Jordyn Lebovits — Attachment & Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC) Lab
“I work in the Attachment & Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC) Lab here at the University of Delaware. ABC is a parent-child treatment approach designed to help parents provide the best quality care they can for their children. Most of our parent participants have experienced some early childhood adversity such as neglect, drug abuse, growing up in a low socioeconomic household, having parents in prison, etc. Specifically, the intervention aims to teach these traumatized caregivers how to correctly nurture their distressed children, follow the lead of their children, and avoid frightening behaviors towards their children, so that they can provide their kids with better childhoods than they had themselves. There are many different working parts to the lab, but I work as an ANS technician. What that means is that I place electrodes on parents and infants to monitor and record their heart rates and their blood flow. Depending on which stage of the intervention the participants are on, they complete specific tasks as I record this physiological data behind a one-way mirror. Some tasks involve just the child, some only the parent, and some both the child and the parent together. I love working in this lab because, as a nursing major, I really enjoy helping people, and I truly feel like the ABC Lab makes a direct impact on people’s lives!”