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Therapy

Parent-child Relationships




Preventive and therapeutic interventions in infancy and early childhood are often directed at the parents' sensitivity. Sensitivity refers to parents' ability to perceive their children's signals and needs accurately and to respond to these signals promptly and adequately (Ainsworth et al. 1978). Enhanced parental sensitivity stimulates the children's socioemotional development, in particular their attachment security. The theory of attachment was developed by John Bowlby (1982, 1988) to explain the nature of a child's emotional tie to his or her parent, and the attachment relationship with the parent is one of the child's first and most important developmental milestones. Children who are securely attached to their parent seek support from their parent in times of stress and distress, and are able to explore the world and mature in a healthy way. If the attachment relationship is insecure, children do not have a sense of a secure base, and the development of normal behaviors such as exploration, play, and social interactions is impaired. Attachment experiences become internalized as a working model of attachment. Long-term research suggests that children who, as infants, were securely attached have more optimal social and emotional functioning. Therefore, preventive and therapeutic interventions often aim at enhancing parental sensitivity and children's attachment security. Although most of these interventions take place in industrialized Western countries, they are based on fundamental research conducted in various parts of the world, which supports the cross-cultural validity of the basic assumptions (van IJzendoorn and Sagi 1999). It should be noted that several intervention studies have been implemented with cultural minority samples.




Additional topics

Marriage and Family EncyclopediaRelationshipsTherapy - Couple Relationships, Family Relationships, Parent-child Relationships