Stephanie Sternes LMFT, LCPC, NCC

09/17/2026

TWO-HOME CLINICAL INFO - Children of Divorce

Before we diagnose the child, what are they being asked to adjust to?

When a child of divorce presents with anxiety, irritability, withdrawal, sleep problems, behavior changes, or difficulty transitioning between homes, treatment can quickly become focused almost entirely on the child.

Teach coping skills.

Improve regulation.

Decrease anxiety.

Build emotional language.

All good goals.

But family-systems work asks us to widen the lens.

What is this child regulating around?

Two homes?

Different routines?

A new stepparent?

Changes in roles or relationships?

Tension at transitions?

Parents who still experience one another as enemies?

A child who is monitoring the emotional temperature of both homes?

Research on interparental conflict shows that children can respond cognitively, emotionally, behaviorally, and physiologically to conflict between their parents. Their adjustment following separation and divorce is also influenced by developmental stage, family stress, parental hostility, changes in routines, and the adults’ ability to remain responsive to the child’s needs.

Sometimes, once we understand the larger system, Adjustment Disorder may be an important diagnosis to consider when clinically appropriate.

Not because divorce itself is a disorder.

Because the child may be experiencing clinically significant symptoms in response to identifiable family stressors and change.

That changes treatment planning.

A child-centered plan might include:

Build regulation and coping skills for transitions and family change.

Help the child identify feelings, needs, and relational situations that increase dysregulation.

Protect the child’s developmental freedom to love, miss, and remain connected to safe people in both homes.

Assess whether the co-parenting or stepfamily system is contributing to the child’s distress and refer the adults for appropriate help when needed.

Sometimes children need more coping skills.

Sometimes the adults need help reducing what the child is being asked to cope with.

Treat the child. Assess the system. Refer when the system needs its own intervention.

Follow me for more clinical teaching on children of divorce, co-parenting, stepfamilies, and Two-Home Family Systems.

Love travels. Belonging travels.

Sources

American Academy of Pediatrics. (2016). Helping Children and Families Deal With Divorce and Separation. Pediatrics, 138(6), e20163020.

Rhoades, K. A. (2008). Children’s responses to interparental conflict: A meta-analysis of their associations with child adjustment. Child Development, 79(6), 1942–1956.

Barnhill, J. W. (2026). Adjustment Disorders. Merck Manual Professional Edition. Diagnostic criteria summarized from DSM-5-TR.

09/10/2026

Co-Parenting and Parallel Parenting Aren’t the Only Parenting Dynamics That Travel Between Two Homes

Why We Need More Language for What Happens Between Homes
Most parents are taught two options after divorce:
Co-parenting or parallel parenting.
But what happens when it is neither?

Some parents have very little contact and still remain deeply organized around the other home. Rules, schedules, communication, discipline, and even ordinary parenting choices begin happening in reaction to what the other parent is doing.

That is different from healthy parallel parenting.

I call this Oppositional Co-Parenting, part of the Co-Parenting Spectrum (Sternes, 2025).

The question is not just, “Are these parents high conflict?”

A better question is:
How is the relationship between these homes functioning, and what is the child being required to carry because of it?

“High conflict” tells us there is a problem. It does not always tell us what kind of help the family needs.

Sometimes parents need more distance. Sometimes they need help finishing the old marriage relationship and building a new parenting relationship around the values they still share for their child.

Court-connected parent education often teaches cooperative and parallel parenting as the primary post-separation models, but some families do not fit neatly into either one.

Research suggests that most children move substantially toward pre-separation functioning within about two years, while frequent, intense, and persistent interparental conflict can interrupt that adjustment.

That is why I use 18 to 24 months as a clinical referral checkpoint, not a rigid cutoff.

If moderate-to-high conflict is still not moving toward a more child-centered pattern, it may be time to consider a different level of help.

That may mean a clinician, mediator, parenting coordinator, or other professional trained in post-divorce co-parenting and two-home family systems.

What if we knew what we were looking at earlier? Would parents seek help sooner? Would counselors recognize when co-parents need specialized support and refer them? Would courts intervene without reducing the family to labels, blame, or choosing sides?

Maybe naming the pattern is one of the first steps toward getting the right help to the right family.

Full article:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/co-parenting-parallel-parenting-what-happens-when-neither-sternes-zplic

Stephanie Sternes, LMFT, LCPC, NCC
Co-Parenting Spectrum (Sternes, 2025)
The Izzy Project
Two Homes. One Family.

Sources: O’Hara & Cohen (2024), Family Court Review; North Carolina Judicial Branch, The Most Important Job: Parenting Information for Families Living Apart.

09/09/2026

How many parents really know what CHILD-CENTERED MEANS:

TURN TOWARD THE CHILD’S FEELINGS. NOT AGAINST THE OTHER HOME.

A child says:
“I miss Dad.”
“I don’t want to leave Mom.”
“I wish I could stay here tonight.”

Those are hard moments.

But they become harder when the adult hears the child’s feeling as information about the other home:

“She must not be happy here.”
“Something must be wrong.”
“See? She really wants to live with me.”

Now the child’s emotion has become about the adults.

What if we taught parents something different?
NAME IT.
“Your heart misses Dad.”
Name the child’s experience without assigning meaning to the other home.
NORMALIZE IT.
“That makes sense. You love him.”
Missing someone we love is normal.
A child can be excited to see one parent and sad to leave the other.
MAKE ROOM FOR BOTH.
“You are loved, and you belong in both homes.”
A child does not need to choose which attachment is allowed to matter.

That is child-centered.
The adult turns toward the child’s emotional need instead of turning the child’s pain into evidence against the other parent.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends giving children permission for their feelings and opportunities to express them. It also cautions against putting children in the middle or demonizing the other parent, which can create feelings of disloyalty and pressure to choose.

Research on post-divorce triangulation similarly found that greater triangulation was associated with poorer child adjustment through increased loyalty conflict and lower self-esteem.

So maybe emotional regulation in a two-home family is not teaching a child how to stop missing the other parent.
And it is not teaching coping skills so the child becomes better at carrying their parents’ tension and conflict.

Sometimes regulation begins with an adult who can tolerate the child’s love for someone else.
NAME IT.
NORMALIZE IT.
MAKE ROOM FOR BOTH.**
And counselors: if your child client is repeatedly carrying conflict between two homes, treatment cannot stop at helping the child cope with it.

We should not make children more skillful at carrying something that was never developmentally theirs to carry.
The adults may need intervention too.

Turn toward the child’s feelings. Not against the other home.

— The Izzy Project
Two Homes. One Family.
Resources: American Academy of Pediatrics, Helping Children and Families Deal With Divorce and Separation; van Dijk, van der Valk, Deković & Branje (2022), Triangulation and Child Adjustment After Parental Divorce: Underlying Mechanisms and Risk Factors, Journal of Family Psychology, 36(7), 1117–1131.

09/03/2026

Children of Divorce

COUNSELORS: LISTEN FOR THE NEED UNDERNEATH THE COMPLAINT.

A child says:
“Ever since my stepmom moved in, Dad never has time for me.”

It can be easy to hear:
“So you’re struggling with your stepmom.”

But a counselor trained in stepfamily dynamics knows to listen for something else too:
“I miss having my dad to myself.”
“I miss the way our relationship used to feel.”
“Everything changed too fast.”
“I’m still trying to figure out where I belong.”

These can be normal parts of stepfamily development.
Children may grieve the relationship they had with their biological parent before the stepfamily formed.

They may need more one-on-one time with that parent while the new family relationships develop.

And sometimes the adults are simply moving faster than the child can emotionally follow.

The same thing can happen in Mom’s home.
A child says:
“Mom always does whatever my stepdad says.”

We might hear:
“You’re having a problem with your stepdad.”

But underneath it may be:
“I miss Mom.”
“I don’t feel like I have her anymore.”
“I need to know our relationship still matters.”

That changes the clinical response.

Instead of immediately saying:
“It sounds like you and your stepmom are having problems.”

Try:
“It sounds like you really miss having time that is just you and Dad.”
Or:
“It sounds like a lot changed when the family changed. What do you miss most about how things used to be with Mom?”

Then stay curious.

The stepparent relationship may need attention.

But the stepparent may not be the root of the distress.

Counselors trained in stepfamily dynamics know to assess for:

Too much, too fast.
Grief for the old family structure.
Loss of one-on-one biological parent time.
Unclear stepparent roles.
Changes in belonging.
And the developmental reality that stepfamily relationships usually need time to grow.

DON’T CONFUSE THE PERSON THE CHILD IS COMPLAINING ABOUT WITH THE NEED THE CHILD IS TRYING TO EXPRESS.

Sometimes “I don’t like my stepmom” means:
“I miss my dad.”

Sometimes “My stepdad ruins everything” means:
“I’m scared I lost my place with Mom.”

Listen for the need underneath the story.

— The Izzy Project
Two Homes. One Family.

08/27/2026

WHAT IF WE LOOKED AT WHAT CHILDREN CARRY BETWEEN HOMES THROUGH A GOTTMAN LENS?

Gottman taught me a lot about communication.

Two of the biggest lessons were these:

The meaning we assign to another person’s behavior matters.

Defending is a sign that the relationship is in trouble.

And when we feel misunderstood or accused, our very human response is often to defend ourselves.

But defensiveness can deepen the negative cycle.

So I have been wondering:

What if we looked at what children of divorce carry between homes through that same lens?

An ordinary interaction happens.

A stepparent says:

“Come on, dude.”

In that home, dude is playful and familiar.

The child goes to the other home and hears:

“She called you a name.”

The behavior did not change.

The intention assigned to the behavior changed.

Now the child carries that meaning back:

“She was being mean to me.”

I am calling this Cross-Home Meaning Distortion.

It happens when behavior in one home is given a different, often negative, meaning or intention in the other home, and that interpretation travels back with the child.

WHY DO WE NEED LANGUAGE FOR THIS?

When we know something harmful is happening but cannot clearly describe the process, we reach for labels.

Alienation.

Narcissist.

Borderline.

Controlling.

Toxic.

Sometimes those words identify something important.

But they often tell us who we think the problem is instead of describing what is happening between the homes.

Cross-Home Meaning Distortion is not meant to label a parent.

It is meant to name a pattern we may be able to intervene in.

BECAUSE WHAT DO WE USUALLY DO?

We react.

“That is not what happened.”

“I would never do that.”

“Your mom/dad is twisting everything.”

We defend ourselves against an intention that was assigned to us somewhere else.

And that reaction can become part of the problem.

The child sees the tension.

The adults react to the child and to each other.

Eventually, those reactions can begin to look like proof that the negative meaning really was true.

That is what I call the Reactive Mirror Effect.

WHAT IF WE RESPONDED DIFFERENTLY?

Instead of immediately defending ourselves, what if we helped the child examine the meaning?

“Okay. What actually happened?”

“What was their tone?”

“How is that word usually used in that house?”

“What do you think they intended?”

“Could there be another explanation?”

Then the adult can calmly clarify:

“When I said ‘dude,’ I meant it playfully. I wasn’t trying to hurt you. And if something I say does hurt you, you can always tell me.”

No attack on the other parent.

No demand that the child choose who is right.

No defensive battle.

We are helping the child separate:

“This is what I was told it meant.”

from

“This is what actually happened when I was there.”

We are teaching children to keep thinking for themselves.

Cross-Home Meaning Distortion is a clinical framework. We do not yet have research showing that it predicts later resist/refuse behavior.

But it leaves me with a question worth studying:

What if interrupting the assignment of negative intent early reduces the Reactive Mirror Effect and ultimately lowers the risk of resist/refuse dynamics later?

Sometimes what we need is not another label for a person.

We need language for the pattern happening between them.

Have you seen this happen?

08/25/2026

What if we could describe what is happening between two homes without first calling it parental alienation?

Would parents hear it differently?
Would counselors understand the system more clearly?
Would family courts have better language for patterns many families recognize but struggle to describe?

Would we become better at distinguishing abuse and legitimate safety concerns from conflict, reactive behavior, and relational patterns that require a different intervention?

And most importantly:

Would the child get to keep more loving relationships?

When tension or conflict between homes becomes moderate to high, children can begin carrying distorted meaning, loyalty pressure, adult reactions, and roles that were never meant to belong to them.

What if better language helped us identify what is actually happening before a child lost a relationship they may have been able to keep?

10 Clinical Lenses for Moderate- to High-Tension Two-Home Systems Children carry many good things between two homes. Love travels.

08/21/2026

What if we had language for what children carry between homes?
Pause and think about this for a minute.

A child has an ordinary interaction in one home.

Someone says, “Come on, dude.”

In that home, dude may be playful. Familiar. Loving.

But somewhere along the way, the child is given a different meaning for it.

“She called you a name.”

Now the child carries more than a word across homes.

They carry a story about the word.

The next time someone corrects them, jokes with them, or uses that same familiar language, they may no longer hear the interaction as it was intended.

They hear it through the story they are carrying.

And then something really important can happen:
The reaction to the story begins creating evidence that the story is true.

This is what I call the Reactive Mirror Effect.
What if we had better language for understanding what happens to children between two homes?

Would we become more supportive clinicians?

Would we become better co-parents?

Would we slow down before assuming a child's reaction tells us exactly what happened in the other home?

Children often cannot explain this process to us. They don't necessarily know that a meaning has shifted. They only know what something feels like now.

And our professional training has not given us enough language for understanding the relational system that exists between homes.
We have language for the child.

We have language for each parent.

We have language for trauma, attachment, behavior, and diagnosis.
But we need better language for what travels.

Because sometimes the most important part of the clinical picture isn't sitting in the therapy room.

It is moving back and forth between two homes.
What might change if we learned to see it?

08/13/2026

FINAL TWO LIVE TRAINING DATES
Two-Home Family Systems • 6 NBCC Credit Hours
August 21 & October 16

**More than 4 in 10 American adults have a step-relative.**¹
**Nearly 1 in 3 American children experience parental divorce before adulthood.**²

And yet, how many of us were actually trained to work with the family system that develops when a family is spread across multiple homes?

These are not rare cases.
They are already in our offices.
And stepfamilies and two-home families do not operate like first-time nuclear families.

They have a different structure. A different family culture. And some very predictable challenges:
INSIDERS & OUTSIDERS
A biological parent and child already share history, attachment and belonging. A stepparent enters as an outsider.
CHILD LOSSES & LOYALTY BINDS
Children may be carrying grief, change, love and competing loyalties between the people they need most.
POLARIZED PARENTING
Parenting, stepparenting and discipline can quickly divide a couple into opposite positions.
CLASHING FAMILY CULTURES & TRADITIONS
There isn't one established family culture anymore. Different homes bring different histories, rules, traditions and ways of doing family.
EX-SPOUSES ARE PART OF THE NEW FAMILY SYSTEM
They may live in another home, but they don't disappear from the system. Decisions, schedules, parenting and conflict can reach across households.
Patricia Papernow has spent decades teaching the field that these are normal, predictable challenges created by **stepfamily structure.**³

So here is the ethical question:
If these families are this common, are we prepared to treat them competently?
The ACA Code of Ethics calls counselors to practice within their boundaries of competence and to gain the education, training, supervised experience and consultation needed when developing competence in new areas.⁴

That is one of the reasons I have offered this training throughout 2026. I wanted to help more counselors become equipped to recognize what they are seeing before a normal stepfamily or two-home dynamic gets mislabeled, escalated or treated through a nuclear-family lens.

ONLY TWO LIVE INTENSIVES REMAIN
AUGUST 21, 2026
OCTOBER 16, 2026
The Ethical Risk of Treating Stepfamilies Like Nuclear Families
Practical Interventions for Two-Home Family Systems
Boise or Live Online
6 NBCC Credit Hours
3 Ethics | 1.5 Boundaries | 1.5 Su***de Prevention
Lunch included for in-person attendees.
Every registered attendee receives a giveaway entry.
Grand Prize: 10 FREE private case consultations with me
Value over $1,500
Plus a free resource bundle.

I do not have another live 6-hour intensive planned for 2027.
After these dates, I will be moving toward smaller, longer advanced-training groups.
So if you have been thinking about coming, these are the dates.
Two Homes. One Family.™
Sources
Pew Research Center, A Portrait of Stepfamilies (2011): 42% of U.S. adults surveyed reported at least one step-relative.
Johnston, Jones & Pope, U.S. Census Bureau Center for Economic Studies, Divorce, Family Arrangements, and Children’s Adult Outcomes (2025): nearly one-third of American children experience parental divorce before adulthood.
Papernow, P. L., Clinical Guidelines for Working With Stepfamilies: What Family, Couple, Individual, and Child Therapists Need to Know, Family Process (2018).
American Counseling Association, ACA Code of Ethics, Standard C.2.a, Boundaries of Competence.

08/05/2026

You are invited to see your hardest stepfamily cases in a whole new way.

Sometimes the child is not the problem.

The child may be carrying the tension between homes.

Join me for a one-day clinical intensive designed to help you slow these cases down, see the larger Two-Home Family System, and understand what may be shaping the concerns entering your therapy room.

Every registered attendee receives an entry to win 10 private case consultations valued at more than $1,500, plus a professional resource bundle.

When co-parenting conflict, stepfamily roles, divided loyalties, ethics, boundaries, and su***de risk begin overlapping, even experienced clinicians can feel unsure about where to begin.

You will leave with practical tools to:
• Identify what the child may be carrying between homes
• Distinguish co-parenting conflict from stepfamily stress
• Recognize when individual therapy is not enough
• Strengthen assessment, treatment planning, documentation, and referral
• Protect your ethical role in complex family cases

The Ethical Risk of Treating Stepfamilies Like Nuclear Families
August 21 or October 16, 2026
Boise or live online
6 NBCC credit hours
3 Ethics | 1.5 Boundaries | 1.5 Su***de Prevention

These are some of the hardest cases we are asked to hold. I would love to spend the day helping you see them with a clearer clinical lens and leave with interventions you can use immediately.

Scan the QR code to reserve your place.

Stephanie Sternes has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7886. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Stephanie Sternes is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.

07/30/2026

6 NBCC Credit Hours, Lunch Included, and a Chance to Win More Than $1,500 in Consultations and Resources!

Reduce anxiety. Improve coping. Manage behavior.

But what if the child is not the source of the problem?

When anxiety is being shaped by loyalty binds, disrupted connection across homes, or chronic co-parenting tension, an individual treatment plan may help the child cope but may not change the conditions sustaining the anxiety.

The child may be carrying distress that belongs to the larger family system.

That is where the treatment lens must widen.

This one-day CE training will show you how to move beyond the individual lens and develop a broader treatment plan that can:
• Reduce loyalty binds
• Protect predictable attachment across homes
• Move high-tension co-parenting conflict to the appropriate level of care

One approach teaches the child to cope with the anxiety.

The other asks what must change so the child does not have to keep carrying it.

The Ethical Risk of Treating Stepfamilies Like Nuclear Families
August 21 or October 16, 2026

Boise or live online
6 NBCC credit hours:

3 Ethics | 1.5 Boundaries | 1.5 Su***de Prevention
Lunch is included for in-person attendees.

Every registered attendee receives an entry to win 10 private case consultations valued at more than $1,500, plus a professional resource bundle.

Scan the QR code and register today.
Stephanie Sternes, LMFT, LCPC, NCC
NBCC Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7886. Stephanie Sternes is solely responsible for all aspects of the program.