As a parent, you know that your child or teen needs help. That’s why they are now seeing a Long Island counselor and learning all about dialectical behavioral therapy, or DBT. However, this is only the first step towards your child’s healing. Family involvement in DBT therapy is the next crucial component of your child’s success in therapy.
You are an important guide for your child as they grow, and the home environment you create can be a tremendous source of support for your child. This means that when your child is DBT therapy, your participation, when appropriate, in therapy sessions, learning about DBT, and incorporating it into your everyday life with your child, is integral to sustaining therapy success for your child.
What are Three ways family involvement in DBT therapy makes a difference?
1. Learning a New Vocabulary
First, through family involvement in DBT therapy, you will learn a whole new set of vocabulary to use with your child. This includes your child’s diagnosis and how it affects them. It also incorporates helpful working knowledge of how DBT works, so you can support your child as they also learn about DBT. DBT centers around four areas of skill development. These include:
- Mindfulness
- Distress tolerance
- Emotional regulation
- Interpersonal effectiveness
Additionally, you will learn how DBT encourages thinking skills that encourage a balanced approach versus an all-or-nothing outlook.
2. Extending this Learning to Home
It’s not enough that your child learns a few new skills in session, but then comes home and doesn’t use them. They must extend that learning at home and incorporate those skills into their everyday lives.
This means that you too must learn these DBT skills and practice with your child as part of family involvement in DBT therapy.
It’s understandable if you resist this at first. As we get older, it can be harder to be open to new ways of thinking and learning. We get set in our ways. Or, we believe that it’s all “their problem” that needs to get “fixed” by their therapist.
The reality is that relationships work both ways, especially for parents and children. For your child to see success, they must successfully implement these skills regularly. They need reminders, they need support when they fail to use their skills, and they need positive reinforcement when they do succeed. You are a key part of their everyday life, and their success in integrating new skills hinges on how they interact with you at home.
3. Promoting Communication and Understanding
As noted above, one of the key tenets of DBT is interpersonal effectiveness. That means being able to communicate in a way that promotes understanding between two people.
When your child uses DBT to communicate with you, and you role-model back to them, imagine the understanding that occurs! You will find that you will learn more about your child than you realized, and that they’re capable of way more self-regulation than they ever realized.
It’s this joint realization that builds understanding, and with understanding comes a deepening of your relationship with your child.
DBT and Your Child
DBT is a great treatment method for children because its focus is on helping your child or teen develop their own skills and abilities. It’s empowering for them! They are not just being talked to, but instead they are making their own choices and becoming more independent. Family involvement in DBT therapy makes it easier for your child to use a mindfulness skill to self-soothe, or an interpersonal effectiveness skill to have a respectful disagreement without even having a second thought.
What is The Role of the Therapist for Family Involvement in DBT Therapy?
The role of the therapist when it comes to DBT and families is an interesting one. On the one hand, they are working with your child to develop their abilities to handle stress, manage their emotions, and to communicate. They will also work with you to help you understand what DBT is all about and to practice these skills yourselves.
What they are not trying to do is tell you how to interact with your child. Your Suffolk County therapist is there to help both of you to be on the same wavelength, so your child knows what to do when they’re challenged in life, and you know how to help them. When both of you know what to do, it is much easier for each of you to use the DBT skills.
To help your child be successful in therapy, family involvement is key. This means ensuring your child has the space to learn and develop DBT skills on their own, while also participating with them and providing opportunities to practice. If you are curious about how DBT can help both you and your child, contact me today about dialectical behavioral therapy for children.
Frequently Asked Questions about Parent Involvement in DBT therapy
DBT isn’t just what happens in session, and with children and parents, life can get busy fast and it can be hard to remember what DBT skills to use. At Suffolk DBT, our therapists provide between-session phone coaching for tough moments for your child.
With phone coaching, your child and family can get real-time support when emotions feel overwhelming, behaviors appear out of control, helping them apply skills in the moment where real change can actually happen.
Overwhelmed by their overwhelming emotions, your child might react in ways that seem confusing and alarming.
And, that reactivity likely has negative consequences, whether that means punishment from parents at home, criticism from teachers, getting in trouble at school, or judgment from their peers. As a result, your child might feel invalidated and rejected.
However, they also learn that acting out gets their needs met. In an attempt to have their feelings and wants heard, they might continue acting out, feeding a destabilizing cycle that can continue into adulthood.
Maybe you’ve sought help in the past, and your child has been diagnosed with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder(ADHD), Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD), an anxiety disorder or something else. Perhaps you’ve tried every treatment and parenting technique you can think of, but nothing has truly helped. Your child might still seem lonely, vulnerable and lost.
In DBT Therapy we often call these children ” Super Sensors” .They often possess deep compassion but struggle with regulation, impulsive behavior, and overwhelming, rapid-fire emotional shifts.
We know how important this time of development is for children and we are here to help create lasting change.