What are you reading to keep up with the infant & early childhood mental health field? These are some of the items that the Peninsulas group have shared at recent meetings.
Interested in this stuff? Join us. -gw
Thursday, September 20, 2012
On Topics of Interest: The stuff we talk about at our meetings
What are you reading to keep up with the infant & early childhood mental health field? These are some of the items that the Peninsulas group have shared at recent meetings.
Interested in this stuff? Join us. -gw
On Monthly Updates from TACSEI & CSEFEL: A click away
Current issue: http://eepurl.com/ouIK9
Get monthly updates from TACSEI and CSEFEL. You can sign up for the Pyramid Model Update here. -gw
On Time Out, Camping Out & Controlled Comforting: Working with older children
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Tony emailed me with follow-up about about the sleep techniques post. In the psychiatric residential setting where he worked, both "camping out" and "controlled comforting" were effective in helping older children to get to sleep. He also addressed the question of, do you talk to a child, when he is in time-out? -gw
It may be of interest that the techniques described for infants ended up being the same ones we used in residential treatment for kids who had never had secure attachments. It worked.
Yes both methods could be effective but they had to be "discovered" for each client. I am not sure that there was a set criteria but I do know that there were general categories of difficulties that led to one or the other.
There was an issue with "time out" with insecurely attached children [at the residential facility] .... The general rule was that children were not talked to when they were in time out. However, it also became clear, over time, that some children were simply too disorganized to be in the room by themselves. With these children staff would go into the room to organize them. The effectiveness of this had to do with the experience of the staff. We had a few staff who were so grounded that when they got close to a child the child just got quieter -- if they had to hold the child it would turn out to be quite brief (as opposed to what would happen with staff who were not that grounded).
In general I had the rule "talk is cheap," and it doesn't buy much when it comes to engaging children. When talk is an extension of a "calm and assertive" presence it usually doesn't have to "say" much - the body, the presence, does the talking.
Monday, September 10, 2012
On Behavioral Sleep Techniques to Help Infants Sleep Better: The news gets out
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Below is a link to a fascinating article that came out online five days ago. Maybe you are reading about this news for the first time here. The reality is that there are already 463 sites that are touting this information -- in just 5 days -- my Google search informs me. That is the power of the Internet. Science can inform parenting practices. There is tremendous curiosity about how to be effective with children. Infant mental health need not be considered an esoteric subject. Its truths are of interest to the general public. -gw
A new study by researchers from Murdoch Childrens Research Institute claims that "controlled comforting" and "camping out" (behavioral sleep technique) not only helps infants sleep better, it also reduces depression levels in mothers.Researchers, who conducted the first ever study of its kind to have looked into the long term effects of these sleep techniques, say they are safe to be used in the long-term.
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