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How To Protect Children In Divorce w/ Jennifer Leister

For a lot of families who are facing divorce, one of the main concerns they have is the impact that the divorce will have on their children. Our firm is dedicated to providing high-quality, relatable, and timely resources to our community and clients. Jennifer Hargrave sat down with Jennifer Leister to discuss Children, Divorce, and how best to protect them from trauma.

Jennifer is a Licensed Professional Counselor. She is the owner of Jennifer Leister and Associates and she is very experienced in helping families navigate the transitions that come with divorce. 

 

Jennifer Hargrave:

One of the things you’ve done is to write a book for children to help them understand the divorce process. Can you tell us about your books?

Jennifer Leister:

So, yes, Meet Max – Learning about Divorce from a Basset Hound’s Perspective is the first book that explains divorce to children 11, 12 years and younger, and then Max Meets Emma – Learning about Blended Families from a Basset Hound’s Perspective is when the cat moves in.

So, Max, the dog, has to understand what it’s like to start sharing his beloved owner, the son, Max. And so the second book, Max Meets Emma is really the introduction of a significant other all the way through how to healthy blend, and both books deal with all the emotions that children face during times of change. And so Meet Max and Max Meets Emma is a labor of love and I really think they have a great message and really good for families.

Jennifer Hargrave:

So let’s talk a little bit about your experience in working with children. I know you work with teenagers but you also work with young children who are going through life transitions, and divorce is one of those. What do you see for young children when they’re their world is changing?

Jennifer Leister:

So that’s a great question. I usually start seeing children clinically at about age five, children under five, sometimes I work with them, but some of those kiddos really do need a registered play therapist. So if the children are extremely verbal, I do still work with children that young. I find that most of the kiddos that I work with, let’s say, ten and under, what we focus on the most is really at an appropriate developmental stage, of course, is the understanding of what’s happening.

So some of the classic languages that I use when working with young children is that – “Your family has two homes.” And I really tried to focus on, “Your relationship with your mommy and your relationship with your Daddy doesn’t have to change,” even though the husband-and-wife relationship is changing. So we do a lot of play, read a lot of children’s books, a lot of artwork, just a lot of appropriate play and really acclimating and understanding that their family is changing from one home to two home, but love is permanent and so I use analogies like sunshine. How love is like the sun and the sun touches both homes regardless of which home they’re in and that love is the same. So we do so much developmental play to just really try to reinforce that divorce doesn’t alter relationships, it just changes the way the family is presenting or functioning, but it still functions the same in two homes.

Jennifer Hargrave:

What is a good indicator that maybe a child should begin seeing a therapist?

Jennifer Leister:

I do try to help families recognize if their children have any regression, that is a great sign that they could use some outside support and care and education and processing. So any type of change in educational needs – if their grades have changed, if you’re younger kiddos have regressed to bed wetting or thumb sucking or separation anxiety has started back up. Another indicator would be difficulty with transitions. When children are transitioning, going from Mom’s house to Dad’s or Dad’s house back to Mom’s house, if they transition well, then that’s a great sign that they are really adjusting in a healthy, developmentally appropriate way.

Transitions, I think, are a key indicator of how your kiddo is doing. If there is a lot of struggle, then they may need outside support other than just Mom, Dad and family, and teachers, or their church or clergy. And so sometimes children, a good indicator would be if really the separation anxiety, difficulty sleeping, especially on transition days. There’s obviously a normal phase that children go through that they need time to adjust so there’s always a little bit of regression and tears in the beginning, but if you don’t see progress over 30, 45 days, or you see things getting worse would be definitely a good time to reach out to a therapist.

Jennifer Hargrave:

Do both parents need to be involved in the therapy or the selection of the therapist? What advice do you have for parents maybe who don’t see eye-to-eye on the issue of therapy?

Jennifer Leister:

So some of that is a personal preference or your clinical training or foundation. I personally believe that, yes, both parents should be involved. I find if I’m working especially with young children but really even my adolescent population, I want to work with both parents. If both parents have some form of shared custody regardless of the actual possession schedule or parenting plan, as I like to call it.

Regardless of how many nights they live with either parent, I do think both parents should be involved because I like to give a lot of parent feedback and coaching on how to do things better. And if I only have one parent involved, one parent gets the benefit of my coaching and education and training and the other parent doesn’t have, so I find that can create an imbalance on what the children are seeing in their two homes. But the other key point on why I find it is so important to work with both parents is I want the child to see that I care about both parents and when parents alternate bringing their children to therapy and we do joint family sessions like that feedback if or when it’s appropriate, I want the child to see that I care about both of their parents because children, fundamentally, of course, they love Mom and Dad regardless of which home they live in.

I find it sends a deeper message to the child when both parents participate and they know that both parents care about their health and wellness and understanding of divorce.

Jennifer Hargrave:

Sometimes there’s a question about confidentiality with children and especially when you’re also working with parents and parents may want to know the details of what you’re discussing in a therapy session. How does that work when you’re working with the child?

Jennifer Leister:

Oh, that’s a great question. I’m going to break it down into two parts. Obviously, with younger kiddos, I don’t spend a lot of time explaining to them how confidentiality works. I do take time to at least explain it on their age-appropriate level. I do tell parents I will give them feedback on themes that we talk about what I think would be beneficial or helpful to helping the child. So I’ll give coaching and feedback on developmentally appropriate topics but the words children say, their actual quotes, I do try to keep confidential unless the child gives me permission to share.

With my teenagers, I spend a lot more time talking about the limits of confidentiality. There’s a course for under our code, right? Suspected any type of child abuse or self-harm is a deal-breaker, right? We have to disclose those things, but I do try to give teenagers more privacy than I do my littles because I want them to feel safe with me, of course. But when I know teenagers are telling me something that really does affect the family, for example, if one parent is using them as a messenger or the parents have conflict, if that was occurring is causing depression or anxiety.

Those things I really do try to get the teenager to give me permission to open that up and either send them to a family therapist if appropriate. If not, allow me to do parent coaching to really try to decrease the stress that the divorce is putting on the adolescent. But I really try hard to never do that without their permission.

Jennifer Hargrave:

One thing I know that can be confusing for people is the different roles that therapists play. So, for example, a husband and wife may be seeing a therapist for marriage counseling and want that same therapist to be the children’s counselor, is that advisable or even allowed and what do you recommend with regards to individual counseling?

Jennifer Leister:

So that, too, is a pretty complicated question. And so some of it really comes down to geography. Right here in North Texas, there’s really a therapist on every corner and so I am pretty strong in my boundary that if I’m in one role, of course, our licensure says you can never be in a dual role. If you’re the marital counselor, I benignancy do think you need to stay with the marriage counselor but I also try to be sensitive to out in rural communities or other areas around the state or in other states. You may not have as many child-centered or registered play therapists who can see children and so sometimes I try to be more sensitive that therapists have to do what they believe is best. But especially in the Metroplex, I really like therapists to stay in their lane and I always tell therapists when I’m training, especially my employees, to stay with your patient and you never want your client to be confused about who was your client at the time. And so I just think it is cleaner, more ethical, most appropriate to not ever blur those roles.

 

Jennifer Hargrave:

But just because you’re working with a child doesn’t mean that you’re not going to be involved in working with the parents, so how when you are treating a child as your patient, what is that relationship with the parents look like? You’ve been mentioning coaching and I know that’s one of the things that you do so well is to give good feedback to parents, so, I’m just kind of curious about how that relationship looks like.

 

Jennifer Leister:

The actual way that I explain that to parents is that – “I am here to be an extension of your child.” And so when I’m the child’s therapist, the individual therapist, all of my coaching given back to the parent is really exclusively based on the child’s needs. And so if either the parents start saying, “Well, what about me, and how I feel?” Or, “What about my need or my anxiety or my depression?” I am not going to treat that. I’m going to obviously, validate it, respect it, but I’m going to boundary those needs and I’ll offer either a family therapy referral or their own individual therapist for their needs. And so it is really important to me based on my training to give that parent feedback, but it is truly that. It is all the coaching and feedback I give is how to take care of my clients’ needs.

Jennifer Hargrave:

Okay. The other thing I want to talk about is just the difference because you are working with adolescents but then you are working with children five and above, so what is therapy look like for a child who’s like five to seven versus a thirteen or fourteen-year-old?

Jennifer Leister:

I am very fortunate in my office to have a pretty established playroom. There are a ton of toys – male and female. Any child is allowed to explore any toy they want. I also have an art room. I don’t do sand trays anymore, but I know a lot of therapists who specialize in children also offer sand trays and music therapy so there are a lot of other techniques that other therapists can employ to really keep the children engaged.

We know developmentally children learn through play, right? And so, we know that to be able to really process, understand, feel, and a lot of children who can’t truly express, it’s very hard to talk about themselves from an I statement and so it is much easier for some of my kiddos to be able to use toys and to be processing may be a fight between Mom and Dad or a difficult transition and so they’ll use whether it’s toys or stuffed animals or art or other activities that I have in the playroom to really work through those types of thoughts and feelings that they have.

And then to answer the second part of your question, with my teenagers, I always love it when a big, oh, 17-year-old, six-foot-two, big kid is like, “Hey, is that Candy Land?” And so, it’s really great but the majority of my teenagers, right? They really do engage more in talk therapy. So, kind of, my 10 to 14 I find like to play dominoes and some types of card games or something. So, they don’t just have to sit on the couch and stare at me, but some of my teenagers just engage in very normal talk therapy.

Jennifer Hargrave:

If a family right now is living in conflict and considering whether or not to divorce, what advice do you have for them just in general about the impact that divorce can have on children and maybe things they can do to help mitigate the negative impact that it can have?

Jennifer Leister:

I love your question and I’m going to kind of start with saying reading AFCC Journals and other books written on divorce, one of the things that I see consistently reported in the research is it isn’t necessarily marriage or divorce that is– what is the word I’m looking for? I’m so sorry, a precursor if children are healthy or maladjusted. What we’re looking for, what the research shows is this really, conflict, and so we want, I want families to know whether married or divorced – children can grow up, happy, healthy, resilient, developmentally appropriate, launch into adulthood without any complication or concern, and it doesn’t matter if it’s married or divorced, it comes down to healthy relationship, healthy parenting, healthy co-parenting, rather that’s in one home or two homes.

Are you working together as a parental unit or are you working against one another? So whether that happens in marriage or divorce, I truly believe that I have seen very healthy well-adjusted children living in two homes. And I have seen children truly hurting in marital families, in their intact home, but the family has a ton of conflict. And so I do believe the research and what I’ve seen through AFCC and some other journal articles that specialize in divorce, it really is about the conflict.

And so I do encourage any family who was struggling with conflict to seek out marital counseling and to do everything they can to preserve their marriage. But if a husband and wife find that divorce is necessary and then, I do tell all my clients who come to me for a consult on how to tell children about divorce is that they really just have to look at their conflict. And if you just cannot resolve the conflict, then raising children healthy in two homes could be more impactful.

Jennifer Hargrave:

I think that’s such an interesting point because, I mean, I have often said to people and it’s good to know that the research backs this up, but divorce in and of itself isn’t what I see is causing the pain in the child relationships, but really it is the conflict. And you don’t have to be divorced to have conflict in the home, in fact, there are lots of homes with high levels of conflict and we know that has such a negative impact on the lives of children. Tell us a little bit more about what led you to create the Max Books, because I think they’re such a helpful tool for helping parents maybe find a way to talk about what this change in the family structure is going to look like.

Jennifer Leister:

In my own experience with working with children and what my clients were reporting back to me, Dinosaurs Divorce has been around for years, right? I would say that’s a book that most professionals are very comfortable using and are aware of. It’s a great book and it has sold millions of copies and when it was written, I mean, it was a phenomenal book.

I personally started finding that I wasn’t reading the entire book in session because the book started out explaining divorce and the feelings that children go through, which is all very appropriate information. But the book also includes second marriages and so I found in the beginning, I was reading half the book because I didn’t want in one setting to be explaining divorce but also explaining blended families.

So I was only reading half a book in session and I had a kiddo, just make a comment about that and I was like, “Maybe I should try to separate out the books,” and I do still use that book in sessions. I still reference the feelings, that there’s a page in the book that is very well written that it has like eight different feelings that children feel. And so I’ll still use those different feeling faces to help children really recognize all those feelings are appropriate. But really, it drove me to want to write these books so the children could just really separate out the two different topics and when I researched how many books were just written on blended families, I really wanted to continue to develop the Max series and so stay tuned, through the years, there will be more coming, I hope.

Jennifer Hargrave:

Where can people find your Max books?

Jennifer Leister:

They are for sale on Amazon just under Meet Max or Max Meets Emma. And then I also have maxmeetsbooks.com and so you can also purchase them off the website or jennifercounseling.com. They are both on my website.

 

Jennifer Hargrave:

And you also have a really helpful video too, for families. Can you tell us a little bit about the video?

 

Jennifer Leister:

Yes, it’s a very inexpensive video just explaining how to tell your children you’re divorcing and so I have scripted the conversation for any parents who are wanting more information on what exactly to say to their children or teenagers. And so it just gives you some bullet points and some language to use to just set it up as appropriately as you can.

Jennifer Hargrave:

We know that that conversation is going to be a big and impactful conversation to the life of that child, it’s just going to be one of those moments probably that they won’t forget is when they learn that their mom and dad were getting a divorce. What tips, just can you summarize real quick that people need to know when they’re getting ready to have that conversation?

Jennifer Leister:

Just a really quick tip – do the conversation together, anytime that you can. I find children process and receive the information when both mom and dad or two moms or two dads, just whoever their parents are if they are sitting together, telling their children, “Our family is going to change.” And I tell families, “Use the word divorce,” don’t think of it as a taboo word. Children need to be able to understand, say the word, and know that it’s not a dirty word. Divorce is what their family is going through and to be able to use the language, I tell families, I tell parents to say things like, “Our family is changing. We have decided to divorce,” and I will tell parents to really concretely separate out. This is more for like 12 and under, the husband and wife dynamic, this relationship between husband and wife has come to an end, but being Mom and Dad is forever. And I tell families to really be very concrete in their language and saying the husband-and-wife role has come to an end. That way children can continue to hear the language, “Mom loves you” “Dad loves you” “Mom is forever” “Dad is forever”. Those roles never change because it is the husband-and-wife dynamic that has come to an end. They are always parents. That also helps me link parents to some accountability to one another that they are forever parents even post-divorce and to continue to work on their co-parent relationship which I recognize takes time and adjustment and new boundaries but it can be achieved.

I have very healthy, well-adjusted, beautiful families that I work with post-divorce that the children are thriving. And so if you find yourself facing a difficult situation and if you are thinking about ending your marriage and your thinking about divorce, I do want to offer hope because a collaborative divorce definitely provides a foundation to ending a marriage but setting up a co-parent-relationship and restructuring what that relationship looks like and the communication and boundaries that are needed to raise children in two homes.

Jennifer Hargrave:

Okay. You’re going to have to stick around and we’ll do another part to talking about collaborative divorce and how that can help families. Jennifer, I want to thank you for taking time today to come and share with us some of your wisdom and insight that you’ve gleaned from working with kiddos in the divorce for families who are going through a divorce. I think you are such a tremendous resource in our North Texas region and I feel thankful to get to know you and to have benefited and learned so much from you. So thank you for being with us.

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