Healing Traumatized Children

Because millions of children experience early trauma and attachment disruptions, whether through death, physical or sexual abuse, domestic, community, or school violence, terrorism or other tragic losses, parents and professionals need not just vague theories but a proactive plan for healing relationship avoidant children. Healing Traumatized Children authors Hall, Merkert and Biever have successfully merged mental health, trauma, and attachment, parenting and in-home treatment strategies into a single comprehensive resource for parents and professionals. The authors emphasize the importance of an in-home plan (where the healing must begin), outline how to effectively assemble a support network, provide the keys to the establishment of a therapeutic home environment, discuss psycho-education that identifies the six distinct Trauma Disrupted Competencies and provide multiple types of healing interventions. Healing Traumatized Children confirms that without effective in-home intervention, many of these children will become involved in juvenile and adult justice systems and continue the intergenerational transmission of maladaptive relationships, abuse, and neglect. It is important to remember that these children will eventually become tomorrow's parents.

Learn to build the trust you need to help children in crisis! Rebuilding Attachments with Traumatized Children: Healing from Losses, Violence, Abuse, and Neglect is a therapeutic guide to helping troubled children move beyond the traumatic experiences that haunt them. Author Dr. Richard Kagan, Director of Psychological Services for Parsons Child and Family Center in Albany, New York, presents comprehensive information on how to understand—and surmount—the impact of loss, neglect, separation, and violence on children’s development, how to discover and foster strengths in children and their families, and how to rebuild connections and hope for children who are at risk of harm to themselves and others. This unique book is designed to be used in tandem with Real Life Heroes: A Life Storybook for Children (Haworth), an innovative workbook that helps children develop the self-esteem they need to overcome the worries and fears of their past through a creative arts approach that fosters positive values and a sense of pride. Rebuilding Attachments with Traumatized Children helps children move from negative or suppressed memories to a more positive perspective, not by denying hardships, but by drawing strength from the supportive people in their lives. Practitioners can use the book as a framework and detailed guide to assessment, engagement, development of service plans, and implementation of attachment and trauma therapy. The book is a comprehensive model for working to build the trust necessary before other trauma therapy approaches can be successfully initiated. Topics examined in Rebuilding Attachments with Traumatized Children include: attachment theory and research types of attachment problems PTSD behaviors permanency work with children in placement ADHD, bipolar, and RAD cognitive behavioral therapies storytelling therapies the myth of perfection neuropsychological patterns and much more! Rebuilding Attachments with Traumatized Children is a rich resource for practitioners, academics, parents, adoptive parents, foster parents, grandparents, and anyone working to show troubled children how to learn from the past, resolve problems in the present, and build a better future.

Healing Days is a book designed to be used in therapy for kids ages 6-11 and functions as an excellent resource for those who have experienced physical or sexual abuse. Readers will follow four children as they learn ways to cope with their own trauma. Sensitive and empowering, the book models therapeutic coping responses and provides children with tools they may use to deal with their own trauma. A Dear Reader introduction is included for the child reader. Also available is an online Note to Parents and Caregivers.

An essential guide for recognizing, preventing, and healing childhood trauma, from infancy through adolescence—what parents, educators, and health professionals can do. Trauma can result not only from catastrophic events such as abuse, violence, or loss of loved ones, but from natural disasters and everyday incidents such as auto accidents, medical procedures, divorce, or even falling off a bicycle. At the core of this book is the understanding of how trauma is imprinted on the body, brain, and spirit, resulting in anxiety, nightmares, depression, physical illnesses, addictions, hyperactivity, and aggression. Rich with case studies and hands-on activities, Trauma Through a Child’s Eyes gives insight into children’s innate ability to rebound with the appropriate support, and provides their caregivers with tools to overcome and prevent trauma.

The suffering of children who undergo traumatic events takes many forms and can extend for a long time afterwards. Children Changed by Trauma is the first book to show parents and others what they can do to help a child who has witnessed, or been involved in, a traumatic event deal with the experience. The author suggests ways to help children cope with intense emotions, learn to talk about what happened, and begin to feel safe again.

Featuring in-depth case presentations from master clinicians, this volume highlights the remarkable capacity of traumatized children to guide their own healing process. The book describes what posttraumatic play looks like and how it can foster resilience and coping. Demonstrated are applications of play, art, and other expressive therapies with children who have faced such overwhelming experiences as sexual abuse or chronic neglect. The contributors discuss ways to facilitate forms of expression that promote mastery and growth, as well as how to intervene when play becomes stuck in destructive patterns. They share effective strategies for engaging hard-to-reach children and building trusting therapeutic relationships. This book will be invaluable to mental health professionals working with children, including child psychologists, social workers, play and art therapists, counselors, family therapists, and psychiatrists. It will also˜serve as a supplemental text in clinically oriented graduate-level courses.

Trauma and Play Therapy synthesizes new developments in the study of children’s trauma recovery to assist clinicians in combining play therapy with other powerful ways of addressing the needs of hurt children. The TraumaPlayTM model, formerly known as Flexibly Sequential Play Therapy, equips practitioners to manage and adapt aspects of the play therapy place and process in order to help children tell their stories while draining the emotional toxicity from traumatic experiences. Chapters explore the neurobiological and developmental foundations of play therapy as well as strategies for navigating children’s trauma in relation to specific aspects of play therapy such as sensory integration, metaphor, and humor. Enriched by a tapestry of illustrative case examples and tools for therapists, this is a vital new book for clinicians working at the intersection of play and children’s trauma.

Why doesn’t our child return our love? What are we failing to understand? What are we failing to do? These questions can fill the minds of adoptive parents caring for wounded, traumatized children. Families often enter into this experience with high expectations for their child and for themselves but are broadsided by shattered assumptions. This book addresses the reality of those unmet expectations and offers validation and solutions for the challenges of parenting deeply traumatized and emotionally disturbed children.