Parent Bonding
The importance of parental bonding is well documented. It is not only the emotional welfare of both child and parent that benefit from strong familial bonds, but there is evidence that the learning capabilities of children in the early years of education is strongly influenced by the strength of their parental bonds.
There are many Activities to improve bonding between parent and child,(e.g. Parent-Child Bonding Through Touch: advocated by Amelia D. Auckett) but for a practitioner there are difficulties in offering such interventions to a parent who may require them. The perceived social stigma of being told 'you need to bond with your child more' can be too much for some parents. Therefore the practitioner needs to discover whether the degree of impairment in parent bonding is sufficient in any particular case to warrant the recommendation outlined above.
As we know, when dealing with such emotionally sensitive subjects as the relationship between a child and its mother and/or father, it can be helpful to fall back on clinical certainties to reduce the parent’s emotional reaction to the diagnosis. The translation of what might be perceived as "You are a bad Parent" into "We can improve your Kaufman rating by a few points" has obvious benefits.
This is where a Parent Bonding Assessment Tool can come into play. When correctly used by a trained practitioner, a Parent Bonding Assessment Tool can really help lay the clinical foundation for the treatment.
Here are a number of respected assessment tools that include Parent Bonding scales. They are designed for use by educational psychologists, clinical psychologists and pediatricians employed by The Hammond Group, Inc.