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Hello, I was looking for advice trying to navigate getting help for my special needs kid at both households. My son has high behaviors, we have a skills coach that comes to our home 2x a week and works with him and then me sometimes on parenting strategies. My sons behavior increases at dad’s, so I connected him for parenting sessions. After each session dad has had, he sends harassing messages to me about how terrible of a parent I am because the therapist shares with him things she sees at my house and then he harasses me about it. He also demands to know exactly how much screen time kiddo gets, how many hours per week we study, etc. I respectfully asked the therapist to share as little info about my household as possible and provided the court documents saying I’m full legal guardian and didn’t go into detail, but did share he had supervised visits in the past because he abused me in front of the kids and was not caring for his own mental health. She chalked it up to pretty much being drama between parents and she’s shared other info with him about IEP meetings and other services.

I’m not sure how to go forward. I don’t trust her now, and don’t tell her details I don’t want getting back to dad. Dad just had a session with her Monday and he started the harassing messages before the session even started because she was late. He continued on for 4 more hours. I could ignore this, but the therapist is eating up the things he says like I dont ever tell dad anything, he has no rights, etc and she feeds into his drama. She is young and I don’t feel she has experience with triangulation before and is falling right into it. He tells her I let our child do whatever he wants, and this is affecting the strategies we’re working on because she believes him.

I want to really start therapy somewhere fresh and not involve dad at all. I wish he could just take their parenting sessions and learn things, but that doesn’t seem to be happening. It’s a lot of drama for not a lot of improvement. Has anyone else had experience with special needs children behavior challenges from home to home? My sons diagnosis is such that he will have trouble with transitions, hates changes in routine, and lacks emotional regulation. I have learned some ways to decrease behaviors and not escalate into meltdowns, but dad will not get on board.

Yeah, I have a 14 yr old with emotional dysregulation (aka borderline personality d/o, cluster B traits). I feel you.

There is so much triangulation with the parents that these kids do, and that therapist is not really helping that problem.

I’m sorry you’re going through this. Are you guys doing DBT?

I just brought DBT up last week as something I wanted to explore. My son is 7, so we’re just starting our journey trying to figure out what will be the best fit. Thank you!

Sounds like starting afresh with someone new is the right thing to do - initially just at your place
Pick someone experienced enough to withstand triangulation should you at a later stage wish to restart therapist at the dad’s house too; check before hiring them they are confident about not being triangulated, explain what has happened