Attachment-Focused Parenting: Effective Strategies to Care for Children (Norton Professional Books (Hardcover)) Hardcover – March 16, 2009

This is a wonderful approach to parent/child relationships in general. EVEN MORE SO if you have a child that has suffered trauma, has attachment disorder, or is a foster/adopted child. It requires you to absolutely let go of any "traditional" parenting patterns you may be holding fast to. There is neuroscience evidencing critical brain development occurs from conception to 3 years old. Lacking a stable, loving, nurturing environment, the brain fails to develop the connections and patterns necessary for trust, empathy, self-worth, and so much more. I can't summarize everything I've studied for 3 years in a couple of sentences, but I have lived it with my adopted son. There are many children that fall into this challenging group. All the kids being raised by grandparents or Aunts & Uncles b/c the bio-parents are in jail / addicts / dead - most will have attachment challenges. This population of kids is so much larger than I could have once imagined, and our society is NOT equipped to understand or deal with them. READ THIS BOOK and share it with your schools. We have to start somewhere in becoming a trauma/attachment informed culture so we can work with these kids. Leaving them in the abyss is a forecast for a frightening future.

We fostered and then adopted a 7-year-old who suffered severe abuse and neglect in early childhood. She presented several vexing aftereffects, and despite our best efforts, we never found an effective therapist. She spoke of suicide as early as 8 years old.I read many books on parenting during the past few years. We took classes. I read blogs, watched youtube videos, you name it, even government pamphlets. Nothing offered practical solutions anywhere near as good as this book.I started using the techniques before I finished the second chapter and they worked like magic. I taught the techniques to my wife who also uses them successfully. It's different from what either of us experienced as children, but it's easy to practice, and it feels much better and more natural than how our parents raised us.Our daughter is now 12 and thriving. She has friends, tells the truth, wins academic awards, regularly contributes to the household, her self-esteem has soared, and most importantly, she no longer reacts to negative moods with self-harm or lashing out toward others.I cannot recommend this book highly enough, especially if you have a difficult parenting job and you find your current toolkit lacking. My one quibble is the writing style. As an academic I'm comfortable with dense prose, but many people are not. Author's message could reach more people with a simpler, more conversational approach.

A little difficult, dry reading in the first chapter. But worth plowing through it as it introduces the rest of the topics/chapters. Very good after that, helped my husband and I understand and work better with our grandchildren. The had very rough childhoods for first 5 - 9 yrs of their lives dueto their parents. Due to a death and change in guardianship,for the last two years we can be fully involved as grandparents. It has been somewhat overwhelming but with help from counselors and books, they are slowly progressing to happy kids. This book is extremely helpful.Highly recommend for parents grandparents, anyone who wants to work with children.

This is the first guide for parents I have read from Dan Hughes. I love it. Although I have read about three of his clinician focused books, this one seemed to lead to the greatest click of his methods. Because it deals with everyday parenting and not just children with severe attachment experience.It makes me feel that I can have children, as the excellent transcripts of different ages, from very young to teenage, give you a sense of how to interact during those difficult moments where most parents either don't know how to respond or force behavioral compliance at the expense of a child's/teen's inner world, and thus mucking it all up and wondering why one's kid is this way.And it's not at all about being too nice and nurturing and giving in. It's about giving a flying F that one's child/teen has an inner world of feelings, hopes, dreams, and personal meanings.I wish my parents had the slightest inkling of these ways of interacting. I may not have struggled with an anxious attachment style for my life.

Good book for research based info!

This book was recommended by a friend & whilst I am often suspicious about theoretical ideas on good parenting; I found this one actually works in practice! I'm only half way through but am already using ideas from it with my own children. Although the title suggests the book is aimed solely at parents, it would also work for extended family members & some of the theory could also be applied by those who care for children such as care homes, childminders, teachers, etc as the book gives tips on effective communication; for eg, when an adult is trying to get an insight into how a child is feeling using techniques that are sympathetic to the young person's needs.

The expertise of Dr Daniel Hughes is demonstrated in this book in vignettes that highligh the refinement of his interventions.

I am a fan of Dan Hughes and his approach to working with children and young people, so I was eager to read this book. I found it to be excellent, and would recommend it to anyone working with children or parenting children, particularly helpful for working with children who haven't had the best start in life/have lived through difficult situations at home/fostered/adopted.

I work as clinical social worker with foster parents. Although the example conversations are a little 'American' they are really helpful for encouraging empathetic responses - a 'how to' guide to an attachment-focus approach. The book has a nice pace, is broad but focuses on topics succinctly. I highly recommend to parents (of all kinds) and social workers.