Divorce Support: Nurturing Children Through Change

0:04 Good evening and welcome. 0:06 Thank you so much for joining us for tonight’s webinar, Divorce Support, Nurturing Children Through Change, presented by Dr. Justin Misereau. 0:16 Did I pronounce that correctly? 0:17 Got it. 0:18 Yep. 0:18 Good job. 0:19 I love it. 0:20 My name is Katie Delaney, and I’m the family and medical outreach coordinator for the New Jersey Center for Tourette Syndrome and Associated Disorders. 0:28 I will be your facilitator for this evening. 0:30 Before I introduce our presenter, I wanted to go over some housekeeping notes. 0:34 The audience is muted. If you are attending the live webinar, questions can be submitted in the questions box at the bottom of your screen. 0:42 During the live Q &A, the audience will gain access to unmute themselves. We will stop the recording right before this. 0:49 At the top right of your screen, you will see a paperclip icon. There you will find a copy of the slides and upcoming events. 0:56 at the bottom of your screen you will see a react button. 0:59 To the right of the react button is an arrow and when you click that you’ll see a few emojis appear such as heart, a thumbs up, etc. 1:07 Throughout the webinar feel free to use this feature to let our presenter know how they’re doing. 1:11 So if you see where this is, if you could give me a thumbs up or a heart, that would be Great. 1:21 Beautiful. 1:22 Okay, good. 1:30 so for those viewing the webinar recording, you will not have access to these features. 1:34 However, any questions you have for the presenter can be submitted through the chat box to the left of your screen. 1:41 The presenter will answer those questions on our webinar blog, located on our website njcts.org under the programs tab. 1:48 This blog will be monitored until Tuesday, June 25th. 1:52 Any personal information will not be included in the post. 1:56 The New Jersey Center for Tourette Syndrome and Associated Disorders, its directors, and employees assume no responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, objectivity, or usefulness of the information presented on our site. 2:07 We do not endorse any recommendation or opinion made by any member or physician, nor do we advocate any treatment. 2:13 You are responsible for your own medical decisions. 2:16 And now it is my pleasure to finally introduce our speaker for this evening, Dr. Justin Miserell. 2:22 Dr. Miserell is a licensed psychologist in New York and New Jersey. 2:27 He received his undergrad degree from Rutgers University in New Jersey and his graduate degree from Fordham University in New York. 2:35 He currently serves on the faculty at the Hasenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone’s Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry’s Child Study Center, and he is a clinical director at the department’s New Jersey office. 2:51 That is a mouthful. 2:53 Yeah, it’s too long of a title. 2:55 Dr. Miserrell, with that, I’m going to hand it off, and the floor is all yours. 3:01 All right, thank you very much. 3:02 Thank you for having me, and thank you for all the tech support prior to getting on today. 3:08 We’re going to be talking about divorce and separation this evening. 3:13 I’m going to be talking about things for parents to consider as well as clinicians. 3:21 I’m assuming that we have a mixed group in the audience, so both some people who are working with families impacted by divorce and some folks who are, you know, doing therapy and some people who are going through it personally themselves. 3:36 So some of this is going to be geared for families as well as clinicians. 3:40 I’m also going to do like a little bit of a deeper dive into one of my niche areas of interest which is high conflict divorce and separation. 3:49 So you can bear with me a little bit if I get in the weeds there, but I think it’s going to be useful even if you’re like a lay person trying to learn about divorce because those high conflict cases will give you an example of what not to do and that can be very helpful. 4:04 Okay, so this presentation is going to provide some psychoeducation about the range or spectrum of divorce, ranging from amicable to acrimonious divorces. 4:15 I’ll be talking about risk factors that can impact on children who are going through, whose parents are going through a divorce or separation. 4:23 I’ll go through the high-conflict divorce and separation dynamics, as I touched on previously. 4:29 I will talk about therapeutic strategies that could be helpful, as well as helpful co-parenting tips for people who are trying to work out things with their previous partner. 4:43 We’ll talk about characteristics of healthy and unhealthy divorces, and we will also provide some examples of how to, you know, healthy and unhealthy divorces and examples of when high conflict divorces situations go in bad directions and when we can get them back on track and try to save the dynamic from really going off the rails. 5:09 Those are also gonna be a list of helpful resources for families at the end. 5:14 Okay, so divorce in America, this is a huge topic as it always is. 5:19 Traditionally, we think that the divorce rate is like always around 50%. 5:23 It’s actually been getting better, it’s declined a little bit in the past decade, so it’s a little bit better than, you know, I think marriages are lasting a little bit more than 50-50 at this point. 5:35 However, there is something to be noted, which is that there are less people getting married, more people that are cohabitating, and people who tend to cohabitate without getting married still have a pretty high rate of separation. 5:51 And in addition, the rate for second marriages is still pretty high. 5:54 But at least the people who are choosing to get married are starting to do better than previous generations. 6:01 Some of that could also be related to people delaying marriage later until they’re more settled and feel more confident in where they are and making that a life choice and so they’re in a better position to make it work. 6:14 That’s the thinking as to why some of the marriage rates are getting better. 6:18 But suffice it to say, there’s still many children growing up in divorce and separate households. 6:26 Children who are growing up in households impacted by divorce and separation tend, on average, to struggle with a number of different things. 6:34 I have listed up here academic difficulties, loss of interest in social activities, difficulty in adaptation, anger, irritability, feelings of guilt, destructive behavior, health problems, loss of faith in marriage in the family unit. 6:49 One caveat to note is that not all children of divorce or separation experience these difficulties. 6:56 There are plenty of kids who go through divorce and you know their parents handle it well and appropriately and the kids come out on the other end and they’re just fine. 7:05 There’s some instances when kids are resilient and they can manage it even if it’s a very difficult situation. 7:11 And certainly there’s circumstances when the marriage was a very unhealthy and and was having a negative impact on the children and it was a good idea that the parents separated so the children actually doing better because they’re not involved in this in the midst of this toxic dynamic back and forth so there’s a lot of variation among children who are who are impacted by divorce and separation so suffice it to say if you’re going through a divorce don’t freak out that it’s going to be a guarantee that your children are going to be damaged from it because that’s not the case we just have to do it in the way and for the right reasons, which brings up this slide. Reasons. 7:51 What are the reasons for divorce? Well, they’re very numerous, right? Irreconcilable differences. What does that mean? 7:57 That means that people in the marriage, people in the relationship cannot see eye to eye on various issues. They have different values and different desires or different goals for themselves. 8:11 You know, it used to be the case that irreconcilable differences was not an acceptable reason to get divorced, and then in the 70s a lot of states began to change the laws so that that could be a reason, and hence we got the initiation of what’s called the no-fault divorce. 8:31 Prior to that, the more traditional reasons for getting divorced were, as you can imagine, things like infidelity or domestic abuse and violence and all these kinds of things that have listed up here as well, addiction, financial disagreement. 8:44 Some other reasons why people get divorced are incompatibility, continual conflict and disagreements, intimacy issues, growth and personal development, by which I mean people get married at a certain age and maybe over the course of a lifespan and children are getting older, their goals change, their interests change. People go through midlife crises. 9:07 I mean, that’s that’s still a thing and they change what they want to do and they want to have a second career or a new start on life or go into something differently and their partner or their spouse doesn’t fit into that. 9:20 Parenting disagreements, that’s a big one that I see. 9:23 Being a child and adolescent psychologist, a lot of parents who cannot agree on how to raise the children, be it on matters of religion or or discipline, or what school they go to. 9:35 So these are things that can all lead to marital strife and eventual separation. 9:41 In general, unhappiness or dissatisfaction. 9:44 Plenty of people who file for divorce just report being dissatisfied or unhappy with things and wanting to make a change to try to come up with a new lease on life. 9:59 So there’s many different reasons for this. 10:00 And as a therapist, there’s no judgment or preconceptions about this. 10:07 When people come to me and they’re dealing with these things, my job and my role is just to help them get clarity on what their issues are and understand what can be solved and what can’t be solved. 10:18 What is the spectrum of divorce? 10:20 So from amicable to acrimonious. 10:23 Amicable is, we’ll think of it as like a cooperative divorce where the parents or the partner, and, you know, mostly speaking to divorces involving children, obviously, so a divorce involving children, in which case the parents are working together in a mature way to resolve their differences without, with the minimization of conflict and to minimize litigation. 10:48 As opposed to acrimonious, where there’s a lot of conflict, like Brad Pitt and Angelina Custody disputes, arguments over what to do with the children, arguments over residency, arguments over custody and finances and all the rest of it. 11:03 So that’s the acrimonious side of things. 11:06 So in an amicable divorce, parents practice good communication. 11:12 They are able to co-parent, they’re able to speak to each other. 11:15 They’re able to say, okay, well, did you see the new schedule for the baseball or for soccer? 11:20 Yeah, let’s let’s figure out who’s taking the kids to watch thing because we’re not into the same household There’s a lot of a lot of communication that is involved in the raising of children in today’s day and age 2024 to begin with so let alone when you’re having Parents who are separated or divorced you know you’re having different households you have more to coordinate more Logistics to cover so the more communication and the healthier communication the better Amical people going through an amicable divorce put children first They will understand that at the end of the day the most important thing are the kids being healthy and making sure that we’re doing What’s best for them rather than what might be in the in the narrow self-interest of one part of the other? 12:07 amicable folks are hopefully selecting cooperative divorce attorneys, and I’m going to speak more about the difference between between cooperative divorce or collaborative divorce and more litigious divorce attorneys. 12:21 They’re open to mediation and compromise, meaning they’re open to having a third party come in and help them resolve their disagreements. 12:31 People going through amicable divorces are mindful of financial interests. 12:35 They’re not just draining the bank account just to fight it out, and they also show understanding and sympathy or understanding and empathy for the other person. 12:46 So what is not amicable? 12:48 Acrimonious divorce. 12:50 Acrimonious divorce and the academic term for some of this is high conflict separated parents or HCSPs or high conflict divorced parents. 13:02 This involves parents who are divorced or separated and are engaging in ongoing and oftentimes adversarial and contentious disputes. Frequently, litigation and family court is involved. 13:17 Children are typically and often caught in the middle of their parents’ disputes, so the children might be privy to the negative commentary that one parent or the other is making about the other parent, or children are being put on the spot and asked to give opinions about one parent or the other. How do you feel about your mom? How do you feel about your dad? 13:38 Do you really want to go on that vacation? 13:40 That sort of thing, it happens a lot. 13:42 Do you really want to spend the next holiday with his family? 13:46 Those kinds of things. 13:48 These cases can be extremely stressful and exhausting for treatment providers like me. 13:54 Therapists, it’s very hard to be in the middle of that. 13:57 In particular, because therapists as a group tend to be nice people who want to do good in the world and be kind to patients. 14:08 and that sort of thing, and when they are thrown into situations where they’re working with acrimonious or high conflict divorce, they might find themselves a therapist that is in the crossfire as well, and it can be a very uncomfortable situation. 14:22 So I will speak a little bit about what therapy is like working with families who are experiencing this kind of issue. 14:31 Okay. 14:32 Let’s talk about high conflict parenting dynamics. 14:35 So in these, part of this dynamic includes like a pervasive conflict on all matter of topics from the simple things that shouldn’t be that crazy like vacations, holidays, after school activities, you know, should they be in the rec soccer team or the travel soccer team? 14:55 That doesn’t seem like a big deal. 14:56 Well, when you’re going through these high conflict divorce cases, sometimes that is big deal because travel involves more distance and logistics and stressors and takes them out of other things you’re trying to do. 15:09 So this could be a potential occasion for conflict. 15:14 To the complex issues like disputes over which school the child should attend or what religion to raise them in or certainly custody time and finances, conflict is pervasive, dominates most topics and settings, and it persists over time. 15:32 So it’s not the kind of thing where, oh, well, we just finalized our divorce, so now we’re all happy, all well and good. 15:38 These are situations that often involve ongoing disputes and issues past the point when the divorce was settled. 15:45 And kids are in the middle of this all along the way, and it’s very, very difficult for them. 15:51 *** for tat pattern. 15:52 So you did this negative thing, and I’m gonna get you back. 15:54 You didn’t help me on this day, So I’m not going to do the favor and let the kids go over to your house when your mother-in-law is in town or whatever. 16:02 So there’s like this back and forth kind of thing. 16:05 Aggressiveness, defensiveness, so a pattern back and forth of attacking, one side attacks, the other side gets defensive and guard it, and then vice versa. 16:15 Oftentimes, parents in these situations are unaware of the impact it’s having on their children, or they might be too caught up in their own anger and frustration to really take a moment and take a breath and assess the way that their behavior is impacting on their kids. 16:30 And there might be attachments to toxic narratives like, for instance, my ex-wife is controlling and domineering. 16:38 She’s sabotaging my relationship with my son or my ex-husband is a narcissist and everything is about him. 16:44 He doesn’t consider what’s best for the kid, just wants to do, you know, what’s best for his own agenda. 16:48 And when parents get stuck on these negative views of the other parent and vocalize that around the children, it gets very harmful and toxic. 17:00 Let’s talk about the parent-child relationship dynamic. 17:03 So in these, again, just to clarify, some of these situations might seem extreme. 17:10 For those of you, this is more of a comment for like laypeople who are dealing with divorce. 17:14 Hopefully you’re not going through this kind of high conflict thing. 17:17 But this this gives us a sense of how bad it can really be So there’s a range of you know family dynamics that parents and children go through with high-competitive wars one one example is When children have positive relationships with both parents. 17:32 They just want to stay out of the line of fire They want to spend you know significant or substantial amounts of time with both parents. 17:40 They don’t want to have to choose Next, on the continuum, you might have children who have a strong affinity for one parent, but not so much for the other, and maybe they have some preferences, and maybe they drift in one direction, but for the most part, nothing too upsetting. 17:56 And then on the further extreme, you have children who feel allied with one parent or the other. 18:02 They develop these relationship alliances, and these children consistently prefer to Reject that parent and then you get in these cases you start to see children who are refusing to see one of their parents in that case you might be dealing with one of these kinds of situations a situation where there’s Outright family dysfunction a situation where there’s what we call parent estrangement or parent alienation So I’m going to go into each of these different Divorce dynamic scenarios What are the short- and long-term effects of high-conflict divorce and separation on children? 18:44 It’s, as you can imagine, very toxic and harmful, and the high-conflict divorce is associated with parenting problems, poor relationships between children and parents, situations like parent alienation syndrome, which is somewhat rare, but when it does happen, it’s quite difficult to turn around. 19:07 And that’s when I’ll talk about that more in a little bit. 19:09 This is when one child strongly is rejecting one of the parents. 19:16 Child maladjustment, use of negative coping skills, like substance abuse, problems with depression, anxiety, and even experience of child abuse goes up. 19:29 It’s highly associated with these kinds of divorces and separations. 19:33 So, high-conflict divorce can cause a lot of difficulties, and research links chronic high-conflict amongst the parents to children’s chronic stress, insecurity, agitation, shame, self-blame, guilt, and feelings of helplessness. 19:50 So, long story short, high-conflict divorce, bad for kids. 19:54 Don’t do it. 19:56 So, let’s talk about family dysfunction. 19:57 Remember, I said there’s family dysfunction, and there’s parental estrangement, and there’s parent alienation. 20:03 So these are three different types of scenarios that parents going through a difficult divorce might be exhibiting. 20:14 So in family dysfunction, as you can imagine, there could be many forms to this. 20:19 Every family has some form of dysfunction. 20:22 Kind of dysfunction I’m talking about here is quite significant. 20:26 There could be a variety of issues that all interact in emotionally destructive ways and contribute to upsetting and rupturing the parent-child relationships. 20:38 So some examples or some common elements of this can be intense parental conflict, so lots of arguing and yelling and cursing that children are exposed to. 20:49 This can happen while the parents are still cohabitating, and it can continue after they’ve separated. 20:57 Toxic interaction patterns where one parent or the other is making frequent put downs or insults to the other’s partner or the children. 21:08 Instances where there’s emotional manipulation happening, where children are getting like the message that if they want their parents’ affection, they need to respond in a certain way, or they need to do nice things for one parent and not nice things to the other parent. 21:24 Triangulation between parents and children. 21:26 So kind of like putting, you know, forming these alliances and excluding one member of the family or the other. 21:35 Lots of times when you see family dysfunction, there’s parents or the children or both dealing with mental health issues, most commonly anxiety and depression. 21:45 It could also be things like personality disorders and parental substance abuse. 21:51 All these sorts of issues will certainly contribute to family dysfunction and may lead to a child refusing to have a relationship with one parent or the other. 22:01 Children being put in the middle, of course, which is involving them in conversations about court proceedings and inappropriate information about the other spouse, kind of leveraging the child for their allegiance and affection, trying to get more out of them than they really should be doing. 22:18 Children should be left alone in these circumstances. 22:21 They should be allowed to be children. 22:23 They should not be put on the spot to make decisions that then impact custody and vacations and these sort of things, I mean, it’s okay if a professional’s asking them that, but parents shouldn’t be putting them in the middle of those discussions. 22:37 Like if a therapist is asking a child questions like, how do you feel spending, you know, three days a week at your parent’s house, that’s fine, at your mother’s house, that’s fine to ask for the therapist, but the parents really, in these situations, shouldn’t be making the kids feel like they need to choose and make a decision on it, leave it up to the professionals. 22:58 Parent estrangement. 23:00 So in a parent estrangement, this occurs in cases where a parent is being rejected from the child, like when there’s like a separation or divorce and a child pulls away emotionally from the parent. 23:14 In a parent estrangement situation, what we describe it as is the child is doing that for their own self-protection or self-preservation. 23:27 Oftentimes the rejected parent has one or more of the following, like a personality disorder or history of abusive behavior or substance abuse history or mental illness or they maybe never really developed a healthy attachment with the child prior to the separation of the divorce. 23:43 So like a common example that I might see is like if a young children and parents are getting separated and the father was working a lot of hours and you know coming home basically just seeing the kids on the weekend and not really doing the TLC, tender loving care stuff with them and now the kids have to go to the dad like at least every other weekend if not more and the kids are like what do you mean I need to go like if the five-year-old kid isn’t used to being away from their mother for a bunch of days every week, and they might resist that for various reasons. 24:16 So sometimes we were looking for, is there a reason why this parent is being rejected and the kids are refusing to go there? 24:22 If there’s a substantial reason for that rejection, we call it parent estrangement. 24:29 And then we’re gonna, leads into parent alienation. 24:33 So in parent alienation, this is like the kind of least common of these scenarios where there’s children that are refusing to see one or both of their parents or one of the other parent, parent alienation involves some kind of emotional manipulation, be it like purposeful or direct or sometimes it’s just indirect and accidental and whatever the case may be, parent alienation involves like rejecting a parent basically without good reason, like rejecting a parent in favor of another parent. 25:08 This occurs when one parent targets or, say, villainizes the other parent with unwarranted claims. 25:16 So, like, you might make claims against the other parent, like, that parent’s abusive, that parent is mean, that parent is, you know, doing all these other things, and these are unfounded claims or they’re false. 25:28 So, like, kind of trumped up charges that one parent might be feeding child about the other parent. 25:33 In these situations alienating parents typically involve children in discussion so they’ll tell them oh you know your your father is really stressing me out because he keeps taking me to court or they’ll make comments like you know your father your mother is so is so ridiculous she always does these horrible things you know you have no idea how bad your mother is so exposing them to that kind of toxic talk really does a number on on the kids, but then that also is paired with this sense that the child has where they’re in the middle of a battlefield and they have to choose sides and they can’t just be on good terms with both sides. 26:11 They have to either choose one or the other. 26:13 And then if they feel an alliance with a favorite parent and they feel like insecure about saying how they really feel, maybe they really do want a good relationship with their father, but their mother has given them the vibe for the sense that she’s gonna be disappointed with them if they have a good relationship with them. 26:32 You know, when the kid comes home from a weekend at dad’s and she says, and the mom says, how was your weekend? 26:38 And they say, oh, it was good. 26:40 And the mom looks like sad that you said that. 26:43 Like that sends a message that mom doesn’t really wanna hear nice things about that. 26:47 So then the kid starts to say negative things, like, oh, the weekend sucked at mom’s. 26:53 Mom didn’t do anything. 26:55 and she just watched TV all day, and all we did was play on our iPads, it was terrible. 27:01 And then the alienating parent is like, well, that’s your mother, she’s terrible, and then it just gets reinforced. 27:09 This pattern can play out over time and get exacerbated to the point where children will like basically hold this very toxic messed up narrative that’s not consistent with the of the parent that they’re rejecting and they come into therapy and it’s a whole lot to work through and unpack. 27:28 Particularly when the alienating parent is not on board. 27:32 If they are undermining it for some reason, if they’re against the child or the children having a positive relationship with the rejected parent, it’s hard to turn it around. 27:44 So parent alienation one of the most difficult situations to deal with in family therapy for sure. 27:50 All right so What I’m going to do is maybe pause here and see if we can get a poll up or if we can get audience temperature. 28:00 I was told that we should check in once in a while and see if everybody’s good and any questions at this point. 28:23 So I’ll keep going unless if you guys have questions or if you have any commentary or that you want to weigh in on, feel free to speak up or use one of the interactive features here. 28:45 Alright, so moving on, so I’m going to talk about passive versus active alienation. 28:56 So passive alienation occurs when the favored parent or the alienating parent like unintentionally or unknowingly takes actions to contribute to the rejection of the other parent. 29:11 So in these situations it’s like parents indirectly saying things or maybe nonverbal behavior like when the child’s talking about the weekend at dad’s and mom doesn’t say anything negative but also doesn’t look happy and gives the general nonverbal vibe that she’s not happy if the kid had a good time. 29:34 Other things they might do is just undermine events, undermine get-togethers, undermine vacations and be like, well, I didn’t know that that was the date or I didn’t do that on purpose. 29:48 I wasn’t aware. 29:49 So just kind of like general disregard for the other parent and the other parent’s concerns that can lead to this pattern of alienation is what we call passive. 30:01 So it’s like, they’re not actively, directly undermining the relationship, but they’re doing things that are having that effect. 30:10 Active alienation is different. 30:12 That occurs when a favor or the alienating parent is intentionally attacking. 30:19 And so this is kind of rare, and it’s really hard to catch, because kids who are being brainwashed or being coached or being drilled to feel a certain way about the other parent will not usually say, oh, my parents are, my mom’s telling me that, to say that my dad’s terrible, but he’s not. 30:36 Like they don’t usually tell you that. 30:38 So it’s rare to catch it. 30:39 Usually the parents will be saying like, you better tell that therapist that he’s terrible, but do not tell them that I’m telling you this. 30:49 It’s very hard to catch and prove and to address it. 30:53 But in these active alienation situations, The alienating parent is directly and consciously doing things to undermine that relationship between the other parent and the children. 31:07 So those are the three situations, we have family dysfunction, we have parental estrangement and parent alienation. 31:16 These are the three different scenarios, different categories that you get in the world of the bad divorce, the high conflict divorce. 31:24 So the role of the clinician, what is the role of the clinician? 31:28 There are various roles for the mental health professional. 31:31 So one thing that we do is custody evaluations. 31:33 That’s doing the psychologist do that, and that involves a very extensive process of interviewing not only the parents and the children, but collateral contacts as well. 31:44 It could be other therapists, it could be other family members or friends who have insight into the family, and then making recommendations regarding the custody arrangement, how much time each parent should be spending with the child. 31:57 Intervention services are the other things that the clinician can be doing, and that’s most often what I do. 32:04 I do evaluations of children, I don’t do custody evaluations, but I do mental health evaluations, and most of my involvement in these types of cases involve family intervention services. 32:15 So what you do in the intervention is you’re doing the therapy. 32:18 You’re trying to right the ship. 32:20 you’re trying to sort out the unhealthy family dynamics. 32:25 Sometimes when the clinician is involved in these cases, if it’s a family court-involved case, if it’s a case that’s had a lot of litigation, you may need to present as an expert witness. 32:36 Certainly you’ll produce work product or documents that will be used in court, be it a report or progress notes or some kind of letter that they you to provide opining on the family’s dynamic. 32:52 What is the difference between an expert witness and the role of the therapist? 32:57 So expert witnesses are usually the evaluators that are just taking a snapshot of the child and the family and the situation and they provide the report and they may have to go to court and testify to it. 33:08 The role of the therapist is a little bit different because instead of just taking a snapshot and making an assessment, you’re actually charged with intervening and changing and persuading people to change the way they interact and engage with one another within the family. 33:24 And once you take on the role of the interventionist, your role changes a little bit because you have a therapeutic relationship with the parents and the children. 33:32 If you are brought to court, you’re functioning as a fact witness, meaning you’re being asked questions about fact. What did you hear? What did you observe? 33:41 What did see what is your recommendations based on what you’re experiencing in the therapy, but it’s a little bit different than the expert witness who comes in and does an evaluation or is speaking from the standpoint of the academic view on particular issues that are being asked. 33:59 You could be asked to come in and talk a little bit about alienation dynamics and how that might pertain to this family. 34:07 That’s something that happens in the expert witness testimony. 34:09 So, various roles for the clinician. 34:13 So, treatment and intervention, what does it look like? 34:15 Individual therapy is one form, that’s the one-on-one way of doing therapy. 34:22 It’s important to involve that in dealing with these cases. 34:29 In general, when there’s like a divorce or separation, a lot of times people will think, well, the kid should be in therapy, we should help get them help on this. 34:39 It’s not the case that every child needs to be in therapy. 34:43 What I usually tell folks, sometimes people come to me saying that they are planning on getting separated or getting a divorce and they haven’t told their children yet. 34:52 So then I help them if they’ve already made that decision, helping them to tell their kids that and then guide them through that process. 35:02 What I’ll usually tell them is give it a few months and see how the child does. 35:07 And if they adjust, like if they have sad days, if they are anxious, if they cry, that’s all normal. 35:13 That’s a normal reaction to a tumultuous event in their life. 35:19 So we don’t need to panic about it. 35:21 But if it persists after three months and the kid seems to continue to have a change in mood, a negative change in mood or behavior, then in that sense, in that case, it is worthwhile to get them checked out with the therapist. 35:35 Of course, if there’s a terrible reaction and the kids are really panicking or melting down or freaking out when they find out about their parents separating, then by all means get them into therapy. 35:46 One version of it is individual therapy, therapist and child. 35:51 Another is family therapy, which is the one that I tend to promote because I think you really need family involvement to get at a lot of these issues. 35:59 And family therapy can involve different constellations of people in the family. 36:06 You can have parent and child, you could have the two parents working in it, you could have the whole family system involved in a particular session. 36:14 So session by session, it depends on whatever the therapist is working on. 36:19 Reconciliation or reunification therapy is a particular type of family therapy. 36:24 It’s an intensive form of therapy that is designed to help those families, like I was explaining before, where you have alienation or estrangement. 36:34 So typically in cases where a child is refusing to see a parent for one reason or another, this therapy is designed to get at that. 36:43 Co-parenting therapy in instances of divorce involves having both parents meet with the therapist on a regular basis to review the different co-parenting issues that might be coming up and to think through different strategies and solutions and try to come to a healthy place. 37:03 Group therapy is more rare. 37:05 It’s kind of like these kinds of cases don’t often lend themselves to group therapy because of the conflict and stuff involved, but there are places where you can find group therapy interventions. 37:18 There’s like places, this program like Family Bridges, which is an intensive program for parent alienation that involves groups. 37:29 And then there’s parent coordination, and parent coordination is kind of more, it’s more like a practical nuts and bolts thing where the clinician is serving as a mediator of sorts or almost like an umpire between two parents who are having a lot of different disputes, and we’ll hear both sides of a particular issue. 37:50 Let’s say, for example, you know, what sport the kids are going to play in the fall, and they’ll hear both sides, and then they’ll either mediate or give an arbitrary answer about what to do, and that way parents know they have a process for resolving some of these issues when they can’t resolve it themselves. 38:07 All right, sharks versus shepherds. So this is about lawyers. 38:11 So lawyers, just a word of caution, be careful with finding your matrimonial law attorney because some of them can be sharks and some of them can be shepherds and by that I mean sharks, they tend to attack, they punish the other side, they’re motivated to litigate, they’re not really thinking about, in my opinion, the best interest of the child always, they’re always looking just to win. 38:37 And sometimes Winning, no matter what the cost, involves losing the children or hurting the children. 38:45 And that’s not good. 38:47 So I definitely encourage people to look for lawyers who do collaborative law work. 38:53 These are shepherds, people who want to shepherd you through the process, not just fight through the process. 38:59 They want to work with clinicians. 39:01 They tend to be open to mediation. 39:03 They tend to encourage or counsel their clients To be flexible to be compromising instead of just doubling down and fighting all the time So beware of the type of lawyer that you that you look for that you’re working with and for you clinicians out there You know also be aware of the different types of lawyers that that are out there not all the same They don’t always have the same Intention so be careful with with who you can’t choose you who the clients bring in to your office or who they’re dealing with But you can be wary and be careful with what you say and do with those particular lawyers who might be more antagonistic than is necessary. 39:46 So where are some risk factors for children’s poor adjustment to divorce? 39:51 So and this speaks to this question of, OK, when should you get the kid into therapy? 39:55 Well, a lot of times, the kids can work through it OK and usually give it a few months because they’re going to have an adjustment period. 40:01 They may have a difficult few months after they learn about the separation, it may happen again when one or both the parents relocate or move out of the home, but sometimes they’ll be just fine, they’ll work through it. 40:16 Other times they may be having lingering difficulties that may need to be addressed. 40:21 And some of the factors that lend itself to that are, with parents’ ability to cope with the divorce, parents’ overall mental health, the developmental stage and age of the children, you know, developmentally, there’s different challenges between a teenager and a young child that brings up different issues. 40:38 Child temperament, certainly kids who are more easygoing and more resilient, they’re going to kind of roll with it more than kids who are anxious or highly sensitive. 40:47 The HCSP, that’s a high conflict separated parent, so any time you have a high conflict divorce going on, your likelihood of poor adjustment with the children goes way up. 40:58 Legal proceedings, again, more conflict and more litigation associated with greater anxiety, greater stress, more difficulties, and loss of contact with parents. 41:09 So if like a parent was very involved, is like cut off or greatly reduced, that can really disrupt the children and cause very poor adjustment. 41:19 Another rule of thumb is minimize the amount of change and transition that happens, like less disruption to the child’s life better. 41:29 If parents are separating but the child’s staying in the marital home and the parents are working things out, you’re not going to have as much difficulty. 41:38 And on the other hand, if the divorce leads to tremendous financial disruption and the house has to be sold and kids are moved out of their school district, they have to go to a different school, obviously that’s going to lead to more problems. 41:57 So Very important to create a safe and validating space. 42:02 Validation just means telling the children or reflecting back to the children that you understand how they feel and it’s okay for them to feel what they feel. 42:10 Providing developmentally appropriate explanations, so speaking in a way that they can understand. 42:15 Family therapy is the most effective treatment for children of high conflict divorce. 42:20 So if you’re unfortunately experiencing that or you’re working with someone who is, definitely ask how much family therapy is happening here. 42:29 Because if people are just in their own silos talking to their individual therapists, there’s gonna be a limit to the progress you’re gonna make, in my opinion. 42:37 All right, best co-parenting tips for families going through divorce. 42:41 Don’t take things too personally. 42:45 I tell parents that I’m consulting with to treat the other person, treat the other parent like a co-worker. 42:53 Imagine they are a co-worker that you don’t necessarily like but you have to get along with in order to get the job done. Being flexible and adaptive is a critical part of that as well. 43:04 Keeping children out of the conflict so not putting them in the middle, not putting them in the hot seat, not making them choose. 43:10 Seeking support, being quick to get therapy can be actually a good thing. 43:14 I know I said watch and see how they adjust but also don’t hesitate to get help if you think you need it. 43:22 Guidelines for healthy divorce. 43:25 So seeking support, therapy or otherwise, prioritizing children’s well-being. 43:30 Really put the children’s needs before your own. 43:33 Communicating openly and respectfully with the other parent. 43:37 Focusing on the future, trying to figure out what you’re trying to build instead of being bogged down in the past and the grievances or the negativity of the past. 43:45 Try to educate yourself about the therapy process or educate yourself about the divorce process. 43:50 Read up on, you know, books that can be helpful for parents who are going to divorce. 43:56 Consider mediation or collaborative divorce. 43:59 And there’s some resources at the end of this presentation for that. 44:03 Stay organized, like keeping all your paperwork in order, being organized with your schedules. 44:09 Like the more chaos and disorganization in these families, the worse the outcomes are going to be because life is difficult enough when you have children and you’re trying to them, but now you’re throwing divorce and separation into it. 44:22 It’s going to be even harder because now you’re juggling multiple locations and homes and all this other stuff. 44:28 So the more organized the better. 44:30 Consult with professionals, ask for help, and be patient and compassionate with yourself and with your former partner. 44:41 They might be your former partner, but they’re still your partner because you are co-parenting. 44:45 You are still co-parenting your children. 44:47 You’re still going to be their parents, and you need to understand and accept that. 44:51 Characteristics of an unhealthy divorce on the other hand involves children and adults, involving children in the adult conflict, making impulsive decisions regarding money and other things, using the children as pawns to try to like hurt or get back at the other parent, parents who are neglecting their self-care, stressing themselves out, it’s almost like workaholism except instead of work they’re spending all their time dealing with divorce related stuff, hiding assets or information, not being transparent, refusing the compromise, not listening to legal advice, at least if you’re listening to a shepherd lawyer and you’re not listening to them, then you’re not doing the right thing. 45:33 Social media, using social media as a platform, I’ve seen that in my practice, it’s terrible, like going on a tear or attacking people on social media or attacking the other parent’s extended family or relatives, losing sight of the big picture and not putting children first. 45:51 So we have about 10 minutes left or so. 45:53 I’m going to kind of go quickly through a couple of examples, and I’ll give you time to ask questions. 45:59 Here’s a successful high-conflict divorce example. 46:02 This is the case of Joshua. 46:04 So this was like a 12-year-old boy who had parents with a history of high-conflict divorce. 46:11 They had been divorced when they came to me, and they had a history of arguing and not getting along and a whole range of things. 46:20 The boy Joshua was going back and forth to each of the home, but he certainly had more of an affinity towards the mother. 46:27 He was kind of a sensitive, more of a sensitive soft-spoken boy. 46:31 And the father was like this kind of big gregarious, but also like rough around the edges, loud talker kind of guy. 46:38 And sometimes the kid felt uncomfortable and intimidated by him. 46:41 And then, you know, one time they had a disagreement or the kid did something that he shouldn’t have done in school and the father got really angry. 46:50 He didn’t do anything abusive. 46:51 He didn’t hit the kid, but he really yelled at him and freaked the kid out. 46:55 And as a result, when the kid went back, when the boy went back to the mother, he told his mother, you know, father was scaring me and freaking me out and I’m too scared to go back. 47:06 And because the parents, they had, you know, high comp of divorce, the mother was taking the child’s side and was like, well, that’s, I agree with you. 47:14 He’s a terrible person and we shouldn’t be going there. 47:17 If he’s making you feel that way. 47:18 So there was the, you know, this situation where the child’s refusing to go to his father. 47:23 So then eventually they found their way to me by court order. 47:26 And then we engaged in the family therapy. 47:28 And what we had, what I had to do is help each of the parents take steps towards each other. 47:33 Have the dad learn to be calmer and more validating and more compromising and have the mom see the father in a less toxic way and also to encourage her son to push through some of the anxieties and issues that he was having. 47:48 And because they were, in my opinion, humble enough to listen to my advice and work with me, they definitely made a lot of progress and were able to heal that relationship and their family is doing better now than they were before at any time. 48:03 Now, that is to contrast with an unsuccessful high-conflict divorce example, which unfortunately is pretty common. 48:11 And this is the case of Lila. 48:12 In this case, I also had a situation where there was an affinity with the child, like an eight-year-old girl, for her mother against her father, and the father, because he had very demanding job, wasn’t around as much. 48:34 He didn’t have, like I was mentioning earlier, he didn’t have built up that TLC. 48:39 So when they separated, Lila really didn’t feel comfortable going to dad’s and the parents were not able to just like figure this out. 48:47 In fact, I think the mom like intentionally or just because she couldn’t control her own anger with the father said a lot of mean and hurtful things to the child. 49:00 And even then when they came to me for therapy, Lila was like, yeah, there’s no way I’m going to go with him. 49:06 He’s a bad person. 49:07 I don’t want to spend time with him. 49:10 And despite our best efforts and trying to get the parents aligned, I was not able to turn this relationship around. 49:18 The thing that undermined it here was that I had two parents, unlike the previous example with Joshua, two parents who were not willing to listen to my advice and who really could not get past their own kind of toxic anger with one another despite the impact it was having on their kids. 49:37 And because that, because I wasn’t able to really sort that out and get those parents aligned and working well together, Lila was a hopeless case. 49:46 I strongly believe, unless we’re able to get the parents to function like a healthy co-parenting team, it’s going to be very unlikely to heal the relationship with the children and whichever parent’s getting rejected. 50:01 So those are some of the examples. 50:03 My takeaway message as we come to the end here, divorce is a serious matter that impacts children one way or the other. 50:09 You can’t avoid that. 50:11 If the choice is made to separate or divorce, the kids are going to be impacted. 50:15 Don’t take it lightly because it’s a serious decision, and I personally think that there’s certain marriages, sure, that should be dissolved because it’s so unhealthy and abusive and toxic, but there’s also a lot of marriages that could probably be saved if you put in the effort. 50:32 Of course, it involves a level of self-sacrifice and pushing through, and if you go to a good therapist, they can help you do that. 50:40 Regardless, take it seriously, do due diligence in trying to heal things before you pull the trigger on that. 50:48 If divorce is unavoidable, there are better and worse ways to go about it. 50:51 Amicable divorce is absolutely possible. 50:54 If you can be flexible, be willing to compromise, and at the end of the day, put the children first. 51:00 So that’s really my end message here. 51:03 Here’s some resources. 51:04 We got the Collaborative, CollaborateNewJersey.org. 51:08 This is, if you’re looking for matrimonial law attorneys, I would suggest going to this website because they have a list of people that they basically approve for, these are shepherds that are trying to shepherd the family through divorce without blowing their college and retirement savings on suing each other. 51:29 And here’s some suggested readings, mostly academic, so I’ll kind of move on from that and we’ll get to questions and answers. 51:36 And we will be making the slides available so if people need to like look or want to look through these Resources they can at a later at a later date. Here’s my information. 51:48 You can also email me if you have any questions All right. Sorry. I don’t know if I left this a few times. 51:54 It looks like eight minutes left Yeah, it’s okay if we go over a little bit no worries Um, so now we’re going to go into Q &A. Dr. Miserel, thank you so much for your presentation. 52:07 So first I’m going to ask the submitted questions and then we’ll switch to the verbal Q &A, which is when I will stop the recording. 52:17 So um, let’s first, so I’m going to start asking a question and then if Brianna you could put up the other PowerPoints, that would be great. 52:26 Oh, thank you. 52:27 Okay, so we have our first question, which is, can I fix things if I’ve done some of the bad things in a conflict divorce? 52:39 How so if yes? 52:42 Yeah, I think you should try to get into therapy if you have an already a family therapy in particular, not the individual therapy, or seek out some kind of family therapy process. 52:53 And I do believe that it’s possible to fix things and turn it around, if you’re willing to take accountability for what you did, which sounds like you are if you’re posting that question, but you do need most likely some kind of professional guide you through it. 53:11 So my advice would be to seek out a good family therapist who can help navigate that for you. 53:20 And another question that we have is, any resources or suggestions when working with children from high-conflict separation and domestic violence? 53:31 Yeah, well, there’s, in terms of resources, there, it’s kind of tricky because I don’t know what your insurance is. 53:41 So I think you could start by looking on your insurance for therapists and trying to find a good family therapist. 53:49 And you can start by going, if you go to your insurance provider, you put in different, you know, search, find a provider, find a clinician, you put in questions about family therapy and otherwise, and then that would be a good place to start. 54:03 The collaborative, I put for that New Jersey collaborative place, that’s for the lawyers, but they also have connections to therapy resources as well. 54:14 And their kind of mission, the collaborative divorce, that also involves mental health as well as attorneys, their mission is to help people do divorce better. 54:26 So I would start with that website. 54:31 And another question we have is, what if I can’t afford therapy? 54:37 Oh, excellent question. 54:39 If you can’t afford therapy, there are sometimes three ways of going about it. 54:46 If you don’t have insurance and you can’t afford the therapy or you can’t afford the copay, it’s gonna be tough. 54:53 If you’re in a religious community, maybe there is like a member of the community, like a priest, a rabbi, or somebody who’s respected that can help mediate some of these things. 55:03 Sometimes people seek out help from a third party within the extended family who’s respectful or respected, who can help them kind of mediate and navigate. 55:13 But it’s rough because if it’s very complex, then it’s something that you really would rather have an impartial professional help you navigate. 55:23 So that’s kind of a hard thing to do it yourself. 55:26 In terms of things that you can do that don’t cost any money, is listen to some of the advice I had here. 55:32 Try to really listen to your ex-spouse. 55:36 Try to be open with communication. 55:39 Try to be flexible and compromising. 55:41 Try to validate. 55:43 If the other partner is a dead end, then there’s a little, you know, there’s a limit to what you can do, but you can try to do your part at least. 55:54 Okay. 55:54 And so, so before we switch to verbal questions, for those of you that are watching the recorded version of this webinar, thank you so much for attending. 56:06 Please complete the exit survey. 56:08 An archive recording of this webinar will be posted to our website, njcts.org, under the programs tab. 56:16 this blog is now open and accessible under the archived webinar. 56:22 All questions submitted during the recorded viewing will be posted there. 56:25 Our presenter will be answering all questions posted until Tuesday, June 25th. Any personal questions will not be included. 56:32 Any personal information will not be included. 56:35 Our next presentation will be Unified Parenting Cultivating a Strong Relationship While Raising a Neurodivergent Child presented by Jeffrey Young of Relationship Place. It’s scheduled for Wednesday, September 25th at 7 p.m. 56:50 Eastern Standard Time with the recording the following day, Thursday, September 26th at 2 p.m. 56:57 Eastern Standard Time. 56:59 We offer professional development certificates for school professionals and school nurses that attend the live or recording of the webinar. 57:06 To register for either time, please visit njcts.org slash webinars. 57:11 And with that, I’m going to stop the recording.