Ethics Consult: Child Custody and Parental Visitation

Dear Ethics Consult, If my nine year-old minor client who is a child of divorce does not want to visit their other custodial parent as required by the court-approved visitation plan (possibly because he or she doesn’t like the other parent’s new partner), how do I support the child?”

Sincerely,

Child Psychologist

How to Help Children of Divorce Cope With Parental Visitation Decisions

Dear Child Psychologist,

Working with children of divorce is challenging and impactful work. Psychologists and therapists who counsel children and adolescents must familiarize themselves with relevant state laws in addition to ethical and professional considerations that may pertain to minors involved in divorce and child custody cases.

Unfortunately (and understandably), many therapists shy away from this type of therapeutic work counseling children and adolescents due to the potential for licensing board complaints and court involvement. 

Consequently, I thank you for your counseling work with this child client with divorced parents. I also commend you for asking this thoughtful question. 

Let’s dive into the essential aspects for you to consider.

4 Guidelines for Counseling Children of Divorce

Here are some guidelines that may assist in ethically supporting your client who is a child of divorce.

1. Be Clear on Your Role

The fact that you ask how you can best support your client indicates you are already clear on your role, which is to support your client’s adjustment to the family circumstances and facilitate the emotional wellbeing of the child during this transition. 

Well-intentioned child counselors and therapists may sometimes stray from their role as a treating therapist and become intertwined in the forensic issues, such as determining the best interests of the child or appropriateness of the current parenting plan. 

As a treating therapist, you should never allow yourself to get sidetracked with those forensic issues, which are best determined through a forensic evaluation by a court-appointed professional who does not have a treatment relationship with the client. 

Bottomline: Your role is to facilitate your client’s emotional wellbeing by supporting your child client during this period of family transition. 

Most licensing board complaints and other legal and ethical pitfalls arise when therapists overstep this boundary by moving from the role of clinically-focused, treating therapist or child counselor into a forensic therapist role by making conclusions or recommendations. 

2. Validate and Normalize the Challenges

Within your clinical role as a treating therapist to an adolescent or minor child of divorce, you may begin by validating and normalizing the challenges of having two homes–especially if this is a new arrangement for the child either in transitioning between homes or adjusting to the new family dynamics of a blended family. 

Coping with these circumstances for children of divorce can be particularly difficult. 

The challenges can be normalized in two ways. 

First, support and normalize your adolescent client’s emotional response to the transition of their parents’ divorce and the transition to having two separate homes. 

Second, explain to the parents the specific challenges and emotional responses to expect during the transition. This may help the parents to anticipate the child client’s anxieties and frustrations, so they may be more prepared to respond in a supportive manner. 

In normalizing your client’s emotional response, be aware that many children and adolescents in divorced and blended families struggle with not feeling heard or feeling as though they have no control over their circumstances. 

As the child’s therapist, you can normalize these emotions while also helping your client practice effective communication skills. 

That said, the clinical focus on communication should be balanced with acceptance of parental decisions. 

Sometimes children in counseling may appropriately express their concerns and wishes, but even after being heard by their parents, the ultimate decision is not aligned with the child’s wishes or desired outcome. 

In these situations, it may be clinically appropriate to explore the distinction (from the child’s perspective) between offering input and feedback versus making adult decisions and accepting responsibility for the consequences of these decisions. 

Children and adolescents in counseling may take comfort in not having to make difficult adult decisions, and this is true in many areas of life. For example, children (whether their parents are married or divorced) typically do not determine which school they attend. However, even though the child is not yet of an age to make these types of decisions independently, you can assist the child with clearly formulating and communicating with their parents regarding concerns or perceived advantages of specific educational options. 

You may want to explain this to a child client in terms of it being important for parents to know and understand the child’s concerns and how different decisions will impact the child. But, ultimately, parenting decisions are hard decisions that children don’t have to make or be responsible for. 

3. Consider Family Therapy Along With Individual Therapy

Family therapy may also be helpful to your client and may be conducted concurrently with your individual work with the child. 

Ideally, in divorce and custody matters, it’s a good idea to refer out and collaborate with another therapist to handle the family therapy sessions. 

This may help prevent ethical predicaments where the wishes of the child and one particular parent become adverse to one another, such as when the child wants to stop visitation with one parent completely or expresses a preference to the court (now or later) that goes against that parent’s desire. 

With a separate therapist conducting the family therapy you can remain aligned with emotionally supporting the child who is your client. And you can focus on the child’s adjustment to situational circumstances, while the family therapist can focus on interpersonal relationships within the family. 

This strategy allows your child client to utilize the therapeutic relationship with you as a safe space to process their anxieties and experiences with the family systems and family transition. 

Another benefit of relying on a separate therapist to guide the family therapy sessions is that it allows the family therapist to focus on the interpersonal aspects of the new blended family situation and maintain and establish appropriate boundaries within the family system for that work.

4. Be Mindful of the Potential for Court-Involvement

It’s also important to acknowledge that even if your minor child or adolescent client is not currently court-involved, cases of a child of divorce expressing resistance to contact with one parent have a significantly increased likelihood of becoming court-involved cases. 

Be sure to maintain appropriate boundaries, practice only within your scope of competence, and ensure proper record keeping and documentation. 

Of course, these guidelines are a hallmark of good ethical and clinical practice in general. However, they become even more important in cases with court involved clients. 

And, though it likely goes without saying, be sure you are familiar with your state’s mandated child abuse reporting laws, engage in clinical consultation – when appropriate – and seek legal consultation when needed. 

Another resource that may be helpful is the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC). AFCC is an international, interdisciplinary organization with the goal of educating professionals who work with children and families in divorce to provide the best possible services and outcomes. AFCC has Guidelines for Court-Involved Therapy that inform best practices for working with court-involved clients. 

Best wishes,
Sincerely,

Brandi Matthews, LMFT, JD

How to submit your questions to Ethics Consult.

 

 

READ NEXT: What’s a Clinician’s Responsibility When a Client Refuses Life-Saving Care?