ABSTRACT
Chronically traumatized children have difficulties in attachment. Many of these children have traumatized parents and their families suffer from intergenerational abuse. Parents can break this cycle of intergenerational abuse by helping their child heal. Interventions to improve attachment are kept to a minimum in the stabilization phase since they are more effective after the traumatic memories have been processed. When attachment is identified as a barrier, the child is either afraid to upset the parent or the child rather dissociates than using the support of adults to regulate his stress. Interventions can improve the parent’s self-regulation to keep a calm brain or focus on managing the child’s symptoms with trauma-sensitive care. This contributes to the child’s safety, however processing the child’s memories relieves the child’s symptoms rather than managing them. Rather than trying to change the parent’s behaviour, the parent can make a plan to become a good enough parent by compensating for what the parent cannot do or creating an extended parenting environment, and present this plan to the child. Life-story work, baby games, mirroring, can activate the child’s attachment system to keep him connected to the adult and prevent dissociation during trauma processing.
