Page 67 - Meeting with Children Manual

Section 5

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• My child is completely fed-up with their other parent
Parents who lack differentiation from their children tend to be quite anxious when
away from their child(ren) and they tend to use their children as emotional anchors in
their daily life in a way that resembles that of role corruption (when parents separate,
roles in family are renegotiated and roles that may re-emerge include such things as
the child serving as a parent’s ally or enmeshment (where child and parent’s issues
merge) (Garber, 2011). The parents who score low on the PRS tend to elicit and foster
an over-alignment with their child; leaving the child with little choice but to join to
please their parent through compliance. These parents may feel threatened by any
attempt on the part of those working with them to identify their lack of seeing their
child as a different person with different thoughts and feelings to them. They tend to
feel unheard and misunderstood if challenged directly about their child potentially
having any different thought or feeling than them.

ITEM 2 Parent Insight
Individual ability factor

• Well it has nothing to do with me
• Yes, I hung up; why shouldn’t I? She does it to me
• He/she had it coming and if he/she can talk to me that way there is no reason why
I can’t do the same!
• If it wasn’t for his/her ignorant behavior, we would not be in this mess
• If he/she would call when I am not busy, I might be able to answer
• I won’t text or email. It is his/her fault that we are in this mess. He/she can talk to
my lawyer
• There is nothing I can do about our communication. I don’t feel like talking to
him/her anyway
• I have no idea what his/her problem is – probably a personality disorder
• If only he/she would… we would not have to call the police
Those with low insight tend not see themselves as any part of the problem. If the
parent is unable to examine him/herself in relation to how he/she contributes to a
situation, the parent is likely low in insight. People who do not identify their own
feeling states or regularly project responsibility onto others may not be ready to hear
their child’s input. It is more likely with this frame of mind that the parent would blame
the other parent for any messages delivered by the child. Worse than blaming the
other parent would be for the person with low insight to blame the child for any
messages that have to do with his/her behavior.

ITEM 3. Parent Sensitivity
Parent/Child factor
Ainsworth, 1973, 1978 and Bowlby 1980 noted that sensitivity to children’s signals and
the appropriate and timely response to those signals is central to attachment theory
and is the central predictor of caregiver/infant attachment. What does sensitivity
mean? Claussen and Crittenden (2000) view sensitivity as one of the steps in multistep
communication and state: “Conceptually, sensitivity refers to the parent’s ability to

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