Mending Fences: A Collaborative, Cognitive-Behavioral Reunification Protocol Serving the Best Interests of the Post-Divorce, Polarized Child

Product Description
High conflict divorce can leave children polarized within the transitioning family system, aligned with one parent and resisting or refusing contact with the other parent. Rather than becoming mired in the bottomless pit of back and forth blame, more and more courts are seeking remedies in the form of reunification therapy.
Charged with helping the polarized child to enjoy a healthy relationship with both parents, we know what doesn’t work: individual child therapy cannot remedy a family systems problem. Dyadic interventions with the child and either parent are seldom sufficient. Even family therapies fall short when they are not grounded in well-established, reliable and valid science.
Mending Fences introduces a child-centered, systemically informed, empirically-validated and experientially-proven collaborative reunification protocol. Focusing on the anxiety inhibiting the system’s healthy functioning, well-respected and long-validated cognitive behavioral exposure methods are fused with structural family therapy to reduce the child’s anxieties about separating from one parent and approaching the other, the aligned parent’s fears of separation and loss, and the rejected parent’s fears of rejection.
A common vocabulary across coordinated interventions allows children across the spectrum of ages and abilities to identify and overcome an individually tailored succession of anxiety-inducing events so as to gradually (re-)establish healthy and safe relationships with both parents.
The Mending Fences protocol is practical, proven, and effective. The user-friendly discussion is peppered with up-to-date references to the scientific literature and international case law. Application via video conferencing platforms is discussed.
Included: Case illustrations, sample court orders and service agreements
Table of Contents
Caveat Lector
Foreword
Chapter 1 There Is No Such Thing as Reunification Therapy
Chapter 2 Know When to Hold ‘Em: Receiving, Accepting, or Declining the Referral
Chapter 3 The Court Order
Chapter 4 The Service Agreement
Chapter 5 In the Age of Telehealth
Chapter 6 On Villages and Blind Wisemen: MMST as a Team Sport
Chapter 7 Initial Adult Interviews
Chapter 8 Establishing Rapport with the Child
Chapter 9 Conducting Initial Child Interviews; Segueing into Anxiety Management
Chapter 10 Understanding Anxiety
Chapter 11 Anxiety Management, Exposure, and the MMST Protocol
Chapter 12 Working through the Success Deck: Creative, Responsive, and Graduated Exposure
Chapter 13 When MMST Isn’t Enough
Appendix A Sample Court Order
Appendix B Sample Service Agreement
Appendix C Sample Timeline of Multi-Modal
Systemic Reunification Therapy
Citations
Acknowledgments
Index
Review
I agree with Ben Garber. As a lawyer and as a therapist, I agree with his criticism of most court orders for reunification therapy in high conflict divorce cases and I agree with his structure for more appropriate and effective family therapy in these cases.\nSomething needs to change when there is child resistance and refusal to see one parent during and after separation and divorce, and it needs to change now. This problem is growing nationally and internationally. Many children, parents and even grandparents are suffering from the loss of important and necessary relationships, while children are often isolated with a parent with serious problems. This is a continuing tragedy that many family law professionals (lawyers, judges, counselors, mediators, evaluators) can see, but few professionals understand what to do about it. Ben Garber is one of those who knows what to do and we really need to pay attention to his recommendations and get going with implementing them.
The most important principle he emphasizes at the start of this book is that the problem of child resistance and refusal is not just between the child and the “rejected” parent. The problem is one of family dynamics. It’s tempting to put the child in indivi