KEY POINTS:
A child psychologist says the whole community can help Jayden Headley cope with the tug of war surrounding him.
Auckland-based Fiona Ayers says children caught in the middle of bitter marriage breakups often display "challenging behaviours" such as refusing to do as they are told, aggression or the
opposite - complete withdrawal.
But she says parents, teachers, other adults and children can all help if they understand what is going on.
"It's really important not to say he's naughty. He's just really saying, 'I don't understand'," she said.
"When he gets back to school, the other kids will know what has happened, and I have seen that work quite positively.
"I worked with one girl where the parents went very public over her situation and the whole community just got in and supported her."
Ms Ayers and other experts consulted yesterday all said children could cope with traumatic events if the adults around them re-established "normality" as soon as possible.
"What Dad needs is to achieve as much normality as he can," Ms Ayers said. "That means getting him back to school, getting some friends going, just being as normal as possible."
She recommended the boy's father, Chris Jones, who has interim care, should work with his teachers and other adults to agree on a common approach to any challenging behaviours.
For example, if Jayden hit another child, they might agree that he should be removed from the situation, have someone explain why he should not hit other children, and apologise to the person he hit.
"It's really important that everyone is working together from the same page," she said.
She said the boy would need some access to his mother, although that might take time to arrange and might have to be supervised.
Other family members might need to provide transport so that the warring parents did not have to meet.
"Kids have to know both their parents if they possibly can," Ms Ayers said. "A stepmother is never a mother."
A Henderson lawyer who often acts as a court-appointed lawyer for children, Diane Ransfield, said that where one parent had alienated a child against the other parent, the Family Court tended to award care of the child to the other parent.
"In some cases the courts have, for a period of time, quite severely limited contact with the parent who is trying to alienate the child from the other parent," she said.
"Quite often a psychologist could be engaged to work with the alienating parent and try and get them to understand the impact on the child.
"For children, the most powerful thing is if a parent is supporting a relationship with the other parent. That's just incredibly helpful for a child."
Union of Fathers activist Jim Bagnall, a former primary schoolteacher who has helped 105 fathers in court as a "McKenzie friend", also said Mr Jones would need to reassure Jayden that he would see his mother.
"I'm not usually in favour of supervised access, but in this case there might need to be three or four police constables around her house," he joked.
"He is going to need his mum."