Reviving Ophelia - Mary Bray Pipher [74]
Once she started, Amy loved to talk. She told me about starting her period at her dad’s house. She had supplies at her mother‘s, but nothing at her dad’s, and she had to ask him to go buy her pads. Later her mom got in a fight with him because he hadn’t brought her home. She’d wanted to share Amy’s first period. As Amy said, “She thought it should be a mother-daughter thing.”
She told me that both parents tried to buy her love with presents. “If I wanted to, I could ask for a racing bike or television right now.” Worst of all was how her parents talked about each other. “They both pretend they don’t rag on each other, but they drop hints all the time that the other one is the craziest, meanest person they know.”
Her biggest worry was starting junior high next year. If she lived with Dad, it would be a new school where she had no friends. If she lived with Mom, all the kids would know her parents got divorced. She said, “I don’t know how I’ll get my homework done. Mom helps me with math and Dad knows French.”
She told me how ashamed she was of the divorce. She had tried unsuccessfully to keep it secret and had been embarrassed when kindly adults offered her sympathy. She avoided her friends because they might bring it up. She was sure she had the strangest parents in America.
I said, “They have lots of competition for strange, believe me.” She smiled for the first time that day, and I caught a glimmer of what the pre-divorce Amy must have been like.
I ended the session by calling Joan in and suggesting that Amy go spend a few weeks with her grandmother while the adults worked things out. After she returned, we’d talk again and maybe Amy could be in a divorce group for young teens.
Joan said, “Chuck will never agree with this.” I offered to call him.
Chuck was immediately angry when he heard I’d seen Amy. I talked to him about releases, consent to treatment and confidentiality. Then, after he calmed down, I asked him how Amy was doing. He said, “Since the separation, she’s a different kid.” Of course, he had his own theory about Amy. “Confidentially,” he said, “Joan is the biggest bitch on the planet.”
I listened patiently while he bad-mouthed Joan. As he talked, I thought how miserable these two people had made each other and how right it was that they divorce. But unfortunately, because they had Amy, they couldn’t really separate. In fact, in some ways they would need to negotiate and coordinate efforts even more now that they lived in separate households. And the same things that destroyed the marriage could keep them from adequately parenting Amy over the next few years.
I reminded myself that underneath the parents’ anger was pain. No doubt they both needed guidance sorting through this failed marriage. But my job was to help Amy. I feared that unless these parents settled down, Amy was at high risk for depression and, perhaps later, delinquency. I wasn’t sure these parents were capable of putting Amy’s needs first and working as a team, but I had nothing to lose in trying to help them do this.
I suggested Chuck and Joan come in for some divorce counseling. I told Chuck that it’s better to talk about Amy in therapy than in an attorney’s office. It’s cheaper and non-adversarial. Perhaps because he himself was a psychologist, he had to agree.
Chuck said he was willing, but he doubted Joan would do it. I offered to talk to her. I could see Amy’s drawn face as I hung up the phone. Maybe while she was at her grandmother’s I could have Chuck and Joan in for some sessions. Maybe by the time she came home and started junior high, they would have started to do what adults need to do in situations like this, which is to put their own pain aside and help their child.
JASMIN (13)
Long before I met Jasmin, I’d seen her parents in marital therapy. Joe and Georgeanne were good, likable people, but their marriage wasn’t working. They had married right out of high school because Georgeanne was pregnant. Joe was an extrovert and an excitement seeker, while Georgeanne was quiet and liked routines. She seemed always