FAQ’s – ACT A Clinician’s Guide For Supporting Parents

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ACT – A Clinician’s Guide For Supporting Parents

Questions and Answers by Dr Koa Whittingham

Yes! Acceptance and Commitment Therapy the Clinician’s Guide to Supporting Parents is written for readers with various levels of previous exposure to ACT, from complete novices to seasoned ACT therapists and academics.  

Yes! Acceptance and Commitment Therapy the Clinician’s Guide to Supporting Parents is written for readers with various levels of previous exposure to ACT, from complete novices to seasoned ACT therapists and academics.

This is not just a re-packaging of familiar ACT content with the tweak of focussing on parents. Rather, it is re-thinking parenting intervention, from the ground up.  

Within this book we integrate ACT and RFT with evolution science, behaviour analysis, attachment theory, emotion-focused and compassion-focused therapies into a cohesive framework. The book is grounded within our new ACT model: the parent-child hexaflex.

In addition, the book is jam-packed with original techniques, experiential exercises, metaphors and meditations.

Yes! This book was written for readers with various levels of previous exposure to parenting intervention.

In fact, we include theoretical chapters reviewing the core parenting literature including the behavioural and the emotional-relational literature.

In addition, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy the Clinician’s Guide to Supporting Parents contains chapters on the therapeutic relationship and case conceptualisation. 

It will fit just fine!

We have consciously built what we ourselves wanted: a cohesive, integrative framework from which professionals can flexibly draw on the entirety of existing parenting research and intervention.

Within this book we integrate ACT and RFT with evolution science, behaviour analysis, attachment theory, emotion-focused and compassion-focused therapies.

In addition, we include a chapter specifically focussed on integrating ACT with other interventions.

Any professional in the fields of parenting intervention or parent support may find Acceptance and Commitment Therapy the Clinician’s Guide to Supporting Parents helpful.

Probably! The book is jam-packed with original techniques, experiential exercises, metaphors and meditations, many of which can be applied to other populations and presenting problems.

If you read all the ACT books but just don’t work with parents, I wouldn’t scratch this book off the list.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy the Clinician’s Guide to Supporting Parents is divided into three sections:

(1) theoretical and scientific background, focused on the key theoretical frames used in the book, as well as reviewing the emotional-relational and behavioural literature;

(2) the bedrock of clinical practice covering the therapeutic relationship and case conceptualisation; and

(3) ACT processes with a chapter for every process within our parent-child hexaflex and a final chapter on integrating ACT with other interventions.

The parent-child hexaflex is the backbone of this book.

It expands the hexaflex used in ACT more broadly, to include the parent, child and the parent-child relationship in a developmentally appropriate way.

It also integrates compassion into the model. The parent-child hexaflex, hence, has seven inter-related processes:  

  1. Values and proto-values.
  2. Psychological contact with the present moment including shared psychological presence.
  3. Experiential acceptance of parent, child and relationship.
  4. Flexible languaging.
  5. Flexible perspective taking.
  6. Compassionate context including self-compassion, compassion for others and receiving compassion from others.
  7. Committed action and exploration.

Both! The field of parenting science and intervention is often split into two worldviews: the relational-emotional (including attachment theory) and the behavioural.

However, we take the stance that conflict between these two camps is not genuine and productive scientific conflict, but rather pseudo-conflict.

We maintain that an evolutionary, contextual paradigm is wide enough to contain both.

Within this book we have done the best we can to move beyond the pseudo-conflict and point towards a united parenting science and intervention approach grounded within an evolutionary, contextual paradigm. 

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy the Clinician’s Guide to Supporting Parents covers the full spectrum of child development from infancy to adolescence.

Further, towards the end of each ACT Process chapter we take the time to discuss the ACT process considering four key developmental periods: infancy, early childhood, middle childhood and adolescence.

In case studies and examples, we did our best to cover the full spectrum of common parenting challenges that professionals see again and again including child anxiety, neurodevelopmental disorders, behaviour and conduct problems, sleep challenges, bullying and peer problems, perinatal loss, marital conflict and parental depression.

At the end of each ACT process chapter we take the time to make specific comments on working with different populations.  

Yes! All of the ACT process chapters contain a clinical case to clearly illustrate both case conceptualisation and the use of specific techniques.

Yes! There are free resources on this site. Please click here to access them.

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