Coming to Grips With Attachment: The Guidebook for Developing Mutual Well-Being in Parent-Child Relationships

Book Synopsis: I understand the difficulties you are experiencing in raising attachment-challenged children. I understand because I have worked with many foster/adoptive parents and am the adoptive mother of four children who were abused and neglected during their early childhoods. Furthermore, I have a doctorate in developmental psychology and specialize in the socio-emotional development of children, the mal-developmental paths associated with trauma, and parent-child relationships.

In addition to introducing a new framework for thinking about and assessing parent-child relationships, I identified and explained behaviors characteristic of attachment-challenged children, provided some ideas on how to discipline these children, and described a novel method for activating or coaxing attachment behaviors using a relationship coaching method. During my years of teaching this information, parents remarked that they would really appreciate more details, more step by step instruction, more anecdotes, and more examples of when and how to use discipline and the coaching method.

So, this is it – the guidebook I wrote specifically for parents who live with attachment-challenged children. The goal of my work is to help parents and their children achieve mutual well-being. Using a mutual well-being paradigm means that whatever interventions we use must be non-harmful and helpful to both child and parent.

The techniques I use to achieve this goal are grounded in a transactional concept. Transactional means “a communicative action or activity involving two parties reciprocally affecting or influencing each other” and in so doing transforming each other (Webster’s 3rd International Dictionary).

Keeping the transactional concept in focus I teach parents how to meet the needs of their attachment-challenged children and how to teach their children to meet parental needs in the relationship. I explain the concept of mutual well-being throughout the book, which also includes lots of bare bones facts about the brain, attachment, and relationships.

The book also contains discipline definitions, many real-life examples, scenarios of our children’s behaviors and what to do about them, plus explicit step-by-step instructions on implementing the relationship coaching method.