The Art & Science of Transplanting Children
Sessions: 8
Lecture: 7h 4m
Certificate: 16+ hrs
200 CAD
The impact of disrupting a child's attachments, regardless of the reason and even when in the best interests of the child, can be deep and profound. This course makes sense of what happens and provides a way through to resolving these challenges to ensure that healthy development and well-being is not compromised.
As is the case with all our courses, this course features lectures by Dr. Neufeld, carefully curated support for enriched study, study aides, the opportunity to ask questions of trained faculty or course facilitators, a year's access to the campus to enable study at one's own pace, and a certificate of attendance upon completion. For more information, consult the 'about our courses' page.
COURSE SUMMARY
Transplanting children – whether this occurs as the result of remarriage, removal, adoption, parental loss, or change in custody - constitutes the most difficult challenge in raising children. Like plants, it is all about their attachment roots; unlike plants, it is a great deal more complicated. From his years of experience with transplanted children and the adults involved with them, and his profound knowledge of attachment and human vulnerability, Neufeld makes sense of this most daunting of human challenges: raising children who were born to other parents. Insights as to the dynamics involved sets the stage for helping children re-attach when needed, restoring the context in which to raise them. The objective of this course is to provide a working map for all those who are involved with transplanting or transplanted children.
SUITABILITY/APPLICABILITY
This course is addressed primarily to all the adults involved directly and indirectly in care-giving, parenting and teaching children who have not been born to the parents who are currently responsible for raising them. This includes adopted as well as children in the care of foster parents and step parents. It also includes children in group homes and orphanages. The course is also useful to the relatives and supporting cast of such children and their families.
Dr. Neufeld has a reputation of being able to address all the players involved with such children at the same time; thus providing them with a common understanding and a common vocabulary.
SAMPLE TOPICS
- how attachment is meant to develop and how transplanting can impact this development
- a comprehensive model of attachment that is especially useful in applying to the challenges of step-parenting, foster-parenting, and adoptive-parenting
- how to best support the adaptive process in transplanted children
- how attachment can be preserved even when the child can no longer be with
- the developmental nature of grieving the loss of parent
- why transplanted children may have difficulty re-attaching
- the signs and syndromes associated with disrupted attachments
- why transplanted children are more likely to be aggressive and oppositional
- why conventional discipline is counter-indicated and what to do instead
- resolving 'competing attachments' where the child only accepts one 'mom' or one 'dad'
- why transplanted children need to 'adopt' their new parent and how to best support this process
COURSE OUTLINE
The course is structured into 8 sessions with each session including approximately one hour of instructional video from Dr. Neufeld.
- Session 1 - Becoming attached
Neufeld’s six-stage model of attachment is introduced as are the conditions required to fully develop the capacity for relationship. The construct of attachment depersonalization is introduced. An attachment problem checklist is presented for participants to use. - Session 2 - Why children need to attach
The two main functions of attachment are introduced and expanded upon: firstly to render the child receptive to being taken care of, and secondly to foster growth and maturation. The failure to re-attach renders a child resistant to care and oppositional in behaviour. - Session 3: - Fostering attachment
Six ways of fostering healthy working attachments are presented and discussed. - Session 4 - The impact of separation
The separation complex consists of six major problems all rooted in unbearable separation. A problem checklist is introduced to help identify and diagnose the separation complex. Also discussed are strategies for reducing the separation that transplanted children face. - Session 5 - Impediments to re-attachment: protective shyness
Transplanted children often experience great difficulty re-attaching to 'new' parents. One of the most significant problems is the existence of competing attachments that the brain deems critical for survival. Three guiding principles for resolving and neutralizing these competing attachments are presented. - Session 6 - Impediments to re-attachment: defensive detachment
A second major impediment to re-attaching is the reversal of attachment instincts caused either by hypersensitivity or by facing separation which is too much to bear. This defensive reaction also underlies a number of diagnosis common to transplanted children. Strategies are provided for defusing this challenging dynamic. - Session 7 - Keeping children safe and helping children adapt
Strategies are presented for reducing the wounding that transplanted children often face by the nature of both their attachment history, and their current attachment constellations. Also presented are ways of dealing with aggression and of priming much needed adaptation. - Session 8 - Disciplining Transplanted Children
Transplanted children are often more difficult to discipline as a result of the typical dysfunction that results in the wake of a separation complex. Methods of discipline that are effective, attachment-safe, and developmentally sound, are presented.
Inquiries
If you have questions or require additional information that you cannot find on our website or FAQ page, you may contact our office on our Inquiries page.
Charity & Non-Profit Status
The Neufeld Institute is a registered Canadian charitable organization under the name Neufeld Institute Foundation and is also registered as a NPO in British Columbia. If you would like to make a contribution to us, please go to our donation page.
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