Child and Family Therapy

Child Therapy

To be effective, Child Therapy (also referred to as Individual Therapy or Cognitive-Behavioral Play Therapy) must be tailored to the child's age, developmental level, and the nature of the problem. For a younger child, therapy often focuses on behavior change and parental involvement is a critical component to assisting a child in developing more adaptive ways of coping. Effective child therapy results in new, more socially constructive ways to express needs and learning adaptive behaviors to cope with stressful or frustrating situations. Critical skills to be developed often include impulse control, self-regulation, social intelligence, and judgment.

With young children, effective therapy often does not focus on the discussion of problems. Problems are worked on in the context of play. To the skilled therapist, play is a powerful form of communication about the child’s ways of experiencing her world and expressing the difficulties he is experiencing. Play is also a form of healing. When a child "plays out" fears and difficult experiences in a context in which he is understood and coping skills are learned, the child is able to move on.

Individual psychotherapy with adolescents is similar to the therapy that adults engage in. Although they may be somewhat self-conscious at first, teens who are referred to therapy because of a problem in living often come to value therapy as an opportunity for growth and maturation. It is a place where they can focus on themselves, on their problems with family or peers, and on their fears as well as hopes and dreams. Psychotherapy aims to help integrate their powerful emotional world with the emerging reality of adulthood.

"Dan is the most gifted, insightful and innovative of therapists.  He’s helped our son discover fundamental, healing truths about his life and his place in the world."

Family Therapy

Family therapy brings family members together to solve issues that are hurtful and distressing to each member, even though the problem behaviors may be decidedly displayed by a single member of the family. My approach to this work is rooted in the belief that families are the single most powerful resource available to effect change, growth and healing. In traditional forms of psychotherapy, each individual works separately to solve his or her problems. In family therapy, family members work together to solve problems. The primary goal of family therapy is to identify, harness and strengthen the family's resource. Family therapy has proven to be of great benefit to people at times of major life stress.

One's family can be the greatest source of support, safety, and love. But a family in crisis or facing a difficult transition can also experience great pain and grief.

A fundamental goal of my professional life is continuing to evolve the ability to successfully help families solve what can seem to be insolvable difficulties. I strive to integrate experience, empirically validated clinical methods, humor, and the commitment to the wonderfully therapeutic power of families in my work.

My approach to therapy is goal–oriented and is aimed at creating solutions to problems in the shortest amount of time necessary.
I strive to assist people in generating solutions that emphasize strengths rather than pathology.

I believe that interventions that incorporate personal resources and activate one's social supports are often most crucial to successfully resolving life's difficulties and achieving real growth.

"From the beginning, Dr. Griffin focused on what is, not what's wrong. He joyfully pointed out strengths, keeping us as parents in the present moment, working on what's real, giving us hard but effective ways of being and doing that have made the biggest difference in our family life and our child's success in the larger community."

 

Attachment Disorder

The term "Attachment” often refers to the intimate bond formed between an infant or very young child and the primary caregiver. But Attachment also refers to the close affectional bonds that remain with us throughout life. A primary motivation in all of us is the need to seek and maintain contact with others. Since our well-being and survival depends on securing the protection of significant others (attachment figures), that relationship is our central concern throughout childhood, and its unresolved insecurities linger into adolescence and adult life, including marriage.

Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) is a condition which is considered an otherwise typically developing child is unable to form healthy social relationships, particularly a strong bond with a primary caregiver. The absence of this bond can result in ongoing or intermittent feelings of rage, deep shame, a lack of trust and a seeming inability to understand cause and effect, and an urgent need to control everyone and everything. Oddly, children with RAD may seem typical and even charming and helpless to outsiders, while waging a campaign of terror within the family. RAD is frequently seen in children who have had inconsistent or negligent care in early childhood, including children adopted from orphanages or foster care. It is important to note that the majority of adopted children do not have Reactive Attachment Disorder. It tends to be more common in children who have had stressful early life experiences, such as having been in an institution or other environment in which the caregivers did not provide emotional and sensory stimulation (e.g., physical holding, talking and interaction with adults, consistent meeting of physical and emotional needs).

As a psychologist and the parent of two children who were adopted internationally, I have developed a keen appreciation for the critical importance of attachment in fostering the emotional well being of everyone in an adoptive family. My work with many families over the years has compelled me to seek the most effective interventions available for this painfully critical situation, leading to my choice of a family based model of therapy that is most suited to the complicated needs of such children.

Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, an attachment-based therapy is an evidence-based treatment for children with Trauma-Attachment Disorders, Reactive Attachment Disorder, and other disorders of attachment that are complicated by severe trauma or histories of maltreatment. Children who have experienced trauma, neglect, loss, and/or other dysregulating experiences can benefit from this treatment.

What Doesn’t Work with Children with Attachment Disorders

• Forms of treatment such as individual and play therapy are ineffective with children who have disorders of attachment because all these therapies require a trusting relationship between the therapist and child, and the ability to form such a relationship has not been accomplished.
• Conventional Behavior Management Plans/Level Systems. Such plans are based on consistency, and this consistency makes these plans an easy target for the strategic thinking of an attachment affected child. These children will see a behavior management plan, not as a way to change behavior, but as simply one more thing to learn “how to work” for their own purposes.
• Challenging the child’s perspective with “objective evidence” in order to persuade them that their thinking is somehow incorrect. This approach assumes that parent and child share a common view of “reality”, which is not true. The adult's "objective view does not resonate with the attachment disordered child's sense of reality”. In fact, the child is apt to see this approach as a manipulative attempt on the parent's part to set the child up in some way.
• Taking such children’s behavior or statements personally. This usually takes some practice, as these children are often skilled at discovering adults’ tender spots and going after them.
• Reacting emotionally to attachment affected children’s behavior. This can reinforce the child’s sense of being in control of the adult’s emotions (a goal they generally pursue). Judging or criticizing the behavior and reactive consequences all fall into this category.