I think I’m going to Coffee talk you twice tomorrow.
In the first one I’ll answer a question. In the second I’m going to talk to teachers – and the principal. For schools, it’s mostly the principal who’s involved, but the teacher should know what’s up.
Mostly teachers need to keep their heads down and remain non-involved… mostly it’s navigating the parent conferences. It’s the principal and the front office where most of the inter-parental action happens.
Sometimes it’s the records thing. Sometimes it’s a child tantrum in the office at exchange. Sometimes it’s a missed pick-up because the allied parent already picked the child up.
Triangulation is a hallmark of manipulative pathology. General public bystanders need to de-triangulate. It’s the psychologists who should be handling it. But they’re not.
Everything is a problem because the doctor psychologists in the family courts aren’t doing their job of fixing the problem. That’s their profession, that’s their job – to fix the mental health problem.
In this case, child attachment pathology and child abuse.
This isn’t a custody issue. Its a treatment issue. We need to fix the problem. To fix the problem we first have to identify what the problem is – i.e., which parent is abusing the child?
Diagnosis guides treatment. If we try to treat cancer with insulin, the patient dies from the misdiagnosed cancer. What is the diagnosis?
Start there. Once we have an accurate diagnosis for what the problem is, then we can develop an effective treatment plan to fix the problem… whatever the problem is.
That’s what we do in healthcare. You go to the doctor when you’re sick and the doctor diagnoses what’s causing your problem and then gives you a treatment plan to fix the problem.
Diagnosis first, then treatment. The treatment depends on the diagnosis, are we treating cancer or diabetes – which parent is abusing the child?
If a child is rejecting a parent, one parent or the other is abusing the child because abusive parenting is the ONLY thing that causes a symptom of a child rejecting a parent.
The ONLY diagnostic question is which parent is abusing the child?
Once the doctors start doing their job… everything will be fixed because they’ll fix the problem.
I should tell you how to fix problems. Maybe I should start with the basics of behavior change. Do you want to change any aspect of your life? I should tell you how to do that.
It’s relatively easy. The problem is you won’t do it. It’s called “resistance” and it arrived with Freud and has been the obstacle forever after.
I should tell you about Alfred Adler and why people want their problems. I should tell you about depression and anxiety too – just kind of orientations.
Should I tell you about Sapolsky and how it doesn’t matter what you do because it’s all Determined? Probably not.
I should talk to the teachers and principals to give them suggestions for navigating their child end of inter-parental custody conflict. We’ll see how the spirit moves me.
Craig Childress, Psy.D.
Clinical Psychologist
WA 61538481
OR 3942 – CA 18857
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