One of you wants the therapy to continue. One of you wants it to stop.
Flannel People mediates the post-decree deadlock over a child’s therapy — Minnesota and virtual nationwide. We meet with each of you separately first, then the two of you design the decision together instead of trying to win it. $1,495 per person. No hourly billing, no retainer.
One focused session
Both parents
The real driver
On the surface it’s “she needs it” against “it’s overkill.” That’s almost never what the fight is actually about. When we meet with each parent separately, what’s underneath is usually one of these — and each one has a version on both sides of it.
Forty-five minutes each way, through traffic, on a weeknight, against a work schedule and a sibling's practice. One of you is absorbing that. The other may be absorbing something else — the rescheduling calls, the waitlist, the eight weeks it took to get the slot.
Copays that add up, or a provider who turned out to be out of network. One of you is watching a number climb. One of you is watching what you think it's buying.
One of you doubts it's warranted, or worries about a child carrying a label longer than they carry whatever brought them in. One of you is watching something they think is finally working, with no safe way to test that by stopping.
Often the therapist was chosen by one parent, has heard one account of the marriage for months, and has met the other parent once or never. That parent isn't against therapy. They're against this therapist — and they argue the general case because the specific objection sounds petty out loud. Meanwhile the other parent is looking at a child who took four months to say anything real to anyone, and doesn't want to spend that again.
Therapy becomes a stand-in for who gets to decide things about this child. For one of you the objection isn't the appointments — it's finding out about them afterward. For the other, it's having a decision made in your own parenting time reopened every time.
A worry that what your child says in that room turns into a paragraph in a legal filing. Both of you can have this one, about each other.
They've said they don't want to go, and one of you isn't sure how much weight that should carry. Or they've said they do, and one of you is afraid that's about to be overruled.
These need completely different solutions. A scheduling problem and a values disagreement look identical over text, and people spend months treating one as the other. Naming which one you actually have is where this gets unstuck.
A 2023 meta-analysis in the Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare pooled twelve randomized trials of video-delivered psychotherapy for children and adolescents. Where it compared video sessions against in-person sessions, the difference in outcomes was negligible. So when the real obstacle is the commute, that piece can often be solved without either parent giving ground on whether the therapy is worth doing.
von Wirth, Willems, Döpfner & Kohl, J Telemed Telecare, 2023
Both parents
Research on why children leave therapy early keeps landing on the adults around it. A meta-analytic review of dropout in child and adolescent outpatient mental health care found that how a parent sees the treatment — whether it seems relevant, whether it seems worth the obstacles — predicts premature termination. Children are not sealed off from that.
de Haan, Boon, de Jong, Hoeve & Vermeiren, Clinical Psychology Review, 2013
That has a consequence for each of you, and it isn’t the same consequence.
Which is why this decision has to be actually agreed. If it’s imposed, the thing you’re fighting over stops working.
How it works
01
Separately and privately, each of you ranks what’s actually driving you, from a fixed list — the same list above. It takes about five minutes. It frequently ends the dispute on the spot, because once you can both see that you’re solving a logistics problem, the logistics problem is solvable.
02
Each of you writes down what the therapy is for, and the three things you would observe in your own child that would tell you it had done its job. That moves the conversation off “therapy: yes or no” and onto your child, where you both have standing. In practice the two answers overlap more than either parent expects.
Then the harder question, one each. If you want it to continue: what would tell you it’s time to stop? If you want it to stop: what would tell you it needs to keep going?
03
The output isn’t a verdict. It’s a written plan with moving parts:
Three options
Nobody hands you an answer. You pick from these.
With video available for the sessions that make the drive impossible, a defined progress measure, and a 90-day review.
Some of the best-studied programs for children going through a divorce are time-limited and structured, with a set number of sessions and a defined endpoint — the New Beginnings Program runs ten, CODIP twelve to fifteen. That's a different shape from open-ended weekly therapy, and parents often don't know it's on the menu. Whether it fits your child is a question for a clinician, not for us.
Specific, objective, written conditions that would start it again. This is often the agreement. It gives one parent the stop they're asking for without requiring the other to accept that nothing will ever be done again.
Scope
We don’t decide whether your child needs therapy. That’s a clinical question and it stays with the clinician. We’re not going to guess at it, and you should be suspicious of anyone in a mediation room who will.
What we do is get the two of you to agree on the process — including a set of questions you write together and deliver to the treating therapist together:
You stop arguing with each other and start asking the one person qualified to answer.
Making a child the tiebreaker between their parents is the one move here with real potential to do harm. We don’t do it, and we’ll push back if it’s suggested.
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4.9 out of 5 from 279+ Google reviews
$1,495
Flat fee per person — no hourly billing
100% Virtual
Every session on Zoom
1 Week
Appointments usually available
Mediator: Ryan McLaughlin. Neutral mediator — not anyone’s attorney, and not a therapist.
Questions
No. That's a clinical judgment and it belongs to the clinician. We help the two of you agree on how the decision gets made, and on what you ask the therapist together.
Yes. There's no version of this that works with one parent. We meet with each of you separately first, then together.
Not to mediate. Many people have their own attorney review anything they agree to, and that's a good idea — but you don't need one to start, and nothing in the room binds you.
That's common and it isn't a disqualifier. Mediation can run alongside an existing case. It may not fit when there are urgent safety concerns or when one parent won't participate at all.
We don't. You do — together, with a set of written questions you agree on first. That's usually more useful than anything a mediator could relay secondhand.
This is usually a single session. Appointments are typically available within a week.
Book the consultation anyway. Part of what we do is figure out how the invitation gets made, because how it's asked changes the answer more often than people expect.
$1,495 per person, flat. No hourly billing.
Book
If this has been going in circles since spring, one structured conversation is a better use of your next hour than another text thread. Fifteen minutes on the phone first, free, to see whether this is a fit.
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Flat fee $1,495 per person · All sessions on Zoom · See all post-decree mediation
Educational Disclaimer: The information provided on this website is for educational purposes only and is not intended as legal advice, therapeutic advice, or therapy. Flannel People Mediation is a mediation service provider only. We do not provide legal advice or therapeutic services. Please consult with a qualified attorney for legal concerns.
Flannel People Mediation provides mediation services only. Ryan McLaughlin does not provide legal, insurance, valuation, tax, financial, or business advice, and mediation does not replace your own counsel or advisors.