Tom is a cheerful little boy. So when it comes to looking for what might be painful for him in his relationships, his parent can’t quite see it. He probably doesn’t have any particular belief, the little one. He’s fine, he makes everyone laugh.

A few exchanges later, Tom explains that it is precisely hard being the one who makes people laugh. When he wants to talk seriously, the others keep treating him as the resident joker. He feels that people don’t believe him, that they don’t trust him. What reassured his family about his well-being was also, for him, a source of difficulty. I really like this part of Stessie Fougeroux’s demonstration. It reminds me how far we can know someone, live with them, pay attention to them, and still miss part of what they are going through. We know their place so well that we may end up hearing less of what they are trying to tell us from that place.

Here Stessie presents an adaptation of her Crossed Beliefs Game for family therapy. She uses characters to stage a fictional family: the parents, Julie and her little brother Tom. After the version designed for individual therapy, which I had already shared, this proposal raises other questions. There are children around the table, parents’ stories they do not necessarily know, and all that shared life of which each person could tell a rather different version.

What my brother had seen

The set-up begins simply. Cards are laid out on the table; each person chooses one in silence and keeps their choice to themselves. The others then try to imagine which one they picked. So you have to agree to listen to what your family thinks it has understood about you before you can answer. That alone can be a lot.

For Julie, her mother thinks of the feeling of not counting. Her father imagines that she doesn’t feel heard. Tom, for his part, goes back to a trip to the cinema. They had chosen a film his sister didn’t like, and she had sulked for a good part of the afternoon. But what he mainly describes is that she looked sad.

Julie is moved. Her brother had seen her sadness. She, who could feel reduced to her sulks, discovers that he had perceived something else. This detail stays with me more than the final choice of card. There had been a disagreement about a film, probably fairly ordinary seen from the outside, and in that disagreement something had happened for her around her place in the family. Tom had caught a glimpse of it. Without this conversation, she might never have known.

Of course, those close to us can also get it wrong. And fortunately, Julie can speak again. She clarifies, she talks about what she misses, especially those moments when she would like to be alone with her mother. The card remains a starting point. I would struggle with a use of the game in which the family ended up deciding, by majority vote, what one of its members is supposed to feel.

Not rushing things with children

Stessie also takes a precaution that is worth dwelling on. With some children, she prefers to speak of “sensitivity”. Something hurts and keeps coming back, without having become a conviction through which every situation is read.

I find this choice of word quite apt. It leaves some leeway, precisely. A child can feel forgotten in certain circumstances, be particularly alert to it, and still have many other experiences that point in a different direction. We have no reason to rush all of this into a definition of who the child is.

Cards have something convenient about them: they make words available. But we can quickly become attached to the words we have just found. I think I would keep this question in mind throughout the work: is what we are naming helping this child to tell more of their experience, or are we starting to tell their experience for them?

What if the children started looking after the parents?

This is the question that gives me the most pause in this family adaptation. Stessie raises it herself, quite frankly: by asking children to identify their parents’ beliefs and to look for ways not to reinforce them, is she not at risk of parentifying them? She explains that this concern made her hesitate for a long time. I am glad she did not leave it out of the video, because it is part of the work.

In the fictional family, the father talks about his fear of being abandoned. His own father left when he was eight, and he never saw him again. His daughter explains that she sometimes experiences his remarks about her giving him fewer kisses as she grows up as a reproach. He acknowledges that this distance can indeed make him relive something of that abandonment.

We can imagine what this conversation might open up for Julie. She could tell that something was going on. She can now understand that none of this starts with her, with her adolescence or with the number of kisses she gives her father. A story was already there.

The question is what she will do with this discovery. If she comes away thinking that she must now watch every gesture so as not to awaken her father’s fear, we will have given her extra work. Stessie’s intention is to allow her to free herself from that responsibility. She uses the image of “going on holiday”: being able to recognise what is at play without being obliged to enter into the usual exchange.

I like this image, provided we check with the child whether the holiday is really possible. Julie must be able to keep growing up, to want certain gestures of affection less, to be busy elsewhere at times. Understanding her father can change the way she receives his reactions. It does not make her responsible for repairing his story. For me, this distinction must stay alive in the session, right down to the answers the adults give the children.

A response worked out together

For the game phase, Stessie explains that she has set scoring aside in her work with families. The participants build a response to a situation together, then the person receiving it says how it makes them feel. This choice seems to me consistent with what she is aiming for: making people want to try, allowing second attempts, avoiding a situation where a child finds themselves assessed on their ability to respond properly.

In one of the scenarios, the mother is celebrating the success of her book, but her daughter has to go and meet friends. How can this important moment be acknowledged without asking the daughter to automatically give up her evening? The family talks it over. Someone suggests she tell her friends about the book. The daughter replies that her friends couldn’t care less. It is a small moment that I find delightful: a response can seem tactful, generous and well thought out to the others, and not hold up for two seconds when the person concerned imagines saying it.

So they keep looking. The idea emerges of planning another moment to celebrate this success together. In the role-play, the mother says she felt soothed seeing the efforts made to take her into account. It is not only about the response they arrived at. It is also about having witnessed it being put together, having seen the others wonder how she would receive it.

Tom is not entirely convinced

And then comes the scene where Tom announces that he wants to become an Olympic swimming champion. Some encourage him, another points out that his level still has to be taken into account, his mother suggests he give it a try. Tom listens and notices something awkward: even the encouragement could give him the impression that he is not being taken seriously. They tell him he can succeed, but maybe they are just being kind to him.

The demonstration could have ended with a family that finally finds the right words and a child who is completely reassured. What happens is more interesting. Tom discovers how much his expectation is likely to stay with him, even when the responses change. He begins to recognise his belief at work.

That does not settle, at a stroke, the situations in which he really was given little hearing. Those will need to be talked about too. But a doubt appears in a conviction that, until then, seemed able to explain everything. The next response may not be exactly the one he already knows.

In this proposal I find the curiosity about people that had interested me in the interview with Stessie about her journey as a therapist. She brings a tool, discusses its limits, adjusts the way she uses it. And she leaves room for those moments when what a person says shifts a little what we thought we were understanding.

In the end, I think it is Tom I will mostly keep in mind. The one who was thought not to have any real difficulty, since he was cheerful. It makes you want to ask him one more question, and to give him time to answer.

Watch Stessie Fougeroux’s demonstration: the Crossed Beliefs Game in the family