Rough time with therapy lately

Well, as with most things, the solution isn't an all or nothing approach.

Littles usually hold a lot of trauma--often they hold most of the trauma for the system, and are ones who were the most damaged by the trauma. The purpose of forming a solid, healthy connection with the T is to help them heal from that trauma. Internal connections are important, but we can't be our own trauma therapist.

We're not going to say that, because they've been hurt by outside relationships in the past, the answer is to prevent them from having any outside relationships. But neither do we let them be on their own to manage dealing with the T, without any internal support.

If all the alters are equally important, and equally clients of the therapist, that includes the littles. They are just as deserving of help (maybe more so), even if it's trickier to accomplish and a much rougher process.

I'm not going to argue with your assessment of your progress, fireheart. If an approach is working for you, that's great. And systems are so different from each other. For us, our main purpose in seeking out therapy was to "take the littles" there to get help. "Leaving" them with internal babysitters while older parts go to therapy is not something that would be useful to us.

We had therapy Tuesday morning, so we discussed what you wrote with our T, because we've heard a few other systems on here state that point of view--that littles shouldn't directly interact with a T.

He thinks that as long as there's teamwork between the T and older parts, to support the littles, that it's important for them to have a direct connection and relationship with him.

We were building that with him, slowly, but there are specific things about the way he responds that are very triggering to them, and there was a kind of "last straw" thing that snowballed into a big problem. The T has taken that very seriously--he called it a "personal failure" that he's very sorry about, and from what he's said, he's been doing a lot of thinking about what happened.

We're sorting all this out with him, and the more he understands, the more sensitive and careful he can be when dealing with the littles. And the more we understand about why he responds the way he does--that it's all based on caring, even if it inadvertently hurts their/our feelings, the better we can help the littles tolerate miscommunications and manage the rupture until it's worked out.

Seeing the bodywork T is another approach we're taking to help the youngest littles with emotional regulation, since words are not effective enough in soothing them, and that's been part of the issue with having talk therapy by video over the past year. Being in the T's office, in the same room with him, seeing him hold the stuffies that we bring--that provided some non-verbal soothing and regulation for the littles that's been missing since last March. We'll probably be able to see him in his office again starting in April, so that will help also.

while we feel that we are doing well with a very different approach than yours I can totally confirm that the video session have changed the interactions and made them more about the head and words.
Our T has had a couple of moments when she failed to attune properly, once it felt like she was talking to a totally different person, because she failed to see where we are at. It is more difficult and the opportunities for misunderstandings and misattunement are greater. and some important small interactions are missing that we usually have when talking to her in person. Times when she would draw things for us to help us understand or use items to explain etc. we used to have more creative sessions than what we are having now. It seems really difficult to figure out problems with connection when the medium isn't really supporting it either.

This is such a nuanced reply, I can tell you've thought about it a lot.
I also wouldn't say that our littles never interact with the T (they do, with our supervision), and yes, it regularly does feel like we are our own therapist (which is obviously also not ideal). Plus, we are lucky in that we have been able to continue face-to-face sessions mostly throughout the last year.
I can definitely attest that misattunements are incredibly painful. I also really like the idea of trying out bodywork stuff. That is my T's orientation and it has provided some wonderful tools.