I was recently gifted this course ‘Understanding Attachment-The Fundamentals of Human Psychology’ by Lorraine from the Child Psychology Institute. This is a two hour CPD course. As a busy mother working full time, these courses suit me. I want to continue to enage in CPD for a variety of reasons. Firstly, I enjoy learning and expanding my knowledge in areas I am not always familiar with. Secondly, even though I have a permanent job, my CV is always a work in progress and I like to add to it regularly and consistently. These short courses make that possible and ensure I am up to speed too!
This course interested me twofold, firstly as a mother, and secondly as a teacher. The area of attachment is one which I admittedly, knew little about prior to this course. I sat down this evening and did the two hour course while the kids were in bed. Lorraine , the course author, is so easy to listen to! Everything she says has value, there is no fluff or fillers in her courses. I have completed several of her courses now and they never disappoint. Her passion for this subject is clear in the way she delivers the course, and the delivery of the course made me even more interested and invested in the course.
Lorraine spoke about meeting children’s needs, and what happens if these needs are not met. Lorraine says our behaviours are driven by our unmet needs, and this just really resonated with me. Straight away I thought about children I taught throughout the years, and their behaviours, and now I can see why perhaps those behaviours took place. John Bowlby says ‘We are only as needy as our unmet needs’ and this really made me stop and reflect. If you think about any children you may have taught in the past, and behaviours they exhibited, I’ll wager that there was an unmet need, or an underlying issue or reason for the behaviours or neediness. Lorraine talks about ‘getting under the hood’ and figuring out what their unmet needs might be.
The course also covered the history of attachment research, which in itself was very interesting, to see how attachement theories developed from the 1940s onwards.
The course also looks at the different types of attachment , which I found fascinating. I was shocked at the statistics which said that only 60% of children have a secure attachment.
Opportunity for attachment and the quality of care given are the two key factors for forming secure attachments. Lorraine reminded us to have a non judgemental approach in this area, as so many of the issues are caused by mental health issues, substance abuse, their own experiences as a child and other factors which make it impossible for the parent to provide a secure base. It really reminded me of the importance of having empathy, and to support parents and children to the best of our ability. It was defintely food for thought for me, both as a parent and a teacher. It is also I feel, something slightly different to have on my CV which I think will show a broad interest in education and child psychology. Considering this course was only two hours, it is jam-packed full of useful content and practical advice and information.
This course and several others, is available here: https://childpsychologyinstitute.ie/