This article asserts that a traumatized mother, to maintain her psychobiological homeostasis, must avoid intersubjective connection with a child who
is seeking it to regulate his own distress. In this case, what Lou Sander
described as a “moment of meeting” cannot take place (Sander, 1995, p.
590). Case examples are used to illustrate how, when all are together in the
consulting room, the reflective, mutually regulating therapist can facilitate
moments of meeting between therapist, a mother who has been subjected
to interpersonal violence, and her child, who has similarly been traumatized. Furthermore, I show how the therapist, in the face of the child’s
traumatic reenactment in play that can further trigger and dysregulate
the traumatized parent, can intervene to coconstruct meaning, for both
the traumatized child and mother, obviating mother’s need to avoid the
child’s distress and post-traumatic re-experiencing. This allows meeting to
occur, reordering the implicit relational knowing of both mother and child.