It is widely accepted that early experiences colour the way in which children view the world and in particular their relationships with other people. In this article, Christine Gordon describes a programme of intervention with children who have attachment difficulties as a result of living in trauma during infancy. The article looks at developing a theoretical framework for understanding the ways in which early trauma affects a child at psychological, emotional and physiological levels. It describes an approach to parenting which is more effective than the traditional methods which tend to work better with children who have had healthy and relatively trauma-free early childhoods. The author briefly examines how this approach can be used with other forms of intervention which work more directly with children in helping them to untangle early experiences and make sense of their history.
