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Dr. Delaney begins by addressing the misuse of the RAD diagnosis (a subject he and I discussed a year ago), and … “the swelling controversy about maverick, ‘coercive’ attachment therapies and parenting approaches.”
He mentions the APSAC report (see previous blogs about that) and quotes the report in their concern about how “most foster or adoptive parents are probably unaware of the risks and poor foundation for some treatment claims.”
The next point in the article acknowledges that while “some approaches are controversial, discredited, and even banned in some states, ‘not all attachment-related interventions are controversial.’” (I assume that last quote-within-the-quote was from the APSAC report as well.) Dr. Delaney goes on to state,
“These noncontroversial interventions, grounded in traditional, mainstream attachment theory, utilize approaches which are widely approved and focus on improving caregiver sensitivity and responsiveness to the child. They provide safety, stability, predictability, nurturing and patience. They emphasize improving the caregiver-child relationship and increasing caregiver-child encounters that are central to aiding the attachment process and improving the quality of attachment relationships between the child and caregiver.”
The aforementioned quote appears early on in the article. So up until this point, I’m not in major disagreement with what I am reading. Frankly, all the attachment therapists I know teach parents to be patient and nurturing, and to provide predictability and safety. All the parents I know are working their you-know-what’s off trying to create caregiver-child encounters that “aid the attachment process.” In fact, I just responded to a woman today who was wondering why her attachment therapist spent SO much time with the mom and dad and not just “therapizing” their child. It is because good attachment therapists know that the parents are doing the bulk of the healing, and they need coaching and explanations on how to reframe behaviors, respond in ways that will work, and most of all, the parents need support and validation that they are on the right track and have a chance at being successful.
More to come…
Although I wondered about occasionally why DS’s therapist spent so much time with just dh & me, after the fact I was always grateful. Without his intervention, I shudder to think where we all would be.