Abstract
PSY FPX 6015 Assessment 1 This is a retro analysis of a case study of a 24-month-old girl, Annette, who is just beginning to display a potential rare attachment style. The fearful-avoidant attachment style exists in only 7% of the population. Annette not only lives with both her parents but also has experienced some of the old traumas that can lead to such a disorder. The family is German American with 2nd and 3rd generational extended family who give sporadic emotional and financial support. Counter-culture that Annette’s parents are raising her in is the late 60s and 70s.
Her mother had high levels of stress, anxiety, and depression during prenatal development with Annette. She also drank alcohol during gestation and Annette’s early child development to help medicate her potential attachment style of anxious-ambivalent. Her dad prefers to be distant, irritable, and abusive because he works outside the house. He wallows in excessive alcohol drinking as he attempts to contain his likely attachment style of being dismissive-avoidant. Interventions involving good psychology techniques like 12-step recovery and brief parental linguistic treatment are introduced as best practice towards prevention of disorganized attachment during early adulthood among Annette.
Introduction
Annette is a 24-month-old girl who resides with her mother, father, and her older brother, and even though they had moved around many times in the previous two years, they are now residing in Ft. Worth, Texas, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The mother and father both said that their daughter was always shy and pretty much only plays with her brother. Any close relatives reside far, far away; however, they assist Annette’s parents economically and emotionally scarcely and do not come. Annette’s parents just became concerned about her as she has been having difficulty with indiscriminate crying, striking her brother, undressing, dressing up in another child’s diaper, and even getting caught consuming from another child’s bottle.
According to her mother, she was weaned off the bottle at the age of 9-months and started taking solid food. But she sucked her thumb all the time. Annette seems to require attention from her father during his home presence and from her mother for the rest of the time, but she likes playing with her brother too. With reference to her sleep patterns, she started sleepwalking a month earlier and withdrawing. In addition to this, alcohol, domestic violence, depression, cultural differences, abuse, and neglect, if all of these have some role to play in the life and analysis of Annette and her family.
Challenges and Primary Issues
PSY FPX 6015 Assessment 1 But the family dynamics of violence and alcohol use are gigantic problems to address and form a giant part of the primary issues with Annette’s strange behavior. The parent’s coping mechanism has led to a violence and potential SUD, such as alcohol dependence, major depression, and anxiety comorbidities. Therefore, treating these is primary, followed by addressing the underlying family of origin problems with the mother and the father.
The mother has developed probably anxious-ambivalent attachment characteristics as a result of sexual abuse and alcoholism during her childhood. She is anxious and depressed on a normal basis, and this has impacted the degree of care provided to the children. Stress during pregnancy is most likely to lead to abnormalities in child and fetal development. The father portrays characteristics of a dismissive-avoidant in marriage and the children. Both appear to use alcohol to excess in an attempt to cope with their unresolved psychological issues. They have even reported giving alcohol to the children so that they sleep. Additionally, the mother has had difficulty with previous pregnancies that have caused excessive blood loss and necessitated an emergency cesarean section. Annette was born normally and a few weeks early. So, she was a bit underweight. Most importantly, the mother also reported craving alcohol during pregnancy and drank beer and wine during pregnancy.
Development and Behavioral Analysis
As far as Annette’s issues, she is apparently developing a rare attachment style, fearful-avoidant because of the level of trauma and abuse that she has experienced. This kind of attachment style only develops in about 7% of the population and usually develops within a child’s first 18 months of life. Annette may have seen the abusive violence from her father as intimidating. For example, her father may laugh at her and her family, and then get angry at them for the same thing and attack them violently or in some other aggressive manner, especially her mother.
Annette’s boundarylessness in undressing, dressing in other children’s diapers, wandering off alone, and sometimes hitting her brother is another example of this potential attachment style. Also, she can easily adapt to a new environment for short periods, but likes playing only with her brother or alone. She also keeps very little eye contact with people. Annette’s sleeping problems are also to be concerned about. She has also been seen sleepwalking for the past month, which could be because of extreme tiredness due to anxiety and stress in the home or poor diet. These practices are problems that may threaten Annette’s future relationship, coping efforts, and overall well-being.
Individual and Cultural Differences
There are a few individual and cultural differences that must also be taken into account. The first is that the parents are both of German descent, as the rest of the family immigrated as 2nd generational German Americans. This accounts for the reasons for their acceptance of imbibing alcohol during pregnancy and giving children alcohol for irritability or as a bedtime drink. Alcohol is not viewed by Germans in the same way that alcohol is viewed by Americans. It is more deeply embedded in culture and can remain as cross-cultural identity with German Americans. Cultural differences can govern some long-term unhealthy behaviors in intimate relationships due to perceived religious and family values.
Separating or divorcing a spouse is less widely accepted culturally, especially among religious believers, including Catholicism or Southern Baptist. Lastly, some counterculture problems must be mentioned here also. The time frame for this case is the late 60s and early 70s, which was overall an era of resistance to conventional norms for young Americans. Alcohol and drug use were used and thought differently than presently. Individual and cultural difference then does have potential correlational applicability to the case.
Interventions
Also, interventions take priority so that long-term harm to Annette is avoided. There are associations between genes, environmental aggression, and family cohesion with later alcohol use or SUD. As Annette grows up in this dysfunctional, violent, and alcohol-abuse ethnic family, she may become confrontational, SUD, and possess unhealthy relationships as a grown woman. Therefore, from Leontopoulos, the interventions of gratitude, self-worth, and goal-setting interventions can achieve positive character change in an individual, i.e., endurance, empathy, self-esteem, and virtue. Annette’s parents would be aided by positive psychology interventions, i.e., 12-step recovery and Imago therapy.
These interventions would return cohesion, sobriety, and hope to the family that would decrease Annette’s attachment style. Brief parental linguistic intervention is another treatment that would improve positive parenting capability and decrease Annette’s behavior issues or potential attachment style. Brief parenting intervention teaches caregivers multiple ways of speaking with their children. According to Heymann et al., problems or behaviors in the home can be attributed to a number of parent-child interactions that can shape child development. Therefore, efforts should be made to address language and behavior in at-risk infants/toddlers like Annette. The interventions include practices such as games that highlight the importance of parental responsiveness and back-and-forth parent-child interaction. For example, parents begin interacting with Annette in a linguistic way in a positive manner through do skills instead of do not skills. These include praise, reflection, and descriptions of action but no commands. The intervention provides word variety, linguistic value, and aliment of language that supports potential disorders of child behaviors, especially to those living in poverty. Thus, by creating a positive environment and reducing Annette’s vulnerability to attachment disorder that could impact the remaining years of her life.
Conclusion
In brief, Annette is vulnerable to developing a rare attachment style or has already developed one because of the amount of abuse and trauma directly and indirectly to which she has been subjected in the 24 months of life. The avoidant-fearful can surface as young as 18 months and later develop a disorganized attachment style after she becomes an adult. Now, she is acting inappropriately by undressing, sleepwalking, crying spasmodically for attention, not seeming to need it, sometimes appearing to be irritable, and withdrawing further with little eye contact. She has received mixed messages from her parents regarding attention, reward, punishment, and nurturing.
Alcoholism, stress, and depression during pregnancy and early developmental care may have a correlation with behavioral aberrations, violence, and dual communication. Positive psychological intervention and linguistic input are indicated to break the cycle of alcoholism and dysfunction. Culturally diverse tolerance is needed when interfacing with the German-American family and this 60s and 70s counter-culture. Effective interventions will provide Annette with an opportunity to form healthy relationships as she matures into young adulthood.
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PSY FPX 6015 Assessment 1 Early Development Case Intervention Analysis
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PSY FPX 6015 Assessment 1 Case Analysis: Early Development Intervention
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