Understanding Attachment Injuries In Children And How To Help

EXPANDED SECOND EDITION New Interventions More Examples Expanded Descriptions If you work with children and families, this may be the book you have been waiting for! This book provides a new, easy-to-follow roadmap for understanding and working with children with some of the most challenging and treatment-resistant behaviors and their families. Some of the most challenging children to help are those who have been injured early in life in their first relationships through disrupted or injured attachment. These children can be both hurting and hurtful to others, and are often anxious and depressed, yet push away the very things they most need for healing: love and connection. Traditional child therapies are largely ineffective and professionals and parents may be at a loss as to how to help. Perhaps there is a better way to reach attachment-injured children. Perhaps our therapy models have simply not been a good match for their needs... Multi-Modal Attachment Therapy (M-MAT) brings a fresh, innovative approach to working with children and families struggling with attachment injuries. In a whole-brain strategy, M-MAT blends a number of modalities to target precisely those areas most impacted by the attachment injury: attachment and connection, self-concept, worldview, and skills deficits. The result is a powerful, cohesive, and comprehensive attachment-based therapy. In clear, concise language, Young lays forth for the reader an easy to follow roadmap for understanding and implementing M-MAT with children and their caregivers. She additionally outlines how to work with those children who are most at risk: children who do not have a permanent, committed caregiver. M-MAT Multi-Modal Attachment Therapy provides a brief overview of attachment theory and discussion of children with attachment injuries, but focuses primarily on the how-to of implementing this therapy model to provide healing to children and families. Many interventions and examples are included throughout the book. It is intended as a practical manual for therapists and social workers, but also holds some use for parents and other professionals in understanding attachment and approaches to working with children with attachment injuries. M-MAT is designed for children with mild to severe attachment injuries including those with developmental trauma and/or diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder (rad). Adopted and foster children may benefit greatly from this model, as placements are often lost due to untreated or under-treated attachment injuries "M-MAT is a two-pronged approach with both a play and a talk component. The play component utilizes largely non-verbal forms of communication, connection and nurturing, such as mirroring, rhythm, touch and eye contact. The talk component engages the power of language and the child's thoughts by addressing cognitive distortions, responsibility, and self-concept through re-storying, skill building, and psychoeducation, creating a new narrative in which the child can organize and make sense of his/her experiences in a healthy, adaptive way. The two components together reinforce each other, allow for deeper integration and healing, and are far more powerful than either alone. Together they access many parts of the brain and harness the incredible healing power inherent in both left and right brain modalities. This is a whole-brain approach that utilizes both bottom-up and top-down interventions." "The main tools for engagement and buy-in for the child are playful engagement, fun, deep empathy, reflection, and truth." Excerpts from M-MAT Multi-Modal Attachment Therapy: Healing Attachment Injuries in Children and Families

Now in a fully updated and expanded edition, Levy and Orlans' classic text provides a comprehensive overview of attachment theory, how attachment issues manifest, and how they can be treated. The book covers attachment-focused assessment and diagnosis, specialised training and education for caregivers, treatment for children and caregivers and early intervention and prevention programmes for high-risk families. The authors explain their unique models of 'corrective attachment therapy' and 'corrective attachment parenting', and provide practical guidance on goals and techniques for clinicians who work with maltreated and attachment disordered children and families. This second edition incorporates advances in the fields of child and family psychology that have occurred since the book first published in 1998, with substantial new sections on interpersonal neurobiology, adult and couple treatment, the application of positive psychology. Clear, authoritative and skills-oriented, this is the essential guide to attachment for psychologists, social workers, clinicians, as well as foster and adoptive parents.

Disorganized attachment, the most extreme form of insecure attachment, can develop in a child when the person who is meant to protect them becomes a source of danger. This book provides a comprehensive text on disorganized attachment.

This book will be of use to social workers, therapists and parents striving to assist poorly attached children. It is a narrative, composite case study of the developmental course of one child. The author blends attachment theory, research and trauma with general principles of parenting and family therapy to develop a solid model for intervention. It will prove a practical guide for all adults trying to help high-risk youth.

Do you ever feel confused about what went wrong in your foster or adoption story? Are you fearful about the future of your marriage and your children? Do you ever feel overwhelmed and desperate for help? You are not alone. Many foster and adoptive parents are trying to raise children with complex emotional trauma, desperate for answers to heal their families. Caught off guard, these families find themselves with shattered dreams, shattered homes, and shattered hearts, with nowhere to turn for answers. Extended family members, friends, and the greater community don't understand the challenges and sometimes add to the problems these families face, sometimes prolonging the healing process for all. Attachment disorder is cruel. This book is for the wonderful-hearted people who stepped into adoption with dreams of loving a child to wholeness, only to find that hurting kids sometimes hurt people. This book is for parents who feel overwhelmed, desperate, and depleted. Or for the friend or family member who has watched the the adoption story of their loved one unravel. My family has lived our own version of hope and hell in learning what real love looks like for these children. It took our marriage to the brink, our own personal mental health to its limits, our family to some dark places--but we came out in a brighter place. We surfaced with the support of our community, our dedication to making it, and a whole lot of prayer. Before I was raising kiddos with attachment disorders, I was therapeutically supporting families who were. And now I want to offer this hope and help to you. Parenting Children of Trauma brings you everything I've learned as mama, friend, and counselor, in a new and easy-to-understand way through: Demystifying attachment disorders and the impact of complex emotional trauma on our homes and society. Breaking down current treatment options for attachment disorders. Equipping you with information, strategies, and stories to know you are not alone or powerless in your own home. Resources to help the friend or family member who wants to support adoptive/foster families. Walk with me through understanding trauma to alleviate fear and doubt about who you are, who they are, and what your future holds. Because parenting children of trauma will take you to the lowest parts of your existence, only to raise you back up again with a new resilience, a new freedom, a new compassion, and a whole new framework through which to see and love your child. Whether you're already in this situation, thinking about stepping into it, or know someone who is in it, this book will help you set realistic expectations, redefine love, and walk away with actual tools to change the climate of your heart and your home. What's stopping you from reclaiming your heart, your home, and your hope? If you're ready to live free of shame, full of hope, and safe in your own home, then this is your book.

Provides a map, stories, and suggestions for those who are charged with the critical task of instilling a deep sense of trust and security in children so that they can begin to develop lasting normal relationships.

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.