Parents Can Be Therapists of their Child

First of all, parents need to respect their child if they want to have a chance to succeed in reversing a bad situation : without respect nothing will work, and you have to be able to perceive your child as somebody who suffers deeply.

If you hurt her or his feelings, there will be no establishment of a positive, co-operative relationship : that base is a must to keep in mind permanently to avoid negative drifts with time.

Parents having a child with a chronic condition that may be caused by emotional factors can implement themselves the guidelines explained here, but the therapeutic process might be harder to start because :

1- frequently, the family situation of a suffering child is that one parent abused or continue to abuse the child and the other parent chooses consciously or not to ignore it to protect the marriage : frequently, when a child abuse is disclosed in the family, this leads to divorce with consequences that can be hard for every member in the family like sorrow, depression, financial troubles, lack of time, need to find a new home...

But sometimes children are abused by somebody outside the family : an uncle, a grand parent, a neighbor, a friend, a baby-sitter, a health professional, a teacher, a priest, a hospital nurse or orderly (especially during night time)...

Anyway, the caring parent needs first of all to protect the child against more abuses, otherwise no progress will be possible.

2- you as a parent need also to convince your child that ce will not have to suffer retaliation if your child discloses abuse by the other parent or by an other adult. In such a case, you would have to become independent from your abusive partner.

3- the suffering child continues to live in the same place with the same persons : therefore ce will tend to continue along the same ways because it is the best ce found to cope with ces sufferings, or at least adapt as much as possible to minimize the hurts.

4- you, parent, most often were not trained nor you did yourself a therapy, you thus have no experience nor personal drive on how to be non-directive, as like for most of us when you were a child your parents were directive with you all along your growth.

5- we can not change our personality just because we want it, and our actions and orientations conform to our personality to try satisfy as best as possible our personal needs, but our needs can conflict with those of our children.

6- for a therapeutic process to engage with your child, it needs more than a positive and encouraging attitude with the child : you need to have enough time to spend with your child each day and to be available at the moments when the child seems to be the most accessible, which can be difficult to match with a full time occupation needed to cover all living expenses.

7- the human environment may disapprove what you parent are trying to achieve : most of adults do not see how to be different than directive with children. The neighbors might not understand the situation as themselves were raised in directive ways when children. For many people, freedom and respect are only abstract principles that they never had the chance to experience personally. The same goes with relatives and friends.

Therefore trying to create a therapeutic environment for your child in the middle of a society that is not so compassionate might be hardly feasible. You would need to have time and space which are easier to find in the countryside, so that could lead you to rethink the way your life is organized, unless you already live in a rural environment.

8- the child ceself can be a cause of difficulties if ce feels the need to test the new orientations that you are trying to adopt to help ce better : your child may be provocative to see if you really mean to go beyond words.

You can use all that is explained in this website, even the part about recruiting somebody to help you cure your child, with the Assistants Recruitment page.

Importance of feelings and emotions in our lives :

Children and pets know better than adults that the more you express and receive love, the happier you are : you just need to allow time for that. If you don't, you miss the best life can bring to you, plus you drive your children and pets to seek love somewhere else, as it is a basic need for them.

A parent successful at actually curing her own autistic child can be found in the book by Tamara Morar : "Ma victoire sur l'autisme", is all in french, no known translation into english even though the author was a translator. She is the mother who decided to help herself her 4 year-old son when he became severely autistic and she found no really therapeutic program though they lived in Paris.

With the help of a speech therapist and compassionate school teachers, she managed to actually cure him in the course of a few years, taking inspiration from some programs in the US, spending a lot of time with him, and trying to provide him with a lot of opportunities to be with normal children.

rev. 2015