The biggest challenge to parents, Hughes and Baylin explain, is learning how to regulate emotions that arise--feeling them deeply and honestly while staying grounded and aware enough to preserve the parent-child relationship. Stress, which can lead to "blocked" or dysfunctional care, can impede our brain's inherent caregiving processes and negatively impact our ability to do this. While the parent-child relationship can generate deep empathy and the intense motivation to care for our children, it can also trigger self-defensive feelings rooted in our early attachment relationships, and give...

A revolution is under way in how we understand the nature of relationships, how we develop in those relationships, and how our brains function synergistically in connection with others. This field is known as attachment theory, and until now most of the cutting-edge insights have been written in "researcher-speak" and reserved for neurologists, psychologists, and others in the healing professions.

Here veteran therapist and specialist in attachment disorders Daniel A. Hughes demystifies the research for lay people. By summarizing in short, easy-to-read "keys" the theory and brain science...

This book shows how to work successfully with emotional and behavioral problems rooted in deficient early attachments. In particular, it addresses the emotional difficulties of many of the foster and adopted children living in our country who are unable to form secure attachments. Traditional interventions, which do not teach parents how to successfully engage the child, frequently do not provide the means by which the seriously damaged child can form the secure attachment that underlies behavioral change. Dr. Daniel Hughes maps out a treatment plan designed to help the child begin to...