Attachment Disorder Therapy | Day Treatment Program | Attachment Narrative Therapy Intensive Program
Attachment Disorder Therapy
The quality of care during the first months and years of life has important implications for a child’s development. A baby is completely dependent on a caregiver to fulfill the basic needs of food, comfort and safety. Nurturing fulfillment promotes optimal development and facilitates a secure attachment relationship between caregiver and child.
However, maltreatment such as abuse or neglect may compromise development and cause social, cognitive, emotional and behavioral problems as the child grows. Children who experienced maltreatment early in life may suffer from a condition called attachment disorder.
Our Family Attachment Narrative Therapy Program is designed for children and adolescents between the ages of 3 and 21 who are suffering the long term effects of maltreatment experienced early in life.
Family Attachment Narrative Therapy Intensive Program
Our Family Attachment Narrative Therapy Program is designed for children and adolescents between the ages of three and twenty-one who are suffering the long term effects of maltreatment experienced early in life. Their behavior is often unusual and may be described as withdrawn, clingy, dependent, anxious, aggressive, defiant, violent, oppositional, and destructive. Lasting behavioral improvement is likely to occur only after underlying attachment, trauma and developmental issues are addressed.
The program starts with a thorough assessment to determine a treatment plan. If the intensive program is indicated, the family meets two to three hours daily with a team of therapists, usually for a 2-week period. Toward the end of the intensive period the therapist makes specific recommendations for follow up therapy, which may include our day treatment program, weekly follow up or other options.
Our treatment approach is gentle and nonintrusive, yet intensive and powerful. The program is guided by the belief that parents are the primary healing agents for children, and builds on parent knowledge about the child’s internal motivations. Our therapists train parents to create narratives that increase feelings of security, address issues in the child’s history and help the child reach new conclusions about his or her life experiences.
With the necessary support, parents are able to attune to their child and provide the sensitive, caring experiences missed in their early years. This helps the child take a new perspective on life and provides a pathway for an improved future. Parents, along with the therapists, create four types of attachment narratives, unique to the child.
- Claiming — Used to communicate that from the beginning the child deserved love and care. Also used to impart family traditions and history.
- Developmental — Helps the child to progress properly through necessary stages of development.
- Trauma — Addresses trauma history and helps the child gain a new understanding of life events.
- Successful child — Teaches positive core standards for behavior.
Other therapeutic techniques may be used, including Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), audio-visual entrainment (AVE), non-directional play therapy, and family or individual counseling. The environment of physical and emotional nurturing permits powerful healing in both the child and parents.
Day Treatment Program
Our day treatment program offers follow up in a group setting. The goals of day treatment are to improve peer relations, behavior and self regulation, all in a peer setting. The day treatment curriculum uses socialization therapy and recreation therapy in addition to group psychotherapy.
All children in the program have behavioral problems and come from backgrounds that include neglect, abuse, foster care, and/or adoption. In most groups, these factors make a child. This setting normalizes these experiences, and gives the children opportunities for success in a group they may have never experienced.
Day Treatment lasts three hours per day. At least one hour consists of group or individual psychotherapy and the remainder of time is spent focusing on social skills, life skill, and recreation therapy. Throughout the session, therapists give children constant feedback. Behavior is labeled in terms of core standard of good behavior such as respect, responsibility, trustworthiness, fairness, caring, giving and receiving love, and being fun to be around. Children are held accountable for their behavior choices.
The overriding goal is to give the children an opportunity to experience success in a social setting in an effort to shift their inner working model to a more positive, functional one. Children between the ages of 4 and 15 are considered for admittance. Currently, the program is offered one day per week. For information on fees, please see the fee schedule.