Parenting an emotionally disturbed adopted child

Gregory Keck, PhD Attachment Therapist & Adoption Expert, shares advice for parents on how to best be a parent to an emotionally disturbed adopted child and help make a connection with them
Tips For Parenting An Emotionally Disturbed Adopted Child
KidsInTheHouse the Ultimate Parenting Resource
Kids in the House Tour

Parenting an emotionally disturbed adopted child

Comment
61
Unlike
61
Transcription: 
I think that one of the most helpful things that any attachment therapist can do is to provide the parents with an array of things they may do, but often times parents want very specific things and there's often times there are not specific things. So what attachment therapists really attempt to do is to help the parent work on the relationship, keep the channels of communication open, offer the child lots of nurturing, comfort, and security, spend a lot of time in together as opposed to time outs. Traditional methods of parenting like grounding, or time outs, or punishments simply are ineffective with kids who have been damaged by early trauma. One thing that we really would like parents to do is try to reduce the amount of anger that they experience and that they express to the child because the anger serves to alienate the child and instead of a connection is a disconnection, and we often ask parents to ask themselves, “Is what I'm doing a connection or is it bringing about a disconnection?” And most of the time we should be do something that'll bring about a connection because each disconnection parallels the earlier trauma that the child already has experienced in terms of disconnections and rejections.

Gregory Keck, PhD Attachment Therapist & Adoption Expert, shares advice for parents on how to best be a parent to an emotionally disturbed adopted child and help make a connection with them

Transcript

Expert Bio

More from Expert

Gregory Keck, PhD

Founder & Director, Attachment & Bonding Center of Ohio

Gregory C. Keck, Ph.D., is the founder and director of the Attachment & Bonding Center of Ohio. He is an internationally known psychologist and trainer who addresses the issues of trauma, adoption, and post-adoption challenges. He and his staff provide attachment therapy for adoptive families whose children have experienced serious early childhood maltreatment prior to adoption. In 2012, he received the National Association of Social Workers State of Ohio Lifetime Achievement Award. He is the parent of two sons who were adopted in adolescence.

More Parenting Videos from Gregory Keck, PhD >
Enter your email to
download & subscribe
to our newsletter