Shared by: Drs. Theresa & Stuart Warner DrsWarner@chiropediatrics.com The Top 7 Strategies to Help a Parent When their Spouse Disagrees with their Decision to Start Chiropractic Care for their Child. Most chiropractors, that are committed to helping children, have had many experiences of being presented with a child that needed chiropractic care and one of the parents forbid the other one from starting chiropractic care for their child. This is very frustrating, since the parent that is against chiropractic care for their child is usually not educated and is not open to getting informed about the benefits of chiropractic care for their child. Many times there is a power struggle between the parents, and the result is that the child stays subluxated and sick. We should try many things to attempt to educate the spouse so the child does not suffer. The following top 7 list will give you some good suggestions to overcome the above situation, and remember, you do not win them all. 1. Try to get the uncooperative spouse to come into your office to observe you adjusting other children. Just about every uncooperative parent has very little (if any) first hand experience with chiropractic, so it is very important to attempt to get him or her to come into your office. This can many times be accomplished if the spouse is waiting in the car for the visit to conclude or if they are coming by to pay a bill, just entice them into your office for a few moments and when they see you adjust other children it will dispel most of the misconceptions that they have. We have a very high success rate when the parent can experience chiropractic care for children first hand. 2. Give the patient pediatric patient success stories to bring home for the parent to read. When they see the results that several other children have experienced it will help shift them a little. 3. You can also give them some children's pamphlets to read, although many times they won't. But it does not hurt to try. 4. Many uncooperative spouses think that the allopathic approach is the only way for their family. We share many articles from the "Children's Chiropractic Information Center" which show that antibiotics and Ritalin are ineffective and harmful to children. There are many other ways to shake the foundation of their medical beliefs that will open them up to the chiropractic approach. You must use the most respected scientific references and logic to prove your point. 5. Teach and educate the spouse, whom supports care for their child, to pick carefully which issues or points are the most important to bring up to their spouse. Teach them not to be argumentative and to ask open-ended questions to shed light on the flaws in their spouse's thinking process. Many times asking questions will reveal to the skeptic that they do not have all the answers and they will be open minded. 6. You can call the uncooperative spouse on the phone and answer some of his/her questions and concerns to help put them at ease. You can start out by asking if they know how we determine if there is a problem in their child's spine? Also you can with permission have one of your patients call the spouse and have them talk "parent to parent". 7. Send them a video to watch such as the "The World's Greatest You" video featuring Gold Medallist Dan O'Brien known as the "World's Greatest Athlete" that has lots of children testimonials on it. These ideas will surely give you more options to help families work together for the benefit of the child. We do not recommend adjusting the child behind the back of one of the parents, except in rare circumstances. When you have situations with one of the parents, remember that your sincerity, passion and commitment to help children will go a long way. If you keep the best interest of the child at heart you will be able to help more children that have this situation. Sometimes you have to be persistent in a loving way.