Plenary Session II: For the love of Fluffy: Transitional objects in high conflict divorce

Adult conflict, separation, and divorce can compromise a child’s emotional security with long term developmental sequelae. Forced to migrate between homes, triangulated into the conflict, and sometimes pressured to take sides, anxiety builds, identity is reshaped, and the quality of these children’s futures is at risk.

As family law professionals, we work hard to assure that children’s access to “emotional fuel” continues uninterrupted by implementing child-centered therapies and crafting developmentally-attuned parenting plans. This presentation focuses on the power of the transitional object—those portable, idiosyncratic blankets and stuffed animals and trinkets that communicate a caregiver’s love while apart—both to help children manage separation and to move toward healthy autonomy.

Building on a dramatic Canadian divorce case (Chomos v Hamilton, 2016 ONSC 5208), the concept of the transitional object is defined, and its role in the course of healthy development is explored and applied to the needs of children caught up in high conflict divorce. Transitional objects are discussed as portable sources of emotional fuel, a metaphor that invites a new and very practical perspective on understanding and serving the best interests of these children.

This PowerPoint and relevant materials, including the court’s ruling in Chomos are available to conference participants in advance of the conference via Dr. Garber’s website at http://www.familylawconsulting.org/WashState%202019/Seattle2019.html. Participants are invited to bring their own preferred blankies and teddy bears to this presentation.

Learning objectives:

• Participants will better understand the role of transitional objects in healthy child development and their special role when development is impacted by family conflict and transition.
• Participant-therapists will be better able to recognize and respond to children’s needs for transitional objects to assist with the anxieties associated with frequent loss and transition between conflicted homes.
• Participant-evaluators will become more acutely aware of and responsive to the role of transitional objects and how these idiosyncratic anxiolytics provide a window into the child’s needs and experience of family.

Read more about Benjamin Garber, PhD

Plenary Session III: What do we really know about what we do? Being mindful of our footprint on the family

When families separate and divorce, the overwhelming majority of families with children are able to reach agreements and understandings about parenting plans and child sharing/child custody on their own or with some assistance from attorneys and clinical mental health professionals.

However, the families that litigate and have dispute over these issues—the very families that we interact with and serve, place the well-being of the family and of the children in the hands of professionals such as judicial officers, attorneys, and mental health professionals.

They do so based on the assumption that professionals are wise, professionals are experienced, and that professionals truly know what they are doing. They do so assuming that the recommendations, guidance, and orders we make have behind them some degree of known efficacy and positive impact. But do they?

What do we really know about the efficacy of the various interventions we recommend and order? What happens to families when the natural autonomy and independence of the family system is impacted by litigation? Especially in those cases which are higher in conflict and in which repeated rounds of litigation ensue, what do we know about our impact on the family?

This inspirational and cautionary plenary session will explore these issues and, hopefully, help family law professionals approach their work with more humility, more respect for the family, and with a greater awareness of the consequences—both intended and unintended—that we have on the family.

Learning objectives:

• Participants will be more alert to the nature of family systems and systems change.
• Participants will learn what we really know and don’t know about the interventions we advise and order.
• Participants will become more aware of and respectful of the autonomy of the family.

Learn more about about Robert A. Simon, PhD

Advanced Master Class – Track A: “How do you get refueled?” They may be legally divorced. Now they need to get emotionally divorced!

Approaching the “best interests” standard through the lens of the child’s need for emotional fuel invites new and creative approaches to a number of common areas of family law practice.

Dr. Garber suggests that early attachment relationships and social capital more generally provide children with critical emotional fuel and build resilience against anxiety. Our job, as family law professionals, is to assess where and how each child gets that fuel and to intervene both through therapies and judicial rulings to maximize those opportunities.

These concepts are applied to four specific areas of practice:

• Child custody evaluations can be designed so as to more efficiently and more effectively (yes, less time and less cost to collect more and better data!) by incorporating a process-oriented protocol;
• Co-parenting and Parent Coordination interventions can be made more effective when the adults’ emotional divorce is clarified by assuring that neither is seeking emotional fuel from the other;
• “Reunification” interventions can be made more effective by integrating established CBT strategies to diminish anxiety and maximize the child’s opportunity to enjoy a healthy relationship with both parents; and
• Self-care: The work that we do takes its toll. The risk of burn-out, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma is high.
• The day closes by asking you to reconsider the question, “Where do you get refueled?”

This PowerPoint and relevant materials are available to conference participants in advance of the conference via Dr. Garber’s website at www.familylawconsulting.org/WashState%202019/Seattle2019.html.

Learning objectives:

• Participants will become better able to approach self-care, forensic assessment and forensic intervention from the perspective of emotional refueling
• Participants will better understand and apply the idea of social capital as it bears on understanding and serving the needs of court-involved children.
• Participants will better understand and apply the idea of resilience as it bears on understanding and serving the needs of court-involved children.
• Participant-evaluators will become able to include process-oriented observations so as to better and more efficiently assess resilience, social capital, and emotional refueling.
• Participant-therapists will become better able to recognize and respond to the ways in which social capital and emotional refueling can facilitate or impede progress in co-parenting and parenting Coordination.
• Participant-therapists will become better able to integrate CBT tools to manage anxiety and thereby facilitate reunification interventions.

Read more about Benjamin Garber, PhD

There will be a 15-minute break during the Advanced Master Class.

Advanced Master Class – Tract B: Cognitive and implicit bias: Beware! Our brains fool us and lead us astray

No matter how hard we try to approach our work with neutrality and objectivity, the fact that we are human and that we have human brains leads us to bring to our work biases, both known and not known.

Because bias is the greatest risk to the integrity and usefulness of the work we do, becoming aware of our biases, especially implicit biases and cognitive biases, is essential to doing our work as well as we can.

This intensive and interactive/experiential Master Class will explore cognitive and implicit bias. We will explore how to recognize those biases you are most prone to, and examine teach de-biasing strategies.

Be prepared for a stimulating, enlightening, and even surprising Master Class.

Learning Objectives:

• Participants will learn what cognitive and implicit biases are and why they can’t be avoided.
• Participants will identify cognitive and implicit biases to which they, individually, are prone.
• Participants will learn de-biasing strategies.

Learn more about about Robert A. Simon, PhD

There will be a 15-minute break during the Advanced Master Class.