If you are working with children and families being torn apart by the child's determination to transition- do have a watch of this very useful presentation.
Here is a taste of what you will hear about a possible model for working with children and their families affected by gender
"good assessment is an interactional process and not a tick box"
Working with a colleague: based on normal family assessment model. Start by seeing the parents, taking a family history. What has gone on: illnesses, significant losses in the family, including siblings. Sometimes a new sibling can feel like a serious loss to a child.
Provide a non judgemental environment for parents to share their feelings. Get a sense of how the child has responded to events and changes.
The history of the couple provides a flavour of the parents' relationship. Online meetings can mean that separated parents can attend at the same time.
Pick up how the parents respond to the child and how they respond to each other. What it means to each parent.
Sometimes you can see issues being played out in their relationship with their child which they dont want to repeat or which they fear
How does your child respond to you being upset? Is the child empathetic to parents' distress?
Transference - when the therapist experienes the hostility or anger that has been directed at parents. Can be very helpful to gaining understanding of what the underlying drivers might be
Part of the work is to help parents to reestablish their role. as parents. getting back in their seat when they feel they have been pushed out of their seat.
Horrifying to hear of mental health practitioners who have excluded parents.
With the children - ask about social relationships, school, anime characters and what they like and why, dreams,
The most terrible thing for parents is to feel that they are about to lose their child.
Sometimes we have to help parents to accept that they may have to experience the transition of their older child. Sometimes it is impossible to deter an older child/young adult. How to cope with threat of being disowned? how to live with disagreement? sometimes the parents are full of information, arguments, research but the child is blithely ignorant and just determined to pursue transition
"Calm down a bit" and take a different tack. Try agreeing to disagree. Sometimes unlocks a change in the child.
What hopefully starts to happen is that the child starts to feel taht the parents can have their views and they have theirs but that it becomes more of a listening project that is going on.
We have to think more widely. We believe that there needs to be a change the way this has been approached. the affirmative approach is wrong and harmful.
Often what a child is telling you is that they hate themselves. Affirmation means kind of agreeing with them that there is indeed something wrong with them.
What we are saying instead to them is that "we believe that you can accept both the nice things about yourself but also the bits you are not so keen on"
You can help them feel that it is safe to love themselves just as they are.
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