Facilitating Developmental Attachment: The Road to Emotional Recovery and Behavioral Change in Foster and Adopted Children

About the Book

This book shows how to work successfully with emotional and behavioral problems rooted in deficient early attachments. In particular, it addresses the emotional difficulties of many of the foster and adopted children living in our country who are unable to form secure attachments. Traditional interventions, which do not teach parents how to successfully engage the child, frequently do not provide the means by which the seriously damaged child can form the secure attachment that underlies behavioral change. Dr. Daniel Hughes maps out a treatment plan designed to help the child begin to experience and accept, from both the therapist and the parents, affective attunement that he or she should have received in the first few years of life. Hughes' approach includes: —Using foster and adopted parents as co-therapists —Teaching differentiation between old and new parents —Overcoming the perception of discipline as abusive —Framing misbehavior, discipline, conflicts, and parental authority as important aspects of a child's learning to trust. All children, at the core of their beings, need to be attached to someone who considers them to be very special and who is committed to providing for their ongoing care. Children who lose their birth parents desperately need such a relationship if they are to heal and grow. This book shows therapists how to facilitate this crucial bond. A Jason Aronson Book

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Attachment: Theory and Research Healthy Attachment
Chapter 3 Attachment as Dancing
Chapter 4 Developmental Attachment Patterns
Chapter 5 Attachment into Adulthood
Chapter 6 Weak Attachment
Chapter 7 Trauma & Neglect and Weak Attachment
Chapter 8 Specific Symptoms of a Weak Attachment
Chapter 9 Children, Therapists, and Parents
Chapter 10 Children
Chapter 11 Therapists
Chapter 12 Parents
Chapter 13 Integrative Psychotherapy for Developmental Attachment in Children
Chapter 14 Principles
Chapter 15 Directive and Empathic
Chapter 16 Relationship-Centered
Chapter 17 Emotional Richness
Chapter 18 Focused on Attachment Sequences
Chapter 19 Goals of Differentiation and Integration
Chapter 20 Past, Present, and Future
Chapter 21 Cognition, Affect, and Behavior
Chapter 22 Self?Other Duality
Chapter 23 Problems and Skills
Chapter 24 Parental Participation
Chapter 25 Reasons
Chapter 26 Emotional Attunement
Chapter 27 Emotional Support and Empathy
Chapter 28 Differentiation
Chapter 29 Increased Similarity between Therapy and Home
Chapter 30 Expert Knowledge
Chapter 31 Parental Authority
Chapter 32 Safety
Chapter 33 Specifics
Chapter 34 Emotional Attunement
Chapter 35 Directives
Chapter 36 Differentiation
Chapter 37 Parental Authority and Knowledge
Chapter 38 Homework
Chapter 39 Regression
Chapter 40 Therapeutic Interventions
Chapter 41 Engagement and Leading
Chapter 42 Contract
Chapter 43 Holding
Chapter 44 Attachment Sequences
Chapter 45 Confrontations
Chapter 46 Information and Education
Chapter 47 Verbal Directives
Chapter 48 Psychodrama
Chapter 49 Paradoxical Interventions
Chapter 50 Illustrated Stories
Chapter 51 Additional Props: Children's Books-Photographs, Stuffed Animals, Music, Miscellaneous
Chapter 52 Matthew
Chapter 53 Melinda
Chapter 54 Bill
Chapter 55 Jenny
Chapter 56 Principles of Parenting
Chapter 57 Family Atmosphere and Interactions
Chapter 58 Attunement and Empathy
Chapter 59 Choices and Consequences
Chapter 60 Attachment Sequences
Chapter 61 Behavior, Emotion, and Thought
Chapter 62 Reciprocal Enjoyment
Chapter 63 Regression
Chapter 64 Parental Self-Care
Chapter 65 Day-To-Day Parenting
Chapter 66 Moving In
Chapter 67 Day-To-Day Discipline
Chapter 68 Understanding the Child's Reinforcers
Chapter 69 Privileges and Practice
Chapter 70 Paradoxical Interventions
Chapter 71 Reframing
Chapter 72 Differentiating Thoughts and Feelings from Behavior Regression
Chapter 73 More Imaginative Parenting and Problem Solving
Chapter 74 Good Times: Fun and Love Facilitating Fun and Love
Chapter 75 Some Fun and Love Activities
Chapter 76 Conclusions

About the Author :
Daniel Hughes, Ph.D., received his doctorate in clinical psychology from Ohio University. For over a decade he was the coordinator of children's services at Kennebec Valley Mental Health Center and also worked at Colby College Counseling Services. He is in private practice in Waterville, Maine, where he has contracts with foster care agencies.

Review :
For those treating attachment disordered children with traditional child psychotherapy, this book will compel a reexamination of that approach and lead the way to a decidedly more effective treatment. Therapists struggling to help these children will findcountless new insights and concrete examples of how to be successful instead of frustrated in their work. An experienced, gifted, and innovative therapist and teacher, Dan Hughes takes the reader through a primer in attachment theory and reactive attachment disorders in maltreated children, through the theoretical principles and actual techniques employed in therapy, four illustrative case vignettes, and a discussion of how to educate, assist, and support the parents of poorly attached children... Dr. Hughes's deeply insightful book provides professionals as well as parents with a comprehensive understanding of the issues and of the types of interventions that succeed in resolving them. The scope of this brilliant work extends beyond the disturbances of foster and adoptive children. If all children were treated in the way Dr. Hughes describes, with his compassion, humanity, humor, and depth of understanding, there would be better outcomes. Even for therapists who do not practice in this manner, their grasp of a child's development and their approach to their young patients will be greatly enhanced by Dr. Hughes' theoretical framework of attunement and engagement...