Therapy with a child once a week needs to be complemented by parents using the same attachment-based language and strategies at home. After all, the therapist only sees your child for approximately one hour a week. The other 167 hours matter, too!
Parents are the experts on their children. You know their history, triggers, strengths, personalities, and what is happening in their everyday lives. A successful therapeutic relationship should include collaboration between the therapist and parents.
Regular parent-only sessions serve several important purposes:
- Consistency in attachment language: Children benefit when the same therapeutic language and relational approaches are reinforced at home.
- Real-time problem-solving: Parents can bring current challenges from home, allowing the therapist to help identify what the child may be communicating through their behavior and how to respond to the underlying attachment need.
- Recognizing progress: Reviewing strengths, concerns, and developmental changes helps everyone stay on the same page and adjust treatment as needed.
- Building parenting skills: These sessions provide practical tools that parents can immediately apply at home, rather than simply discussing what happened during the child’s therapy hour.
- Strengthening the therapeutic process: When parents are actively involved, the skills developed in therapy have more opportunities to carry over into everyday life.
- When working with divorced parents: We always ensure we do ½ hr. with one parent and ½ hr. with the other. The parents are not seen together because they live in 2 separate homes where different approaches may need to happen. We have also noticed parents open up a bit more when they are not with their ex-spouse.
- Recommendations: We always recommend podcasts, trainings, or books during these sessions. We base the recommendations on how the parent learns to ensure we are partnering with them using something they will be able to comprehend.
- Insurance-based clinicians: Seek consultation to explore how you can incorporate these sessions into your practice. You may consider offering them at a reduced, out-of-pocket rate as psychoeducational parent sessions. Another option may be to establish a separate chart for the parent, provided there is a clinically appropriate diagnosis, medical necessity, and corresponding billing code that supports insurance reimbursement. Be sure to consult with an experienced billing specialist and ensure the arrangement complies with insurance requirements and ethical documentation standards.
Without parent involvement, therapy can become a process where the child is doing all the work during one isolated hour each week, with limited opportunities to reinforce those changes in their everyday environment. This can slow progress and leave parents feeling unsure about how to support their child.
And honestly, don’t you want support when raising a little human? They certainly don’t come with instruction manuals!
A word about how parent involvement should look:
If you’re seeing a child therapist who rarely or never meets with you separately, it’s reasonable to ask how parent collaboration is incorporated into the treatment plan. What changes are you seeing in your child? How are you being supported in reinforcing those changes at home?
Also, consider whether the therapist is consistently using the child’s waiting time for a quick 5–10-minute parent update immediately before the child’s session. Regularly placing the child in the waiting room while parents discuss concerns can also affect the child’s sense of privacy, trust, and security in the therapeutic relationship.
An experienced child therapist understands that parent involvement is a process. Initially, this may mean regularly scheduled parent-only sessions to establish rapport, gather history, identify patterns, and develop strategies. As the child becomes ready, parents can gradually be incorporated into sessions if the child agrees. We have had instances where the child doesn’t agree to their parent attending a session with them, and we honor that request. In these situations, we will continue the parent sessions as is without the child present.
Remember: We aren’t just treating the child in isolation. We’re supporting the relationships and environment that help the child thrive.