Welcome back for the next journey of The Family Express Podcast with Kathryn de Bruin, LMFT and Ronda Evans, LMFT where our destination is resilient and connected families. Today is our second installment in the Attachment in Action Series: Toddler Stage. All Aboard !

3:30. Clear and direct and sequential language because the toddler takes in information and starts to draw conclusions.

5:50. Kathryn provides two side by side examples of an interaction between her and her toddler son: one example in which there is a rupture of conflicting needs/desires, and another example in which there is a goal-directed partnership interaction.

10:30. Toddlers can learn very early about rupture and repair.

11:00. Parents/Caregivers now have two roles of nurturer and protector, and balance the needs of the toddler for exploration with parents need for setting guidelines/rule sets. Parents need to provide/foster a safe enough environment. 

13:30. Another conflicting need is when two caregivers disagree on navigating the needs for nurturing exploration and tending to safety.

14:00. If the two parents have significant differences in their parenting “style” and their own comfort level of balancing developmental needs of exploration and safety, then we can see distress emerge in individuals or in the family.

17:55. When toddlers are under distress, we may see them “adapt” and adopt certain strategies. #1. Toddler Caregiving strategy of parent; perhaps keeping a smile on their face. #2 Toddler Compliant strategy; milder form is Performative strategy; both are about please parent, and fear of punishment, and be good and make parent happy. #3 Toddler Emotional Dysregulation Angry/Helpless; the cue is the parents responsiveness is unclear, inconsistent, ambiguous; so the toddler can’t figure out the contingency; motivated to keep parents attention to maintain the attachment; 

25:50. Contingencies within a household can be slightly different between parents and the toddler can still figure out the contingency and so the toddler experiences their parent-child contingency as consistent and predictable.

27:40. In these strategies the goal of the toddler becomes to keep the parent/attachment person with them, and the toddler lets go of the goal of personal development.

28:00. In an ideal world, how we respond to emotion and distress and the dance of dyadic attachment is in the background, and more importance and priority is put on the development of the toddler/child.

29:00. Treatment considerations in EFFT: think and assess systemically; how does the child’s behavior and affective demonstrations speak to these strategies in dyadic attachment.

33:40. Balancing early childhood intervention in the toddler versus systemic, attachment-based framework/lens and treatment considerations.

35:00. Metaphor of family therapist being the general practitioner with holistic assessment of the whole system, and then refer to specialist for specific, or individual needs.

Thank you for listening! 

Kathryn de Bruin is an ICEEFT Certified EFT Trainer. Kathryn and Ronda are both licensed marriage and family therapists, EFT supervisors and therapists, and AAMFT Approved Supervisors.

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