Integrative Attachment Family Therapy: A Clinical Guide to Heal and Strengthen the Parent-Child Relationship through Play, Co-regulation, and Meaning-Making

“Dafna Lender’s framework, integrative attachment family therapy (IAFT), uses the power of neuroplasticity to provide parents and children with new experiences of safety and connection that shift trauma-informed relationships. It offers a powerful mental health intervention that can help families to heal. If parents and therapists follow Dafna’s guidance, they can make significant progress in reducing attachment trauma in future generations.” —Bessel van der Kolk, MD, #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Body Keeps the Score

The key to meaningful change is connection.

Integrative Attachment Family Therapy (IAFT), 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 treatment guide, Dafna walks readers 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 clinical guide, you can truly help families transform into happy and well-functioning environments where children can thrive.

Dafna Lender, LCSW, is an international and certified trainer and supervisor for practitioners who work with children and families in both Theraplay® and dyadic developmental psychotherapy (DDP). Dafna’s expertise is drawn from 25 years of working with families with attachment in many settings. She is the coauthor of Theraplay: The Practitioner’s Guide and teaches and supervises clinicians in 15 countries in four languages: English, Hebrew, French, and Spanish.

Molly Gage, PhD, is a book developer and developmental editor who specializes in transformative nonfiction.