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| About Traditional Treatment |
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The children we see may have been involved in numerous foster care placements or have been institutionalized in an orphanage, or residential treatment facilities. Challenging adjustments to life—most often moving from one living arrangement to another—and the behavioral issues that result, are at the top of the therapeutic "to do" list. For that reason, traditional therapies are usually unable to successfully treat a child with an attachment disorder. They are unable to address the underlying grief, loss, and trauma their young client has experienced.
In addition, traditional therapy with younger children often uses play—toys, puppets, stories, games—to illuminate themes in a troubled child's life and help the child resolve an identified problem. Play therapy is designed for children with the ability to respond to its healing potential. Children with attachment disorders usually cannot find a theme to play out. And since parents are usually not involved in play therapy, the child may use the opportunity to try to disrupt any alliance and trust between the therapist and his parents. |
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| Assessing child and family needs |
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Every person's ability to trust and attach to important others is on a continuum. Healthy attachment is at one end, and insecure, disorganized attachment is at the other. So treatment of attachment disorder is highly variable depending on the needs of each child or teen and his family. Treatment at ATS takes each child or teen and his family as they are, with their own constellation of strengths and challenges.
We base our treatment plan and protocols on extensive family materials and a number of diagnostic tools. The following tools help us identify and understand important information about each child:
- Current behaviors
- Level of functioning
- Current and past school issues
- Medical history
- Current providers, caseworkers, etc.
- Psychotherapy and medications
- Testing results and recommendations such as neurological, psychological, speech, and hearing
- Infancy experiences and biological mother's pregnancy and birth history
- Previous counseling
- Potential abuse
- Change of caretakers
- Parent(s)'s chief complaints
- Our testing and intake documents
We also consider information about the biological parent(s)'s history—if available—and the history of the child's current parents, including their marriage and information about their family of origin history. We conduct thorough interviews (child and parents separately) so everyone's voice is heard. |
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