Description
There is clear evidence that the adult attachment of the parents, particularly the primary caregiver, is a predictor of the attachment of the child. Parents may take parenting courses, but without understanding and integrating their understanding of their adult attachment, unresolved issues from their childhood will prevent parents from creating a secure parenting environment, essential for secure infants and children.
This training will help participants learn the adult attachment categories, based on the research of Dr. Mary Main and how each category affects parenting. Participants will learn how to determine a parent’s adult attachment, and how to reflect this to the parents with whom they are working, non-judgementally. The therapy model will help parents understand how their attachment affects their parenting, how to parent from a secure adult attachment and how they can redevelop secure adult attachment.
Parents with unresolved trauma have a significant impact on their children since they are more disorganized in their parenting. Although resolution of the trauma is crucial for both the parent and child, the parent who can understand their own triggers and work to offer more predictable parenting will ensure the trauma is not generationally transmitted.
The controversy of culture and attachment will be explored briefly.
This parenting paradigm offers a valuable and non-judgemental approach to ensure that all children have the potential to become secure adults and for those parents with insecure adult attachments to develop better self-understanding and new meaning to their early childhood experiences.
Case examples and interactive exercises will be presented.
Learning Outcomes
- Develop an understanding of the adult attachment of a parent
- Describe how the adult attachment category affects parenting
- Build parents’ understanding of their attachment category, without self-judgement
- Examine a model of therapy to redevelop secure adult attachment
- Learn parenting interventions based on secure adult attachment
Who Should Attend
This training is for mental health professionals, social workers, clinicians, counsellors, psychotherapists. As well as those that work with children and youth and would like an in-depth understanding of attachment theory.
Course Format
This course is delivered online as 2 three-hour interactive virtual sessions using Zoom.