Do family therapists EVER advocate for minors patients?

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You might be right that therapy is just talking, but that’s not what they assume. After all they don’t let *adults* be therapists either, unless they earned some psychology degrees. Which pretty much answers the question why kids can’t be therapists: they don’t have those degrees.

Now, there are those rare kids that get PhD at 12. So if some kid does it in the field of psychology, I guess that kid can be a therapist. But obviously such kids are in short supply.

However, I agree with you in questioning why they need those degrees to be a therapist. But then it’s a different topic. Which touches on yet another topic. Why not forget about therapists altogether and just ask your friend to do one on one with you? That would basically be a therapist without a degree, they just won’t be called therapist. But if so then what is even the point of therapists to begin with? Why pay money to a stranger if you can have your friend do it for free? And yes we can talk about it here. Let’s see if some people have an answer to that one.

On a different note, since adults used to be kids, adult therapist remembers what it was like. But I still see what you are saying: they remember but don’t care.

My best counsellor was barely qualified academically. I think she just had a natural talent. I call it remedial parenting.
Children have a wide range of talents. There was an orphanage of 140 residents that had been bedlam for years until one new girl arrived and within a week, she had all the older kids helping the younger ones.
Simply talking with friends works as therapy if we talk about our inner struggles. I have a friend who is not ready to talk to a pro, or a self-help group, but we enjoy hearing of each other's experiences. Just trying to explain things for others can often clarify it for ourselves.

That depends on one’s goals in life. My dream since I was 9 was to become a theoretical physicist so for me getting into college is absolutely necessary. I realize that most other people don’t have such ambitious goals like I do. But I am sure at least for some of the goals others have they would need to go to college to achieve them. Or, even if they don’t have such goals, they might have them later in life, and then come to regret their choices. And that’s where adults can help: adults been through it before, so if a kid listens to adults they would have fewer regrets.

So let’s say a kid has a vision of their future that doesn’t require a degree. So they happily get their C-s. But then few years down the line they change their mind about their goals and now they need a degree. What to do with those C-s? I assume there are some work arounds, as they say when there is a will there is a way. But that would waste years of their life, years that could have been used more productively if they didn’t have those C-s. And since their lifespan is limited, they would achieve less. Now this whole thing could have been prevented if they had stricter parents who would push them to have better grades. That’s why I would side with parents in this particular respect.

And then when we talk about other things it’s the same concept. A kid would tell another kid to eat all the candies they like. And then they would get diabetes later in life. Adults wouldn’t let them eat candies. They would resent it. But then they would thank them later.

This actually reminds me of a cartoon I saw as a kid back in Russia. So in that cartoon the adults were so fed up with kids that they decided to go away to some place outside the city and let kids do what they want. There was one good adult that decided not to go and stay with the kids; all other adults left. But even that adult stayed under the condition that he wasn’t allowed to tell kids what to do: kids were allowed to do whatever they want. So the first thing that happens is kids throw a huge party about the fact that adults are no longer around and eat all kinds of cakes and stuff. Then they get sick, but still are trying to deal with it themselves. When they get so sick that they can’t stand it, they ask that adult for help. His initial response is that they are allowed to do whatever they want. They tell him that it’s not about being allowed, it’s about wanting advice: they will be free not to listen to it, but at least they want to know. And he gives them some advice, which they are really greatful for. Meanwhile, the adults at that place they all went to, start to rethink their decision. They remember how they were so much better when they were kids. So they decide to come back. When they come, the kids are really excited to finally reunite with them.

Right, right. But if an 8-year-old child is making detailed, failsafe suicide plans to avoid being punished by his parents, or having fantasies about stabbing his teacher to death for getting him in trouble at home, are good grades REALLY worth it? Are they? Are they? Do tell!

One thing they don't teach in therapy schools is that parents' love toward their children isn't sincere---it's transactional. It's doled out in small amounts for obedient behavior and good grades. So when a child patient brings this up to an adult therapist, the therapist can't understand it or doesn't want to hear it, because it goes against their loyalty to the patient's parents and textbook training. That's why "family" (read: parent) therapy is always, always, ALWAYS unhelpful to the minor patient.

I'm very sure a child in therapy has more important things to discuss than candy, even with a child therapist. Like how to stop his parents from emotionally abusing him. And a child running the therapy session would definitely have more social skills than his/her patient. So the child therapist would be able to teach the patient how to trick his parents into giving him more love without demanding more time and effort to "buy" that love. In other words, with the tricks, the patient's parents would love him just as much with a C in the report card as they would with all A's. All while an adult therapist would do nothing to help him; he/she would just mock him and/or pretend not to know what he's talking about, due to being in the proverbial bed with his parents.

This cartoon sounds disgustingly preachy! It basically says that kids are subhuman garbage unless adults accompany them. I'd pay all the TV networks not to run this filthy garbage if I had as much money as George Soros has.

Come to think of it, I have a good friend who came from Belarus; he came from a town near Minsk. (Which was the same country as Russia when he lived there.) He says that all parents prized their child's grades above EVERYTHING ELSE, even their child's life, and his parents were only slightly more lenient than mine. The cultural situation was so bad, that the city's police followed the schools' academic calendars, and deployed extra patrols: to the town's train station to thwart runaways and to busy railroad crossings to stop kids from taking their lives, whenever the quarterly grades were given to students. Of course, some students simply took their lives at home, before their parents came home after seeing their grades at school. (Electronic gradebooks didn't exist back then; it was early 1990's.) If his parents were as strict as mine, he might not even be alive today, for all I know.

I guess my parents must have lived in Belarus in their past lives. Who the **** [F-word] knows!

One extreme is to completely dehumanize the child because of bad grades. The other extreme is tell the child grades don't matter at all. The truth is in the middle: make the child know that grades matter, without dehumanizing them.

Did you feel like committing suicide when you lost your favorite game? No. Were you motivated to win it? Yes. See, so there are ways to motivate a person to do something without making them feel completely miserable when they fail. Getting good grades should be the same concept.

I didn't feel like committing suicide. But I did feel like killing the people who made the game, not unlike how I felt like killing my teacher for getting me in trouble with my parents. Instead, I smashed the game cartridge with a hammer, after I couldn't pass a specific level after weeks of trying. Which is a shame; I could have sold that sucker for hundreds of dollars today.

Of course, this raises the question: who actually "deserved" (notice the quotes) the killing? With my teacher, it's easy: she called my parents and tattled on me about my bad grade, so she and she alone was to blame. With the game, it's harder, at least from today's perspective with my Computer Science degree. Is it the programmer who wrote the source code for the frustrating level? Is it the designer who created the level with its bottomless pits, no save points, and invincible enemies? Is it the project manager who commissioned the level? Is it the marketer who promoted the game as easier than it actually was? Is it the CIO who earned money from the game sales? Hmm...

Last edited by Aspie1 on 18 Jan 2022, 10:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Okay, just think of something else in your life where you feel motivated WITHOUT feeling like killing yourself when you fail.

If you can't think of any such examples, then this is the topic right there to discuss with your therapist. The problem is not your grades or your parents. The problem is that your thinking is very black or white. You either assume your life depends on it, or you don't care at all, but nothing in-between. You need to learn to see gray areas where things are important yet are not suicide-worthy. That is not about grades or your parents. Thats your thinking in general.

When you solve that general issue, then the specifics about grades/parents might fall into place.

It was my freaking family---not just parents, but all extended relatives too---who put such thinking into my head. The ONLY reason I had such thoughts was to keep from being punished and shamed for weeks on end. If I were an urchin living in the streets, sleeping in the Amtrak station at night, eating at soup kitchens, and peddling small items salvaged from the city dump for money, I wouldn't give two _hits about getting bad grades or otherwise failing. Because I'd be answering to no one but myself. But that wasn't in the cards. And the family therapist got in the proverbial bed with my family (hence her job title) and joined them in breaking me.

You're clearly missing the point of this thread. Please don't post in this thread anymore.

Last edited by Aspie1 on 18 Jan 2022, 10:24 pm, edited 3 times in total.