First Contacts Do’s and Don’ts:
The Keys to Making Parents Feel Empowered, Respected and Part of the Process
- How to get parents to meet with you, even if they say they’re busy or frequent “no-shows”
- How to engage the absent/estranged parent who doesn’t answer email
- First meeting with parents: setting the stage for future success
- Research, risks and limitations
Frequency and Content of Parent Contact and Involvement
- How often should you meet with parents and in what format?
- Ethical considerations for sharing child information in parent sessions
- Helping parents with behavior management
- Effective, culturally sensitive, attachment-focused parenting techniques
Stuck Parental Attitudes and How to Respond to Statements Like …
- I’m the adult and she just needs to listen
- I was brought up this way and I turned out just fine
- The real world isn’t going to baby him
- All this play stuff is just a waste of my time and money
- I tried your behavior strategy at home and it didn’t work
Helping Parents Hold Boundaries
- Gently confront parents who want better behavior but can’t consistently hold boundaries
- Addressing parents’ shame and guilt about their own contribution to the problem
- How to confront parents who are inconstant in their messages and behavior
Assess, Prepare for and Conduct Parent-Child Joint Sessions
- Decide when the time is right for conducting child-parent joint sessions
- Timing, subject matter, who to include
- Explain to the parents what to expect in a child-parent session
- Address your own fears as a clinician about conducting family sessions
- Conduct a parent-child session
- Handling chaos, shut-down, arguments and more


