Facilitating Healthy Caregiver and Youth Attachment

Secure attachment to a primary caregiver in the early years builds a foundation for self-regulation, healthy peer and adult relationships and academic success. This workshop describes how attachment forms, identifies the four types of attachment between child and caregiver, provides specific attachment-focused parenting approaches to use throughout childhood and adolescence, and explains the role that attachment plays in developing coping skills, learning capacity and future relationships with peers and intimate partners.

Participants will be able to:

• Describe how the process of attachment to a primary caregiver occurs through the dance of attunement.

• Identify secure, ambivalent, avoidant and disorganized attachment types and the impact of each type on peer and adult relationships.

• Offer specific attachment-focused caregiving approaches to birth, foster, kinship and adoptive parents that are targeted for all stages of child development, including infancy, early childhood, school age and adolescence.

• Utilize a range of resources that support secure attachment between caregivers and youth.