Dr. Jennifer Karp, C.Psych: Cultivating a Secure Attachment With Your Child & Why it Matters

Thoughts on Record: Podcast of the Ottawa Institute of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

For many parents, cultivating a secure and nurturing attachment with their children is among their highest parenting priorities. However, establishing, maintaining and fostering this attachment can be a challenge when environmental conditions are poor and/or when the parent's resources are negatively impacted by stressors, illness or other demands. OICBT Clinical psychologist, Dr. Jennifer Karp, C.Psych, joins us for an in-depth discussion of how to cultivate a secure attachment with your child and why it matters. In this discussion, we cover:

• how the area of parent-child attachment became an area of interest for Dr. Karp, including the influence of the book "The Power of Showing Up" by Daniel Siegel & Tina Payne Bryson on her parenting perspective
• a brief review of the major findings around attachment derived from the well-known "strange situation" experiment as a well as a brief review & summary of the major attachment styles
• implications for parent-child attachment on outcomes for children in adulthood
• a review of the ways in which the attachment style formed in childhood can play out in adulthood from an interpersonal/psychological lens
• the role of neuroplasticity in forging/modifying attachment
• the role of parent-child attachment in fostering emotion regulation in the child
• a description of Siegal & Hartzell's notion of the "low road" and "high road" (from their book Parenting From the Inside Out) when it comes to parent processing of information when triggered by interactions with their children, with examples and suggestions around how to stay on the "high road"
• how to provide necessary corrective feedback to children while maintaining a secure attachment
• how to form a secure attachment with your children if you did not have a secure attachment as a child with your own parent(s)
• the kinds of attachment injuries that are the most problematic between a parent and a child
• ways to improve child self-regulation and promote independence from an attachment lens
• how can parents provide effective, attachment-informed parenting while stressed, fatigued or overwhelmed

ICYMI: Dr. Karp's previous appearance on Thoughts on Record on Becoming a Resilient Parent: https://www.buzzsprout.com/811163/3777035

Dr. Jennifer Karp is a clinical psychologist who provides treatment for children, adolescents and parents. She offers individual child and adolescent therapy to address a range of difficulties such as anxiety, depression, behaviour problems, ADHD, interpersonal challenges and parent-child relational conflict. She maintains a particular interest in working with clients suffering from anxiety conditions and OCD. Dr. Karp also offers parent consultation and emotion coaching support. In addition to therapy, she provides psycho-educational assessments to children and adolescents in order to evaluate learning disabilities, ADHD and gifted status. In addition to CBT, Dr. Karp has training and experience in other approaches including acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). In addition to providing individual therapy and assessment, Dr. Karp is currently involved in the training and supervision of psychologists in supervised practice.