Useless Therapist

I find it extreme­ly frus­trat­ing to have a ther­a­pist sit­ting there say­ing “just make the kids do X” after hear­ing, for an hour, about our attempts to do exact­ly that. She has no new sug­ges­tions as to how to make them do these things, just says “do it.” Um, okay—so do we order the cat­tle prods now, or what? Because we’re at the point, with some of these issues, where we’ve done pret­ty much every­thing we CAN do to, for instance, get Rowan out of bed, short of things that are too like­ly to be con­sid­ered child abuse. He’s 14 years old, and if he has decid­ed not to get out of bed, and we’ve already turned on lights, tak­en away his cov­ers, made the room noisy, etc and he STILL won’t get out of bed, what next? Drag him out, kick­ing and scream­ing? Take away the bed so that he won’t be sleep­ing so com­fort­ably? I was all for pour­ing ice water on him (and have threat­ened to do so)—but then some­one told us about a kid placed in fos­ter care because his guardian did that (not to get him out of bed, for oth­er rea­sons). ARRRGHHHHH!

Edit—this isn’t Emi­ly, our fam­i­ly ther­a­pist who is an absolute god­dess and who I’d hap­pi­ly mar­ry if giv­en half a chance. This is Tara, who is R & G’s therapist.