so sometimes they will use those to really take on a high level of power and control in the room and to get out aggression. And then we are going to have parent involvement, okay?

This age group does not live in a bubble. So unless there is child abuse and neglect that you highly suspect, sexual abuse, things like that, we are going to involve the parents as much as possible because the children go home. We have them for 50 minutes a week, maybe, or maybe you see them in school more, but you get them for like 10 minutes, or whatever that might be. So we are going to give our recommendations to parents. We are going to help them with attachment and things in the home.

Ages 6-12

Ages 6 to 12, guess what? Our goal for the first one is the same. We really want to allow our children a safe place to process their situation, that we are a safe vessel. Usually, at this age, they will start to ask about what I am going to tell their parents.

And so as the child gets older, the level of confidentiality, not secrecy, but what we are going to share with parents, is going to shift. So those younger ages, I share a whole heck of a lot unless it is a domestic violence situation, a high-conflict divorce situation where they are in family court. Then I share very little, and I will talk about that later. And so at this age group, same thing. If there is all of that stuff, we share very, very little. But now, I am going to even with my like 4, 5, 6-year-olds, I might say something in the room like, "Wow, when you play with my sand tray, your body seems so calm. Can I tell your mom that?" 

Because guess what? This child needs some sensory stuff at home to calm their stuff down, right? So I still am almost asking for a release of information from a four-year-old basically, but I am still that, I hold that, the time in the room with my children very, it's really important to me. So that will increase here. And for you to be safe and feel safe, you really have to stick to that. So if I am going to email parents about something, I let my children know, like, "Hey, you know what? I am going to send an email to your parents about X, Y, and Z." Or maybe I did it because I needed to do it before the session.

I am going to  let them know, "Hey, I emailed your parents about X, Y, and Z. What are your thoughts about that?" Just so that we can still be their safe person. Our goals are to increase their skills and communication, emotional intelligence, window of tolerance, and improve kind of their comfort in sharing their feelings, giving them that language to be able to share what is going on so that they can get their needs met in a different way than acting out. So this is a little bit different than those younger kiddos where we are going to do most of it. I still do mostly play with this age group, but there is a little bit more, this sounds bad, and I do not mean it bad, but of an agenda.

We can use the play to do these things and use ourselves to do these things. We are going to give parents skills to support the child, again, in a developmentally appropriate manner, still focusing on attachment because that is one of the number one kind of protective factors for these children. And then the same thing is to really build the child support system and ecology outside of the, just the therapy room, just the family unit. We are going to play. We are going to play still. You can use some directive activities. You can share coping skills, things they can try at home. The themes of the play are very similar. They do hide and seek less often, but some of those younger children do, and they'll do it in a different way.

It might be hiding something of importance in the play therapy room in the sand, and I have to find it. We want to give them as much autonomy in the room as possible. They should be physically safer in your room, so you do not have to have as many boundaries with them. So that increases their power and control, and autonomy. Again, the swordplay or other weapons play will come up. Nurturing play comes up, and it might look a little bit differently. So I am thinking about like that 10, 11, 12, they are probably not going to make you food. Sometimes they will, they may not play with babies anymore in your office, but they may want to sit close to you as you draw, or they may draw you something, right?

They are like, "This is for you" kind of thing. So they'll show some of that nurturing. And then, again, still focusing on attachment, you'll see some attachment stuff. Sometimes they'll reenact some things where You are like, "Hmm, they do not have a safe attachment at home," or, "They are only attached to their dog at home. They do not feel connected to other people." I do this through a sand tray very often. It is looking at attachment in different ways through a sand tray.

And then, what is their parental involvement? I talked about this. You are going to disclose less, and you might be facilitating family sessions.

So if you were trained in family therapy, and it makes sense to do this, then you can do some of this, and it's likely to help these children explain how they are feeling, right? Giving them a voice rather than a typical family therapy session where You are looking at the entire system as kind of like you are equally involved with them. If You are working with this child, they are yours. They are your person. And so there will be some bias within the family sessions because you are the person protecting and loving on that child, right? You are going to help them share their voice versus a family therapy setting where everyone has the same amount of voice, I guess, if that makes sense.

If it is, again, in that high conflict divorce nature, which is an abusive kind of situation or coercive control, we are not going to do that.

Ages 13-18

All right. Teens, we need to again be safe, really non-judgmental for them to kind of process, talk trash, right? Being that place so that we are not going to share information with parents unless we have to or unless the teen has said it's okay, that is the only time with this age group that I share. So if there is a safety concern, yep, we gotta share. But if they are really angry about something a parent did or whatever it might be, we will not share these things with parents without our teen's consent.

And typically, it would be within a family therapy type setting rather than us telling a parent because it's, our goal is to increase autonomy and things. To increase their communication skills, emotional intelligence, and interpersonal effectiveness. I do a lot of this here in this age group of how can they get their needs met in a way that they feel good about themselves no matter the outcome. So I do a lot of that work with my teens to help them increase autonomy. I really like doing kind of a values sort or identifying values and clarifying those with our teens because they may see that they do not align with their parents on certain values. And what is really fun is when they realize they do not align with their peers.

Sometimes it is wonderful therapeutic work. And then, again, to build that child support system, and they are going to have a more active role in this. I do not need to always contact the school counselor, and I do not need to do these things. We are going to give that to them to do as they grow older. These are kind of the themes or the things that I really focus on with my teens who are dealing with divorce, really with anything, but specifically with divorce, is really focusing on connection and using myself in the room talking about that process, not just the content. It really helps with that interpersonal effectiveness. We really focus on confidentiality, a value sort. So if You are like, "What is a value sort?" 

If you look up ACT therapy. So acceptance and commitment therapy, they have a ton of different ways. You can get value cards, you can just write your own, whatever it is. But doing that with teens is really, really helpful in their healing process here. You can teach some coping skills, so maybe they are having a really hard time, and they are using self-harm. So we can give them ways to manage their, you know, manage their nervous system, to calm them down, basic skills to not self-harm in the moment, things like that. So you can do that, like coping skills stuff, and then, again, with the parental involvement, it will be less and usually done within a kind of family session thing, but again, your person is your teen in this, and so You are helping them share their voice.

I do hold my teens accountable, so if they are being boneheads, right, and I hear about something they are doing from their parents, it is a way, you can not hold them accountable. It is not like the teen is always right in these situations, but really your goal is to help them share their voice, and you are that safe person that has their back in doing that.

How Are We Helping Parents?

How are we helping parents? I wish more of these parents would come in, but most of the time, these parents are coming in to have me fix their children or have someone in my practice fix their children. But what we can do is give them a lot of education.

A lot of the things I give them are on development. So what does this look like for a three-year-old? What is important with attachment, and why is attachment so important? So a lot of psychoeducation on this. I do psychoeducation on divorce is not what actually harms your children. It is you all's behavior before and after that harms your children. I do it in a very nice way. Parents do not usually dislike me after that, but I do educate them on that. We focus on creating consistency at both homes if possible. Not possible very often when there is domestic violence and there has been a separation, but we know that consistency and structure helps to build safety for our children, no matter the age.

And so wherever we can find consistency, we do it. We really focus on the importance of not using the child as a confidant or a messenger between parents. This is really harmful; it kind of goes back to that pre and post-divorce or separation stuff. If it is possible and you have access to parents, like I have access to parents within my practice, I really try and focus on creating a sense of team. So parents do not often, you know, they may not get along, but in a lot of cases, they do want what is best for their children. And so in that way, we are all three, or unless there is, you know, stepparents and things like that, our goal is team, and we are team kid, right?

And so if we can create that, it will be really helpful for our clients. And then offering referrals for individual services or other supports because if our parents work through their stuff, our children will be better, I promise.

Protect Yourself to Protect the Child

All right. So this piece is important because I actually care about you as well, not just our children. When you are working with a divorced family, you and your license are more at risk. So I hope I am not scaring you all away from working with children. We need so many more child therapists in our world. But you do need to know how to protect yourself so that You are actually protecting the child and your relationship with the child in your sanity as well.

Get Your Documentation Ducks in a Row 

Okay. So one of the most important things, if you do not take anything else away from this webinar, this training, you are taking this away. You need to get your documentation ducks in a row. You need to know your state's and licensing laws on getting consent for mental health treatment. The most common reason for a founded grievance in my state is around a therapist not getting proper consent. And what I mean by this is you need to get consent from both parents unless there is a specific document, and this is when we are talking about separation and divorce that says you do not. And guess what? Still then, if the other parent's involved, I try to get consent because it will actually protect the child, it will protect your relationship with the child, it is going to protect if there is intimate partner violence and post-separation abuse, it will protect the protective parent or the victim parent.

 I know that is really hard for a lot of therapists. For a while, I was like, "Ah, I do not want to get consent from the other parent. Ah, you know, they are abusive. Why do I need to get consent from them," blah blah blah. They are preventing the child from getting mental healthcare, all the things. But you need to focus on best efforts to get consent even if there is a court order saying you do not need it. And then also knowing your laws in your state about the age that a minor can consent for their own mental health treatment, and what that actually means and what you need to do to make sure that happens. So know your state's and licensing rules, protect yourself, and have really good initial paperwork.

Your disclosure and consent need to be just airtight when you are working with divorce. And I work with a higher level of acuity. I work mostly with families where there is family court involvement, and there has been abuse and neglect, and there has been domestic violence. I work with a lot of those cases. So it is really important. You might get a case, and you do not know that is what it is, and that is what it is. So You are going to have amazing initial paperwork that spells out everything. What does confidentiality look like? What do you have to mandate report? These are required, but you are going to have it just like tied with a bow beautifully. When You are documenting in your notes or your treatment plans, or whatever it might be, you are going to document as if a judge is reading your notes. So enough information for them to get a sense of what is going on, but not so much information that your child is at risk for a parent learning something that would harm the child. For those things, you use your psychotherapy notes, and again, know the laws in your state and your license regulations about psychotherapy notes. I get to write notes that are a part of their file, but it is not with their file if subpoenaed. If that makes sense, it is like doctor's notes. So anything that I need to remember but I do not want in the file, I am going to put it there. So really do some good research.

Managing Parent Contact

Another thing is how you manage parent contact. So triangulation when there is separated parents, just know it is going to happen. It is not if. It is when. And so, what are ways that you can eliminate triangulation?

Email communication. In my paperwork, I state that if so, get consent in your initial paperwork, but if it is a divorced family, I require them to allow email communication for this purpose. And if they do not want me to use email communication for whatever reason, then they are not going to work with me because this is that important in helping me eliminate triangulation. If there is a court, an order of protection, then I cut and paste so that if my file was ever subpoenaed or I was brought into court, and one of the parents is like, "She is biased. She never gives me the information." I have it.

Look, this one matches exactly this one. All of my emails go out to both parents. So the same email to both parents, no bias. Sybil is not showing bias. If there are safety issues, then I work on what I email, and again, if there is no protection, we do it a little bit differently.

Your payment agreement, get it upfront. It is not your job to decide one way or the other, like, "Oh, well, this session, Dad pays, and this session, Mom pays." No, we just need to get paid, right? That is not our thing. And so, at times, we can do that if it is really easy. But usually, we charge one card, and then they get to figure that out on their own. I do not have time for that. And that should be in a court order, and then you are going to limit what you share with parents to themes and recommendations. This protects your child so that if you are in a post-separation abuse situation where there has been domestic violence, and they are in family court, we just need to limit what we share with parents so that they can not use it against the child or the other parent.

Oh No! I Just Got a Subpoena!

Oh, no! I just got a subpoena. I hope you all's stomachs did not just go in your throat, but guess what? You might get a subpoena. So clearly, if You are working in an agency, they will have their rules around subpoenas and all of that stuff. But if you are in a private practice setting, a small group practice, or whatever it might be, your first step is to contact your malpractice insurance, and if you have an attorney, your attorney, if you do not have an attorney, I have one on a retainer because I work with a really high acuity population.

Your insurance company can get you access to an attorney so that they can prep you if they need to. They can help you with whatever it is. And unless you have that attorney quash it, which will cost you money, it is out of your pocket, which means you do not want to go, and you have a court order that you do not go, you have to go. So I have heard a lot of people be like, "Oh, but I do not go to court, I am not going to, I do not go." If you get a subpoena, you have to go unless you have an attorney quash it for you. And a judge might not allow it. They might say, "Oh, guess what? You actually have to go."

So, this is why your paperwork needs to be beautiful. You need to get releases to speak in open court. We cannot give any recommendations on parenting time unless you have performed a custody evaluation. In addition, in my paperwork, I have paperwork that they sign regarding payment for testimony.

Your Take Aways 

So remember your takeaway is that pre and post, or divorce behaviors are what typically have long-term effects on children. Children are going to be affected in different ways due to their developmental stages. We can offer protective factors in working with these children and parents. And you really, really, really need to put policies in place to protect yourself. The reason I say it is to protect yourself, to protect the child, is because if you are not doing a good job protecting yourself, then you are not protecting the child you are working with.

Think of it this way, if you have developed this amazing relationship with this child, and then all of a sudden, the child is not going to see you any longer because a judge says, you know, "Oh, yeah, you actually are biased. Look, you have only talked to one parent the whole time," or, "You didn't try and get consent," or, you know, you get a grievance so that you can not work with that child anymore.

So putting the policies in place and having your paperwork beautiful is what is going to protect the child you are working with. And if you are working where there has been intimate partner violence or domestic violence, your paperwork needs to be perfect to protect the target parent. And this is my whole spiel like I could go on for days. In fact, I just did a continued training on post-separation abuse because it is really, really important that you do a good job of communicating with parents in the way that I specified and that your paperwork is how it is to work with these children because it will protect that victim parent in family court to some extent. 

Resources

• 10 Effects of Divorce on Children and Helping Them Cope
• Pediatric ACEs and Related Life Events Screener (PEARLS)
• UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies: Timing of parents' split matters for children's mental health, new research reveals 
• What’s the Hardest Age of Children to See Their Parents Split?
   

References 

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D’Onofrio, B. &  Emery, R. (2019). Parental Divorce or Separation and Children’s Mental Health. World Psychiatry, 18(1), 100-101. doi:10.1002/wps.20590

Fincham, F.D. & Stanley, S.M. (2002). The Effects of Divorce on Children. Couples Research and Therapy Newsletter, 8(1), 7-10. 

Hunter, J. & Trussle, J. (2016). Helping Preschoolers and Elementary-Age Children Adjust to Divorce. University of Missouri Extension. https://extension.missouri.edu/publications/gh6613#:~:text=Preschoolers typically respond to% 20divorce,never see that parent again

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Lindsey, E. W., Colwell, M. J., Frabutt, J. M., & MacKinnon-Lewis, C. (2006). Family Conflict in Divorced and Non- divorced Families: Potential consequences for boys’ friendship status and friendship quality. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 23(1), 45–63.

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Martin, M.J., Sturge-Apple, M., Davies, P.T., Romero, C.V., Buckholz, A. (2017). A Process Model of the Implications of Spillover from Coparenting Conflicts into the Parent-child Attachment Relationship in Adolescence. 29(2), 417-431. doi: 10.1017/S0954579417000086

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Villalovos, K., & Heiden, R. K. (2023). The Handbook of Systemic Family Therapy, Systemic Family Therapy with Children and Adolescents. Journal of Marital & Family Therapy, 49(1), 283– 284. https://doi.org/10.1111/jmft.12602