Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

The influence of children's early parent-child interactions on forming secure attachment is well established. Long-term studies highlight the detrimental effects of insecure attachment on children's cognitive, social and emotional development, and health. These difficulties negatively impact well-being and quality of life in childhood and often continue into adolescence and adulthood, resulting in significant social, psychological, and economic costs. Clearly, the parent-child relationship is a critical entry point for intervention. Parents with a dismissing attachment style, stemming from a history of childhood trauma, tend to steer clear of interdependence and emotional closeness within relationships, often finding interactions with their children highly distressing. Parent-child therapy offers these parents a unique opportunity to challenge their avoidant tendencies, with the potential to break the intergenerational cycle of trauma and attachment insecurity. The proposed study will systematically evaluate the effectiveness of a child-led, play-based therapy (called Watch, Wait, and Wonder) in improving disrupted parent-child relations in a group of dismissing parents and their children. Thirty-six parent-child pairs will be recruited from local outpatient child mental health centres, with children's ages ranging from two to nine years. Information will be collected from clinical assessments, questionnaires, and video recordings of parent-child interactions before and after therapy, and again at a six-month follow-up. Significant improvements in the quality of parent-child interactions and children's emotion regulation are expected to follow therapy and to be maintained over time.