Child-Parent Attachment Project
The Child-Parent Attachment Project is a research program supported by the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Disability and Rehabilitation Research. The project currently consists of three on-going projects focussing on young children with medical conditions and their families. It is housed at the Kluge Children's Rehabilitation Center, part of the Children's Medical Center of the University of Virginia Health Sciences Center. Robert S. Marvin, Ph.D. and Robert C. Pianta, Ph.D. are principal investigators. The projects grew out of their shared interest in the child-parent separation problems displayed by many children with motor impairments such as cerebral palsy.
Kluge Children's Rehabilitaton Center
Project Goals
- To learn more about the impact of a medical condition on the social and emotional development of young children
- To learn more about family coping strategies when faced with the diagnosis of a medical condition in a child
- To develop training materials for families and for health care providers
Study Population
Children aged 12 to 50 months with three distinct types of medical problems make up the study population.
Parenting Issues
A number of interview measures are completed with parents to
learn more about their concerns, reactions and adjustments to
parenting a child with a developmental disability. These
include:
- Parent Development Index
- Adult Attachment Interview
- Family Interview
- Reaction to Diagnosis Interview
Click
here to see a movie about a parent's reaction to her
child's diagnosis of cerebral palsy.
Publications and Presentations
Short abstracts, or summaries, of several recent papers
from the Child-Parent Attachment Project are included as examples
of our current work.