Games and Activities for Attaching With Your Child

by Deborah D. Gray, Megan Clarke

Overview

Packed full of great ideas for fun games and activities, this book encourages positive attachments between a parent or carer and their child.

When it comes to choosing the best games to play with children who have difficulties attaching, it is often hard to know how to play with a purpose. This book contains fun, age-appropriate games along with an explanation of why they matter. All the games included are designed for specific age ranges, from infants to older children, and help to address particular needs in children that are known to affect attachment, including fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. It provides an easy-to-understand description of attachment and reveals the crucial role that play has in forming attachments.

Written for parents and carers, as well as for use by professionals, it is full of strategies to help build healthy attachments in children who have experienced early trauma.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781784501525
Publisher:	Kingsley, Jessica Publishers
Publication date:	07/21/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	168
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Deborah Gray, MSW, MPA specialises in the attachment, grief, and trauma issues of children in her practice, Nurturing Attachments. A clinical social worker, she has worked for over 25 years in foster and adopted children's therapies and placement. She is core faculty for the award-winning Post-Graduate Certificate program in Foster and Adoption Therapy at Portland State University and main faculty in the ATTACh-recognized Post-Graduate Attachment Therapy Certificate Program through Cascadia Training. She is the author of Attaching Through Love, Hugs and Play: Simple Strategies to Help Build Connections with Your Child, Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents and Nurturing Adoptions: Creating Resilience after Neglect and Trauma, also published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Visit her website at www.deborahdgray.com.

Megan Clarke is a licensed marriage and family therapist in private practice with a focus on attachment, trauma, adoption and domestic violence. She is a graduate of the post-graduate programs Attachment/Trauma Certificate Program (Cascadia Training) and Adoption and Foster Care Therapy Certificate Program (Portland State University).

Deborah D. Gray is a clinical social worker specialising in attachment, grief and trauma. She is a leading figure in her field, and a sought-after presenter and trainer. She runs a private practice, Nurturing Attachments, in Kirkland, Washington, USA and has spent over 15,000 hours in the last 15 years counselling children who were adopted. Her private practice philosophy is one of empowering parents with information and techniques they can use to meet the needs of their children and develop close, satisfying relationships. She teaches in the Cascadia Resources/Northwest Adoption Resource and Portland State post-Graduate Programs in Adoption Counselling and the University of Washington's Post-Graduate Trauma Certificate program. In her personal life, Deborah D. Gray feels linked to adoption through the family in which she grew up and has also been a therapeutic foster. In 2015 Deborah was awarded with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the international ATTACh conference for her contribution to the field of attachment. To find out more about Deborah, visit her website at www.deborahdgray.com.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 13

Introduction 15

1 Bonds, Attachments, and Play Deborah Gray 17

Attachment defined 17

Security in attachment 19

Pleasure, pressures, play, and attachments 21

Secure attachments-strong, kind, playful parents and confident kids 23

Creating patterns of security after rocky early years 24

Wired through our attachments 25

Attachment and understanding how people think (theory of mind) 26

Emotional "skills" and attachment 27

2 The Value of Play Megan Clarke 29

Play defined 30

Play and your child's development 30

The importance of play for parents 32

Let's be playful 33

Connecting Through Games

3 Connecting the Two of You 37

Infants and Toddlers 37

Age 3 and Up 55

Age 5 and Up 65

4 Connecting the Whole Family 75

Infants and Toddlers 75

Age 3 and Up 89

5 Connecting Siblings 107

Age 3 and up 107

6 Activities to Help with Mood and Flexibility 115

All ages 115

7 Building Attachment when Children Have Had Exposure to Toxins Jill Dziko 121

Age 5 and up 125

Infants, toddlers and school age 135

Addendum: Notes For Professionals 141

Jill Dziko 141

Julie Fisher 143

Laura Stone 145

Biographies 149

Resource List 151

Editorial Reviews

Games and Activities for Attaching With Your Child is a critical tool for anyone who is looking to nurture attachment with an adopted, biological or foster child. Deborah D. Gray, an expert in the field of attachment and adoption, along with her co-workers, have written an easily understandable and accessible book about games that can help children attach even in the most difficult of circumstances. They clearly lay out the importance of play for children and how it supports brain development, good social skills and the ability to connect with loved ones in order to aid in healthy connections. Step-by-step, from infancy to teens, they lay out activities for families to play in a fun, engaging and meaningful manner. What I like best is that it tells you how to use these activities for children all across the spectrum, from "normal" children to those who are detached and afraid to connect and have been hurt by trauma. As a social worker I have used some of these games and activities with my own clients to excellent effect but best of all, have shown parents how to play with their children where it counts the most which is with each other at home. As a foster mom I can say that these games work and have enhanced my relationships with my children.

Karen Oil

...really interesting, to the point, succinct... includes games for bonding with your child; between an adult/parent, games for the whole family, games for siblings... would be really beneficial for... a support group, foster carers doing foster parent training or skills to foster, prospective adopters... or a social work team. 7 out of 10.

Al Coates

When children are exposed to poor care very early in life, they have to suppress two very important processes that normally help children to feel safe with and enjoy their relationships with caregivers: separation distress which engenders the need for comfort and playfulness which leads to joyful connection. In this book, the authors focus on the playfulness side of parent-child connections, offering a wealth of practical, hands-on ways for caregivers to engage children in playful interactions. Parents and therapists who work with children exposed to poor care early in life will find this book extremely helpful.

Jonathan Baylin

In a culture which is heavily focused on how to teach our children, or how to discipline them, the importance of play and joy in connection can get lost. All children, and especially children who have difficult early parenting experience, need connection and to discover the joy in relationship. Within this book Deborah Gray and her colleagues have delightfully put play at the centre of family life. There are lots of ideas for games tailored to age and with specific difficulties in mind. More importantly perhaps these ideas can act as a springboard for families to invent their own unique way of bringing fun into their lives.

Kim S. Golding

Finally a book to engage children in building attachments with their parents through playing games. This book is practical and offers fun activities to encourage closer relationships between parents and children.

Dr. Sue Cornbluth