Integrative Attachment Family Therapy
The Integrative Attachment Family Therapy (IAFT) Training Course, developed by family therapy expert and attachment specialist Dafna Lender, is a powerful intervention approach that addresses a wide array of issues that make their way to a therapist’s office: difficult behaviors on the part of the child, such as frequent arguments and tantrums, disobedience, and indifference; and reactive behaviors on the part of the parents, such as yelling, pleading, threatening, and giving up or giving in.
Instead of viewing the child as the problem, IAFT addresses the crux of the issue: a misalignment in the parent-child relationship. In this training course, Dafna walks students through the IAFT framework, providing therapeutic insight and concrete strategies to help families achieve meaningful and lasting change.
Whether you’re a clinician, child welfare worker, educator, or professional working with children in any capacity, this must-have resource will allow you to:
- Create a strong alliance with parents―the crucial, and often missing, piece of therapeutic work with children
- Overcome a host of complex, off-putting defenses and dysfunctions that come with working directly with parents
- Uncover the reasons for the emotional misalignment between parent and child
- Guide families in looking at the source of the problem rather than at superficial behaviors
- Enhance children’s attachment security, resiliency, and sense of self
- With this course, you can truly help families transform into happy and well-functioning environments where children can thrive.
Learn through clinical case analysis, role-playing, and practical exercises you can integrate into your practice and use on your own.
This program is offered at the introductory level. It is suitable for graduate-level learning and accessible to anyone interested in the subject.
In preparation for the training, participants are encouraged to purchase and read the book Integrative Attachment Family Therapy: A Clinical Guide to Heal and Strengthen the Parent-Child Relationship through Play, Co-regulation, and Meaning-Making.
Virtual – Join from Home
6 hours of pre-recorded lectures +
6 hours of live practical sessions
Up to 12 CE credits attainable
Live session dates and times
Sign up now and start the 6-hour didactic program on your own beginning August 15, then join Dafna for four weeks of live stream, online, active, and practical sessions.
Live Sessions are from 12:00 – 1:30 p.m. Eastern Time (and are recorded)
Session 1: September 3
Session 2: September 10
Session 3: September 17
Session 4: September 24
Topic breakdown by session
In Module 1 we will: practice exercises for maximizing your social engagement system and participate in experiential exercises for learning about your own internal regulation system.
In this session, you will
- Learn techniques for transmitting trust and safety through body language
- Learn how to overcome your defensive reactions to clients who cause you discomfort by using guided imagery and self-regulation techniques
- See video of real client where parent and child have difficulty due to being mismatched in their nervous systems and how social engagement activities helped them become more attached and regulated
- Map out your own internal regulation system so you can become familiar with your own
- nervous system
- Learn to apply this same map with your clients
In Module 2, we will: learn how interpersonal play between parent and child builds trust, safety and connection. We will practice activities from the 4 Dimensions.
In this session, you will
- Learn about the 4 dimensions of Theraplay
- Learn which type of child behaviors need which of the Theraplay dimension
- Learn activities to use in sessions with your child and parent clients
- Practice activities in dyads
- Learn about the impact of pervasive shame and child misbehavior
- Learn how to repair shame
In Module 3, we will: learn how to help caregiver and child create safe dialogues. We will practice PACE for when a child is angry/defensive and when a child is passive/withdrawn/depressed.
In this session, you will
- Discover the power of the PACE attitude
- Learn to encourage and extend dialogue even if the child doesn’t talk
- Tools for titrating the intensity of interaction between parent and child to maintain optimal arousal
- Practice a position of radical acceptance of the client’s strong feelings
- Learn how to identify toxic shame as a reason for misbehavior
- Learn how to repair the pattern of the toxic shame response
In Module 4, we will: practice responding to defensive parents to help uncover non-conscious fears and facilitate mentalization skills. We will practice role play for parents who make blaming statements.
In this session, you will
- Assess when it is time to parent individual work
- Work with angry and uncooperative parents
- Help parents stay open and engaged
- Learn gentle ways to intervene and redirect a misattuned or critical parent
- Learn how to guide parents in helpful responses within session
Overall Course Learning Objectives
- Describe the principles of Attachment Theory
- List the areas of functioning that are affected by Complex Trauma
- Describe the intervention of PACE
- List 2 playful responses in a PACE dialogue
- List 2 accepting responses in a PACE dialogue
- List 2 empathic responses in a PACE dialogue
- List 2 curious responses in a PACE dialogue
- List 2 interventions for facilitating direct parent-child communication
- List 3 steps in preparing parents for working in an attachment-based model
- Explain the condition of Blocked Care
- List 2 possible reasons for a parent’s persistent defensive statements
- List 2 techniques for regulating a parent’s emotions in a session
- List 2 components of voice prosody
- Describe the social engagement system
Presented by
Dafna Lender
Family therapy expert and attachment specialist Dafna Lender is an international trainer and supervisor for practitioners who work with children and families. She is a certified trainer and supervisor/consultant in both Theraplay and Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP) and an EMDR therapist. Dafna’s expertise is drawn from 25 years of working with families in many settings: at-risk after-school programs, therapeutic foster care, in-home crisis stabilization, residential care and private practice. Dafna’s style, whether as a therapist or teacher, is combining the light-hearted with the profound by bringing a playful, intense and passionate presence to every encounter.
Dafna is the author of Integrative Attachment Family Therapy (2023) and the co-author of Theraplay the Practitioner’s Guide (2020). She teaches and supervises clinicians in 15 countries in 4 languages: English, Hebrew, French and Spanish.