The SCC Blog
A Cast of Thousands
A Case of Thousands I recently received a neuropsychological testing report on a little patient of mine who has developmental problems in the general category of autistic spectrum disorder. The report was exceptional in its careful attention to de...
Cambridge Cornerstone
On Saturday and Sunday, June 2 and 3, The Cambridge Ellis School hosted a training on treating autistic spectrum and other children with serious dysregulation syndromes in the preschool classrooms. The training was led by Dr. Gil Kliman, the recip...
Infant Parent Mental Health Weekend: Beatrice Beebe and Claudia Gold
Beatrice Beebe: Beebe presented her dyadic systems approach to face to face interactions – key domains of interaction - facial mirroring, vocal rhythm coordination, distress regulation. Dyadic systems view of face to face interaction informs nonve...
Peter Fonagy Presentation II
The Way Humans Learn About Their Culture The way this kind of learning occurs helps us understand how the knowledge communicated between parent and child becomes “what is known” and “how it is done” in a large group of people, and then what about ...
Infant Parent Mental Health Course Summary
Peter Fonagy's Presentation: I will begin with the presentation by Dr. Peter Fonagy on "Mentalization". I will give the summary in two parts. This is the first. Fonagy started by “tracing the developmental roots of mentalization”. In fact, he bega...
The Power of Play
On Friday I spoke with two friends from Love and Hope. One of them, K, is a young teacher who is giving tutoring sessions to some of the children. She will be at the Home for two years. Two of the children she is tutoring individually are the two ...
The Power of Play
On Friday I spoke with two friends from Love and Hope. One of them, K, is a young teacher who is giving tutoring sessions to some of the children. She will be at the Home for two years. Two of the children she is tutoring individually are the two ...
A Mother with a Child with Mondini Dysplasia
A Chinese colleague wrote to me about a young mother in Shanghai who has a baby girl born with Mondini Dysplasia. Mondini dysplasia is a type of inner ear malformation that is present at birth, in which affected individuals have one and one half c...
Supporting the Caregiver in Creating a Connection with a Hard to Reach Child
I had the pleasure of observing a preschool teacher, Lisa, with an almost 4-year old boy with autistic spectrum disorder, Max, in the classroom last week. What became clear is that what is necessary with children like Max is a shift in perspective...
Conflict and Repair
This series of photographs illustrates a beautiful example of the repair of a conflict between two children, with many magic moments. E, in the blue shorts, is a 6-yo boy who hit K, the boy in the blue jeans, with a ball. The hit was most likely a...
The Workshop: Magic Moments
Day II: The Workshop A good group gathered for the workshop, including representatives of four orphanages. I began the workshop with a description of brain development. I used Dan Siegel’s ingenious model of the brain in which the thumb represents...
April Trip to El Salvador
Day 1 and 2: As has become the custom, this trip was organized around a workshop. The workshop was designed to respond to the evaluations from the last workshop that requested (1) Discussion of adolescent issues, particularly adolescent sexuality;...
March IPMH Meeting: Attachment Theory: Two Views
In this posting I will summarize the presentations of Marjorie Beeghly and Ed Tronick on the subject of Attachment Theory (AT). Marjorie's presentation explained and offered video demonstrations of the strange situation paradigm, and Ed's presenta...
March IPMH Meeting: Epigenetics II
(Continuation of Barry Lester's presentation with discussion) What are some long-term prenatal stressors that affect placental genes? These risk factors may play a role in future problems but do not predict the future. What they can do is alter th...
March Infant Parent Mental Health Meeting: Epigenetics I
Barry Lester taught us about epigenetics. He started with reviewing the background of “fetal origins” and the concept of “fetal programming”. Can the study of genes and environment at the cellular level inform us about molecular influences on beha...
March Infant Parent Mental Health Weekend: Temperament
We began the weekend with Dr.Nancy Snidman, a colleague of Dr. Jerome Kagan who talked to us about temperament. She defined temperament as “what a child brings to the interaction with the environment to create personality”, pointing out that nowad...
Ten Ways to Help Your Child with Nonverbal Learning Disabilities at Home
Here are the second, five ideas about helping your child with NLD at home. I have included some examples of my own, with the hope that some of you who are parents with an NLD child send me some more examples. 6. Practice: Whatever strategy you fin...
Ten Ways to Help Your Child with Nonverbal Learning Disabilities at Home
Two days in a row last week parents asked me about non-verbal learning disabilities. One child had been given that diagnosis and the other had been given a diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome. I told them both that people in different academic center...
Finding Magic Moments
I continue to be inspired by the team of the Children’s Home, as they work to support the families of the children in the community. Complying with the directives of the local agencies, they have done evaluations of the children and of the familie...