• They will feel safer and more secure with their parents/carers
• They will have a more secure attachment
• Controlling behaviours will reduce
• When stressed they might return to old ways of relating and behaving, perhaps becoming more controlling again, however it will be easier to help them manage this
• They will find relationships easier and be able to regulate emotions more easily
• They will manage stress and understand their emotional experience better
• As they are helped to heal from the past trauma they will become more emotionally healthy
‘Dyadic’ means ‘something about two people’. This word was used because this therapy helps people with their relationships with other people. DDP specifically aims to help parents or caregivers and their child make deeper emotional connections with each other. ‘Developmental’ is used because the children and adolescents who have experienced developmental trauma may have had their emotional, social or cognitive development affected. This therapy aims to work out whether and how your child’s development might have been affected and, if so, how you might be able to help them.
My sessions with parents/carers together with their children are informed by Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy and would ideally need to follow on from a series of 1:1 sessions with you on your own.
Dyadic Sessions
What would the sessions aim to do?
• Reading books together
• Telling or listening to stories
• Nurturing activities
• Drawing
• Using creative activities, such as puppets or plasticine
• Using toys or puppets
This link maybe helpful to decide
Is DDP right for your family?
What do these words mean?
What if my child won't talk about things?
Sometimes it will be too hard for your child to talk about what he or she has done or about tough feelings or memories. This is always OK. When this happens we will let your child know that this is fine and totally understandable. It doesn’t mean though that difficult things will be avoided or ignored.
Often, it means that I’ll slow down the conversation, focus longer on lighter, positive, and successful events first and more gradually introduce more difficult themes.
I might for example talk about things with you, while your child listens.
I might also talk for your child, helping him to find the words that describe his inner life of thoughts, feelings, and wishes. Many children begin talking in DDP in ways and about events that they had rarely spoken about in the past.
I may ask you to try other ways of wondering about things during sessions which might include:
What changes might be expected in my child:
• Create a safe and emotionally containing environment
that helps positive relationships develop between you and your child
• Provide a safe space for your child to explore thoughts, feelings and memories, including scary and unpleasant ones
• Build trust
• Help you share your child’s emotional experiences and
make sense of them together
• Help your child to feel that his or her emotional experiences, thoughts, wishes, feelings, perceptions and motives are accepted and not made light of, or judged, by you.