Choosing a therapist for your child often feels daunting because it’s an important decision in the divorce process. Today’s guest offers invaluable advice on what to look for in a therapy professional.
On this episode of Children First Family Law, Krista welcomes child custody expert and Texas-licensed professional counselor Christy Bradshaw Schmidt. Christy has served as a private child custody evaluator since 2003, having completed more than 600 evaluations for families. She also serves as a private consultant and expert witness in family law matters like constructing parenting plans for kids less than three years old, relocation, reunification, and parent-child contact problems, among other topics. Christy is also a leading voice in helping therapists understand boundaries in high-conflict cases, the appropriate roles of mental health professionals in family law matters, and why selecting appropriate therapists for court-involved families is critical. Christy is the author of hundreds of articles and presentations surrounding issues related to children and family courts.
Krista and Christy begin their discussion by delving into Christy’s journey working with court-involved families. Christy explains the problem with therapists’ training, why nearly all cases requiring child custody evaluations also require therapeutic resources, and her experience with 600+ custody evaluations, with 90% of those including recommendations for therapy. You’ll hear specific ways parents can find the best and most appropriate mental health professionals and why more therapists need to enter this line of work. Krista and Christy cover the necessity of transparency between therapists and both parents, Christy’s process for dealing with parent-child contact cases, and why family law is an incredible career focus area for mental health professionals who can find many satisfying rewards in helping families flourish.
Divorce is incredibly distressing for children and families. Involving a qualified therapist can help guide parents to help children and parents cope with divorce realities and meet individual and coparenting needs moving forward.
In this episode, you will hear:
- Christy Bradshaw Schmidt’s journey into working with court-involved families
- The problem with therapists’ training, fostering fear in working with court-involved families
- Why nearly all child custody evaluations recommend therapeutic resources to help fix the problems
- The incredible dearth of trained professionals willing to do this critically important work, for example about 25 in the Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas, area, demonstrating the serious issues of supply and demand mismatch for families going through divorce and needing help
- Specific ways parents can find the best, most appropriate mental health professionals by using the right keywords and asking the right questions
- The problems and likely damage parents face when they choose the wrong mental health professionals
- Why more therapists need to go into this line of work
- Therapists’ basic training that makes them ill-equipped to do this work
- How therapists can obtain the necessary skills to help court-involved families
- The importance of therapists for the family to work with one another and communicate regularly
- The need for transparency between therapists and both parents
- Rebuilding and fostering trust between parents
- Ethics considerations for therapists involved with court-involved families
- Why mental health professionals should testify regarding their work when parents go to court in family law cases
- The process Christy would use in a family with parent-child contact problems
- What other states can learn from Texas, which created rule changes around grieving therapists in these cases, giving them more protection and allowing more therapists to be willing to do this important work
- Why Christy believes family law is an incredible area in which mental health professionals can focus one’s career, giving therapists so many opportunities to help families flourish despite the breakdown caused by divorce
Resources from this Episode
www.childrenfirstfamilylaw.com
txfamilylawforensics.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/CV-combined-version-with-CE-5425feb.pdf
All states have different laws; be sure you are checking out your state laws specifically surrounding divorce. Krista is a licensed attorney in Colorado and Wyoming but is not providing through this podcast legal advice. Please be sure to seek independent legal counsel in your area for your specific situation.
Follow and Review:
We’d love for you to follow us if you haven’t yet. Click that purple ‘+’ in the top right corner of your Apple Podcasts app. We’d love it even more if you could drop a review or 5-star rating over on Apple Podcasts. Simply select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” then a quick line with your favorite part of the episode. It only takes a second and it helps spread the word about the podcast.
Choosing Your Child’s Therapist with Child Custody Expert & LPC Christy Bradshaw Schmidt Podcast Transcript
Christy Bradshaw Schmidt 00:00
There’s potential for harm to your family and to your child. That sounds pretty extreme, but that’s just what it is. Because if you’re going in and you’re taking your child to a therapist, if they think it’s okay just to talk to you and not include the other parent, that’s a red flag. Because when that individual gets on the witness stand and they’ve heard one side of the story and they’ve believed one side of the story 100% that is ripe for cross examination because they’re not considering that. They’re, you know, a child’s life, it’s a puzzle, right? And that child is half mom, half dad, half Mom, mom, half Dad, Dad. However, their family structure is set up, and if you leave one part of that out, that’s a big gaping hole in your assessment of that child or that family. And so part of it is, you’ve got to have somebody who’s not going to believe this. Sounds horrible, not going to believe every believe everything their client tells you, and you know, so if you’re the parent, they’re not going to believe everything they tell you. It doesn’t mean you know that you’re not a trustworthy person who’s talking to them. But they really need to go, Okay, so that’s your because there’s always two sides to every story. So that’s your side of the story. They’ve just got to wonder, what’s the other side of the story? And what’s this child telling me, if they’re treating the child, you know, and is what the child telling me true, or they experience of the world kind of tainting what they’re seeing, because their life experience is so limited at that point. You want people who are really able to think and consider outside of just what they’re hearing in their office, what else might be going on. And you really want therapists who aren’t focusing on telling you that your ex is a narcissist, or your ex is a borderline. If you’re in individual therapy as a parent, you want somebody who’s going, Okay, so let’s say that’s what’s going on. How do I help you deal with that? Because at the end of the day, we can’t control what our CO parent is doing. We can’t control what our CO parent is doing with our child. We can control what we do in response to that, and you need therapists who are helping you or your child learn the coping skills to manage their life and their circumstances. That’s both parenting in a single parent home after a separation or divorce, co parenting a child after a separation or divorce, or just helping a child learn to manage that transition between two homes and having two houses. It’s all about coping skill development. It’s not about light.
Intro/Outro 02:02
Welcome to the Children First Family Law podcast. Our host, Krista Nash, is an attorney, mediator, a parenting coordinator, and child advocate with a heart to facilitate conversations about how to help children flourish amidst the broken area of family law. As a child advocate in demand for her expertise throughout Colorado and as a speaker on these issues at a national level, Krista is passionate about facilitating and creatively finding solutions to approach family law matters in a way that truly focuses on the best interests of kids. Please remember this podcast is provided to you for information purposes only. No one on this podcast is representing you or giving you legal advice. As always, please enjoy this episode and be sure to like, subscribe and share the podcast with others you think would benefit from this content.
Krista Nash 02:52
Today, on the podcast, we welcome Texas Licensed Professional Counselor and nationally engaged child custody expert Christy Bradshaw Schmidt, since 2003 Christy has served as a private child custody evaluator, having completed more than 600 evaluations for families. She also serves as a private consultant and expert witness in family law matters related to issues such as how to construct parenting plans for kids under three years old, relocation, reunification, parent child, contact problems and many other topics. Christie is a leading voice in helping therapists understand boundaries in high conflict cases, the appropriate roles of mental health professionals in family law matters and why the selection of therapists for court involved families is so critically important. Additionally, Christie has authored and provided hundreds of articles and presentations about issues relating to children and family courts. Parents will gain from this episode’s focus on how to pick the right therapist for children in divorce situations and mental health professionals will gain from understanding their vitally important role and necessary approach to help court involved parents, including why they need to expect and embrace testifying in these cases. We hope you enjoy this episode. Welcome to the Children First Family Law Podcast. I’m really glad you’re all with us today, I’m excited to welcome Christy Bradshaw Schmidt, who is coming to us from the Dallas Fort Worth, Texas area and has a lot to share. As she has been on the front lines for many, many years as a licensed professional counselor. She does custody evaluations and expert work, and for a long time did therapeutic work, though she’s not doing therapy now, but has a lot to help share both with parents and professionals about things to think about in the family law context. So Christy, welcome. Thanks for doing this with me today. Thanks for having me. I’m glad to be here. Yeah. So we, as we were prepping for this, talked about first, I want to hear a little bit about how you got into this work and. I think we will potentially first talk about an audience of parents, right? And parents, what should you be thinking about as you’re looking at how to help your children and how to find the right resources of therapists, because there’s certain rights and wrongs in terms of being in a high conflict or any kind of divorce situation, right? So we’ll talk about that, and then we’re going to pivot a little bit and talk later about what therapists in particular should be thinking about. There’s a lot of fear a lot of therapists have about getting involved in these court involved families and whether they should testify, and what their notes look like, and things like that. So if you’re a therapist, maybe listen to the beginning and then fast forward toward the middle to end of this so you can hear the specific thoughts that Christy can share about what you need to think about in your own practice. So with that, help us understand kind of how you got into this work, as opposed to just doing typical therapy. I
Christy Bradshaw Schmidt 05:52
fell into this work when I went to grad school 30 years ago. We weren’t taught this. This is not a field of study that I even knew existed if I told you what my grad professor told me to do with my notes, if I would subpoena it, it would curl your toes, because it’s not what you’re supposed to do. But when I got out of grad school, I actually worked, initially, working in residential treatment, working with adolescents and young adults who struggled with substance abuse and mental health issues. I worked with pregnant and postpartum women who struggled with those similar issues, and then I ended up in inpatient care and day hospital care and working IOP and doing some individual therapy on the side, until I got fed up with managed care, right? Like do more with less. And so I started looking for a job. And this was back in the day where you looked for a job in the newspaper. That’s helpful job. Yeah, there was a job yeah, there’s a job at Family Court Services. We have those offices here in Texas in five different major counties that do custody evaluations, or what we call them, social studies, back 25 years ago. And so I started working there, worked there for six years, and then went out on my own. So I and I had no idea this existed before that. Yeah,
Krista Nash 06:58
I think it’s interesting, because I think it’s still pretty true that there’s in most therapy training. This is not something that you could talk about marriage counseling and you can talk about family work. But is that your experience, that it’s still true that sort of this forensic, kind of high conflict court families that are involved in this is not something that is really taught very solidly. There’s a
Christy Bradshaw Schmidt 07:21
few programs throughout the country. I know Alabama has a psychology and law program at the University of Alabama, so there are some of those. But most of what I’m seeing now is, if they talk about it at all, it’s talk about from the fear mentality, avoid at all cost. And they’re not really trained how to lean into that, how to do that, well, how to not be fearful of that, because as much as you may want to avoid working with court involved families, if you work with children, if you work with couples, if you work with families, and even if you work with adults, there’s a chance there at some point you’re going to get pulled into a Family Law matter. It’s just the luck of the draw, right?
Krista Nash 07:55
I mean, when you look at the incidents of divorce and all of that, you’re going to have kids that are that are definitely going through that, right? Okay, so talking then to parents, let me get a little more background on your therapeutic work for a while. Did you do therapy with kids, with families like what was the extent of your own therapeutic practice? Most
Christy Bradshaw Schmidt 08:15
of my therapy practice was in residential, inpatient and Day Hospital. I ran an individual therapy practice outside of that, working with kids and families, primarily, I did a couple of play therapy cases until I realized that was not my jam. Landed my rear end in court twice on that and realized that my supervisor gave me that information. Okay, so I worked family systems, work within the addiction and mental health and dual diagnosis world. That was my five years before I got into this. And then, thankfully, when you work for the county system, you are doing 52 custody evaluations a year, give or take. Wow, it’s baptism by fire, so to speak, and so. But my therapy work came out of really working with families struggling with addiction and mental health issues, and primarily with kids. So I was dealing with parents who were married, parents who were separated, parents who were in the middle of a divorce. Got called. Divorce, got called in the corner on a couple of those because it just comes with the
Krista Nash 09:06
territory. Yeah. Okay, so then if you’re now, you’ve got an interesting seat in the role of custody evaluator. I will just say that the custody evaluation is called different things across the country and the world. In Colorado, where I mostly practice, we have Child and Family investigators, which are the lower level that don’t involve psychological evaluations. Our parental responsibility evaluators handle a broader, more in depth approach, including psychological evaluations. Do the ones you do involve psych evals with
Christy Bradshaw Schmidt 09:36
parents, they do not. We are called Child Custody evaluations nationally. Obviously, we’re all making a shift to parenting plan evaluations, but evaluations, but you’re absolutely right. All over the country, all over the world, they’re called different things in different states, in our what, how our law is written, they are custody evaluations across the board. If you are a PhD psychologist or a master’s level trained in doing testing, you can we are all to look for whether or not testing is needed and. And if I, as one who does not do psychological testing, gets into an evaluation and say, you know, I really think I need some psychological testing here. I need some more hypotheses about what’s going on psychologically with these individuals and their psychological functioning, I have the ability, and my law actually dictates that I asked for the court to appoint someone to do psychological evaluation, psychological testing. That’s true
Krista Nash 10:19
in Colorado as well, if you’re appointed as a CFI, but you think it needs more like if you think it needs a substance use evaluation, or you think it needs a mental health testing, then you are required to go and bring that to the court and parties and say that you need that. So that sounds really similar. Okay, so you start these child custody evaluations. How many think you’ve done? And let me say one other thing people say all the time, and I’ve said this on the show before, but I just want to double down on this. The reason we don’t like calling this custody is because it’s like it’s chattel, like it’s things that you own, like I have custody of a chair, right? And so we don’t like to treat kids that way, even though the law used to treat kids that way. It’s a mind shift for everybody who works in the field to call it parenting plan evaluations or parenting time evaluations, but we often say custody, because, as my marketing people will tell me, that’s what everybody still Googles. So just know that’s why you hear this tension if you’re listening to the podcast, about this difference between calling it custody and calling it something else. But it also is true that parents still use that far more than they call it parenting time. So if I use custody it’s not because I don’t get the difference. It’s just because I’m recognizing the lingo. Is what it is. Okay. So how many child custody evaluations do you think you’ve done on or around 600 or a little more? What percentage do you think involve a therapeutic recommendation, meaning, I think you need to get some therapy
Christy Bradshaw Schmidt 11:40
over 90% okay, for either a child, a parent, both parents, or the entire system, it just depends. But there’s gotta be what I term referral recommendations. There are always referral recommendations. If I had to guess it’s 90% have some form of therapeutic component or a parenting coordination component,
Krista Nash 11:58
yeah, and I think that’s really interesting, because I agree I sound like a broken record. I did these evaluations, and still am able to do them in Colorado, but I now have shifted my practice to the best practice attorney role, because I find it so much more fulfilling and probative and helpful, because I can do all that investigative work, but I can also sit at the table and push and push and pull and prod and try to get everybody, you know, get this solved. So when I was a CFI, and now it’s in probably 90% of the cases that I recommended therapy. And I recommend therapy, and so I ask you that just to double down on the issue that you can see where now that problem comes because what percentage of therapists do you think are willing to do these cases? I mean, you have anything like of all the therapists in the world. Is it 1% of them? Is it 10% of them? It’s something far, far lower than we need who are asking to do this. It’s absolutely
Christy Bradshaw Schmidt 12:55
far, far lower of a percentage. And I didn’t major in math for a reason. She says math is hard. Judge Willis, and I support that math is hard. I mean, if I look at my community, which Dallas Fort Worth is as large as it is, yeah, if there’s 25 that I would trust that’s a really high number. And obviously that varies from, do they treat adults? Do they treat children? Do they treat families? Do they do parent child? Do they work with families experiencing parent child contact problems? But, I mean, it’s a low number, yeah, and we have more in Dallas Fort Worth than, say, Austin has or Houston has very, very few. And it’s an issue. We’ve talked about this. I’ve presented even at AFCC conferences. On a national level. It’s an issue everywhere. From what I’m hearing,
Krista Nash 13:36
I am a broken record in saying in the Denver Metro area two families. No, I only have five who I’ll use, right, or whatever. Maybe there’s a few around the edges. It might be 10, but there aren’t really more than that. It’s kind of like finding a good CLR. Like, it’s like that CLR meaning a best interest attorney. Like, there’s just not very many that do it really well. And so this is part of why I think people get maybe, hopefully, people aren’t tired of it, but they might be already tired. Already tired on my baby podcast of all these mental health people I keep bringing on, but I need parents and professionals to understand how important psychologists and licensed professional counselors and mental health professionals who do this work are, and how we need so many more, and how parents have to be really careful. Because, how would they know that? How would they know that the therapist that they could get off of their corner, you know, ad or their insurance list? How would they possibly think that with 50% of the people getting divorced, that there’s only 25 in Dallas Fort Worth, and maybe 10 in Denver to choose from that would be the ones that could actually help them and the going to somebody else might do harm. So let’s talk about that from parents. I just want everybody to understand, almost all of our cases need this, and almost none of them get the right resources. It’s a massive, massive supply and demand problem, right? So part of. This is of having Christy on is that I want parents to understand, whoa, I better be careful, and I better go get this as soon as possible. Because the other problem is that by the time you get to child custody evaluators and divorce land and hearings, now you guys are dug in even more in the case is even worse, and the situation is even worse, and so we might have done more harm. So I wish I could beg everyone to grab these resources, figure out who the resources are in their communities, make sure they’re asking the right questions, to make sure that they’re getting the right people for their children, and then do it soon, soon, soon, soon, right? As soon as possible, like we want you doing this pre decree, if possible, meaning, before you get divorced, and it’s final, not just when you’ve been fighting for 10 years, right? Separation?
Christy Bradshaw Schmidt 15:42
There’s a concept somebody to help you tell the kid Exactly.
Krista Nash 15:45
So, alright, so given that bad supply and demand situation, when you’re a parent and you’re just coming to this issue that your family, you’re realizing that your family is not going to be how you wanted it to be initially. And maybe you’re at separation, or maybe you’re just filed or whatever, what would you advise parents look for in terms of who are the right resources for their for their situation, especially for their children, but maybe for themselves as
Christy Bradshaw Schmidt 16:11
well. Well, let’s start with the kiddos. If you have an attorney, my first recommendation would be ask your attorney. If anybody’s if you have a family law attorney or one who primarily practices in field of family law, ask them who they use, who’s on your list, and not only who’s on your list, but if you’ve already filed with the court, who does your judge like? Who does your judge trust? So that’s always a great place to start, because you’re dealing with professionals who are number one in those courtrooms. Every day they see these individuals testify, every day. They know who these judges trust and don’t trust. They’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to professionals. So that is your best place to start if you are representing yourself. I’m going to say, do a Google search, but I will say, only start there. As much as I would love that there are all these wonderful professionals on insurance panels who work with court involved families. That’s not my experience. And I will tell you, most who are on insurance panels, at least in my experience, will say they’re happy to work with court involved families. And it’s not that their hearts in the not in the right place. It’s not that they’re not trying to be helpful to families. They just don’t know what. They don’t know.
Krista Nash 17:17
Did you say they’re they’ll usually say they are happy to work with court involved families, but they don’t know what they don’t know. So those
Christy Bradshaw Schmidt 17:23
who are willing to do it don’t know what they don’t know. Some will say, Absolutely not. I’m not touching it with a 10 foot pole. But those who lean into it and are quickly like, Yeah, I’ll take your there. We have Facebook pages of you know, I’m looking for a therapist to work in this arena, and it’s made up of therapists. And all the time there’s court involved questions, and the list of 30 that are willing to work with them, I’m like, I’ve never heard of you, and I’ve done this for 25 years in my community. And when I go looking on their website or trying to see they’re not members of AFCC, the Association of family and conciliation courts, their last five continuing educations were related to, you know, school education or issues that may peripherally have to do with what we deal with, with the families we serve, but it’s not court involved cases. These are not the ones attending the trainings and getting the education training experience that they need. A lot of them where I practice are associates. They’re coming in, still working to get a full license. A lot of these cases, you don’t need somebody who has an associate degree. Yeah,
Krista Nash 18:23
we have that in Colorado too. I think it’s called, oh, it’s like, like, LPCC or something like that. Like, it’s like, you’re in training under somebody
Christy Bradshaw Schmidt 18:33
else, right? And they’ve got to get their training somewhere. And if you have a case, and if they’re under supervision with a court involved therapist, that’s a consideration, especially if money is tight, because we know this can be expensive. Litigation is expensive period, but I want to be supervised somebody
Krista Nash 18:49
who knows what they’re doing. All the people that I would recommend are part I happen to be involved myself with AFCC, and a lot of my guests have been associated with AFCC, but that’s because there is so much thought leading going on about this at AFCC. So again, I’ll put in my show notes a link to the AFCC national site and the local Colorado, one in Texas one. But I think all the people of the 10 or whatever, they’re all on that list. It doesn’t mean I would go with anybody on the list, but all 10 of them are on there, and so that’s maybe a good practice tip for parents, at least, to say, Hey, I went to the AFCC list, and I found these people. What do you think about them? Ask your attorney, ask around, and then what else should they be asking? What else should parents do to vet this? You mentioned
Christy Bradshaw Schmidt 19:36
cles. I’m gonna back up just a second. If you go to the AFCC, it’s AFCC net.org, website, even if you’re not a member, you can get to their practice guidelines. There are guidelines for therapists who work with court involved families, so you can go on and read what they’re supposed to do if they’re treating your child, what they’re supposed to do if they’re treating you. So you kind of know the lingo, and you kind of understand what’s best practice, so you know what you’re looking for. But. Gonna go Google them? Yeah, you’re looking Are you having training in trauma? Have you had training in course of control and intimate partner violence? Have you had training in working with court involved families? Have you had training in mental health issues in court involved families? That’s kind of the stuff you’re looking for. And if you look at their website, do they have a list of 30 things that they’re experts in? Nobody can be an expert in 30 things. But if there’s nothing on their webpage that says court involved, that’s a red flag for me, because I see a lot of therapists will raise their hand and say, I work with these families, and when I go to their website, there’s not a word about it. So if this is something you’re doing and doing regularly, I don’t say you’re marketing to that. I hate to say that, but you’re at least educating people that this is an arena that you’re trained in and that you’re qualified to work within.
Krista Nash 20:43
What’s the risk of picking somebody? I get this a lot like, Oh, I found somebody that I’ll take, especially with wait lists and the few number of people doing this. I mean, it’s really hard to hit them at the right time to take these cases, and there’s so many more than they can actually take. And so people will just get desperate and they’re like, Well, I found this other person, or my friend told me this, or I saw this on a Facebook page, or whatever, is this person? Okay? If we don’t see this, you know, every once in a while, it’s like finding a diamond in a pile, right? It’s like, oh, this person’s actually pretty good, you know, I take it back. This person really does have the right, you know, she might need some mentoring, or I might need some mentoring, but she’s got kind of the right approach to this. What’s the risk of going to somebody who says they are court involved, or doesn’t even say they’re court involved? You know, what’s the opportunity cost there of going to somebody who isn’t going to actually have that correct background? There’s
Christy Bradshaw Schmidt 21:33
potential for harm to your family and to your child? That sounds pretty extreme, but that’s just what it is. Because if you’re going in and you’re taking your child to a therapist if they think it’s okay just to talk to you and not include the other parent. That’s a red flag, because when that individual gets on the witness stand and they’ve heard one side of the story and they’ve believed one side of the story 100% that is ripe for cross examination, because they’re not considering that, they’re, you know, a child’s life, it’s a puzzle, right? And that child is half mom, half dad, half Mom, mom, half Dad, Dad. However, their family structure is set up, and if you leave one part of that out, that’s a big gaping hole in your assessment of that child or that family. And so part of it is you’ve got to have somebody who’s not going to believe this. Sounds horrible, not going to believe everything their client tells you. And you know, so if you’re the parent, they’re not going to believe everything they tell you. It doesn’t mean that you’re not a trustworthy person. Trustworthy person who’s talking to them, but they really need to go, Okay, so that’s your because there’s always two sides to every story. So that’s your side of the story. They’ve just gotta wonder, what’s the other side of the story? And what’s this child telling me, if they’re treating the child, you know, and is what the child telling me true? Or they experience of the world kind of taining what they’re seeing, because their life experience is so limited at that point, you want people who are really able to think and consider outside of just what they’re hearing in their office, what else might be going on. And you really want therapists who aren’t focusing on telling you that your ex is a narcissist or your ex is a borderline, if you’re an individual therapy as a parent, you want somebody who’s going, Okay, so let’s say that’s what’s going on. How do I help you deal with that? Because at the end of the day, we can’t control what our CO parent is doing. We can’t control what our CO parent is doing with our child. We can control what we do in response to that, and you need therapists who are helping you or your child learn the coping skills to manage their life and their circumstances. That’s both parenting in a single parent home after a separation or divorce, co parenting a child after a separation or divorce, or just helping a child learn to manage that transition between two homes and having two houses. It’s all about coping skill development. It’s not about blame. And if you’ve got a therapist who wants to take up their torch for you and go to court and advocate for you. That’s a red flag, because that’s not their job. Their job is to help you cope with what’s going on, and if they have to go to court, it’s educate the court
Krista Nash 23:48
on what’s going on. So we get therapists that have been around a while, too, with a kid, right? And the kid’s been seeing this therapist for quite sometimes, sometimes they’re seeing more than just the kid, they might be seeing mom and the kid, right? That’s a whole nother issue. But how do therapists think through the issue of this is my client. My job is to, I hear this a lot. My job is to believe my client and to meet my client, where that client is, and that’s my only job. And
Christy Bradshaw Schmidt 24:15
I don’t think that’s what therapy is. That’s not how I was trained as a therapist. Certainly, there are different types of therapy, and we all have different, you know, fields of or theories of study that we utilize. I’m eclectic. I, like a whole bunch of them, working with families, but if it’s just I go in and believe what they say, and work, I don’t disagree. You have to meet them where they are, because you do. You’ve got to meet them where they are. You got to establish rapport. But therapy is not about coming in and get to be the you know, I get to go in and gripe every week for an hour, and then I feel better. I have a therapist I work with here, doctor Victoria Harvey, who’s like, you got five minutes to complain, and then we’re getting busy, because the goal is not to let’s get into therapy. Let’s resolve whatever’s going on. Let’s learn some coping skills. Come back and see me when you need me. It’s not this ongoing. You’re going to come see me for the. Rest of your life, especially with children, because if you get children into a situation that goes badly or in a situation that they have a bad experience, they may never reach out and do therapy again as an adult. Yeah, that’s a huge risk for children, especially those who really struggle with significant mental health issues or substance abuse issues that they no longer trust the therapeutic system. So we really want their especially if it’s their first involvement in therapy, to be really positive and something where they learn something and they’re not there forever. No child wants to get pulled out of school for the next 18 years, or however many years until they turn 18 and go to therapy if they’re feeling better and they’re doing well, some kids need that, but not all of them do. So let’s say
Krista Nash 25:38
we’ve got a parent. This is a very common now, you know, you get this with child custody evaluations too, but I frequently am put on cases where we have parent child contact problems. Is what we’re calling it. Now, resist, refuse dynamics. There’s a lot of different labels in that. Kind of keep morphing, right? I think right now it’s parent child contact problems and you’ve got a parent, I think, let’s just say hypothetically, because this is a very, very common you’ve got a parent who genuinely believes, for either valid or not valid or a mixture of reasons, that the child is better off without the other parent. You’ve got a child choosing the one parent. Sometimes we have domestic violence. I don’t know if that even needs to be part of this, because that’s a different it’s really different analysis. But let’s just say there isn’t okay for this hypothetical and the preferred parent is not genuinely does not want this to succeed, right? Genuinely does not believe that the child should be making this better with the other parent. How do you explain, either in your custody evaluations or in your work with parents that first of all, what’s your perception that the child you know, does the child need both, and what’s the risk if the child doesn’t have both? And how do you help that preferred parent understand that the child’s adopting that parent’s view isn’t healthy. That’s a constant problem I have is trying to get parents to understand I’m not actually helping my child by rubber stamping these choices. Right? Now, right? How do you navigate that? It’s a big question. Well, certainly,
Christy Bradshaw Schmidt 27:08
where I practice from a legal perspective, children have a right to have relationship with both their parents unless there’s an absolute reason not to. So that’s first and foremost. So it’s part of it is a little reality testing, right? The courts going to order likely that your child’s going to see both their parents, and so we’ve got to help your child have the skill to do that. If there’s been estrangement for valid reasons, because there’s been substance abuse or mental health issues that have been scary or whatever, then we want the offending parent to get effective treatment. We want the child to get treatment, family therapy. Ideally, if the whole family can get treatment, and that sometimes can help the preferred parent who’s fearful kind of put their guard down and find some trust in that. But if we’ve got somebody who just has that belief that may not be based in, you know, realistic circumstances in their family system, especially when I’m doing consulting behind the scenes and parent coaching behind the scenes, it’s real, honest conversations, you’ve got to get into therapy, because I don’t know where this perception is coming from, but this is going to harm your child, and it’s going to harm you if you get if your child gets to adulthood and has no relationship with their other parent, or doesn’t know how to navigate even a potentially less than healthy relationship with the other parent, they’re going out into the world seeking a mate, potentially without the skills To know how to do that right? And children will pick somebody similar to that, or pick somebody the opposite of that. And the goal in parenting children, obviously, is to get them to adulthood successfully, where they have the skills to be independent and self sufficient and know how to navigate relationships. That’s friendships, that’s intimate relationships, that’s, you know, relationships with bosses and teachers and whoever they come in contact with in a way that’s healthy, where they can communicate assertively, where they have healthy boundaries, where they know how to stand up for themselves, where they know how to be kind in circumstances, while doing all of those things that are hard. And it’s your job as a parent to help them get those skills before they’re 18, and if their other parent is, let’s say, for hypothetical purposes, they are a problem not allowing your child to get the coping skills to learn how to navigate that relationship sends them to adulthood with no skills, versus when they’re in your home and you’re parenting, you have the ability to teach them those skills, or get them into therapy where they learn those skills, so when they get to adulthood, I think every parent wants their child to be a healthy, happy, functioning adult, and if that’s not the case, that’s a whole nother set of concerns to look at, right? So that is your question. Yeah,
Krista Nash 29:29
it does. It’s just hard. I just think I hear a lot from therapists and other mental health professionals that the linchpin role of these relationships is usually the preferred parent, absolutely. And so people like, Why do I have to go to therapy? I don’t want to go to therapy. I don’t want to do family systems therapy. It’s not my fault that the dad’s a jerk and the kid doesn’t like the dad, or the mom’s a jerk, or a kid doesn’t like the mom, or whatever the situation is. It’s not my thing. Why should I have to do for it? Why should I have to pay for it? Why should I have to be involved at all? And it takes a while, I think. We start getting some ground when we get that preferred parent to understand the critical role that he or she is in. They’re
Christy Bradshaw Schmidt 30:07
part of the system. If we leave them out, change is significantly harder to achieve, and at the end of the day, they’re a big piece of that puzzle. And nobody’s perfect, yeah, I don’t care if you live in a little sweet, intact family with your white picket fence. No, parent’s perfect. And so we offer things we can do differently, especially in these situations. If you were giving
Krista Nash 30:27
people guidance on how to look for therapists in this situation, would you be suggesting generally that we need what I would call family systems work. And what does that mean? Does that mean? If so, what does that mean? Is it just as good to have a child have a therapist who both parents are able to talk to and work with, or is it better to have, you know, a multi therapist group practice where each person has their own or one therapist working with everyone? How does that generally work? I know a lot of this involves ethics rules, because therapists are usually state by state, and unless they’re on unless there’s a few exceptions, they have to work within their state. But what are the ethics of that? And what should parents be looking for? Ideally? I mean ideal
Christy Bradshaw Schmidt 31:07
world, if the money’s there and that’s always the problem, right? Or do these families have the money to pay for it? Ideally, especially if you have parent child contact problems and there’s resistance or refusal in a parent child relationship, ideally, you have a family therapist, and each member of that family has a therapist. Sometimes you even have a parenting coordinator, and the goal is they’re all talking regularly, not all doing what we call siloed work. In their own little world. There needs to be communication. You need to sometimes the head of that team is your family therapist. Sometimes the head of that team is your parenting coordinator. Just depends. But that’s perfect world. And I don’t think any of us really live in a perfect world. I think from there, it really depends on the facts of your case. If you have a child who’s really struggling and has significant either mental health issues or coping skills issues, or they’re just really struggling to function, that’s that’s your go to, that’s your first therapist is to get somebody to help that child who is going to include both parents equally, and if they’re not going to include them. Equally, there’s transparency as to why. Everybody knows, hey, I’m bringing mom in because that there was an issue at mom’s house about some discipline thing this weekend. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes, or vice versa issue at the other parent’s home. So the Transparency is key, and that doesn’t mean we’re outing everything the kids telling us. It just means, if I’m meeting with one parent more than the other, they know why. It’s not a secret. I’m not doing it behind somebody’s back to cause people to wonder if somebody’s gotten in cahoots with somebody else. There’s a lot of distrust when people separate and are getting divorced, and that adds to that. And then if you’ve got a parent who’s got a mental health issue or substance abuse issue or bad behavior, then that’s the person who needs the therapist, and maybe it’s one parent has a therapist and one kiddo, and then that one parent’s involved in the child’s that other parents involved in that child’s therapy. It really is case by case, you just kind of got to triage your case and meet the needs that where’s the most bleeding. I hate to say it that way, but that’s what you’re looking for. And where do I start there, and then work my way out to who else needs help, but ideal? Yes, there are ethical goals. A therapist cannot treat two people because who’s your client, right? A family therapist, the family’s the client, right? Texas is big. Colorado is too. You get in some of those smaller rural communities, there’s nobody out there, and they’re doing the best they can. And the key for those therapists is, I’m like number one, thank you for doing the work you’re doing, right? But at the end of the day, be transparent. Don’t let any you know. Your overarching process does not need to be a secret when you’re meeting with, whom you’re meeting, and why you’re doing it, and your treatment plan needs to be something that everybody knows. That’s not saying. We’re just saying every word that’s coming out of everybody’s mouth in a session. That’s not what therapy is. But people don’t need to wonder what you’re doing. And if you’ve got people who are willing to be transparent and going to meet with both people. Those are the kind of therapists you’re really looking for for your children when you’re out there, kind of on your own, doing the research. You don’t want somebody who’s like, No, I’m happy to start without the other person. No, they don’t have to sign my informed consent. Even if you have all the rights to take them to therapy, they should still be getting the paperwork from the other parent. Because, again, that child is a part of both of those parents, potentially living in both of those homes.
Krista Nash 34:04
So even if that feels good to a parent like, Yay, I have all the power, all the control. I’m the favorite parent. This is great. I’m going to go control all this. I’m going to pick the therapist. I’m going to take the kid that I love, that the therapist couldn’t care less, to talk to the other parent. That should be a pretty massive red flag.
Christy Bradshaw Schmidt 34:21
That is a red flag. Yeah, that is a red flag because, I mean, at the end of the day, if I’m going to treat a child or anybody in the family system, but especially a child who has two parents and goes between two homes, I need to know what’s going on in both houses. I need to know who both these people are. It’s going to help me better, help your child and do so more efficiently as well.
Krista Nash 34:38
I’m looking to a document you provided to me that I’m going to just kind of run through with you as well. Through with you as well, because you have a lot of good tips on there, of things that parents can do to find. So another one that we’ve can add is that to check that the person is licensed and that their license is in good standing, I can provide the link on that on my show notes, but it’s basically there’s a online search to verify. Buy a license, really, in any state, like through Colorado, so Dora, there’s a Texas one through the Texas behavioral health Executive Council, every state is going to have ability for you to check a license. By the way, you can do that with doctors and attorneys too. So that’s something you might want to look when you’re hiring, really, or choosing kind of any professional. But that would be the first step, right? And then you said, Ask the professional you’re considering to provide you a copy of their CV, which is the Latin term for your their resume, basically. And then that way they can determine the employment history to be able to see it. Should say something about court involved families, right? Your third one is ensuring that the mental health professional is willing to testify and be involved with a family in active litigation, and so let’s pause on that one a little bit. Certainly make any comments you want to about the CV or the licensing, I think we should pause about this thing, about testifying, because so many therapists won’t testify. Okay, not just don’t want to. They say they won’t. Now, lawyers can always issue subpoenas, but if you drag somebody kicking and screaming into court, they’re not very helpful anyway. So even if with a subpoena, they’ll do it if they really are against it and don’t think that it, if they’re too scared of it or they haven’t navigated how they’re going to do this, I think they’re the wrong fit, right. Also, if you invest interest attorney or child custody evaluator on board, absolutely they need to be able to talk to these people, and if they won’t, they’re not a good fit. Like you can just tell