Consultation and Treatment of the Triad: Father, Mother, and Baby

I have been working for about fifteen years now with very young children suffering from psychosomatic symptoms and their parents. For the first ten years I did only joint psychotherapies with mother and child or with father and mother and child. For the past five years I have been doing clinical or diagnostic consultation, as well as supervision of joint treatment of mother and child, or of father, mother, and child. What is specific to my approach is where I work, the Paris Psychosomatic Institute, and how patients are referred to me. The children and their parents are referred by the pediatrician or the physician as well as by psychologists working in day care centers. As a result I often see in consultation parents who have no demand for psychological aid and who may even be against this kind of approach. Parents ask for help with regard to the child's symptom that is worrying them or making their life difficult, as, for example, in the case of severe sleep disturbance.

The children I see present all kinds of symptoms: troubles concerning vital functions like sleeping and eating; diverse somatic disorders, such as eczema, asthma, or repeated infection; occasionally, severe somatic illnesses, such as heart malformation.

In fact it is rare that a child be referred only for psychological problems, like separation anxiety, phobia, or character disturbance,