By REBEKAH DEVLIN
How would you feel if someone you love sat beside you, telling a stranger everything you had done wrong this week? All the areas you struggled with. Times you’d said unkind things. Been impulsive. Vindictive. Totally overwhelmed. Fearful. How you’d struggled to walk up some stairs, been clumsy and dropped something. Talked about other people’s reactions to you. How you struggle socially. Your anxiety. Even your bowel movements?
The person you love and trust… telling all this to someone you barely know.
It would be devastating.
A total betrayal of trust.
Yet every week, we do just that with our children’s therapists.
We are expected to chat over all of those things and more, while our child is given a few toys to play with, as though that magically blocks out our conversation from permeating their brains.
Is it just me, or does the whole way we do therapy need to change?
Sessions should start with a 10-minute parent chat, with the child not in the room, so we can talk honestly about behaviours, what’s working, what’s not. Without their little ears hearing every single comment.
We used to have a psych, who would do just this, she’d invite us parents in, while the child stayed in the waiting room. But hilariously, the receptionist seemed to have a genuine disdain for children and would roll her eyes every time she was left alone with the kids (despite the toys and colouring in stuff to help occupy them!). It clearly wasn’t the job for her. I probably took too much enjoyment in her displeasure, if I’m being honest.
If the child is not able to be left unaccompanied in the waiting room, what about a phone call instead? Or zoom?
What if we used this covid-changed new world to totally revolutionise the system and do a midweek 15-minute parent phone catch-up instead? Daytime sessions are the hardest to fill for therapists anyway, they could spend an hour or two calling or zooming parents at a designated time, taking notes, so that when the in-person session happens, it’s all about the kid. They can focus fully on them and what they need, rather than having that awkward half-chat, half-activity, that doesn’t leave the child or parent feeling like they’ve had their undivided attention. No more speaking in code, or being constantly interrupted.
It also gives an additional opportunity to chat more often, if something urgent comes up that needs to be addressed between physical sessions.
I’d happily shorten my in-person session to 30-minutes if it meant I got 15 minutes uninterrupted over the phone mid-week. It wouldn’t mean seeing less clients, just doing it slightly differently.
I’m also of the firm belief that the first appointment with any therapist or doctor should be done without the child present – at least for a large portion of the appointment. If you want me to spend 45 minutes or an hour detailing every aspect of my child’s disability and struggles, that is definitely not something that should be done with them in the room. We haven’t talked to our kids yet about their autism diagnosis. We plan to do it when they are ready… not because they have overheard a word in a meeting, or because they’ve had their “deficits” catalogued in front of them.
I want them to hear me talking about all their strengths, their talents, their kindness and their love for life, not what society deems as “deficits”.
They already have to deal with so much judgment, misunderstanding, and cruelty in this world, they should not have their parents’ words added to that.
We all remember unkind words spoken to us when we were little. They are seared into our memories.
Why then are we so willing to embrace the status quo of the therapy model?
It’s time for a rethink.
Because if the doctors’ Hippocratic Oath is “first, do no harm”… we probably need to stop therapy requiring more therapy down the track for our kids.
