The Power of Discord: Beyond "Trauma-Informed Care"

The Power of Discord: Beyond "Trauma-Informed Care" 

DESCRIPTION
The ubiquitous use of the word “trauma” and the term “trauma-informed care” runs the risk of rendering the concept meaningless. In this presentation, Dr. Gold will infuse new levels of meaning to our work with infants and caregivers by reframing the term in the context of the Repair Theory of Development. This theory, as elucidated in the recent book The Power of Discord, reveals how infants make meaning of themselves and the world around them in a continuous developmental process through messy moment-by-moment interactions with people who care for them. Only by rooting our work in an understanding of typical, healthy development can we begin to know how to support infants and families when development has gone awry. The presentation will offer evidence that healing from developmental disruption calls for not a one or even two step solution but rather for emersion of new ways of being in a whole slew of new relationships over time.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES FOR PARTICIPANTS
•  Understand the role of mismatch and repair in healthy and derailed infant development

•  Describe the process of infant meaning making in the brain and body

•  Apply the repair theory of human development to clinical work with infants and caregivers

CLAUDIA M. GOLD, MD, is a pediatrician and writer who practiced general and behavioral pediatrics for over 20 years and now specializes in infant-parent mental health. She is on the faculty of the Early Relational Health Fellowship at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, and the Brazelton Institute at Boston Children’s Hospital. She graduated from the University of Chicago and U of C Pritzker School of Medicine. She is clinician with Volunteers in Medicine Berkshires and director of the Hello It’s Me Project, a program designed to bring early relational health principles to high-need, low-resourced communities. She is the author of four books most recently The Power of Discord: Why the Ups and Downs of Relationships are the Secret to Building Intimacy, Resilience, and Trust  with
co-author Ed Tronick (Little, Brown Spark 2020.) She currently writing a new book for Teachers College Press: Getting to Know You: Lessons from Developmental Science on Caregiver-Infant Relationships (forthcoming 2024). She speaks frequently to a variety of audiences both lay and professional and writes regularly for her blog Child in Mind.