P.A.C.E. is an acronym that stands for playfulness, acceptance, curiosity and empathy. P.A.C.E. was created by Dan Hughes, an American psychologist who founded Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, or DDP for short. According to Dan Hughes, the acronym P.A.C.E. is a way of being with kids. It is a way of thinking, feeling and behaving with kids in order to connect and help kids feel safe. 

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Brief Background

Dan Hughes developed DDP as a result of working with children in foster and adoptive care, who experienced trauma from the trusted adults meant to provide care and protection to them. He noticed that the children he worked with did not respond well to the care that the foster or adoptive parents were providing to them. The children did not trust their foster or adoptive parents, which seemed confusing to Dan and each of the foster and adoptive parents. Naturally, one might think that children who were traumatized and abused would want proper care and a good home. These children, however, did not trust their new parents to provide good care and struggled to properly develop a secure attachment to their new parents. These children viewed their new parents as wanting to hurt them. They did not trust the parents intentions or motives, and they viewed routine discipline as abusive. As a result, Dan began studying these children in order to better understand them, and in response developed different interventions for both these children and their caregivers in order to foster a stronger attachment relationship between the child and the parent. As Dan has developed the DDP approach, DDP and the use of P.A.C.E. has extended beyond its original borders in working with traumatized children and has now been extended to be an effective way of working with and being with children in even stable, healthy homes where trauma or attachment disruptions have not occurred.

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​Why P.A.C.E.

Children who have experienced trauma and abuse at the hands of their parents or caregivers develop a form of PTSD widely known as CPTSD, or Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. CPTSD adds an additional layer to an already unsafe body. When there is trauma, a person's body no longer feels safe to be in. Emotions, thoughts, feelings, sensations, beliefs, memory in the form of images no longer have a coherent and integrated meaning. Each feel unsafe and unpredictable. A familiar sound, smell or association can open the door to a cascade of unwanted feelings and sensations. With childhood trauma a child not only feels unsafe internally in their own body, but they no longer feel safe with others meant to provide care and comfort. A mistrust develops between child and caregiver. How do I, the child, know how to trust that you, my parent, will provide the care and comfort I need to survive? And if I can't trust you, the parent, to provide for me, the only other person I can trust to provide good care is myself. Thus, a dependence and reliance on self begins to develop. Feeling the need to rely only on self to provide care can feel overwhelming; simultaneously, a child learns to suppress their needs and pain in order to survive, and as a result, a children then can shut the door to their inner life and inner world. Sensation, needs, emotions, thoughts can no longer feel safe to access.

 

What P.A.C.E. (playness, acceptance, curiosity and empathy) seeks to do is to create safety. According to Dan Hughes and Jon Baylin in their book "The Neurobiology of Attachment-Focused Parenting: Enhancing Connections & Trust in the Treatment of Children & Adolescents," they markt that a child needs to experience safety on "three basic levels: (1) safety to feel the pain of disconnection and to seek comfort from a trust adult; (2) safety to engage a caregiver in positive, playful, rewarding interactions; and (3) safety to share inner experiences and enter an intersubjective relationship with a trusted adult." The use of P.A.C.E. works to disarm a child's felt sense of threat and disarm their need to protect themselves, enabling them to feel safe once again in their own bodies and with others meant to care for their needs.  

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So, My Child Is Not Adopted; How Does P.A.C.E. Work?

The use of playfulness, acceptance, curiosity and empathy works with kids who are in biological families as well. The use of playfulness, acceptance, curiosity and empathy works to co-regulate a child's emotional state when feeling upset. 

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​​When a child feels dysregulated, their brain is perceiving a threat. The cortex, or thinking part of their brain, shuts down, they feel and work to fight off whatever feels threatening. At their body's core, their nervous system registers feeling a lack of safety. This can be because they actually are unsafe, or something they want is being withheld or something they have is being threatened or their sense of self is in danger (i.e. feeling rejected, feeling dismissed, etc.). The use of P.A.C.E.  works to help

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