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Reunification Therapy and Parental Alienation
Reunification therapy is a process in which a qualified therapist works with the whole family reuniting estranged or alienated parents with their child or children, usually due to an extended separation, divorce, or custody dispute.
Sometimes this may be the result of parental alienation. It could be due to a pathological attachment to an abusive parent or enmeshment with an emotionally needy parent who likely struggles with their own attachment issues. In other cases, it may be a rejection of the estranged parent because of past abuse, absence, neglect, or simply the failure to facilitate a bond or attachment to the child.
In all cases, the goal of reunification therapy is to help both parent and child develop a closer, healthy, and secure attachment. Most often, reunification is a court-ordered intervention to protect the child from developing any lifelong difficulties. If parental alienation can be determined, then the therapist will work to end parental alienation tactics by the alienating parent in the reunification process. The goal is to have all parties involved as children do much better with both parents being involved with the process.
Are you having difficulty finding a therapist that fits or respects your world views? Are you wanting to integrate your faith and spirituality into your therapy sessions? While I do not replace the need of a good pastor. I can help you integrate positive virtues and values with spiritual direction. The way I deal with people of opposing views is that I find common ground in the natural virtues that they wish to increase and live out and integrate the client's beliefs and faith to accomplish these goals.
Before you buy your child that Cell-phone
I used to be adamant against smartphones for children, but with the technology today, they are handy for parents too. As a parent, I have a location app that tells me where my children are, how fast they are traveling, and much more. I am not here to convince you of whether or not your child should or should not have a smartphone. There is plenty of good reason for them not to have one.
However, this is not the point of this post. The point is to provide you, the parent, with the tools to protect your child if you decide on your child having a smartphone. There is plenty of risk of teens having a cell phone, sexting, porn, provocative videos, child predators on social media, phone addiction, loss of skill in person to person communication and social skills. You know the risk, what can you do about it?
There should be a few house rules before getting your child a phone.
First and foremost, get a tracking app on their phone and learn how to do parental settings on your child’s particular phone. There are parental controls where you can monitor their text messages, how long they can spend on their phones, and when they can no longer make or receive phone or text messages. You can also control what apps they are allowed to have. Bellow will be videos on how to do these parental controls for your particular phone. Next, I would provide them with rules for having a phone. They should know cell phones are a privilege. That is hard for some kids to understand, considering most all their friends will have one. Any breaking of rules would constitute taking of the phone for a time, and the length would be determined by the degree of the crime. I suggest nothing less than a week and go up from there.
Here are some rules for having your own phone.
Parents create a password for phone and may access the phone at any time.
No threatening or mean texts to others.
No text or phone calls after a predetermined time.
Phone must be charged at all times.
Answer or respond promptly when parents call.
Cell phones do not belong at dinner table.
You must alert parents if you receive suspicious messages or calls including harassment from peers.
No inappropriate pictures are to be taken or sent via text messaging.