The Meaning of the Child Interview: A new procedure for assessing and understanding parent–child relationships of ‘at-risk’ families

Abstract

Reder and Duncan's well-known studies of the 1990s on fatal child abuse drew attention to how parental scripts regarding their children could dangerously distort relationships in ways that were sometimes fatal to children. This article reports on a new system for assessing the 'meaning of the child to the parent', called the Meaning of the Child Interview (MotC). Parents are interviewed using the established Parent Development Interview, or equivalent, and the transcript of the interview is then analysed according to parental sensitivity and likely risk to the child. The MotC constructs were developed from those used in observed parent-child interaction (specifically, the CARE-Index) and the form of discourse analysis used in the Dynamic Maturational Model - Adult Attachment Interview, allowing a more systemic and inter-subjective understanding of parenting representations than often put forward. This article discusses the theoretical background to the MotC, gives a brief review of similar measures and then introduces the coding system and patterns of caregiving. The validity of the MotC is addressed elsewhere.

Feeling ‘like you’re on … a prison ship’ – Understanding the caregiving and attachment narratives of parents of autistic children

“…Winnicott (1967) called the mother a mirror to the infant’s gaze, with the infant learning who they are from how they are seen. Subsequent mentalising research has supported this suggestion that the meaning the parent gives to their child’s experience has a formative effect on the development of the child (Grey and Farnfield, 2017a, 2017b; Luyten et al, 2017). In addition, there is a growing body of evidence attesting to the presence of significant trauma, mood and mental health disorders experienced by parents of autistic children prior to the birth of the autistic child (Bolton et al, 1998; Demir et al, 2008; Jokiranta et al, 2013; Montaque et al, 2018; Roberts et al, 2013, 2014, 2015).…”

“…This model adds a substantial constructivist lens to attachment theory in focussing on the patterns of meanings that shape the parent-child relationships. It is also systemic in its focus on explaining the nature of the relationship rather than a capacity of the parent and the ability of the MotC to discriminate different struggling relationships in clinically relevant ways rather than simply score or identify psychosocial risk (Grey and Farnfield, 2017a).…”

“…The MotC patterns infer a self-protective or child-protective function (or meaning) from analysing parental discourse rather than face-to-face behaviour. In doing so, the MotC links caregiving to the wider context (both present and historical), moving beyond the parent's individual functioning (Grey and Farnfield, 2017a).…”

The Meaning of the Child Interview (MotC) – the initial validation of a new procedure for assessing and understanding the parent-child relationships of “at risk” families

“…There is an increasing call for the use of evidence based approaches both in the assessment of children and families generally, and in the assessment of attachment specifically (Crittenden, Farnfield, Landini, & Grey, 2013), but for this to happen, procedures and methods of analysing them need to fit the context in which they are to be used. A fuller account of the theoretical background and contribution of the MotC is given elsewhere (Grey and Farnfield 2017); this paper gives an introduction to the contribution of the MotC, and then reports on the initial validation study of the procedure.…”

Reflections on assessment, diagnosis and formulation

“…This in turn embodies different power dynamics, for example, regarding how feedback can be given. These issues become more vital when questions of risk and safety become involved (Grey & Farnfield, 2016) where the cost of not getting the assessment 'right' is significant and sharing findings of an assessment, for example, with parents may be very difficult: to not fully share the assessments of 'dangerousness' may imply condoning or minimising and sharing as promotion blame, withdrawal and defensiveness.…”