The Relational Foundations of Reflective Practice and Reflective Parenting

Arietta Slade, Ph.D.

This webinar was presented live on August 6th, 2021. Missed the talk? View it here.

Webinar Presented by Arietta Slade, Ph.D.

Arietta Slade, PhD is Professor of Clinical Child Psychology at the Yale Child Study Center. An internationally recognized theoretician, clinician, researcher, and teacher, she has written widely on the development of parental reflective functioning, the implications of attachment for child and adult psychotherapy, and relationship-based infant mental health practice. She is Co-Founder and Co-Director of Minding the Baby® (MTB), an evidence-based interdisciplinary reflective home visiting program for young families. Dr. Slade is also author, with Jeremy Holmes, of Attachment in Therapeutic Practice (Holmes & Slade, SAGE Publications, 2018); and editor of the six volume set, Major Work on Attachment (Slade & Holmes, SAGE Publications, 2014), as well as Mind to Mind: Infant Research, Neuroscience, and Psychoanalysis (Jurist, Slade, & Bergner, Other Press, 2008), and Children at Play (Slade & Wolf, Oxford University Press, 1994). Currently, she and her MTB colleagues are writing a book on reflective parenting (Forthcoming, Guilford, 2022). She has also been in private practice for over 40 years, working with individuals of all ages.

Resilient, loving, and supportive parent-child relationships depend upon the parent’s capacity to be curious and open to the child’s experience. It is for this reason that professionals working with parents aim to promote reflective capacities, particularly in highly stressed families where threats to safety abound, and such capacities are hard won. But first, they must establish (and re-establish) the relational foundations of reflection in parents: safety, regulation, and trust. These are the building blocks from which the capacity to know oneself and others emerges. Safety and self-regulation facilitate development of the trusting relationships that provide essential scaffolds for learning, discovery, and reflection. This presentation will use key elements of the Minding the Baby ® home visiting program to describe how clinicians can establish these relational foundations, and move parents out of “fight or flight” and into the meaningful trusting relationships that makes it possible for them to discover themselves and their child.