Workshops for Professionals
Partnering With Parents: An approach to collaborating with families to best meet children’s needs
This workshop presents an approach to making strong connections with parents that maximizes the chance they will register and act on the important information you have to share about how to best help their children thrive in school. This model is especially important when it comes to discussing challenging behaviors, as it builds trust with teachers that enables parents to absorb difficult information, reducing denial and defensiveness that often gets in the way of effective collaboration.
Mean Girls (And Boys): Why Young Children Act In Unkind Ways and How To Help
When children boss other kids around, say hurtful things, exclude peers, and act in other unkind ways, they are not acting mean on purpose. By and large, these kids are struggling with difficult feelings of insecurity/self-doubt and anxiety. These complex emotions are uncomfortable and hard to make sense of and cope with, even for adults, no less young children who don’t have the self-awareness or skills to deal with these emotions effectively.
In this workshop, we will explore the roots of relational aggression and how to address the underlying issues at play for kids when they are acting unkind. Effective strategies for intervening in incidents of relational aggression will also be addressed.
Nurturing Children’s Social-Emotional Development
This workshop describes how social-emotional development unfold in young children, and how to best nurture their ability to:
form close and secure relationships with adults and other children
adapt to new experiences—new people and situations
master challenges and build resilience
experience, manage, and express a full range of emotions in healthy ways
Behavior Has Meaning: Understanding the root cause of children's challenges and how to best respond
This workshop will present an approach that helps us put the pieces of the puzzle together to best understand the meaning of young children’s behavior, taking into consider:
Developmental pathway and capacities
Temperament: their unique approach to the world
Environment: their experiences in the world
Doing this detective work enables you to most sensitively and effectively respond to challenging behaviors in the classroom.
Why Is My Child In Charge?
Through my collaboration with hundreds of parents over the past 30-plus years, I have identified eight mindsets that present obstacles to parents responding to their children in the most loving and effective way during difficult moments. These include thinking they can control their child and make them behave; and, fearing that tantrums are harmful to children. In this workshop, based on my 2021 book, Why Is My Child In Charge?, participants will become aware of these mindsets—the lens through which parents filter and respond to their children’s behaviors—which offers a new approach to helping you help the parents you serve make critical mindshifts that help them see their child’s behavior more objectively and respond with sensitivity as they help them cope with life’s inevitable challenges.
Toilet Training Without Tears: Avoiding the Perils of the Potty
Unfortunately and unnecessarily, many parents today are terrified of the toilet training process, having heard horror stories from friends about the power struggles and stress they encountered. Learning this skill should not and does not have to be fraught with conflict or worse, shame. This workshop will address ways to approach toilet learning in a way that is developmentally appropriate, respectful to the child’s growing need to feel in control of his or her body, and frees parents from unnecessary stress and anxiety. The workshop will also address ways to manage typical challenges that arise during the process.
Goodnight, Sleep Tight…
Sleep is one of the most common and vexing challenges for parents. Sleep deprivation is so debilitating for parent and child. This workshop will address how to develop good sleep habits from the start, and how to address typical challenges that arise in helping children learn to soothe themselves to sleep and stay asleep throughout the night.
Defiance, Tantrums, Aggression, Oh My! Effectively Coping with Challenging Behaviors
Defiance, tantrums, “not listening” and other challenging behaviors are a natural part of the development process as children learn to cope with difficult feelings and learn to accept limits. This workshop will focus on how to help parents tune in to the underlying meaning of their children’s behavior and how to respond in ways that help their children learn to cope in positive, pro-social ways.
Limit-Setting with Love
We live in a world of limits, and the most successful people are those that have learned how to accept rules and limits and to get their needs met in positive, productive ways. So being a good limit-setter, and helping children learn to cope with life’s frustrations and disappointments, is one of the greatest gifts you give your children. This workshop will focus on how to set and enforce clear limits in a loving, empathic way, and to cope with the difficult feelings that naturally arise for both children along the way.
Understanding and Supporting Big Reactors/Highly Sensitive Children
Children who are highly sensitive (HS) by nature are wired to register their feelings and experiences in the world more deeply than other kids—both emotionally and from a sensory perspective. This means they get triggered into stress-mode more quickly than other children. They get overwhelmed and feel out of control of their big emotions and big reactions to sensory experiences which translates into more frequent and intense meltdowns and more difficulty coping with life’s inevitable challenges. This workshop will provide insight into the meaning of HS kids' behavior and what you can do to celebrate and support them.
Why Can’t You All Just Get Along? An Effective Approach to Dealing with Sibling Rivalry
Siblings do rival. It’s a fact of family life, as each child is driven to define their individuality and worth within the family system. Even so, the fighting and conflict that can sometimes seem incessant is naturally very distressing and wearing on parents who just want their kids to get along. This workshop will help you help parents understand the roots of the rivalry and offer approaches to helping siblings ultimately work through the inevitable challenges they encounter in forging their lifelong relationship.
Parenting Without Power Struggles
“You must eat 4 more pieces before dessert!” “If you don’t go to sleep this minute there is no iPAD for you tomorrow!” Sound familiar? If so, you are not alone. Power struggles are maddening for parents, and it turns out, not so good for children either. This workshop provide parents and early childhood professionals with new insights and strategies for ways to lovingly and appropriately encourage children’s growing need to assert their independence while maintaining your authority. Struggles around feeding, potty training, cooperation and others will be addressed.
Tuning in to Temperament
Temperament describes how children approach the world–how they take in and process their experiences. It is why some children rush into new experiences without looking back, and others need time and support to feel comfortable with unfamiliar situations. In this workshop, early childhood professionals will learn about the different temperament traits, how to identify their child’s temperament, and how to adapt your approach to meet the individual needs of the children in your care.