Guide For Divorcing Parents: How To Really Mess Up Your Child’s Life
Howard Drutman, Ph.D. & Marsha Schechtman, LCSW
Atlanta Behavioral Consultants
www.TheAtlantaBC.com 678.444.4566
(The Family Lawyer, Atlanta Bar Association, February 2012)
(Many of your legal clients have failed to screw up their children’s lives. This article should help those divorcing parents create long-term psychological damage that will affect their children – perhaps for the rest of their lives. What a legacy to provide to those you love the most. Allow us to put tongue in cheek)
To be successful at screwing up your children, please follow the recommendations below. With patience, you too, can learn to excel at damaging your children’s mental state for the rest of their lives. What an amazing feeling of power you will have over your children and your spouse.
The most important skill to practice is conflict, both pre and post-divorce. Make sure your children see your conflict with your spouse. Do not hesitate to let it all out and show your children that you are mad as hell and you are not going to take it anymore. Make it loud and don’t hesitate to make it physical. Be sure to teach your kids to stand up to their other parent. When your child starts to act like your spouse, be sure to remind them that they are acting just like the parent that you despise. If you are angry, (and why shouldn’t you be after what your spouse did to you?), be sure to vocalize it so the children hear it in graphic detail. Why deal with your anger in a therapist’s office when you can share it with your children for free? After all, your kids need to learn the truth as soon as possible. It will also teach them listening skills.
Litigation is a great way to get back at your ex-spouse. Litigate as often as allowed. Be sure to file lots of contempt actions interspersed with a few modification actions. Filing for a restraining order is a great way to mix it up. Relocating is also a great way to show your ex who’s the boss. Moving a lot keeps everyone on their toes and does not foster that stability and predictability that only weak children need. If you start to doubt yourself, repeat the mantra: “children are resilient”.
When life gets too full for the hassles of daily childcare be sure to abandon or reject your children. Do not worry about cancelling visits at the last minute. It builds character and helps the kids learn not to trust anyone in the future. It is never too early to teach kids that people will let them down.
Make sure your teenager knows you need them… really need them. Make sure they feel guilty about going out into the world and separating from the family. If you can undermine their confidence, it will help. When the children are with you for parenting time, make sure they are held prisoner. Don’t let them spend your valuable time with their friends or on activities that they were signed up for previously. When they ask to sleep over at a friend’s house, be sure to let them know that they don’t appreciate all of the things you do and how little time you have to be together.
If you enjoy unwinding with a few drinks in the evening, be sure to not limit yourself. You like your drink and of course, you can stop whenever you want. Alcohol doesn’t impair you since you know how to drink. Adding other drugs like pain medicine or cocaine can really help blot out the pain and help you deal with the strains of parenthood. It is never too late to have your children join you for a beer. It’s a great way to bond. In addition, kids just love taking care of an intoxicated parent. It’s like play-time where they act like the parent and you the child.
Be sure to do all you can to block access to your children’s other parent. Make sure to rigidly enforce your parenting schedule and never ever allow the other parent to have one minute of time that is not in the order. Orders were meant not to be broken. You are just trying to follow the judge’s order.
Be sure to overly praise and reward your children. Give them special privileges they do not deserve. Act as if they are your best friend. Do not forget to bad mouth the other parent as often as you can. This will ensure that you are the favored parent.
Do not waste your time trying to understand your child’s developmental stages – leave that to the experts. Treat your children at the developmental level you desire them to be. Don’t coddle the kids. Be sure to tell your children the “truth” about their other parent. While you are at it, be sure to tell young children that Santa Claus does not exist and the Easter Bunny was created by candy companies to sell more candy. You don’t want those children of yours believing things that are not true.
If you have to have a child custody evaluation or guardian investigation, do not ever tell the truth. Have some fun with the examiners and see how much you can pull the wool over their eyes. Be sure to tell your children to say really bad things about their other parent to the examiner. Don’t forget to remind them to say that you are perfect and they don’t want you to change anything. You don’t want to risk the children saying anything positive about your ex (or negative about you) when it’s so easy to contaminate their memory and manipulate what they say. Remember, you are doing it for their best interest. If you have a teenager, be sure to offer them a car if you “win” custody. Do this just before they meet with the examiner. If your child is smart, they will know just what to say to the evaluator.
You know you have the best judgment. If you feel your new boyfriend or girlfriend of two weeks is your soul mate, it is important for the children get to know them. Nothing is better than having your new partner stay overnight to allow the kids to get to know your significant other. Having your new partner discipline the children is great for bonding.
As you can see, it is easy to give your child a lifetime of memories.
Burnout: Lawyers Get It Too
Howard Drutman, Ph.D. & Marsha Schechtman, LCSW
Atlanta Behavioral Consultants
(The Family Lawyer, Atlanta Bar Association, January 2012)
When was the last time you put yourself in your clients’ shoes? Have you ever imagined what it would be like not to see your children every day? Imagine the change that would take place in your relationship with your children. Empathy allows you to wonder about how your clients feel.
Day in and day out you work with people playing out real life human dramas, often sad and tragic. Attorneys who understand their clients’ emotional pain and communicate their understanding in addition to the legal issues, are lawyers who have mastered the art of being counselors at law. These counselors at law not only know the law and its application to a particular case, but they know how to understand the emotional world of the client. Empathy is a skill, as important as an understanding of the law. Anything that impairs your ability to understand your client emotionally also limits your ability to be the best attorney.
Those of us who work in the family law arena hear disturbing stories that often harden us. We get frustrated with our clients. We can often understand why the other spouse is divorcing our client. We can easily begin to see our clients as mere objects whom we shuffle through the divorce process. We feel satisfied when the bill is paid and the final settlement agreement is signed. We find ourselves avoiding emails and phone calls from the clients or having associates respond to their calls. As we see our clients less and less as human, our frustration builds and we show signs of occupational burnout.
Occupational burnout is real. Although not a formal diagnosis in the DSM-IV, it is a condition where in the stresses of work affect the emotional and physical condition of the worker. Those who experience burnout often first experience a decrease in job satisfaction and an increase in cynicism. We find ourselves thinking more about why we chose the profession we did and second guess why we did not choose a different career path. Our humor grows darker and often includes disparaging comments or jokes about the clients or colleagues. Each day it becomes harder to get going and we spend more time playing solitaire or searching eBay on our computers. It takes us longer to respond to clients’ emails or drafting necessary documents. Our friends and family may make comments about our sour disposition. When we go home we may eat too much, drink too much, or sleep too much. When the burnout gets worse, we may also begin to experience unexplained headaches, body aches and pains, and a sense of not being physically at our best. If left unchecked, this burnout can develop into depression and anxiety, reaching diagnostic levels.
Feeling out of control is often a predominant emotion of those who have become diagnostically depressed and anxious. Professionals in a state of burnout often describe themselves as feeling as if they are “on a treadmill” or “on a merry-go-round” and they cannot get off. This feeling of little or no control fuels the sense of helplessness and despair.
Fortunately, there are simple things you can do to decrease burnout. First, you need to recognize that you are experiencing burnout. It is important to take an honest appraisal of yourself -looking at your attitudes about your value, your work, your clients, and your colleagues. Speaking with a few trusted friends and family members will also shed some light on their view of your behavior and attitudes. This may help you see things of which you were not aware. Most well meaning professionals will develop some symptoms of burnout at some point in their career. Talk with your mentors about how you feel. If the feelings have worsened to the point of despair it is time to seek professional assistance. Meeting, even briefly, with a mental health professional will offer you a confidential zone to explore all of your feelings about yourself and your relationship to what you do. The mental health provider may even refer you for some medication if they feel it would help provide a life-jacket while you are treading water trying to figure out what to do with your life. In counseling, you can explore all of your thoughts, feelings, and expectations. Family and friends often have an agenda for you or a personal need for you to feel better but a psychotherapist can help you clarify how you think since they do not need you to be a certain way to make their life easier. Short-term psychotherapy can help you re-engaged in your professional life.
As you start the new year, try and address any symptoms of burnout. It will help make 2012 the best year yet.
Happy New Year!
What is a Learning Disability?
Howard Drutman, Ph.D. & Marsha Schechtman, LCSW
Atlanta Behavioral Consultants
(The Family Lawyer, Atlanta Bar Association, December 2011)
Family attorneys often ask us what accommodations are required for a child with a learning disability. In many ways that is like asking, “What accommodations does a child with a broken bone need?” Clearly, if the child has a broken hand, he/she will need different accommodations than a child with a broken leg.
Learning disabilities come in many forms and are a result of impairments in the brain’s sensory input, storage, retrieval or motor output. Those disorders are physiological in origin and affect the individual’s ability to learn, retain, retrieve, and communicate information. The category of learning disabilities is quite broad. Learning disabilities are divided into categories based on which sensory or motor area is affected, as well as if the individual with the problem has impairment in their ability to receive, process, or transmit information. According to the DSM-IV, a learning disability is defined by significant underachievement (below expected developmental level or intelligence) in reading, mathematics, and written expression. Learning disabilities are also defined as impairments in sensory (auditory, visual, & speech), perception, processing, retrieval and expression.
Some of the major learning disabilities included in the APA Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-4th Edition (DSM-IV) include Reading Disorder (commonly referred to as dyslexia), Mathematics Disorder, Disorder of Written Expression, and Learning Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (a catchall category for other types of learning problems). The DSM-IV places disorders, which involve speech, in a separate category, “Communication Disorders.” Those communication disorders include Expressive Language Disorder, Mixed Receptive-Expressive Language Disorder, Phonological Disorder, Stuttering, and Communication Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. Attention Deficit Disorders, although they can affect learning, are in a separate category from learning disabilities.
Children with Reading, Math and Expressive Language disorders often benefit from early intervention. Tutors, special education, and, in some cases, special schools help the child understand their processing difficulties and teach compensatory strategies to overcome their deficits. For reading disorders, programs that include techniques, such as the Orton-Gillingham multi-sensory approach, can be quite helpful in assisting a child to grasp the phonetic components of reading and significantly improve his/her reading rate and comprehension. There are also similar programs to assist children with math and written expression.
The school psychologist or a clinical psychologist should evaluate a child with suspected learning disorders. The assessment will evaluate the child’s intellectual ability and academic achievement. Other tests can assess information processing, such as memory and attention. In addition, the evaluation can rule out other disorders, such as depression and anxiety, which can negatively affect learning. After the psychoeducational testing, a child will often benefit from an evaluation by a speech and language pathologist (often referred to as a speech therapist). Every public school has a speech therapist. A child requiring speech therapy is entitled to therapeutic service from the speech therapist, even if the child is too young to attend the local public school.
Regardless of the specific learning disability, the treatment usually involves a multidisciplinary approach. It is very important that any treating therapist, be they psychotherapists, speech therapists, occupational therapist, physical therapists, tutors, etc., communicate with each other and the child’s teacher.
There is no “one size fits all” when it comes to accommodations for learning disabilities. The important point is to accurately diagnose the problem and design a treatment program custom fit to the specifics of the particular child. Two children can have difficulty reading for very different reasons. Treating them the same way may be helpful to one and very ineffective to the other.
In future articles we will address the various steps that are necessary to have a child classified as having a learning disability at school. We will also explain the various procedures that most public school use to monitor children with learning disabilities.
What Do Mental Health Professionals Need from Family Attorneys?
Howard Drutman, Ph.D. & Marsha Schechtman, LCSW
Atlanta Behavioral Consultants
www.TheAtlantaBC.com 678.444.4566
(The Family Lawyer, Atlanta Bar Association, November 2011)
Mental health professionals walk a very tight ethical rope in dealing with clients who are divorcing or going through divorce related litigation. Because of the potential ethical dilemmas, mental health providers need attorneys to understand these binds, respect them, and do everything they can not to blur them. Without question, the number one request that mental health professionals have for family attorneys is to provide clear direction of the role and scope of their involvement with the clients. Too often, the attorney approaches the mental health professional with vague directives such as “Work with the client to help them get along with their child,” or “See the client and tell us what you think.” In both of these statements, there is a lack of clarity of the mental health professionals’ role, scope, or even who is the client. In addition, there is no clarity on the role of the mental health provider in terms of their involvement in the overall litigation. If there is an active case going on, or the mental health professional is being brought in as part of a settlement agreement, it is vital to provide the professional with a clear Order from the court. The Order needs to clarify the role of the professional, who is responsible for payment of the fees for the services, and if the mental health professionals work will be covered under the normal psychotherapist-client privilege or if the mental health professional will be conveying summaries of their work in written form and/or in oral testimony. Be sure to work with the mental health provider in the crafting of the order to make sure that the roles that are described in the Order meet with all of the ethical guidelines for the mental health professional. Furthermore, the mental professional must also provide an informed consent to the client outlining the scope of the professional relationship, limits of confidentiality, fees, risks, and other related issues.
Mental health professionals can ethically only provide one role per case. A psychologist cannot be a child custody evaluator and then transition to the child’s therapist. Vague Orders which state that the named psychotherapist is to see all of the children for individual psychotherapy may put the therapist in an ethical bind. Checking ahead with the mental health professional before drafting the Order will optimally result in an Order that is also ethically workable for the mental health professional. If the professional has already been involved with the family in one capacity, they should not be designated to provide another type of service even if they are qualified. Too often psychotherapists had one role prior to the litigation (e.g. Marital therapist), and one role after the litigation (e.g. Parent Coordinator). The clients need another professional to serve in the second role. The only situation it could be ethically OK is if there were no other providers who could serve that type of role. This realistic only happens in rural areas. Even in that case, the mental health professional would take on the role and proceed with caution.
The last issues relates to the psychological evaluation and/or treatment of children. Attorneys for one parent frequently ask mental health professionals to see a child for an evaluation or treatment without notifying the other parent. As long as both parents are the legal parents, a mental health provider has an ethical obligation to notify both parents and include both parents in the evaluation, treatment, and feedback of the evaluation and treatment. When an attorney suggests that a child be seen and a parent not notified, the mental health provider by complying, colludes with one parent in keeping information about the child’s treatment from the other parent. In addition, and far worse, is the effect on the child of their therapist and parent colluding with the child to keep the secret away from the other parent. By not including the other parent, the therapist does not get that parents input and perspective on the child’s functioning. There would be no way for the psychotherapist to understand the child’s needs without hearing from both of the parents. Lastly, Attorneys need to stop asking a child’s psychotherapist to give an opinion regarding the custody arrangement of the child. It is unethical for a mental health professional to opine about custody arrangements without performing a child custody evaluation. Even though it is unethical, there are many psychotherapists, particularly those who rarely work in forensic cases, who will offer their opinions. When you seek out their opinion, you are placing these psychotherapists in a position of being open to licensing board ethics complaints, professional association ethics complaints, and even malpractice complaints. If opposing counsel brings in one of these psychotherapists who unwittingly give custody opinions, the therapist needs to be cross-examined regarding the ethics, or lack thereof, of providing an opinion. They should also be asked to explain how they can ethically provide a custody recommendation without having conducted a child custody evaluation. The bottom line is they cannot ethically provide the custody recommendations.
You can make the mental health professionals’ job easier by always providing clear Orders and not requesting therapists engage in multiple roles or deceptive practices.
Please email us with your questions or suggestions for future articles.
Howard Drutman, Ph.D. DrDrutman@AtlantaNPC.com
Marsha Schechtman, LCSW MarshaSchechtman@AtlantaNPC.com
Please visit our website and blog www.TheAtlantaBC.com
Phone: 678.444.4566
Children’s Drawings: Should They Be Included In A Forensic Psychological Evaluation?
Howard Drutman, Ph.D. & Marsha Schechtman, LCSW
Atlanta Behavioral Consultants
www.TheAtlantaBC.com 678.444.4566
(The Family Lawyer, Atlanta Bar Association, October 2011)
We are not sure of the actual origin of the picture below. This picture has made its way through many a professional presentation on evaluating children. Let’s assume the following picture was drawn by a 6 year old girl. This girl was hypothetically asked to draw a picture of her mother as part of a forensic evaluation in a contested child custody case. The child custody evaluator interprets the test, and factors that interpretation into their final assessment of the family. Was that the right thing to do? Should children’s drawings be included in forensic evaluations? Before continuing with this article take a look at the picture and make your own interpretation of what this 6-year old girl is trying to communicate to the examiner:
Using drawings made by children as a psychological test has been a hotly contested issue in the child custody literature. In recent years, with the advent of a more scientific approach to the custody evaluation process, drawings have been shown to lack the criteria that would make them admissible under the Daubert standard. Children’s drawings, be they Human Figure Drawings, House-Tree-Person, Kinetic Family Drawings, or others lack scientific validity and reliability. A psychological test’s scientific validity has to do with the ability of the instrument to predict or classify behavior. Reliability, in scientific terms has to do with the consistency of the results if the individual is retested with the same or similar instrument. Drawings, as a psychological test, lack standardization, have no reliable norms, and have no standard error rates.
So why are children’s drawings even used? They can be helpful in a therapeutic setting for hypotheses generation where you have the luxury of time to explore various possible interpretations of the pictures. In a therapeutic setting you can see the child over many sessions and explore with them the various ideas that are generated in the therapist’s thinking about possible meanings of the drawings. The so called interpretations are really the therapist’s ideas about what the drawing may or may not indicate. The drawings are not clear, to a psychological certainty, in terms of what they mean for the particular person taking the “test.” In a forensic setting, the examiner must use tests that meet the Daubert standard and can indicate, to a psychological certainty, what is going on for the examinee. There is no time to explore various hypotheses over many months.
Should you see “tests”- such as drawings being used in your child custody evaluations – the astute attorney should zero in on the failure of those tests in terms of reliability and validity. The examiner needs to be questioned about why they used non-forensic instruments in a forensic evaluation and most importantly, how did they factor in their interpretation of the drawings into the evaluation. The bottom line is drawings should never be part of a forensic evaluation as a psychological test.
Now it is time for you to compare your interpretation of the drawing from above with this hypothetical note from the child’s mother:
Dear Examiner,
The picture is NOT me pole dancing on stage. I work at Home Depot and had commented to my daughter how much money we made in the recent snowstorm. The drawing is of me selling a shovel.
Thanks,
The Mom
We assume all of you attorneys and judges “interpreted” the picture correctly…..
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