For the Love of Fluffy: Respecting, Protecting, and Empowering Transitional Objects in the Context of High-Conflict Divorce

A structured rubric for evaluating the many systemic variables that can contribute to parent–child contact problems (PCCP)

“…The rubric described below breaks out the factors presently associated with PCCP into six domains of inquiry (Garber, 2019). Each domain includes a number of specific questions, all of which must be considered.…”

“…If chronic, are there exceptions that might provide clues to overcoming resistance in the future? Children who are emotionally immature, impulsive, and/or anxious are more likely to react to incidental temporal and proximal variables without consideration of consequence. Does changing the time or place or conditions of transition reduce the child's resistance? Does changing the time or place or conditions of contact with Parent B (e.g., not going back to Parent B's apartment; assuring that no one else will be present when Parent B and child are together) reduce resistance? Have the child describe what she sees, hears, smells, tastes, touches, and feels in each caregiving environment. Use the Query Grid (Garber, 2007) in interview to explore the child's subjective experience of each home and caregiver. Determine how media, diet, peer, and other resource access differs between environments, and how the child perceives these differences. Would interim contact with the absent parent/siblings/friends via distance media reduce the child's resistance? Would transitional objects diminish resistance (Garber, 2019)? Would efforts to decrease sensory discrepancies (e.g., adopting a familiar fabric softener, nightlight, or a familiar brand of peanut butter) reduce the child's resistance? b. Is the child's resistance event‐, time‐, or place‐specific?…”

“…Once PCCP began to be discussed as a complex multifactor recipe rather than as an either/or zero-sum blame game, 10 it became possible to conceptualize the full scope of the child's relationship ecology. This invited evaluators to consider contextual variables such as each parent's home environment and neighborhood, the role of secondary and tertiary relationships (e.g., siblings, step-parents, grandparents, peer groups), developmental variables such as normal separation anxiety and parent-child affinity, the child's chameleon-like efforts to adapt to disparate environments, and those more pathological and pathogenic relationship pressures including alienation, estrangement, and enmeshment (Garber, 1996(Garber, , 2019Polak & Saini, 2015). Courts have responded in kind, handing down more nuanced rulings.…”

“…As appealing as this model may be to custody litigants' confirmational biases, zealous advocates' win‐lose mentality, and the adversarial court system, it is flawed by its insistence on inferring cause from effect (Garber, 2019; Garber & Simon, 2024; Joyce, 2019). It relies on circular arguments and is biased in favor of identifying the aligned parent as alienating.…”

Dance Movement Therapy with Children: Practical Aspects of Remote Group Work

“…When participants were given the opportunity to bring an object of their choice, they often chose a soft object that accompanied them throughout the session and helped reduce stress. It is possible that the use of an object compensated for the distance from the group members and the therapist, in the same way that the transitional object helps the child in separation while moving away from the mother [ 38 ].…”