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This article is written by NCAP's COO, Allison Davis Maxon, LMFT and was featured in the North American Council on Adoptable Children's Winter 2017 Adoptalk newsletter:
Allison is a clinician, educator, and advocate specializing in adoption/permanency, attachment, and trauma. She is passionate about creating systems of care that are permanency-competent and strength-based. She has expertise in the fields of child welfare and mental health and is currently the chief operating officer of the National Center on Adoption and Permanency. Allison is co-author and master trainer of ACT: An Adoption and Permanency Curriculum for Child Welfare and Mental Health Professionals, co-author and master trainer of Pathways to Permanence: Parenting the Child of Loss and Trauma, and creator of The Ten Things Your Child Needs every day, a DVD with tools that help parents/caregivers strengthen their attachment relationship with their child. You can reach Allison at amaxon@ncap-us.org or 949- 939-9016.
Article Excerpt
We all enter the world ready to attach because this is how we get our most basic and primary needs met. The human infant, like other high functioning mammals, is completely dependent on their primary caregivers to get all of their needs met—survival, safety, food, shelter, stimulation, comfort. For us to understand where some of our children’s most challenging behaviors come from, we must first realize just how much neglect and trauma affect every aspect of a child’s development. We are social-emotional beings with an innate need to connect and form meaningful attachment relationships. Every inter-personal skill required for us to be successful in creating and sustaining these relationships must be learned.