Clinical work with climate-distressed youth using a developmental framework is described, from two theoretical perspectives: acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and psychodynamic psychotherapy. General principles of climate-informed therapy are delineated, and case examples illustrate the use of theory in practice. Interventions involving the family, psychoeducation, resilience-building skills, developing a conscious relationship to nature, engaging in environmentally beneficial actions, increasing the tolerance for uncertainty, and developing career goals around the needs of a changing environment and society are described. The authors discuss the need for the clinician to prepare themselves for the challenges of this work, which include one’s own reactions of emotional distress when youth bring this topic up. Ways the clinician can model responses to climate distress are discussed, including staying informed about the multiple unfolding, intersecting crises, and tolerating a multitude of emotional reactions attendant to this urgent situation. The clinician is encouraged to have and use play materials that can be adapted to environmental themes. The importance of providing a secure attachment relationship to use as a base in “weathering the storms” of the climate crisis is emphasized.

Chapter 7 explores children’s navigation of their relationship with significant adults in skipped generation families. The analysis adapts Goh’s (2011) concept of ‘intergenerational parenting coalitions’ in seeing the migrant parents and grandparent caregivers as forming ‘multi-local intergenerational parenting coalitions’ - a variant of the ‘multi-local family striving teams.’ Children’s experiences of growing up in multilocal intergenerational parenting teams differed. Children in cohesive families usually received much material and emotional support.But if the middle generation had conflict with the grandparents and remitted little the children could lack nurturing, or alternatively, some children and grandparents clung to each other for solace. Children were usually looked after by paternal grandparents while care by maternal grandparents indicated special family circumstances that impacted on the children’s relationship with caregivers. Children’s closeness to grandparents vis-à-vis migrant parents was also influenced by who they had spent most time with. Even so, all children in skipped generation families enjoyed better relationships with their migrant parents if the two sides interacted regularly. Visits to the city during the school holidays offered many of these children opportunities for interaction with their migrant parents. But the children’s experiences of these visits also varied by the urban lot of their parents.