Focus: psychological help with parents of children and adolescents

Working with and through parents: supporting the child who suffers through work on parenting skills. A clinical example

In light of current epistemology, it makes no sense to propose a standard setting for therapeutic intervention for a child's problems. The suffering child belongs to a family, which also suffers; each child and each family member have their own personal and contextual specificities, their own strengths and weaknesses. So why should the therapist's response to a child's suffering always follow the same working model? As in all situations where parents ask for help for their children, the choice of being able to work with the child and the parents or only with the parents depends on many variables. Referring to the theory of complex systems and the concept of "symmathesy" introduced by Nora Bateson, which emphasizes mutual learning within a system, and through the exposition of a clinical case, the Authors illustrate the reasons for the choice to work only with parents, without involving the child, in particular on the re-emergence of parenting skills, which are "hidden" and trapped in the suffering experienced in front of the child.