Parent Involvement in Therapy

Tomorrow I'm presenting at the Utah Adoption Council's annual conference (see here for more details).  Lat week I attended a conference featuring Dr. Bruce Perry's work with trauma and attachment from a neurological perspective.  (For more about Dr. Perry's work, see here.)  Needless to say, trauma. attachment, and brain function are on my mind a lot lately.  

Human beings are attachment beings.  We're hard wired that way.  In fact, an infant's early development is dependent on attachment relationships with loving adults.  As the infant is busy eating, sleeping, squawking, pooping, and gurgling, their right brain is firing along with the adult attachment figure's right brain, and the end result is the formation and firing of unlimited numbers of neural pathways, growing into one of the most complex systems known to mankind. Fascinating!  

For that reason, most interventions I use in my practice are relationship based interventions.  Quite honestly, children, families and couples can heal faster when working within the context of human attachment relationships than any other way.  Hebb's law, or Hebb's axiom is true:  Neurons that fire together, wire together.

So what am I telling other therapists when I'm presenting tomorrow?  The take-home should be that relationships work, and that their greatest tool is parents when it comes to working with children in therapy.

And what am I telling parents?  To take care of themselves and to nurture their support systems so they can nurture their children...and to get involved in therapy.  If you're one of those parents waiting in the waiting room while your child has therapy with a therapist, ask about getting involved.  Ask what you can do at home.  Parents, you are the expert on your own child, and that expertise, combined with the therapist's knowledge of clinical issues has the potential for great outcomes.

If you want to watch a fascinating video on brain plasticity and the brain's ability to heal itself see here.  The fact that human beings are resilient gives me hope, and is the drive behind what I do.