Just pleasantly floundering around.....

I was lucky enough this week to have some training delivered by a psychologist (run more like a group therapy session!) on attachment this week. I have had previous training sessions on attachment but they were either overly detailed, too much about research and/or delivered knowledge that could not really be practically applied to the children I work with. In a nutshell - (like I like it!) The trainer started with the premise that every child is born with hard-wiring for survival. Obviously this makes a lot of sense in evolutionary terms. Therefore, whatever circumstance, family set-up, family behaviours etc a child is born into, they will adapt (and subsequently develop the hard-wiring) that will optimise their chances of survival. Getting a parent's attention is a crucial part of this survival so disorders to do with poor attachment are due to a child receiving, little, inconsistent and/or frightening attention from their parent/s. Strategies for getting these parents' a...

Last night I stumbled across one of those 'debates' that erupt on Facebook every now and then. You know the ones - where one person posts their view and before you know it there are seventy or so post on the thread. You get the: •the rationalist •the idealist •the militant conspiracy theorist •the aggressor •the misses-the-point-the-other-person-made-er •the flippant •the questioner •the jump to someone's defence-er •the academic with evidence •etc all putting their throbbing pennyworth in the pot. What fascinates me is how those 'debates' go. This particular one I would surmise had little impact in terms of idea development or opening up others' mind to accepting another viewpoints. In fact, because there was some aggression and personal comments I would go so far as to say it probably shut down a few minds. This debate in part reflected the way we tend to approach conflict of ideas generally - in law, in education and in meetings: we are adversarial/oppositio...