Date of Workshop: September 25, 2007

Presented By: Eric Guy, MSW, LSW

CMI Education Institute, Inc.

By: Careen Chang, LCSW

I went to Mr. Eric Guy's workshop with the expectation of learning about children who have trouble forming attachments.  I left his workshop learning a lot more than that.

Mr. Guy's theory was that as a professional or grown adult, we often determine our actions, i.e. behavior, after a process of thinking through our ideas and having come to terms with our reactions i.e., emotions.  Contrary to this order of processing, children work from the other way around.  Their behaviors impact on their feelings about themselves and those in their lives, in turn those emotions determine how they think/perceive themselves and their significant others.  In other words, a child who is treated kindly will experience the kindness behind the treatment and determine for himself that kindness is good and desirable.  Mr. Guy further emphasizes the importance of this sequence for the most behaviorally challenged child.  It is at the moment when the child is most out of control that he needs to be tolerated and emphasized with.  To use a psychological term, it is at this point the child needs to be "held".  Mr. Guy didn't talk about his faith background.  However, his theoretical framework reveals a truly Christlike approach to those who are convinced themselves and have convinced those around them that they are un-salvageable.

Mr. Guy also presented a 4-level understanding of trauma and memory that affects a child's development of attachment.  They are cognition, emotion, motor (behavior) and state (affect, often unconscious).  As counselors and other types of caregivers, we encourage children to relate to us on the level of their affective state, but oftentimes, children who have trouble relating are stuck on the level of cognition.  The act based on how they see themselves or how they think others see them.

I highly recommend this workshop to those working with children or are in treatment with clients who are operating on a child-like state.  The workshop was conducted with the minimum use of psychological lingo and all of the concepts were dissected in such a way that anyone who has an interest in children or attachment issues would have felt welcome.