It is important to choose a qualified mental health professional who parents and child are comfortable with. The following are treatment recommendations:
• Systems model: Therapy should involve the child, parent/caregivers, and other family members. The focus should never be on the child alone, and always include family and external influences (e.g., social services, school, and community resources).
• Didactic and experiential: Therapy should be both educational and experience-based. Positive change occurs as a result of information, skills, support, hope, and participation in growth-enhancing activities.
• Reputable and respected: Treatment techniques and parenting approaches should be safe, ethical, and based on solid theory and research. Treatment and parenting methods should never involve physical or psychological coercion, domination, or control.
• Secure base: Treatment that focuses on facilitating secure relationships should include secure-base behavior by therapists and parents: emotionally available, sensitive and responsive to needs, supportive, appropriate limits and boundaries, and genuinely helpful. Treatment should focus on improving a child’s internal working model (core
beliefs), not merely modifying behavior.
• Skill building: Children and parents need to learn impulse-control, anger management, problem-solving, and communication skills. Parents must learn constructive parenting skills, including: self awareness; understanding their child’s core beliefs; being proactive, not reactive; engaging positively; staying calm; down-regulating their child (e.g., reducing anxiety); communicating for attachment; and constructive coparenting (teamwork).
• Positive psychology: Identify the strengths, talents, and positive attributes of the child and family, not only focusing on “what’s wrong.” Building on the positive.
