Connecting With Kids Through Stories ─ Using Narratives to Facilitate Attachment in Adopted Children

Psychologists and marriage and family therapists Lacher et al., who are all based at the Family Attachment and Counseling Center in Minnesota, guide parents and thier therapists in the process of creating therapeutic stories with their adopted children. The process is meant to help deal with difficult and complex issues through family attachment and narrative therapy and address behavioral problems caused by traumatic life experiences, insecure attachment, and developmental issues. They describe the formation of the child's internal working model in response to attachment experiences, life events, and course of development; ways to discover the child's unique model and put together the meaning of behavior; the neuroscience of narrative therapy; comparisons of family attachment narrative therapy with other narrative techniques; the process of telling narratives, with clinical examples illustrating different setting choices, props, perspective, and protagonists; and the categories of parent narrative: claiming, trauma, developmental, and successful child. This edition includes updated research on attachment, trauma, and development, a new chapter on parental attunement and regulation, and a new chapter with full-length samples of the four narrative types. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

The authors are all based at the Family Attachment and Counseling Center, Minnesota, USA. Denise B. Lacher is a psychologist who specializes in treating children who have experienced maltreatment in early life. Todd Nichols is Executive Director. He is co-recipient of the 2008 Pro Humanitate Award issued by the Center for Child Welfare Policy and sole recipient of the 2007 New Horizons Award issued by the Association for Treatment and Training in the Attachment of Children. Melissa Nichols is a marriage and family therapist who specializes in treating children who have experienced abandonment, neglect, and abuse early in life. Joanne C. May is a licensed psychologist and marriage and family therapist and founder of the Family Attachment and Counseling Center. She has over 50 years' experience working with families, children and adolescents.