Caregiver Sessions: Strategies and example questions for maximum impact for child and adolescent therapists
+ A list of strategies and questions to take with you into session
Disclaimer: This newsletter provides general advice for educational and entertainment purposes only, it is not intended to be professional therapeutic or medical advice. Please speak with a registered mental health professional or book a session here to receive professional support.
Hey - This blog post is from my professional newsletter.
The Professional Cocoon is for fellow professionals working with young people, every fortnight I share my latest tips and insights for you to use in your practice with young people this week.
I’m thrilled to be offering my Teen Therapy Masterclass again in 5 weeks!
Tuesday, 4th of March 2025 via Zoom
10:00 am - 1:00 pm AEDT - 3 CPD hours (attendance certificate provided!)
✨ Mastering Rapport: Teen Counselling Skills Masterclass ✨
For counsellors, social workers, psychologists and
related professionals working with teens.
Through 3 hours of case studies, 1-1 coaching and specialised training,
you will leave with:
⭐ Rapport building strategies to implement with resistant clients straight away
⭐ Insight into the developmental and neurobiological reasons for teen behaviour and mental health issues
⭐ Strategies to navigate challenging therapeutic issues unique to teens such as drug use, social media use and bullying
⭐ Peer supervision and connection with like-minded professionals due to the intimate, close group format
Spaces are filling up quickly - Save your spot now! ⚡
What’s the latest news on young people..
Conversations with the family members of our young clients can be one of the biggest blocks we experience as clinicians.
It can be stressful, ineffective and create more issues than it solves.
But, with intention and strategy - we can change our young people’s lives.
Straight from my prep notes built over years of counselling teens and families…
How to Talk to Caregivers Like a Pro 🚀
A list of example questions to guide your session
I am a huge proponent for parental involvement in child and teen counselling.
Now, that does not always look like involving parents in all sessions, in calling them after sessions to update them or telling them what the child spoke about.
In fact it almost never does, for quite a few essential reasons i’ll chat about in a sec.
But if a child spends 7 days a week, roughly 120+ hours in the family home and we only see them for 1 hour every week or fortnight…
You best believe we need to involve families in some capacity.
Otherwise, I hate to say it — but the work we do reaches minimal impact as the child continues to return to the same environment and likely lacks the tools and power to change relationships in the home on their own.
We have 3 options of involving families,
depending on the situation:
1. Involving caregivers directly.
Having them in sessions every now and then to update/collaborate with the teen, involving them in communication as much as the teen allows.
This is usually the diamond in the rough, where the teen is connected enough to a caregiver and the caregiver is emotionally regulated and resourced enough to have them in the room at times, feels comfortable sharing some information and is open to collaboration.
However, this can be the place we strive to end up - to begin here with both parties keen and willing can be rare.
2. Involving caregivers and family members due to conflict or their concerns for the teen that they come to us with.
Eg. Referring teens for “behavioural issues” that the teen disagrees with, forcing them to attend therapy, having very clear goals for the teen that conflict with what the teens says they are experiencing.
This is where we need to be extra skilful and intentional about how we are involved and assist families to connect, which comes with it’s challenges.
3. Involving caregivers and family members due to lack of engagement in the teens life.
The goal here is usually to increase connection, warmth and support for the teen - as low family engagement and presence in the teens life is highly problematic at a time they may say they “don’t need anyone”, but they are still a child with emotional, physical and developmental needs which arguably needs more skilled parental involvement than before.
Now obviously, the presenting issues, family makeup, environment and history, the child’s personality and ability to engage all determine how we skilfully manage these dynamics.
But, here is my process that will hopefully help direct your work with clients families so that our clients can experience the best mental and developmental wellbeing we can offer them.
⭐ A checklist before, during and after sessions with caregivers
Get clear on the goal before you have the convo:
Perspective taking is the key goal in the majority of caregiver sessions.
Not fixing or advice giving yet.And THEN form a collective goal WE are all working on (teen included).
We want to reduce me vs them dynamic, as this can feel like blame and pressure to a teen - where they will push away from family and youWe must be mindful of parents stressed minds understandably with pressure and concern they want to fix issue, unfortunately there is a link in the chain broken here as teen further pushes away/rebels/feels shame/feels reluctant to engage in therapy with you as they feel its just blaming doesn’t understand them OR shut out parent as not trusting or calm
My list of strategies + questions for caregiver sessions:
Ask the teen what they’d prefer.
To have parent in session, separate session, phone call?
(ideally i prefer separate but really only if teen/kid consents as really dont want them to think we are talking about them, feel uncomfy and )
1-1 conversations with parents also allow you to FULLY get parents perspective, focus IN on them and their stressors and explore content that may be distressing/awkward for teen to hear.
However, if a teen says no - I listen.
We work around it.Eg of strategies to implement and qu’s to ask caregiver
- What is your concern for them?
- What do you really think goes on inside their heads and hearts?
(encouraging insight into experience of teen, steering away from rules/bad/good)
- Who’s in your support system we can rope in?
* We want to reduce excessive focus, parent feels super stressed alone (not going to be able to regulate to attune) and focus on teen too much pressure to progress
- Get an idea of cycles and patterns of conflict or communication between them-teen. What is going on here? What increases conflict/hostility? What triggers teen?
Tease this out with the caregiver slowly.
What happens then? How does that make you/them feel? How do you/them react?
Again, trying to get an idea of what’s happening but ALSO increasing parental insight into teen experience.
- Share any insights teen CONSENTS to sharing
(ask this in a session before you speak to the caregiver)
A line i like is “do you want me to take the hit for you?”
There may be something they want to communicate but lack the skills to.
We need to expertly manage this to not be triangulated but can lead to really great advocacy for teen and provide a bridge - gaining parents trust as another adult on the FAMILY team to help along is really really helpful!
- What can be our negotiated plan between all of us? (ideally involving both caregivers if in teens life, if not - close grandparents, siblings if appropriate)
- What are activities or behaviours that connect you to your teen?
How can we increase these?
We all need a firm foundation of warm connection with teens to be able to implement the firmer stuff like boundaries and guidance.When there is little-to-no warm connection, teens continue to push away, feel alone and suffer mentally.
Like all of us in relationships that are going through a rough patch, parents tend to hyper fixate on what is going wrong.
This is normal for us human beings when we are stressed, frustrated and feel we cannot fix the situation.
As outside observers who also care about their child, it is our role to gently point to other options for reconnecting parents and children in their management of their kids mental health and development.
With these strategies, many issues can arise.
Parent hostility, resentment, low engagement and risk issues that involve skilled management from our ends.
As supporters of young people, it’s super common to feel overwhelmed, anxious and lost in how to handle these complex situations.
I’d love to have you join us in 5 weeks time for my masterclass that I specifically created for fellow clinicians wishing to build expert rapport building skills and navigate complex teen issues such as caregiver involvement, social media, bullying and antisocial behaviours.
Tuesday, 4th of March 2025 via Zoom
10:00 am - 1:00 pm AEDT - 3 CPD hours (attendance certificate provided!)
If you or any colleagues have any questions about the day, just reply to this email and i’ll give you more information!
Chat soon,
Ellie
I’m Ellie.
Bachelor of Arts (Psych.), Master of Counselling
I am a specialist in adolescent therapy, after specialising in both my degrees, clinical placements and further training in adolescent, youth and family therapy. I run Professional Development trainings and workshops for fellow therapists working with teen counselling.
I specialise in Youth Trauma and Grief, with comprehensive additional training in family therapy, child and adolescent counselling, supervised by Sydney's leading family and child therapists and organisations.
I now run an online practice where I see clients, create content and workshops, as well as educate fellow professionals in adolescent counselling through professional development trainings and lecturing in adult tertiary education.
Have a qu or want to chat? I’d love to connect!
Connect on linkedin or send me an email
