“How long should we stick with our daughter’s therapist before we call it quits?”

Hello and happy new year, everyone. This is Kent Toussaint, licensed marriage and family therapist,
coming to you live on Facebook as I do every 12 o 'clock Wednesday to answer your parenting questions
here on Tips on Teens. Let's just jump right in. It's new year. Let's jump into this great, great
question. My daughter has been seeing the same therapist for about six months. We like her a
lot, but I wonder if we are really accomplishing anything. My daughter seems a tiny bit better,
But I'm not sure if we are getting our money's worth how long should we stick with this therapist
before we call it quits or? Turn to someone else for help. So this is a really common question
and it's complicated and it's nuanced because there's not a simple answer It's not like it's
a car engine We humans are very complicated and nuanced Machines in a sense. And so there's a
lot of things come into this question first and foremost is What does your child think? I don't
know how old this child is. I don't

know what the issues are with this kid I'm just gonna assume it's let's say it's a teenager. What
is your teen daughter's goals? What are her goals? Is she feeling supported? Is she connecting
with this therapist? You obviously like this therapist So there's something going on that
you like You know, are you talking to this therapist about your concerns about what your goals
are? Also are your goals and your child's goals Congruent with one another, you know, maybe
you're not getting your goals met, but maybe your daughter's goals are getting met wonderfully
Or maybe not. I don't know. That's why this all needs to be talked out You know, it's important
that you are talking with your child's part of talking with your therapist about this There's
a lot going on with this topic So it's really important that everyone is talking once you and
you and the therapist and your child are all talking You guys can then come to an educated decision
on whether this is the right therapist for you whether

it's the right time because there'll be a lot of factors I've had many clients my time when either
the timing wasn't right or I caught the client when the timing was really perfect they had gone
to three other therapists and it wasn't time but now is the time how do you measure that it's all
by feeling talking and communicating so it's really important that we have that but again plan
and talk about it make sure you and your child are on the same page and that's basically how it
works if you believe that this is not working talk to a therapist maybe that therapist can find
other referrals for you or maybe it's time to cut back and if it is plan how to do that instead of
going weekly go to every other week you know and if it's going every week it is going fine then
go back to once a month and if that's going fine then then have just periodic touch touch -ups
when you need to there's no mathematical equation on this it's about connection and relationship
again your work with a therapist is

all about relationship and if you have a strong relation that therapist the much better chance
of opening up of challenging yourself that's what's really important it really doesn't matter
what the modality of therapy and for you people don't know what that means is there's a lot of
different types of therapy there's cognitive behavioral the psychodynamic there's narrative
there's list goes on and on and on and those modalities those theories are less important than
are you connecting with your therapist also if you weren't with your therapist how would things
be going would have things be going much worse you know it's really important to understand
that yeah you may have seen a little progress and like oh we wanted this progress again no one's
perfect everyone's going to struggle but if you didn't have a therapy would things be much much
worse again it's you can't know that for sure you just have to trust your intuition and again
talk to the therapist talk with your child anyways that

is the question for the new year thank you for turning tuning in if you have questions you'd like
answered just email us at at tipsonteens at teentherapycenter .com or you can find a big, you
know, whole bunch of these. We've been doing this for a long time now. A whole archive, that's
what I'm looking for, on our website, teentherapycenter .com or here on Facebook. And again,
we'll see you next Wednesday at 12 o 'clock answering your parenting questions. Thanks and
happy new year, guys.