Attachment and Emotional Communication, PALMERSTON NORTH

It has been said that children and young people who need love the most, ask for it in the most unloving ways. Young people with disrupted attachment, traumatic backgrounds and experiences of neglect or separation crave care and connection, but emotionally communicate this with mistrust and aggression, often repelling those who are trying to support them. Their words and behaviors can be challenging and difficult to understand.

This seminar will present a model for understanding what is behind this behaviour and will explore how helping professionals, therapists, educators and carers can better interpret and respond to the needs that are being emotionally communicated.   

Wendy will demonstrate how a Relational Learning Framework can be utilised to understand the impact of early negative life experiences on children’s attachment and their conceptualizations about relationships and trust. The framework provides crucial clues about how the young person’s past adverse experiences may have changed their view of themselves and the people around them. This framework helps make sense of complex information and helps to illuminate the specific areas of therapeutic need.

• A brief summary of key Attachment concepts to act as a foundation for understanding.
• The impact of adverse life experiences, particularly in relation to their influence on how children emotionally communicate as a result.
• The use of the Relational Learning Framework as an assessment and planning tool will be explored (using typical case examples)
• The importance of emotional regulation for children and how communication and empathy expressed by adults, whether they are parents/carers, teachers or in therapeutic roles, can be helpful for children’s development and recovery.
• How to assist parents/caregivers to enhance emotional connectedness in various aspects of their parenting
• Determining the sequence of therapeutic tasks an individual child may benefit from and assessing the best time to implement them.

Dr Wendy Kelly is a Clinical Practice Advisor with the Clinical Psychology program at Victoria University. She is the author of ‘Understanding Children in Foster Care’ and completed her PhD on the topic ‘Looking after children in care: What psychological factors affect the foster parent-child relationship?’. She also runs a private practice and provides supervision and consultation services for professionals working in the area of child maltreatment and trauma. She has worked in the child protection and mental health fields for over 30 years, including five years as a clinical psychologist in Oranga Tamariki's specialist services. Wendy has developed this new workshop to reflect the huge amount of new research and knowledge that has occurred recently in this area of practice. Wendy’s engaging and interactive presentation style combined with her contemporary knowledge and practice wisdom in this topic area mean this workshop is a must for all professionals who engage with challenging children in their work.