I'm happy sharing insights & information about healthy child development, especially relating to trauma, adoption, & foster care, & posting helpful events.
Lark Eshleman Patterson, Ph.D. is a child and adolescent psychotherapist who is an expert in working with children who have experienced early emotional trauma, attachment difficulties, neglect and abuse. She became a Certified School Psychologist in Pennsylvania in 1994, is Board Certified in Domestic Violence by the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress, and has had successful careers as an elementary school principal and as a children's librarian.
Dr. Eshleman is the founder of the Institute for Children and Families (ICF) which functioned in West Chester and Lancaster, PA, from 2000 to 2010. ICF was a leading treatment center for children who suffer from the lasting effects of early trauma, and from serious and destructive breaks in the bonding and attachment process between child and parent. The Center was also the site of several research projects and proved itself to be extraordinarily successful in providing efficacious, innovative and highly successful treatment for children and their families in this underserved population of adoption, foster care, and childhood trauma. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the international organization ATTACh (Association for the Treatment and Training in the Attachment of Children).
Dr. Eshleman is trained and highly practiced in therapeutic practices of her original therapeutic model STAT (Synergistic Trauma and Attachment Therapy), Theraplay®, EMDR, EEG Biofeedback (Neurofeedback), Attachment and Narrative Therapy, Trauma Art Narrative Therapy (TANT), family and individual psychotherapy, and school psychology for children with significant trauma and attachment issues.
Her work has brought her into therapeutic contact with children and families who have suffered the emotional, psychological and neurologically damaging effects of war and other forms of organized violence. In 1997 she was instrumental in working with Rotary International, and the Rotary Club of Lancaster, PA to develop a treatment and professional training center in Croatia after the Balkan war. From 1997 through 2000 she volunteered more than 10 months at the center. She worked on a New Orleans/Houston base project called "Welcome Home" in which children returning to New Orleans schools were screened and referred for on-site programs to help them deal with the extreme stresses in their lives due to Hurricanes Katrina & Rita, and on trauma-relief teams for other natural and man-made emergencies. Recently she returned to Singapore to teach her program to professionals who will be addressing the trauma of children orphaned in natural disasters, such as the earthquakes in China in 2008.
Her publications include, Healing Emotional Trauma: Treating the Wounded Child, 3rd ed. (2009), a community-based response program for children who have been affected by war and organized violence; a video, RAD: Solving the Puzzle (2001), which received a national award in the science and medicine division of the Telly Awards. Lark's book, Becoming a Family: Promoting Healthy Attachments with Your Adopted Child (Taylor Publishing Company) was published in December of 2003 to excellent reviews, and was updated and re-published in paperback in 2005. She has been a contributor to family and professional magazines and journals, and was recently highlighted in the 3rd edition of the 2009 textbook The Development of Children published by Worth Publishers. The text is used at many colleges and universities across the United States to teach child development. Its authors are Cynthia Lightfoot, Michael Cole and Sheila R. Cole.
