Preschool Assessment of Attachment (PAA) – Clinical conditions (Week 3)

Instructor: Patricia Crittenden, PhD; with facilitators.

Dates: 6 days by Zoom: Aug 8-9; Aug 15-16; Aug 22-23, 2026. There is weekly practice coding/classification after the course with a Reliability Test for those who qualify.

Time: 4pm-8pm UK; 11am-3pm ET; 8am-12pm PT, plus a facilitator meeting (time TBA). There is: (a) coding work after each session and (b) a requirement to submit a 4th PAA carried out by the course participant; this work must be completed to receive a Certificate for Administering the PAA. Because the learning is progressive, recorded sessions will be available until the beginning of the next session.

Description:

This advanced  Preschool Assessment of Attachment (PAA) course focuses on clinical conditions including child abuse and neglect, child sexual abuse, foster care, psychosomatic conditions, etc. Functionally, it addresses children’s combined and alternating A/C strategies, depressed strategies, compulsive strategies with intrusions of forbidden negative affect, strategies with expressed somatic signs, and sexualized strategies. A particular focus is demonstrating the protective advantages and psychological accomplishment of these extreme strategies, given the dangerous conditions of the child’s home.

Prerequisites: Attendance at Weeks 1 & 2 of the PAA.

Language: English

Benefits to clinicians of taking this advanced PAA course:

• Improve observational skills;
• Differentiate symptom behavior from interpersonal protective strategy;
• Identify dyadic quality of protective parent-child relationships;
• Generate compassion for both children and their parents;
• Suggest effective therapist-parent strategies to use in treatment;
• Jumpstart treatment or restart a stalled treatment by clarifying the parent’s experience of their child;
• Enable therapists to find the parents’ ZPD regarding their child;
• Enable therapists to guide parents to discover children’s perspectives and self-protective strategies;
• Permit reliable coders to classify the protective strategies used by endangered children.

Note: coding reliability usually requires more effort than this course.

Cost: $1000 before May 31; $1300 June 1 or later. The registration fee covers the course, feedback on participant’s 4th PAA, practice videos after the course, and the reliability test (for those who qualify).

Enrolment is not guaranteed until payment is made. Payment must be complete before the course begins. All payments are non-refundable. Invoicing and receipts involve extra charges.

Registration: Please contact Patricia M. Crittenden, PhD, regarding registration (pmcrittenden@gmail.com).

Cancellation: The course may be cancelled if fewer than six people register.