The Meaning of the Child Interview: Assessing Risk and Resilience in Parent-Child Relationships Through the Way Parents Speak about their Child'

The Meaning of the Child Interview (MotC: Grey and Farnfield 2017a, 2017b) is a recently validated
procedure for assessing problematic parent-child relationships. It is based upon the insights of
attachment theory into how parents defensively distort information when threatened, and the
impact of trauma upon the meaning parents give to their relationships and experience. The MotC
was developed out of work in the UK family court system, and now is being increasingly used in
working with ‘at risk’ families in child-protection, adoption, and infant mental health settings. Its
distinctiveness lies in its power to distinguish between and shed light on the nature of different
kinds of ‘at risk’ relationships, rather than simply identifying or scoring them. The workshop will
compare extracts of parental discourse with clips of videoed parent-child play to explore links
between how parents speak about their child with the relationship observed in face-to-face
interaction. Participants will have the opportunity to actively engage making sense of some of the
ways endangered parents defensively distort the meaning of their child's experience, the impact of
this on the relationship, and developmental risk to the child. Dr Grey and Juliet Kesteven run
Cambridge Centre for Attachment, which seeks to integrate the use of procedures that assess
attachment and caregiving in assessment and intervention with ‘at risk’ families in the UK. They are
Visiting Lecturers at the University of Roehampton, teaching on the MotC and other aspects of
parent-child relationships.