Building the Bonds of Attachment. Awakening Love in Deeply Troubled Children

Customer Reviews

Heartwrenching and powerful

2008-07-07
Excellent book! A must-read for anyone who works with children. It includes information that I believe anyone around children can utilize. Great information on how to deal with children who have been traumatized but it also has important information about parenting in general and helps us understand how children see the world.

Changed our life!

2008-06-20
We adopted a son with RAD and worked with an attachment therapist. Adopting the methods in this book made an enormous difference in our lives! Don't hesitate if you are considering this book!

eye-opening

2008-06-02
I teach At-Risk 4 year olds and in reading this book I was struck once again with the fact that our words have such power with children....with everyone! This book documents a journey of positive, healing language and loving hope between a foster mom and her daughter. It reinforced to me that the best I can do with the limited time I have with my students is to be consistent with "the attitude," always separating the negative behavior I want to correct from how much I value the child. Excellent resource! I will read it again and again and pass it on to my colleagues!

review

2008-03-11
This is a readable and usable book for those who work with children. RAD is under recognized in the mental health field. More focus on RAD needs to occur in the adoption and foster care systems.

A Must Read for all who work with foster/adopted children

2008-03-09
This book is like a step-by-step instruction manual for helping foster/adopted children with Reactive Attachment Disorder. It is told in the form of a fictional story in order to draw from many different real-life cases. It tells the moving story of a RAD child from birth to age 8. You learn how this disorder happens, how it is often misdiagnosed and mistreated. Then, best of all, you learn all the right things to do to help the child find the healing that it is needed in order to have a happy, healthy life. It is thoroughly engrossing from the first page to the last. You are quickly invested in discovering more about this little girl, and her journey of healing. It has helped me to finally understand the puzzling, and extremely frustrating behavior of my own adopted RAD child. Once I understood the motivation behind his outrageous behavior, and learned the techniques necessary to help him find the healing, I began to see improvement right away. We have also found a therapist who has experience wortking with RAD children, which has made a big difference.

Everyone who works in Children's Services, every child psychologist, every foster parent, and potential adoptive parent should be required to read this book. It completely changed the way I viewed my son's behavior, and, therefore, helped me learn more effective ways to deal with his behavior. Until you understand the RAD child, your typical, conventional ways of dealing with oppositional, defiant, deeply troubled children will most likely remain ineffective, and you will become frustrated and overwhelmed.

Building The Bonds of Attachment

2008-03-07
Building the Bonds of Attachment is the second edition of a critically and professionally acclaimed book for social workers, therapists, and parents who strive to assist poorly attached children. This work is a composite case study of the developmental course of one child following years of abuse and neglect. This work focuses on both the specialized psychotherapy and parenting that is often necessary in facilitating a child's psychological development and attachment security. It blends attachment theory and research, and trauma theory with general principles of both parenting and child and family therapy in developing a model for intervention. This work is a practical guide for the adult--whether professional or parent--who endeavor to help such children.

Excellent book!

2008-02-23
It is a MUST read book for those people who deal with adoption, who treat children with RAD. Wonderful book!!!!

Building the Bonds of Attachment

2008-01-08
This book was hard to put down. It is written in a style that makes it easier to read and should be a must read for all expectant parents, because undoing the damage caused by poor parenting is such a difficult and too often impossible task.

The Single Most Helpful Book I Have Read

2007-09-07
My husband and I adopted a 7 year old girl two years ago. Like so many well-meaning but naive new parents, we had only a vague idea of what life with a traumatized child would be like. We assumed that love, stability, structure and consistency would heal her. We were wrong. For over a year, we struggled with such ugly, mean, rejecting behaviors that I became significantly depressed... until I read Dan Hughes' book. That was the beginning of a new stage in our lives, as no one and nothing has helped us like it has. Our therapists hold Mr. Hughes in the highest regard - he is enormously respected and admired because his compassionate, beautiful ideas WORK. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Building the Bonds of Attachment: Awakening Love in Deeply Troubled Children

2007-09-03
This book is excellent for those who are wanting to understand and effectively parent those children who have suffered trauma and/or have attachment deficit no matter how small or great! A must read for foster and pre/post adoption parents.
A good companion book would be Beyond Consequences, Logic and Control which will deepen the understanding and give parents direction on how to help facilitate family relationships.