My Garden of Thoughts: Reflection #24 -- Attachment Related Preventative Interventions

 

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/preventive-or-preventative

    It parent education, there is usually of lack of preventative care that can help parents address their own experiences with adverse or traumatizing situations. These experiences can inhibit their ability to fully focus on their child's development or practice healthy parenting skills. Thus, having programs that are geared toward enhancing parent's child rearing skills through curriculum that focuses on walking parents through healing of past trauma is important. 

    One avenue of curriculum material that was explored in this week's reading was attachment-based preventative intervention programs. The article first described what attachment theory was and its implications for creating a successful program, then they explored the relevant measures of intervention and how it is essential to the well-being of children. Before moving onto the research that the authors were specifically recommending, they discussed what preventative intervention programs or experiments had already occurred and what we can learn from them. One of these programs was one that centered around Video-Feedback Intervention to promote Positive Parenting (VIPP). This study was able to unobtrusively video tape mothers interacting with their child, divide these films into short clips, and presents it to the parent. These measures have proven to increase parent sensitivity to their children and enhance parenting skills. Finally, after discussing the programs or studies available, the article details how further research would be beneficial. The authors believed that "in-the-moment" comments had proven to be the most efficient and effective way to help parents. They proposed several additions be made on top of this approach to create further successes. Some of these changes included having parent coaches who would provide the teaching comments to parents to watch training videos first. Also adding on more criteria to the training that parent coaching educators go through can make their certification more worthwhile and help them become better at instructing parents during the sessions where they make interactive comments.

   I was really fascinated with the many different approaches that parent intervention programs address. I think it is very important to walk through the pain or trauma that parents have in their past when preparing them to become healthy parents. So many people did not have parents who worked to better their children or learn how to interact and develop a child. Therefore, they grew up without learning what healthy parenting skills looked like from the model their parents showed them. Because of this, I think prevention programs that deal specifically with correcting child rearing habits that might be harmful is needed. Parents might also appreciate how it helps them address the situations in their lives that prevented them from being able to provide the best caregiving experiences for their children. This way, intergenerational dysfunction or trauma is stopped and redirected to healthy ways of interacting between children and their parents. 

- E.