Working with Parents in Child Therapy: A Clinical Approach to Helping Parents With Their Internal and Couple Conflicts About Parenting

Parent work is an important part of effective child psychotherapy, and its potential benefits can go well beyond the limited domains of psychoeducation and advice giving.

This field is required.
This field is required.
This field is required.

Four sessions on Tuesdays: Oct. 20, 27, 2026; Nov. 3, 10, 2026

Time: 7:00-8:30 PM EST

All courses will take place online. Seminar sessions are not recorded
Registration Deadline: October 19, 2026

Continuing Education credits are not offered for this course.

Registrants are expected to be able to attend all sessions in their entirety. Should your availability change, please contact the BPSI Team (team@bpsi.org) to remove your course registration and allow other interested participants to attend.

 

Working with Parents in Child Therapy

Parent work is an important part of effective child psychotherapy, and its potential benefits can go well beyond the limited domains of psychoeducation and advice giving. Child clinicians can help parents support their child and the treatment: 1) by helping parents work through inner conflicts and traumas from their own childhoods that impact their ability to parent; 2) by helping parents as a couple manage the inevitable conflicts that arise between them in their approaches to parenting; 3) by helping parents make sense of their child's mind, emotions, and behaviors; 4) by helping parents with the anger and self-blame that are often evoked by a child's struggles; and 5) by helping mediate conflicts within the family. Parent work also helps create a strong therapeutic alliance between parents and therapist. A sturdy alliance helps the treatment survive the negative transferences and countertransferences between parents and the therapist that can arise in child work, and to weather difficult stretches and "crunches" in the therapy. In this course, students will learn how to engage parents in child therapy and develop clinical skills for helping them navigate the intrapsychic and interpersonal conflicts that inevitably arise in families and in the course of child treatment. The course will include readings and discussions of cases from the instructor's and participants' practices.

Instructors

Timothy Davis, Ph.D.
Timothy Davis, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst and faculty member at BPSI whose clinical and teaching interests center on working with parents to enhance the effectiveness of child treatment. For 25 years he was a part-time lecturer at Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School. He is also the author of Challenging Boys: A Proven Plan for Keeping Your Cool and Helping Your Son Thrive. Dr. Davis practices child and adult psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in Wellesley Hills.


Open to Licensed Clinicians & Clinicians on the Path to Licensure. 

Scholarships are available for BPSI programs.

FEE:

$375 Course Fee
$50 Early Career Clinicians, Residents and Students
$350 Early Bird (available until 10/09/2026)  Use Code at Checkout: EB2026WPCT

The fee is waived for BPSI Members, Trainees, and Partners. Scholarships are available upon request.

 

Explorations in Mind: Community Education at BPSI is made possible by the generous support of BPSI Members and friends. To make a gift to BPSI, contact Carole Nathan (cnathan@bpsi.org or 617-266-0953 x101),
go to www.bpsi.org, or send mail to BPSI, 141 Herrick Road, Newton Centre, MA 02459.

 
Program Administrator
Jackson Doty: jdoty@bpsi.org

Program Chairs
Natasha Lifton, PhD: natashalifton@gmail.com
Linda Emanuel, MD, PhD: l-emanuel@northwestern.edu
 
 
Event Cancellation Policies & Procedures
Any program participant requesting their individual program registration be canceled, must submit their request in writing via email to Jackson Doty at jdoty@bpsi.org. For fee-based events, a request for cancellation (and refund using the original form of payment) must be received no later than 48 hours in advance of the event. Requests received later than 48 hours prior to the event will not be processed or accepted. All approved refunds are subject to a $10.00 administrative fee. If BPSI cancels an event, all registrants will receive a full refund of fees paid (no administration charge) no later than two business days following the scheduled date of the event, using the original form of payment.
 
Grievance Policy
Please address any questions or concerns about your experience at this or any program or event you have attended at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute to the Program Chair(s), BPSI, 141 Herrick Road, Newton Centre, MA 02459; team@bpsi.org; 617.266.0953.
 
The Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, Inc., 141 Herrick Road, Newton Centre, MA 02459, does not discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color, sex, age, sexual orientation, national origin or handicap in the admissions to or administration of its educational programs, scholarship programs or employment.