Boudin Henry M, PHD

On our first visit, we thought Henry may be good, as he saw the issues we were dealing with with our teen son. Then the next visit, he talked to our son alone, and brought us in the last ten minutes and proceeded to tell me I had too many rules, and that they were silly really because you can’t watch them every minute so it was futile to try. He said I was too controlling, I needed to change, I wasn’t communicating with my son. Never said a word to my husband. There was another review on here just a week or so before I posted this one that the mom was saying Henry was blaming her for her son’s issues and pressuring her to be with her 9 year old son alone. I was going to be happy to back her up with my review. My husband tried to stand up for me and say, we make the rules together but he is busy at work and I am the one who enforces the rules a lot of the time. Henry nodded but then turned back to me and said that I need to be more «benevolent» with my son. What happened to the guy we talked to last week who saw all these issues we were dealing with with our son but then turned it around on to me. Then he started asking questions as to why I adopted. He still is directing all his questions at me. He says my son is curious about his birth family. Understandable, but we have been very open about what we knew and he has never shown any interest in them. And then Henry comes out and says that my son is wondering if certain things about what we did tell him are true, for instance, is his birth mother really dead? This was all very overwhelming and so upsetting to me that my son would think I had made this up. Henry said he wanted to see my son some more times and then have us come back in.
My husband said lets try to be open minded and if he can offer anything for us to do that would help our son with the issues noted in the first session, it is beneficial if it will help our son. We let him go to several more sessions. His attitude did not change, and he used Henry as a tool to say things such as, Henry asked me, don’t I think it is silly that I am receiving these consequences since he is now 18. (if he is in our house and not doing the things he is supposed to and has drug use happening at school, rules and consequences do not just go out the window because they become 18, not in our house anyway) He also said Henry was really upset that we were doing at home drug tests when he told us not too. We went to Y.E.S., youth eastside services for a drug awareness class with our 2 sons. They couldn’t believe that someone would tell us not to do that. I went to a psychiatrist myself for advice, he said I was doing all the right things and it sounded like Henry had an agenda. My family doc didn’t agree with Henry either, and definitely none of our friends, some of whom have gone through the same issues, agreed with him and said we should find a better counselor.
In talking with our son, we came to find out that he never brought up being adopted. Henry did, and he asked him question after question about his situation, and then Henry asked my son when he said his birth mother had died, «do you think your birth mother is still alive?» My son never brought this up and it had never crossed his mind. That is the type of things that Henry had done and it ended up causing a lot of hurt and anger in our family with these things that Henry said our son was expressing to him but our son had only answered questions to scenarios that Henry created.
After deciding enough was enough, we told our son we were going to find a different counselor. Our son said he was fine with that because the last session, Henry had just talked about his music and played music from his band, and told my son about the four houses he owns. My son also told us about how he was in his appointment and a man came in screaming for Henry. Henry went out, and the dad screamed at Henry about how he had treated his son, then stormed out off his office.
When we went to the drug awareness class at Y.E.S in Bellevue, before the parents and kids split up, one of the counselors wanted to be sure to say in front of the kids, that we parents are not our kids friends. That the kids will push and push and push us and we cannot back down. We have to have consequences for them and not budge on those consequences. She gave strict examples of what we should do. She said these kids will thanks us for it someday, it will be a long way off, but they will thank us. We then split up and she stayed with the kids and the parents went with a different counselor. After the class, we got in the car and my son had a smile on his face and said he really liked her. Imagine that, even though she made it clear there had to be rules and we had to be strict. She said make the kids have a goal to work toward. My son has already set a goal with his grades he wants to achieve this upcoming year.
Don’t go to Henry Boudin with your child.