Child Informed Mediation

While almost all divorcing parents and separating couples declare that their primary aims include protecting their children from resulting harm, our experience accumulated over many years of observing families in crisis has convinced us that the mere mention of children related platitudes rarely itself moves parents past their co-parenting arguments.

One mediation technique that we value at Los Angeles Family Mediation Services includes is a "Child Informed Mediation" or "Child Focused Mediation". We offer a targeted approach to family dispute resolution that is hugely benefited by collaboration with Mental Health Professionals who help shine a light upon child related values and child development issues. Your special child, who enjoys a temperament and personality uniquely their own, emerges as a unifying influence upon your relationship conflict that otherwise has been shut outside the solutions process.

Our child-focused model has one of our child specialists co-mediate with the lawyer/mediator for portions of the case. This brings into the open a mindful consideration of the unique needs of children, who are always profoundly affected by their parents' dispute. It allows for developmentally appropriate parenting plans to be openly examined and constructed from that baseline.

A child specialist spends time with each child in an intimate and sensitive interview targeted to that particular child's age and interests. In mediation the specialist reports back the child's experience of the separation and conflict, and the child's expressed wishes and unspoken developmental needs. Where it is appropriate in light of the family's circumstances, our child specialist may even "shadow" the child as the youngster moves through some of his or her daily activities and interactions with parents and others. This permits useful empirical information to be gathered so that discussions about the children's best interests are tied to the child's reality as opposed to the picture that one or both parents sometimes assume to be true. A fair report of the child's journey enhances outcomes and softens parental reactivity and gives perspective that otherwise may be absent.

Suddenly the controversy and its impacts may be seen from a viewpoint that extends beyond what can sometimes otherwise be self-centered positioning about control or money. Parents can drop their battle positions to listen and learn what they need to know to make informed decisions about parenting and co-parenting. This shift can then infect the entire process in productive and positive ways.

This type of mediation is designed to ensure that your precious children really are a focal point for working through conflict resolution strategies. It reminds the disputants to accurately identify and focus upon kids needs, at what is also for them this most difficult of times, by maintaining their indirect presence in the mediation room. It allows the parties to actually test workable co-parenting solutions, and so to modify their conduct accordingly. In this fashion the universal goal that your child's best interests will be honored has a chance of becoming reality.

Co-Mediation With Mental Health Professionals Offers A Uniquely Beneficial Paradigm For Child Related Concerns!