Today’s parents are constantly pressured to be perfect. But in striving to do everything right, we risk missing what children really need for lifelong emotional security. Now the simple, powerful “Circle of Security” parenting strategies that Kent Hoffman, Glen Cooper, and Bert Powell have taught thousands of families are available in self-help form for the first time.

Readers learn how to protect and nurture babies through teens while fostering their independence and what emotional needs a child may be expressing with difficult behaviour. Vivid stories and unique practical tools offer insight into how our own upbringing affects our parenting style (and what to do about it). Healthy attachment requires self-understanding, flexibility, and the willingness to make and learn from mistakes. This book shows parents they already have what it takes.

Contents:

• Foreword, Daniel J. Siegel
• Introduction
• I. All Around the Circle: Understanding Attachment and the Importance of Security
• 1. Attachment: Why It Matters
• 2. Security: Befriending Imperfection
• 3. A Map for Attachment: The Circle of Security
• 4. Being the Hands on the Circle
• 5. Shark Music: How Our Childhood Echoes in Our Parenting
• 6. Behavior as Communication: Cues and Miscues
• II. Creating and Maintaining the Circle: How to Be Bigger, Stronger, Wiser, and Kind—and Good Enough
• 7. Shark Bones: Exploring Our Core Sensitivities
• 8. Testing New Waters: Choosing Security
• 9. Staying Afloat: Choosing Security Over and Over as Your Child Grows
• Resources

Author Bio:

Kent Hoffman, RelD, has been a psychotherapist since 1972. Certified in psychoanalytic psychotherapy by The Masterson Institute in New York City, he has worked with prison and homeless populations as well as adults seeking psychoanalytic psychotherapy. His primary focus since the 1990s has been working with and designing treatment interventions for street-dependent teens with young children. With Glen Cooper and Bert Powell. Together, they have created and disseminated the Circle of Security, for which each has received the Washington Governor’s Award for Innovation in Child Abuse Prevention and the New York Attachment Consortium’s Bowlby–Ainsworth Award, among other honors. They are co-authors of The Circle of Security Intervention (for mental health professionals)

Glen Cooper, MA, has worked as a psychotherapist with individuals and families in both agency and private practice settings since the 1970s. He has extensive training in family systems, object relations, attachment theory, and infant mental health assessment.

Review:

“If you are looking for a practical, wise, science-based, and accessible guide to creating the kind of attachment your child needs to optimize development, you’ve come to the right place!…What a gift Raising a Secure Child is for us, for our children, and for the world…. A masterpiece.”–from the Foreword by Daniel J. Siegel, MD, co-author of The Whole-Brain Child