Ayeka is a groundbreaking method of treating young people and the parent-child relationship by guiding parents. It offers a transdiagnostic response to a wide range of disorders in emotional development and mental health during the childhood and teenage years. It effectively treats interpersonal, behavioral, emotional, adaptation and functioning difficulties. The method is exceptional for enabling parents to help their child even when the child is uncooperative with the parent, refuses treatment or has long been receiving other care without improvement.
The innovation lies in the transition – from assuming a particular distress in the child is rooted in a pathology, disease or disability – to understanding that the distress stems from a lack of response to the child’s need to receive from the environment a direction for his or her development. In this absence, a child sometimes veers off the path of healthy development and “gets lost.” The Ayeka therapy model broadly emphasizes the information transmitted by parent to child through their reciprocal communication, in order to direct the child’s development. Dr. Lwow developed a parental-clarity style, a form of communication that delivers clear, easily understandable messages to the child regarding the desired direction of development. Parents can thereby direct and empower the child’s development as well as encourage growth and save the child from becoming developmentally stuck.
The book uses plain language to present Ayeka’s unique approach and introduce readers–whether parents, treatment staff or educators—to the principles of the parental-clarity style. The clinical experience accumulated by hundreds of therapists guiding parents in the Ayeka method indicates that the method leads to dramatic changes, even in difficult cases and following previous treatment failures. A model relying on Ayeka’s principles was recently devised for intervention in schools and kindergartens. Hundreds of care and educational professionals have received basic instruction in the method, which is gaining increasing recognition in Israel, including study and research in major hospitals and universities.
Over 10,000 copies of “The Parent as Lighthouse” have been sold, and the book continues to arouse interest among therapists and parents alike.
Dr. Eitan Lwow, born in 1946, is a pediatric and adolescent psychiatrist and psychoanalyst by training. After years of working in public service and private clinical practice with children, teens and young adults, he conceived and developed the Ayeka method. Ayeka – an original, integrative developmental model – translates complex psychological insights into an effective, practical and accessible treatment protocol for treatment personnel and parents. Dr. Lwow established and heads the Ayeka Center for Clarity in Parenting. The center has been operating for almost two decades and has trained hundreds of therapists and educators in the Ayeka method