Reflective Interpersonal Therapy for Children and Parents

Disruptive and aggressive behaviour in children causes significant distress to everyone involved. Tradition interventions tend to focus on changing the disruptive behaviour itself, but research shows that it is important to also focus on the underlying anxiety, anger and vulnerability that may have contributed to the child’s conduct. In this innovative book, Hermione Roff introduces Reflective Interpersonal Therapy for Children and Parents (RICAP), a new intervention that looks at the processes underpinning disruptive and aggressive behaviour problems. RICAP was developed specifically to meet the needs of children and their families, and offers a new way to think about and tackle conduct disorders. The intervention explores the relationship between anxiety and anger, the dynamics of threat and fear, and the behavioural interactions within a prime relationship. Taking a practitioner-oriented approach, Roff introduces the theory underpinning RICAP, the evidence base for the approach and how it can be put to work in clinical practice. About the author.

List of illustrations.

Acknowledgements.

An old Jewish tale.

Mind that child!

Chapter 1: RICAP: A description of the intervention

Chapter 2: RICAP and aggression: Sometimes it helps to be bad.

Chapter 3: RICAP and reflection: Are these children mindless?

Chapter 4: RICAP and attachment: fighting to feel safe.

Chapter 5: RICAP and avoidance: A useful defence or a habitual ploy?

Chapter 6: RICAP and emotions: Why does everything have to be reduced to anger?

Chapter 7: RICAP and memory: What I remember tells me who I am.

Chapter 8: RICAP and problem-solving: Do solutions matter?

Chapter 9: RICAP and metaphor: The use and usefulness of metaphor.

Chapter 10: Marc: A case study.

Appendices.

References.

Index.

Hermione Roff is the author of Reflective Interpersonal Therapy for Children and Parents: That Child! A New Way of Helping Parents and Children with Extreme Conduct Disorder, published by Wiley.

Disruptive and aggressive behaviour in children causes significant distress both to the children themselves and to other people, yet standard interventions have often proven unhelpful. The trouble is that the behaviour is so disruptive that it demands our attention, and consequently the distress often goes unrecognised. With research now increasingly showing that most disruptive and aggressive children have multiple individual vulnerabilities, it is time to move beyond a "one-size fits all" approach to treatment. Each child is different and — with the right approach — each one can be helped.

This book introduces Reflective Interpersonal Therapy for Children and Parents (RICAP), a clinical intervention pioneered by the author which offers a new approach to tackling conduct disorder in young children. RICAP's central aim is to promote children's and parents' understanding of their own and each other's thoughts and feelings in interpersonal interactions. Taking a practitioner-oriented perspective, Hermione Roff covers the theories underpinning RICAP, its evidence base and how to use it in clinical practice. The results is an essential resource for clinical child psychologists, family therapists, child psychiatrists and educational psychologists.