The pervasive effects of maltreatment on child development can be repaired when professionals use effective, empirically validated, and evidence-based methods. This book describes a comprehensive approach to treatment, Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, which is an evidence-based, effective, and empirically validated family based treatment. Therapists, social workers, residential treatment programs, psychologists, and child welfare professionals will find this book of immediate practical value. Professors teaching family-therapy, child-welfare, and child-treatment courses will find the book a good adjunct text.
From the founder of DDP, this updated and comprehensive guide is the authoritative text on DDP. DDP is an attachment-focused treatment for children and adolescents who experience abuse and neglect and who are now living in stable foster and adoptive families. Its central interventions are influenced by enhanced knowledge about the structure and functions of the brain, as well as the latest findings regarding developmental trauma and the related attachment problems it brings.
Written by experienced clinicians, this book provides an exploration of how educators can easily use Dyadic Developmental Practice (DDP) to help vulnerable pupils to thrive. DDP is an intervention model for children and young people who have experienced trauma in past relationships. Safety and security is increased through offering emotional connection in a variety of ways, helped by the attitude of PACE (playfulness, acceptance, curiosity and empathy). The model gives children the opportunity to experience the relationships necessary for healthy development, emotional regulation and resilience. This book gives educators all the tools they need to embed DDP into their practice, including building connections with students, partnerships with parents, understanding the theory behind DDP, and overcoming the challenges of implementing it in practice. These principles can be adapted to support pupils at all levels.
A comprehensive book about Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy - a gentle, holistic therapeutic approach designed to resolve trauma in children who have experienced abuse, neglect, loss or other extreme challenges to primary relationships.
A practical guide to implementing the rich theory of attachment for treating mental health challenges in children. This book both explains and illustrates how the practice of child mental health professionals can be enhanced, whatever their treatment approach, to encourage engagement, resilience, and development in children with mental health problems. Alongside practical recommendations, Daniel Hughes and Ben Gurney-Smith use dialogue from clinical work to illustrate applications of these principles from Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy as well as other attachment-based practices with parents and children. This “little book” will demystify how attachment theory—one of today’s most in-demand approaches—can actually be brought into clinical work. Topics include regulating emotional states; repairing ongoing relationships; establishing an attachment-based therapeutic relationship; accepting a child’s inner life; assessing the caregiver’s need for safety, regulation, and reflection; the importance of nonverbal and verbal conversations in facilitating secure attachment; and strengthening the mind of the child.
Troubled children need special parenting to build attachments and heal from trauma. This book provides a parenting model that parents and carers can follow to incorporate love, play, acceptance, curiosity and empathy into their parenting. These elements are vital to a child's development and will help children to feel confident, secure and happy.
I could not ignore the tiny spark of hope that whispered to me that there might be someone with whom I could be vulnerable and real, and that this time they might just not let me down... This is the story of Alexia and her therapist Kim, and their three-year therapy journey to begin Alexia's path to recovery. Written from both perspectives, it is a powerful and revealing account of a therapist-client relationship. Together, the authors show the manifold challenges that adult survivors of childhood abuse have to overcome, and offer insight to all therapists on how relational interventions can pave a way to healing.
The call for trauma-informed education is growing as the profound impact trauma has for the children’s ability to learn in traditional classrooms is recognized. For children who have experienced abuse and neglect their behavior is often highly reactive, aggressive, withdrawn or unmotivated. They struggle to learn, to make positive relationships or be influenced positively by teachers and school staff. Students become more and more at risk for mental health difficulties. Teachers become more and more frustrated and discouraged as they attempt to teach this vulnerable group of students. Even though it is relationships that have hurt students with developmental trauma, it is known that they must find safe relationships to learn and heal. Forming those relationships with children who have been hurt and no longer trust adults is not easy. This book focuses on three important and comprehensive areas of theory and research that provide a theoretical, clinical, and integrated intervention model for developing the relationships and felt sense of safety children with developmental trauma need. Using what is known from attachment theory, intersubjectivity theory, and interpersonal neurobiology, the reader is helped to understand why children behave in the challenging ways they do. This book offers successes and ongoing challenges as a means to continue the conversation about how best to support some of our most at-risk youth.
An attachment specialist and a clinical psychologist with neurobiology expertise team up to explore the brain science behind parenting. In this groundbreaking exploration of the brain mechanisms behind healthy caregiving, attachment specialist Daniel A. Hughes and veteran clinical psychologist Jonathan Baylin guide readers through the intricate web of neuronal processes, hormones, and chemicals that drive—and sometimes thwart—our caregiving impulses, uncovering the mysteries of the parental brain. The biggest challenge to parents, Hughes and Baylin explain, is learning how to regulate emotions that arise—feeling them deeply and honestly while staying grounded and aware enough to preserve the parent–child relationship. Stress, which can lead to “blocked” or dysfunctional care, can impede our brain’s inherent caregiving processes and negatively impact our ability to do this. While the parent–child relationship can generate deep empathy and the intense motivation to care for our children, it can also trigger self-defensive feelings rooted in our early attachment relationships, and give rise to “unparental” impulses. Learning to be a “good parent” is contingent upon learning how to manage this stress, understand its brain-based cues, and respond in a way that will set the brain back on track. To this end, Hughes and Baylin define five major “systems” of caregiving as they’re linked to the brain, explaining how they operate when parenting is strong and what happens when good parenting is compromised or “blocked.” With this awareness, we learn how to approach kids with renewed playfulness, acceptance, curiosity, and empathy, re-regulate our caregiving systems, foster deeper social engagement, and facilitate our children’s development. Infused with clinical insight, illuminating case examples, and helpful illustrations, Brain-Based Parenting brings the science of caregiving to light for the first time. Far from just managing our children’s behavior, we can develop our “parenting brains,” and with a better understanding of the neurobiological roots of our feelings and our own attachment histories, we can transform a fraught parent-child relationship into an open, regulated, and loving one.
Attachment Parenting describes a comprehensive approach to parenting children who have a history of neglect, abuse, orphanage care, or other experiences that may interfere with the normal development of attachment between parent and child. Grounded in attachment theory, Attachment Parenting gives parents, therapists, educators, and child-welfare and residential-treatment professionals the tools and skills necessary to help these children. With an approach rooted in dyadic developmental psychotherapy, which is an evidence-based, effective, and empirically validated treatment for complex trauma and disorders of attachment, Arthur Becker-Weidman and Deborah Shell provide practical and immediately usable approaches and methods to help children develop a healthier and more secure attachment. Attachment Parenting covers a wide range of topics, from describing the basic principles of this approach and how to select a therapist to chapters on concrete logistics, such as detailed suggestions for organizing the child's room, dealing with schools' concerns, and problem-solving. Chapters on sensory integration, art therapy for parents, narratives, and Theraplay give parents specific therapeutic activities that can be done at home to improve the quality of the child's attachment with the parent. And chapters on neuropsychological issues, mindfulness, and parent's use of self will also help parents directly. The book includes two chapters by parents discussing what worked for them, providing inspiration to parents and demonstrating that there is hope. Finally, the book ends with a comprehensive chapter on resources for parents and a summary of various professional standards regarding attachment, treatment, and parenting.
