| Description |
239 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm. |
| Contents |
1. Close connections : attaching and bonding -- How attachment shapes your child's brain -- How long does it take to become attached? -- Toddlers or children who join your family -- Creating positive connections : emotional looping -- Techniques that encourage attachment -- Cuddling, snuggling, and feeling cozy -- Stroking hands and rubbing feet -- Cheek-stroking and temple-stroking -- Mealtimes and feeding -- Skin-to-skin contact, breast- or bottle-feeding and attachment -- Play's fusing power -- Play builds brains -- Bedtime and morning routines -- High stress and sleep -- Enjoying the moment, "being present" when with our children -- Language skills are strengthened in attached relationships -- 2. Parents and attachment : put your oxygen mask on first -- Parent's balance and children's security -- Maintaining balance when children do not concur -- Shaming children when we feel shame ourselves -- Boundaries with time and attention -- Boundaries and community -- Boundaries : deciding on time for yourself -- Parents lead the dance of attachment -- Attachment, minor neurons, and magical brains -- Attachment when parents grieve -- Attachment and worrying parents -- Attachment and trauma -- Attachment and friends -- Friends when your child has special needs -- 3. Teaching our children emotional skills and daily responsibility -- Teaching our children calming and self-control -- Calming through breathing -- Playful deep breathing for children -- Give myself a hug and shake it out -- Simple ways to help children's moods -- Learning self-control in daily routines -- Attachment and caring for others -- Limit-setting, shame, and respect -- Good modeling and positive attitudes shape children's behavior -- Family jobs : negative versus positive parenting models -- Routines in children who were neglected -- Positive approaches to routines and organization -- Positive self-talk and positive behavior -- |
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4. Brain-based strengths and deficits, and developing executive functioning -- Impacts of high stress (cortisol) on children's brains -- Executive functioning defined -- Executive dysfunction explained -- Effects of executive dysfunction on parent relationships with their children -- Helping the development of executive functioning -- Additional help in assisting executive functioning -- Homes of children with executive dysfunction should have few distractions -- Attention deficit disorder -- Help for attention problems at home : making attention a priority at home -- Summary on executive function and dysfunction -- 5. Carrots and sticks, rewards and limits -- Noticing behaviors -- Types and amounts of rewards -- Limits and enforcing limits with negative consequences -- Dealing with small bean counters : making up time with jobs or lost pleasures -- Lost privileges for the causal child -- Nasty words and friendly words, nasty and friendly buckets -- Restitution from children who lack assets : chores and family pawn shop -- Stealing and taking things without asking -- Arguing -- Disciplining rigid and demanding children -- Re-do -- Processing sheets to help connect thoughts, feelings, and actions -- Lying -- Videotaping and "fixing" a tantrum -- Plans for the day -- Eating, attachment, limits, and pressure -- 6. Life stories -- Parent story lines and story boards -- When to get help with life stories -- Children and consistency in what we say we believe -- Healthy role models -- Children's story lines -- 7. Promoting attachment in tweens and teens -- Secure attachments in teens -- Teens and their brains -- Emotional skills -- Hopeful, confident parents and teen tasks -- Tweens, teens, and parent moods -- Teens, challenges, and stress -- Learning about close relationships -- Less healthy patterns of attachment -- Encouraging secure attachments -- Helping our teens, understanding our teens -- Allowing lessons from negative experiences -- Connection and encouragement -- When teens and families are in difficult times -- Parent failures. |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Summary |
From the publisher. Capturing the warmth and fun of forming close relationships with children, this book offers simple advice to parents of children who find it difficult to attach and bond -- whether following adoption, divorce or other difficult experiences. Attachment therapist Deborah D. Gray describes how to use the latest thinking on attachment in your daily parenting. She reveals sensory techniques which have proven to help children bond -- straightforward activities like keeping close eye contact or stroking a child's feet or cheeks -- and explains why routines like mealtimes and play time are so important in helping children to attach. The book offers positive ideas for responding to immediate crises like difficult behavior and meltdowns, but importantly also offers longer-term strategies to help children to develop the skills they need to cope as they grow up -- the ability to plan, concentrate and be in control of their emotions. Offering fascinating insights into how children who struggle to attach can be helped, this book is full of easy-to-use ideas which will help you to enjoy the many pleasures of bonding and attaching with your child. |
| Subject |
Attachment behavior in children.
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Parent and child.
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| ISBN |
9781849059398 |
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184905939X |
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