Summary of Presentation for the “Best Practices”
workshop
Association of Family and
Conciliation Courts Annual
Conference
presented by Susanna Marshland, LCSW
June 7, 2002,
Waikoloa, Hawaii
Kids’ Turn offers three main programs currently:
divorce workshops for children aged 4-17 and their parents, a 4-week
workshop for stepfamilies, and a program for divorcing/separating parents of
children aged 0-3. This presentation focuses on the latter program, the Early
Years program.
The Early Years program fits into the “Best Practices”
model (presented by Joanne Pedro-Carroll) simply by its existence – it
acknowledges the tremendous vulnerability and need of the youngest children. Our
workshops also reflect “best practices” in that they utilize a
skill-building approach with parents (and with children), and base our programs
on program evaluations and
research.
History of Early Years
The Early Years program was funded by a grant in memory of
Dorothy S. Huntington. The original
author was Dr. Patricia Van Horn from UCSF, guided by a committee which included
Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, Dr. Graeme Hanson, Dr. John Sikorski, Alicia Lieberman,
Dr. Joshua Sparrow, Dr. Barbara Kalmanson, and Jeanne Ames.
To our knowledge, it is the only program of its kind.
It was probably a decade ago that the Kids’ Turn founders
began to raise concern about the impact of divorce on the youngest children.
I’m sure all of you have heard the phrases, “They’re too little,
they don’t know what’s going on, it doesn’t affect them.” Of course,
research tells us otherwise. The
Early Years program very much reflects the research presented in Wednesday’s
Institute on Young Children by Dr. Pruett and Dr. Kline Pruett.
Research indicates that the youngest children are in some ways the most
vulnerable – the quality of infant-parent attachments and brain development
can have life-long impact. Some of
the consequences of parental separation for infants and toddlers include: feeling at fault (especially if parents separate after child
born or after pregnancy discovered), fear of abandonment, disrupted attachment
to one or both parents, altered brain development (especially when violence is
present), regression, clinginess, crying/tantrums, separation difficulties,
disrupted routines, and inconsistent or punitive discipline inconsistent as a
result of a parent’s stress.
Structure of workshop
Each Early Years workshop meets for 6 weeks, for 2 hours
weekly. Mothers and fathers are in
the same group, though separated parents are mostly placed in different
workshops to facilitate learning. Each
workshop has one or two leaders, depending on the size of the group, who are
master’s level educators or mental health professionals with training on the
impact of divorce on young children. Leaders
are also given some training in how to deal with high conflict families,
including those experiencing domestic violence.
Philosophy of the program:
If parents can take the time to focus on their particular child, they
will be empowered to make optimal decisions for that child.
To that end, we take the time necessary to educate them about
temperament, attachment, children’s development, and the response of children
to separations from an attachment figure. It
is an intensive program, befitting the complexity of early childhood
development; we spend almost two hours on each of these topics.
The following vignette gives a sense of how we integrate
the various teaching points into real-life situations for parents to discuss.
Parents are also assigned homework and do in-class exercises which
assists them in applying the knowledge they have gained to their own situation.
· How might Nabila’s temperament pattern affect her parents’ attachment to her? If she had an “easy/flexible” temperament pattern, might the attachment be any different?
· What changes might you recommend in her living arrangements to maintain the attachment with her father?
·
What might her mother do to prepare her for her visit with her
father? What could her father do to respond to her distress about leaving her
mother?
Temperament: Because
temperament is so primary in early childhood, we educate parents about
temperament (refer to overhead of 9 temperamental traits.)
We focus on adaptability and approach-withdrawal (short and long-term
response to new situations) as being key to how a child responds to separations.
They help parents anticipate what their baby or young child’s initial response
to a change in schedule and routine may be, and how long his or her discontent
with that change can be expected to last. For example, a baby who approaches new
situations with ease will be able to enjoy frequent, brief visits with a
non-custodial parent. A baby who withdraws from new situations might do better
if she has fewer changes in custody to tolerate. With this baby, parents might
think about having longer, but less frequent, visits with the non-custodial
parent. In this way, the baby will not be called upon to accommodate to change
so often. To build parents’
skills, we have them complete an exercise in which they identify their child’s
temperamental traits.
Attachment: One of the implications of attachment
research is that separations need to be kept to a minimum.
When babies are younger than 6 months, frequent contact facilitates the
development of an attachment, and after that, frequent contact maintains
attachments. (We acknowledge that unfortunately, researchers don’t know what
the “threshold” is for the amount of time together necessary to form an
attachment. Attachments form
between babies and their full-time working parents, so researchers know that
equal time is not necessary.) Interactions between babies and their parents need to occur
in a broad variety of contexts (feeding, playing, diapering, soothing, putting
to bed, limit-setting, etc.) in order to provide parent and child the
opportunity to connect with one another in a meaningful way; thus, the child
should see both parents at a variety of times.
Children’s Development: Early Years focuses on social/emotional development, which is
under-emphasized in many parenting classes.
In particular, we teach about normal/abnormal responses to parental
separation, and how parents’ loving caregiving can ameliorate negative
responses in the short- and long-term. We
also utilize a NOVA video called “Life’s First Feelings,” stopping
frequently for discussion.
Older Children’s Workshops: One way we focus on children’s developmental needs in our
workshops for parents of older children is to utilize children’s artwork to
illustrate children’s responses to divorce, highlighting the differences in
children’s responses to divorce depending on their age and other factors.
(Show artwork overheads, illustrating children’s response.)
Curriculum Content Challenges
Participants have varying levels of sophistication – from
psychiatrists to recent high school graduates.
Regarding the current controversy over overnights for young children, we
take the position of not recommending any particular arrangement (refer to
Making Decisions about Living Arrangements overhead), but relying on the parents
to decide what is best for their particular child.
In addition to the CSPP program evaluation, another
evaluation of the Kids' Turn workshops is underway by Jan Gilman and Dana
Schneider in Sonoma, CA, and it is possible that the CA Judicial Council will be
funding an additional evaluation of its effectiveness.
We plan to translate the Early Years curriculum into Spanish. The curriculum is available for purchase through Kids' Turn.