This innovative four-day workshop helps children reunify with a parent they claim to hate or fear. Building Family Bridges™ offers an opportunity for participants to begin restoring a positive relationship in a relaxed setting with engaging videos and other material.

Building Family Bridges helps children who resist living with a parent, or hold unrealistic negative attitudes toward a parent. Many of these children are caught in the middle of their parents’ conflicts. Some have been abducted by a parent and, when recovered, are returned to the other parent and cannot have contact for a period of time with the parent who abducted them. Family Bridges has fulfilled one aim if, by the end of the workshop, the children are ready to return home with the rejected parent who has been awarded custody.

Building Family Bridges jump-starts the recovery of a positive parent–child relationship and teaches better communication and conflict management skills. The workshop also teaches children how to think critically; how to maintain balanced, realistic, and compassionate views of both parents; and how to resist outside pressures that can lead them to act against their judgment.

Children who reject a parent after divorce, who refuse or resist contact with a parent, or treat a parent with contempt represent one of the greatest challenges facing courts, divorced families, and the professionals who serve them. Family Bridges helps families whom courts and therapists thought were beyond help.