Therapist not communicating with adoptive parents/is he doing his job?

If the therapist tells you it is none of your business then you need to fire him. Simple as that. No more questions, no negotiation.With no accountability your son is probably painting an unrealistic picture for the therapist. A 15 year old is only going to benefit from therapy if he wants to benefit. If you go to the sessions with your son to hold him accountable then he might discover problems he wants to fix, and might not. There is absolutely no reason for him to go alone unless he already has a strong desire to change himself.

If he is in therapy for Attachment issues.... RUN! Attachment therapists should never, never, never take a child for therapy (of current issues) without the caretaker. My therapist took my children back alone only in the beginning when they were disclosing abuse from their prior home. Even then the therapist still told me what was said.

The therapist ought to be talking to you at least part of the visit. This is how the attachment therapists do it for us: first I get called in alone to say how the week has gone, then my daughter comes in, and after some discussion of stuff, if my daughter wants private time then I go back out to the waiting room. But we only see attachment therapists so I can trust them not to be led astray, and the private time for my daughter is so she can talk about issues that she doesn't want my reaction to (drugs, sex, alcohol), or past abuse she doesn't want me to know the details about (e.g., if she feels it would be betraying her bparents to me).

I would certainly express your concerns to the therapist. But i disagree you should fire a therapist solely because they wont disclose the contents of the therapy session DD's therapist (different situation, she was much younger.. 5) did not share J's secrets with us. Therapy was a safe place for her to explore some of her issues. Knowing she couldn't share her secrets without mom finding out could have disrupted the process. I was able to gauge her progress by the changes in her anxiety level and her openness towards us. That said, our therapist did share some high level thoughts as to how she was doing.

Sounds like there are several issues here. First off, as several people have said, if your child is supposed to be working on attachment, seeing a therapist without the parent is nonsense and completely ineffective! If it's not meant to be attachment therapy, then with at least it would seem to make sense for it to be family therapy, again, done with your son and the family. Secondly, there are at least ethical or at most legal issues to consider. While most states allow older children to have some degree of anonymity, they do not always have the right to be in contract with the therapist. Again, this varies by state. Also, there should have been some kind of confidentiality statement signed at the beginning of therapy, in full knowledge of both you and your son. It might have indicated that while you are the client, your son will be meeting with the therapist, but that the therapist has legal and ethical responsibilities to share certain information with you, the parent, and with the police. Again it varies by state, but in some states, mental health professionals are required to report if they think someone is at risk of harming someone else, or if they suspect child abuse, or several other categories. Or therapists might tell the child up front that they will keep things confidential up until the point when they think parents should know about things that impact the child's health and safety. I'm not suggesting that your son falls into these categories, but I am saying that these are things that counselors and mental health professionals are required by the ethical standards of their professional organizations, and the state's legal code, to explain to clients. My recommendation would be to find another therapist. If, however, you feel you need to stick with him for a while, ask him about his statement that describes confidentiality. If he acts like that's unimportant, run very fast, and report him!Susan Ward[url=http://www.olderchildadoptionsupport.com]Older Child Adoption Support - Main Page[/url]

Agree with everyone who said you and child should *always* be in the same room. Therapy after adoption should be about building a family, bonding, attachment. Healing for all. There should be a component of the therapy which is you in room with therapist (usually first), to support YOU as parent, and so therapist can check in with YOU to find out what's up with the child this week. Then the therapist calls the child in, and helps them work on their issues, with YOU there to support the child's progress. Nothing, ever, behind your back. For referrals check here, amazing therapists:[url=http://www.center4familydevelop.com/]Attachment Disorder Therapy - Center for Family Development[/url][url=http://www.dyadicdevelopmentalpsychotherapy.org/]Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy Institute[/url]If they don't have someone in your area to refer you to, ask them if there's another organization they'd suggest you check with.Suggest reading a few of their articles, to see how truly competent therapists talk/think about and treat these issues:[url=http://www.dyadicdevelopmentalpsychotherapy.org/attachmentarticles.html]Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy Institute[/url][url=http://www.dyadicdevelopmentalpsychotherapy.org/traumaarticles.html]Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy Institute[/url]You said:... but you don't really know if the therapist said this or not. And the therapist has no CLUE what the child is doing if he isn't talking to you on a regular basis. Zero clue. Not wanting to find out if the child is truthful means the therapist is clueless about children who've been traumatized. Youknow? Because... they lie and triangulate, and the therapist should know that. My last fson was 14, his therapist at about month 4 said to me, "Well, we know B can take care of himself!" I was just floored. Every week of living with fson convinced me more that the child was completely clueless about how the world worked, completely unable to take care of himself. Tragic.It's your money, agree with the person who said, "run".

Well, I had my husband call the therapist and request a "progress report". The therapist said that he does not do progress reports but we can call him whenever we want. He threw out there some potential diagnoses that he is leaning towards and emphasized that he is unable to share the contents of the therapy sessions due to patient confidientiality. He was very arrogant, but my husband held his ground. We understand that the session should be in confidence, but how are we supposed to know what is going on if we are not being given insight to the therapist?

Can you request some family therapy sessions with both you and Hubby in attendance? You'd probably be able to gauge how effective the therapist is if you see how he's relating to your son.

This is what raises the red flags for me. My 4 1/2 year old does this if her therapist doesn't push her (with us in the room). "Why aren't you able to (watch TV)?" "I don't know." Riiiight. She knows perfectly well and it's been explained to her a zillion times, she just chooses the "I don't know. Because my parents don't like me. Because my parents are mean to me. Because they think I'm a bad girl. Because I don't ever get to do anything." answer as often as she can. A good therapist calls a kid on this. In front of the parents. So that the parents feel supported (it's already hard enough to raise an attachment disordered kid, without letting them triangulate with a therapist, of all people!!!) and so that the kid sees that everyone is holding him/her accountable. My guess is that your kid is saying "I'm grounded." and the therapist is saying "Why?" and the kid is replying "I don't know. They don't tell me. They just say I'm grounded." I'm not saying that 100% of what the kid says should be your business, but when it comes to family issues, you should definitely be involved!!!!

What did you think of all the people who advised you to just fire this therapist? As one person who literally is trained to coach parents in older child adoptions said:Very curious what you thought about what people wrote?

I agree with the prior posts. If your child has attachment issues (and it would be unusual to have a child placed at 13 without attachment issues), and if your child's symptoms include lying, cheating and manipulating, a good therapist would recommend that you be present during the sessions. If your child can use the therapy sessions as a tool to further manipulate you, then the therapy is doing NOTHING to address his attachment issues. And if you don't heal the attachment piece - you won't touch any other issues. Fire the therapist. Find an agency/institute that specializes in attachment work. Good luck on your journey.

Usually I meet with the therapist if I need to tell her something or she has a question, then she calls DD back. Sometimes, we both go in if we have an issue and work on it for the whole time. Sometimes only DD goes in, and then the therapist comes out and tells me what was said, and what the plan is for the coming week. Last week, I took the entire session. If the therapist didn't include me, then I would fire her. I did request we are billed at Family Therapy because that's what we were doing. Plus, I wanted it to be clear for the teen years what I expected. If I were you, I'd fire the therapist. I would make sure your son knows I'm in charge...not any worker, not the therapist.