Ok… here, as I see it, is the massive difference between working with kids and having them.

When I work with kids I have empathy for the kids. Sometimes I have empathy for the whole family. But mainly for the kids. It’s super easy to judge parents when your job is to care for and identify with kids.

As a parent, you experience humility and desperation in a way that most non-parents, especially ones who think they know a lot about behaviour and emotion, have no clue about. Without that empathy, that look of specific recognition, from a person who—despite being a mental health professional and having read every book on the parenting shelf—has been reduced to tears by sleeplessness and tantrums and shocked by the unfortunate things they themselves have said or done to the small, vulnerable people in their care, I don’t think I’d be able to let my guard down fully.

(NB if the therapist has super easy kids and/or their co-parent does 85% of the parenting, they might not have that hard-won in-the-trenches experience. Once the principal of my child’s school gave me “advice” for getting her to school on time—set an alarm on your phone!—when the issue was that she hated school and was locking herself in the closet and screaming every morning for an hour, and I realized his parenting experience was non-contributory.)