Enhancing Attachment and Reflective Parenting in Clinical Practice: A Minding the Baby Approach

How can clinicians help vulnerable young families overcome barriers to secure, reciprocal, and joyful parent–infant relationships? This book provides a flexible framework for promoting reflective parenting "from the ground up." Described are effective ways to support safety and self-regulation in parents with histories of trauma and adversity, giving them a stronger foundation for seeing, hearing, and connecting to their children. The book distills principles of the influential Minding the Baby (MTB) home visiting program, as well as contemporary attachment and mentalization research. Vivid case material illustrates therapeutic strategies that can be used with parents and children in any clinical context. End-of-chapter "Questions for Clinicians" help readers apply the concepts discussed, with special attention to developing their own reflective capacities.

Arietta Slade, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and Professor of Clinical Child Psychology at the Yale Child Study Center. She is Co-Founder and Co-Director of Minding the Baby™ (MTB), an evidence-based, interdisciplinary, reflective home visiting program for high-risk mothers, infants, and their families at the Yale Child Study Center and Yale School of Nursing. She came to MTB, where she oversaw model development, training, and consultation, with a background as a theoretician, clinician, teacher, and researcher. Dr. Slade has written widely on reflective parenting, relationship-based infant mental health practice, and the implications of attachment and mentalization theory for child and parent psychotherapy. She is coauthor of Attachment in Therapeutic Practice and coeditor of the six-volume set Attachment Theory (both with Jeremy Holmes). Dr. Slade is a recipient of the Bowlby–Ainsworth Award from the New York Attachment Consortium.

Lois S. Sadler, PhD, RN, FAAN, is a pediatric nurse practitioner and Professor at the Yale School of Nursing and Yale Child Study Center. She is Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Minding the Baby™ (MTB) home visiting program and has led MTB clinical trials and program implementation nationally and internationally. She came to MTB having taught at the graduate level for many years, and with extensive clinical and research experience working with teen parents and young families in diverse community settings. Dr. Sadler has published widely in the areas of the transition to parenthood among adolescent parents and their families, adolescent pregnancy prevention, evaluation of specialized support programs for young parents and their children, and pediatric sleep. She has won numerous awards for her teaching and research and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing.

Tanika Eaves, PhD, LCSW, IMH-E®, is a clinical social worker, Assistant Professor of Social Work at the Egan School of Nursing and Health Studies at Fairfield University, and an endorsed Infant Mental Health Specialist. Dr. Eaves joined the Minding the Baby™ team in 2009, where she worked with sites in the United States and Western Europe as both a clinician and training specialist. She helped develop an introductory training course on clinical approaches to enhancing reflective parenting that drew participants from around the world. She has published in the areas of reflective supervision and workforce well-being, culturally responsive parent–infant psychotherapeutic interventions, and equity in maternal–infant health and mental health outcomes. She has also worked to expand social work education competencies in infant/early childhood mental health and in promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Denise L. Webb, MSN, APRN, PNP, IMH-E®, is a pediatric nurse practitioner and endorsed Infant Mental Health Mentor. She joined the Minding the Baby™ team at its inception, first as a clinician and later as a training specialist working with teams in the United States and Western Europe. She coined the term Reflective Nursing to describe the application of mentalization theory to nursing practice and played a pivotal role in developing an introductory training course on clinical approaches to enhancing reflective parenting that drew participants from around the world. Before completing her training as a nurse practitioner, Ms. Webb worked as an early childhood educator for many years.