Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control: A Love-Based Approach to Helping Attachment-Challenged Children With Severe Behaviors [Paperback]

Heather T. Forbes (Author), B. Bryan Post (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0977704009 | ISBN-13: 978-0977704002 | Publication Date: February 10, 2006 | Edition: 1st

Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control covers in detail the effects of trauma on the body-mind and how trauma alters children's behavioral responses. The first four chapters help parents and professionals clearly understand the neurological research behind the basic model given in this book, deemed, 'The Stress Model.' While scientifically based in research, it is written in an easy to understand and easy to grasp format for anyone working with or parenting children with severe behaviors. The next seven chapters are individually devoted to seven behaviors typically seen with attachment-challenged children. These include lying, stealing, hoarding and gorging, aggression, defiance, lack of eye contact, and yes, even a chapter that talks candidly about how parents appear hostile and angry when they work to simply maintain their families from reaching complete states of chaos. Each of these chapters talks in depth on these specific behaviors and gives vivid and contrasting examples of how this love-based approach works to foster healing and works to develop relationships, as opposed to the fear-based traditional attachment parenting approaches that are being advocated in today's attachment field. The authors end with a Parenting Bonus Section: true testimonials from parents who have been able to make significant changes in their homes with this model of parenting, giving real-life examples of how they have been able to find the healing, peace, and love that they had been seeking prior to working through the techniques outlined in this book.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This book is brilliant! It lets parents know there is another way. --Terry Chapman, adoptive mother

Powerfully healing! The authors have written a profoundly insightful and absolutely critical book for parents and professionals. --Stacey and Scott Annand - parents and advocates for healing families

The authors address the most pressing and challenging issues faced by parents of children with histories of disrupted attachments. --Sir Richard Bowlby, Attachment Advocate.

Powerfully healing! The authors have written a profoundly insightful and absolutely critical book for parents and professionals. --Stacey and Scott Annand - parents and advocates for healing families

The authors address the most pressing and challenging issues faced by parents of children with histories of disrupted attachments. --Sir Richard Bowlby, Attachment Advocate.

About the Author

Heather Forbes, LCSW, is co-founder of the Beyond Consequences Institute, LLC. Ms. Forbes has been training in the field of attachment and trauma with nationally recognized, first-generation attachment therapists since 1999. She has been active in the field of adoption with experience ranging from pre-adoption to post-adoption work, including domestic and international adoptions. Ms. Forbes is a published author and presents workshops both nationally and throughout the State of Florida. Much of her experience and insight on understanding trauma, disruptive behaviors, and adoption related issues has come from her direct mothering experience of her two adopted children. She has a passion for helping families to find the peace in their homes that they deserve.

Product Details

• Paperback: 152 pages
• Publisher: Beyond Consequences Institute, LLC; 1st edition (February 10, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0977704009
• ISBN-13: 978-0977704002
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (66 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #18,625 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #8 in Books > Parenting & Relationships > Adoption
  • #67 in Books > Parenting & Relationships > Special Needs

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

213 of 219 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good practicum even for the skeptical, November 13, 2006

By 

Jack E. Holt, III (Orlando, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control: A Love-Based Approach to Helping Attachment-Challenged Children With Severe Behaviors (Paperback)

I am both a lawyer and an adoptive parent. I have learned over the years to be skeptical of medical and psychological theories without a clear understanding of the supporting research.

Like one of the reviewers below, I am skeptical about some of the supporting explanations for behavior the authors advance. Unlike the authors, I suspect that the advice works because it addresses an adoptive child's fears and frustrations directly and openly (and not because it addresses the separation or birth trauma in the adoptive child). From my brief reading on the subject, the idea of trauma arising from the mere act of placing a newborn with someone other than his biological mother is certainly subject to debate. I confess, though, that a real criticism of the theoretical underpinning in the first chapter is beyond me. On the other hand, I would feel foolish contradicting it without more information.


Instead, I urge readers not to dismiss the rest of the book without further reflection. The advice given by the book is eye-opening and often very helpful. I found that it made good sense. So I gave it try. With our own adopted child, we have seen a night-and-day difference in his behavior which I believe directly reflects the efficacy of the book's general recommendations.

For myself, I tried to raise my adopted child with the "tough love" style that seemed to work with my oldest child and that my parents used on me. However, my adopted child often saw those approaches as rejection and separation from his family. He went so far as to regularly draw himself in crayon pictures so that he was completely isolated from his family.

The book's simplest approach is the best one -- simply listening to what the child wants to tell you and listening to it with an open heart. Of course, every parent already thinks they do that. We don't. None of us.

But how can you learn to listen better?

The book has practical, real-life tips. The authors know that no parent can be perfectly correct in every situation. So, the authors give us the tough situations in a paragraph or two then they set out a possible plan of action for helping children through their fears and misconduct.

For example, when a child has trouble talking to you, they suggest physically getting on a child's level. This works, in part, because it forces the parent to listen. When you're standing over a child it's very easy to assume the conversation is over and walk away. the other reason it works is the child is less fearful of what your reaction might be.

No it's not always practical. But it does work. And the fact, I can do that at home means my child now believes me when I say, "Let's sit over here so we can talk about this." Before I read the book, I said we were going to talk, but what I actually meant was "I'm going to lecture." So my child talks to me now. Simple enough, right?

The design of the book is a big help. First, it's concise. After the first chapter, the writing is very direct and the authors use a lot of white space. It's easy to read and absorb the examples given. Each chapter is followed by a concise summary of the chapter's points AND a few of the most profitable solutions to the problem addressed in the chapter.

This is a terrific format for people like me. I can be taught. But sometimes it has to be in small bits. The summaries are also helpful because when you encounter a situation covered by the book you can flip right to the table of contents and find the bullet points. The summaries are great conversation-starters for me and my kids.

If I had to epitomize this book in one word it would be : practicum.

It's not a master's thesis or a medical article. It's a book of things you can try that have worked for others and that might work for you, too.

Ironically, one review below confuses theory with practicum. Or, at least, I find it ironic because the reviewer appears to be a nursing or medical professional of some kind. The underpinnings of modern nursing and medicine are equally recent and, often, unproven. Innoculations with cow pox prevented thousands of cases of smallpox long before Pasteur proved how and why innoculations worked.

In other words, the practicum of experience was right even though the theory was wrong.

I would recommend reading the book in light of your own experience with your children and trying out some of the scenarios. If it works for you, it's time well spent. For our child, it was the difference between despair and happiness.

My child's unselfconscious smile and laughter are the proof I need that the practicum works.

85 of 88 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Changing lives instead of controling behavior, October 7, 2006

By 

Jeffrey H. Wildrick (New Jersey) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control: A Love-Based Approach to Helping Attachment-Challenged Children With Severe Behaviors (Paperback)

Which would you rather do: Control your child's behavior using threats, punishments, consequences, and "time outs;" or influence your child's heart so that they want to behave well out of love and sense of security and self-control? That's the question at the heart of this book. Forbes and Post focus primarily on how to bring healing to the hearts and minds of children who've experienced early-childhood trauma, but the paradigm that they build here can be helpful to any parent who dreads the next encounter with their kids.

In our house, with three children adopted at ages 7, 7, and 5, we lived through the effects of trauma, abandonment, and neglect on a daily basis. We tried all of the "logic" techniques, and the "magic" techniques that tried to establish control over our children. They all worked - for a while. Then the rages, the whining, the violent melt-downs would return with even greater force. When we discovered that the stress our children experienced in their first few years had an actual bio-physical impact on their brain development that made them hyper-sensitive to stress and unable to self-calm, a light bulb went off. Our attempts to control the children's behavior was actually adding to their stress and fear, and therefore amplifying the very problems we were trying to correct. Post and Forbes helped us to look beyond the veil of anger and recognize our children's fear, acted out in the things the would do. When we began responding to their fear instead of reacting to the behavior it brought about, we began to see dramatic healing.

This is a short book and easy to read. But it's hard to put into practice because it goes against so much of what we've learned from "common wisdom." The one thing that makes it worth it all is that it works! It works right up front, and the changes in our children are lasting. Yes, there are regressions, but because we've learned to move beyond consequences our home is a far more peaceful place, and our children are living out the love-based behavior we so desire to nurture in their lives.

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Relationship before performance and behavior!, September 23, 2007

By 

Sherrie Eldridge (Fishers, IN) (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control: A Love-Based Approach to Helping Attachment-Challenged Children With Severe Behaviors (Paperback)

This book puts relationship before performance,which in my way of thinking, is unconditional love. Is there anything more important than relationship? We don't want "robot children." We want children who can feel and connect in meaningful ways with others, beginnning with their parents. In a word, this book communicates grace-based technniques.