A court can order contact between a child and an estranged parent. It cannot order trust. This truth sits at the heart of Dr. Steve Tutty’s approach to parent-child reunification.
Dr. Tutty is a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in child, forensic and neuropsychology. He has spent more than 25 years evaluating and treating children, adolescents and adults across clinical and court-involved settings. His research has included peer-reviewed studies of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and depression, while his practice has taken him into hospitals, schools, outpatient clinics, wilderness settings, research institutions, universities, and courtrooms.
Dr. Tutty has evaluated and treated more than 2,300 children and adolescents, including young people with autism, ADHD and twice-exceptional profiles. That experience adds to how he conceptualizes parent-child estrangement. In this capacity Dr. Tutty first considers the child’s developmental age and stage, their overall strengths and challenges, and when and how the family rupture occurred before crafting a strategy for reunification.
“Trust is critical for the reunification process,” Dr. Tutty explained… “It is the foundation of every relationship, and once rebuilt, other aspects of the parent-child relationship, such as strengthening their attachment, exploring, learning new skills with one another and feeling a mutual love for one another, can begin to unfold once again.”
Dr. Tutty does not argue that every estranged relationship should be restored, nor does he presume that one parent is responsible for the separation. Allegations of abuse, neglect, domestic violence, substance misuse and other safety concerns require careful evaluation. In court-involved cases, he shares, discussion of family reunification should begin only after the court and qualified professionals have addressed whether renewed contact is appropriate and the conditions under which it should proceed.
Within that framework, Dr. Steve Tutty sees rebuilding parent-child trust as the foundation to build during the schedule of letters, phone calls, video visits, and ultimately in-person visits. Contact may create an opening, but trust determines whether a child feels safe enough to step through it.
Why Fear, Anger and Loyalty Conflicts Can Stall Parent-Child Reunification
Children rarely enter reunification with a single, uncomplicated feeling. Dr. Steve Tutty identifies fear, anger, and guilt as three of the most common emotional barriers. Fear and anger may be directed toward the estranged parent, while guilt can emerge from the child’s bond with the parent to whom the child remains closely connected.
“When the court stipulates that reunification should occur between the child or children and the estranged or rejected parent, the big emotional barriers in the child are often fear, anger and guilt,” Dr. Tutty said. “The emotions of fear and anger tend to be directly related to the rejected parent, while the guilt is often related to loyalty conflicts with respect to disappointing the accepted parent in having any contact with the estranged/rejected parent.”
In Dr. Tutty’s description of reunification work, the terms “accepted parent” and “rejected parent” identify the child’s current relationship with each adult. They do not establish who caused the estrangement, whether the child’s concerns are justified or which parent has behaved appropriately. The history can include genuine harm, conflicting accounts, damaged adult relationships or several of those factors at once.
Dr. Tutty notes that the parent closest to the child may still carry vivid memories of their partner engaging in an affair, abandonment, parental neglect, drug addiction, domestic violence or other painful events that contributed to the family rupture. Those memories may reflect legitimate fear and unresolved injury. They can also impact the emotional atmosphere surrounding the child, even when the parent says little directly.
“It is these memories that are difficult for the accepted parent to resolve,” Dr. Tutty shared, adding that children can absorb the fear and anger surrounding the family rupture whether it is expressed directly or indirectly.
For a child, that tension can turn renewed contact into a test of loyalty. Enjoying a visit may feel like betraying the other parent, while refusing a visit may feel safer than risking disapproval at home. At the same time, a child’s resistance should not automatically be dismissed as another adult’s influence. It can also carry the child’s own memories, fears and conclusions.
That is why Dr. Tutty looks beyond the family rupture. The more useful questions are often what the child believes new contact means to them, what the child fears could happen next, and whether the parents have formed a united relationship, despite the painful past memories, for the child to respond honestly.
Repair Begins When Adults Make Meaningful Change Visible to the Child
Dr. Steve Tutty’s developmental background shapes both the pace and design of reunification. A 6-year-old, a 13-year-old and a young adult will not understand a family rupture in the same way. Each will have different language, coping skills, loyalties and degrees of independence. Time apart can also interrupt the ordinary experiences through which a parent and child learn about one another.
“My experience with these families has been helpful to conceptualize how to approach the process of reunification, as I can understand the type of developmental arrest that has occurred to children across their specific ages and stages of development, and how best to repair it,” Dr. Tutty said.
In that context, repair cannot rest entirely on the child. Dr. Tutty believes both adults can affect whether the process has room to succeed. The estranged parent must demonstrate meaningful change, while the parent who is close to the child can help by openly acknowledging that work when it is genuine. That support does not require minimizing past harm or demanding forgiveness. It can simply signal that the child is encouraged to explore the relationship with the estranged/rejected parent now that healing and change has occurred on their end.
“When children can see that meaningful change has occurred with the estranged/rejected parent, and feel supported by the accepted parent in exploring the relationship further”, reconciliation becomes possible” says Dr. Tutty.
A genuine apology may provide the first direct attempt at repair. Dr. Tutty says it could begin with a letter or a video before moving into an in-person conversation. “Healthy reunification involves a genuine apology or repair attempt by the estranged or rejected parent,” he said. “This may start with an apology letter or an apology video, and the acceptance of the apology from the child’s perspective is critical in this process, despite any positive memories and experiences that existed with the estranged or rejected parent before the rupture.”
An apology, however, does not entitle a parent to immediate closeness. A child often needs time to ask questions and process their feelings. A healthier process allows the parent to show consistency after a repair attempt has been accepted. When clinicians and the court consider it safe, contact may then increase gradually, often beginning with supervised visits before moving toward longer or less restricted time together.
Steve Tutty Says Rebuilding Parent-Child Trust Creates Room for Attachment
Trust is not restored by one successful visit. It grows through repeated experiences that give a child reason to revise what they expect from a parent who has been estranged and/or rejected from the family system. In practical terms, that can mean keeping promises, respecting boundaries, tolerating the child’s mixed emotions and actions, and responding steadily when an interaction does not go as hoped.
Dr. Tutty’s work as a child and forensic psychologist leads him to view those moments from several angles. The clinician considers emotional and developmental needs. The forensic professional weighs competing narratives, documented risks, and evidence of change and recovery a court has documented. His neuropsychology background adds attention to how a child’s age, cognitive development, and the ability to regulate emotion may affect the process.
Reconnection also needs new experiences that predate the family rupture. Once trust has been established, Dr. Tutty says parents and children can begin strengthening their attachment and trust in exploring new mutual activities that can provide a layer of hope that has not been present since the rupture.
Dr. Tutty’s reunification process involves a demanding distinction. Family reunification requires more than access; it asks both adults to support the parent-child relationship, when evidence of genuine change has occurred, and to allow trust to develop at a pace the child can bear. Trust does not guarantee reunification, but without it, a schedule of contact is unlikely to create the attachment families hope to restore.
Families often do not return to the exact relationship that existed before the rupture, Dr. Steve Tutty explains. The work is to determine whether a safer, more honest one can grow from where they are now.
“A healthy reunification process is where the accepted parent validates the work and changes undertaken by the estranged/accepted parent,” he said. “In this capacity, the accepted parent begins to realize that a genuine shift has occurred, and the risk for a similar rupture in the future is significantly reduced. Once this happens, then the child can begin to feel more hopeful and trusting that a relationship can resume with their estranged/rejected parent.”
Dr. Tutty and his team are currently providing mental health services – counseling and testing/evaluation services – for children, teens, and young adults in Manhattan, New York (Manhattan Child Psychology – https://manhattanchildpsychology.com/), over the next several years, before concluding four decades of service.