Tina Adkins
Tina Adkins

Thanks to a generous grant from alumna Sue Fairbanks, the Texas Institute for Child & Family Wellbeing will be conducting a randomized control trial of “Family Minds,” a three-session psycho-educational training program for foster and adoptive parents.

Tina Adkins, a research associate at the institute, developed Family Minds as her doctoral thesis after years of working with parents involved with the foster care system. The intervention focuses on teaching “mentalization” or reflective parenting, which can be defined as the skill of being able to see yourself as a parent from the outside and your children from the inside. Mentalization allows a parent to see the deeper meaning behind a child’s behavior and increases the likelihood that the parent will meet that deeper emotional need–thus reducing the behavior problem and increasing attachment.

 

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