What Encanto Teaches Us About Partnering with Parents and Healing Our Inner

As infant and early childhood educators, home visitors, and mental health practitioners, we understand that collaborating with caregivers is important for our children’s outcomes. However, some families just “rub us the wrong way” even when we’re eager to build rapport with them. In this workshop, you will deepen your understanding of attachment theories to include concepts like attachment adaptations and inner child wounds. These concepts will support you to “meet the families where they’re at” in trauma-informed and developmentally caring ways. Together, we’ll put “intergenerational transmission of trauma and resilience” into action, specifically in our partnership with families. You’ll explore these concepts through self-reflection exercises using Encanto and large group interactive discussions. You’ll walk away with more compassion for your own and the families’ inner child wounds and concrete strategies to address them. Come curious. Come as you are.

Objectives:

1. Participants will understand the neurobiology of “being triggered” and use this knowledge to understand “challenging behaviors” they see in themselves and the families they work with.

2. Participants will apply the lens of intergenerational transmission of trauma and adult attachment theories to promote child and family outcomes.

3. Participants will reflect on their inner child wounds/attachment adaptations using Encanto movie characters.

4. Participants will operationalize empathy and practice strength-based practices that go beyond "multicultural competency."

5. Participants will experiment with one action to meet the triggered inner child wounds with compassion and boundaries.

Host or Publisher AK-AIMH