Working with Parents Makes Therapy Work

Book excerpt: Working With Parents Makes Therapy Work demonstrates the crucial role of parent work in child and adolescent therapy. The Novicks suggest that restoring the parent-child relationship contributes to long-lasting therapeutic change in children and adolescents. With a multitude of vivid clinical examples, the authors provide a practical guide to clinical techniques for integrating parent work with individual child and adolescent treatment. Working With Parents Makes Therapy Work demonstrates that parents and therapists can form a strong alliance to support the child's healthy development. Kerry and Jack Novick apply their revised models of the therapeutic alliance and two systems of self-regulation to help parents from evaluation to termination and beyond. The book covers a wide range of situations, for instance, work with fathers, addressing problems of divorce and diverse family structures, and many modes of communicating with parents. Family secrets and loyalty conflicts; what happens when parents are troubled; the importance of parents in the lives of teenagers-these are all discussed in detail. Privacy and secrecy are defined and differentiated to clarify the meaning and importance of genuine confidentiality.