| Description |
Recent decades have dramatically changed our understanding of infancy and early childhood development. We now know that from ages 0-5, when brain development is at one of its most crucial phases, a child develops the foundation and capabilities upon which all subsequent development builds. Infants and young children require a secure attachment to a primary caregiver to foster cognitive growth, and social and emotional development. In the absence of sensitive, reliable caregiving, development of critical social, emotional, and intellectual skills, including the ability to trust, to relate to others, to empathize, have a positive sense of self and to emotionally and behaviorally regulate is compromised. Trauma and maltreatment that occurs within the context of the parent-child relationship has devastating developmental consequences. In times of anxiety or threat, infants are biologically primed to seek the protection and comfort of their caregiver. Infants feel deep confusion and fear when the parent from whom he needs to seek protection is the person who is frightening and threatening to him.
As a result, young children raised in abusive or neglectful homes, or in residential settings, have considerably different needs than children raised in stable families. Their rage, despair and emotional dysregulation are often hard to understand and manage. When foster and adoptive families, educators or therapists are unfamiliar with the impact of neglect or abuse on child development, they run the risk of further traumatizing children by not adequately addressing their tremendous needs. Through this workshop the instructor will examine the impact of abuse and neglect and suggest a paradigm to increase a child’s ability to use primary caregivers as a safe base. She will describe stress and trauma response symptoms in young children as well as explain the two most prevalent forms of attachment patterns that lead to difficult behavior in children. She will teach a paradigm and strategies that assist with helping children with attachment disturbances and aid participants in deepening their understanding of how to support caregivers of children with attachment disturbances. Participants will leave with a framework for understanding how to intervene with children who are despairing, and often fearfully enraged.
|