JOIN US ONLINE for a special scheduled class offering*
Art & Science of Transplanting Children
Course Start Date: January 15, 2026
Thursdays 12:00PM – 01:00PM PT
Runs for 8 weeks
The impact of disrupting a child's attachments, regardless of the reason — and even when in the best interests of the child — can be deep and profound. This course makes sense of what happens and provides a way through to resolving these challenges to ensure that healthy development and well-being are not compromised.
* although students can take this course anytime on their own, this is a special opportunity to benefit from a guided learning experience with Neufeld Institute Faculty. Former and current registrants of this course can enrol in this class for $50 CAD.
Scheduled Class Details:
📌 Course Start Date: January 15, 2026
⌛ Duration: 8 weeks
🗓️ Thursdays: 12:00PM – 1:00PM PT
🏷️ Tuition: $250 CAD per person
We invite your participation in this Scheduled Class offering of 'Art & Science of Transplanting Children', where you will gain further insight from Neufeld Institute Faculty members Michele Maurer and Bree Jordan. They will offer a rich tapestry of unique perspectives, all within the attachment-based developmental approach.
Scheduled Classes combine Dr. Neufeld’s video lectures and supplementary course material with live faculty-facilitated support sessions. These interactive weekly classes are designed to deepen your understanding of Dr. Neufeld's teachings. It is a unique opportunity to join our experienced faculty and other students online to ask questions, discuss key insights, and explore practical applications.
All of the classes are recorded. If you miss a class, you can keep pace with the group by viewing the recordings at your own convenience during the week.
Please note: you will receive access to the course one week prior to the start date.
There will be some material to review before the first class.
Meet our experienced faculty member, who will support you in this course
Couple and Family Therapist
Langley, British Colombia, Canada
Michele is a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a niece, a cousin, a wife, a mother and a singer. She works with couples, parents, expectant and newly parenting couples in her private practice in Langley. Michele has 30 years experience providing counselling for individuals, couples and families, in mental health care and non-profit organizations.
Counselling Therapist
Winnipeg, Canada
Bree considers herself fortunate to work in a clinic where the practice is heavily informed by the insights from the Neufeld paradigm. She also takes on private clients both in-person and online. Bree enjoys teaching, whether it is informally in consultation with parents and families, or more formally through delivering and supporting courses.
COURSE SUMMARY
Transplanting children — whether this occurs as the result of remarriage, removal, adoption, parental loss, or change in custody — constitutes the most difficult challenge in raising children. Like plants, it is all about their attachment roots; unlike plants, it is a great deal more complicated. From his years of experience with transplanted children and the adults involved with them, and his profound knowledge of attachment and human vulnerability, Neufeld makes sense of this most daunting of human challenges: raising children who were born to other parents. Insights as to the dynamics involved set the stage for helping children re-attach when needed, restoring the context in which to raise them. The objective of this course is to provide a working map for all those who are involved with transplanting or transplanted children.
SUITABILITY/APPLICABILITY
This course is addressed primarily to all the adults involved directly and indirectly in caregiving, parenting, and teaching children who have not been born to the parents who are currently responsible for raising them. This includes adopted children as well as children in the care of foster parents and step-parents. It also includes children in group homes and orphanages. The course is also useful to the relatives and supporting cast of such children and their families.
Dr. Neufeld has a reputation for being able to address all the players involved with such children at the same time, thus providing them with a common understanding and a common vocabulary.
SAMPLE TOPICS
- how attachment is meant to develop and how transplanting can impact this development
- a comprehensive model of attachment that is especially useful in applying to the challenges of step-parenting, foster-parenting, and adoptive-parenting
- how to best support the adaptive process in transplanted children
- how attachment can be preserved even when the child is separated
- the developmental nature of grieving the loss of a parent
- why transplanted children may have difficulty re-attaching
- the signs and syndromes associated with disrupted attachments
- why transplanted children are more likely to be aggressive and oppositional
- why conventional discipline is counter-indicated and what to do instead
- resolving "competing attachments" where the child only accepts one "mom" or one "dad"
- why transplanted children need to "adopt" their new parent and how to best support this process
COURSE OUTLINE
The course is structured into eight sessions, with each session including approximately one hour of instructional video from Dr. Neufeld.
- Session 1 — Becoming attached
Neufeld’s six-stage model of attachment is introduced, as are the conditions required to fully develop the capacity for relationship. The construct of attachment depersonalization is introduced. An attachment problem checklist is presented for participants to use. - Session 2 — Why children need to attach
The two main functions of attachment are introduced and expanded upon: firstly, to render the child receptive to being taken care of, and secondly, to foster growth and maturation. The failure to re-attach renders a child resistant to care and oppositional in behaviour. - Session 3 — Fostering attachment
Six ways of fostering healthy working attachments are presented and discussed. - Session 4 — The impact of separation
The separation complex consists of six major problems, all rooted in unbearable separation. A problem checklist is introduced to help identify and diagnose the separation complex. Also discussed are strategies for reducing the separation that transplanted children face. - Session 5 — Impediments to re-attachment: protective shyness
Transplanted children often experience great difficulty re-attaching to "new" parents. One of the most significant problems is the existence of competing attachments that the brain deems critical for survival. Three guiding principles for resolving and neutralizing these competing attachments are presented. - Session 6 — Impediments to re-attachment: defensive detachment
A second major impediment to re-attaching is the reversal of attachment instincts caused either by hypersensitivity or by facing separation that is too much to bear. This defensive reaction also underlies a number of diagnoses common to transplanted children. Strategies are provided for defusing this challenging dynamic. - Session 7 — Keeping children safe and helping children adapt
Strategies are presented for reducing the wounding that transplanted children often face by the nature of both their attachment history and their current attachment constellations. Also presented are ways of dealing with aggression and of priming much-needed adaptation. - Session 8 — Disciplining Transplanted Children
Transplanted children are often more difficult to discipline as a result of the typical dysfunction that results in the wake of a separation complex. Methods of discipline that are effective, attachment-safe, and developmentally sound are presented.
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Charity & Non-Profit Status
The Neufeld Institute is a registered Canadian charitable organization under the name Neufeld Institute Foundation and is also registered as a NPO in British Columbia. If you would like to make a contribution to us, please go to our donation page.
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