A109 Getting Through to Difficult Kids and Parents

Kids and families in today's society are faced with unprecedented challenges and stresses. These challenges are leading to a growing sense of disconnection, mistrust, and anger between kids and their parents. Kids are increasingly prone to angry and violent outbursts, displays of disrespect toward adults, feelings of inadequacy, and a hunger to connect to a "second family." Parents feel stressed, misunderstood, believe that they don't know their kids, and are confused about parental roles. This course will provide direct, practical, and innovative ways to address the challenges facing kids and families today. The instructor will draw from his wealth of experience to provide pragmatic advice to professionals as they attempt to help parents better understand their kids, provide leadership in their families, and connect to the core selves of their children.

Meet The Instructor

Ron Taffel, Ph.D., conducts workshops across the country on the problems facing kids and their families today. He's the author of Getting Through to Difficult Kids and Parents; Nurturing Good Children Now; and The Second Family: How Adolescent Power Is Challenging the American Family

Course Contents

Session 1: Diagnostic Tools and Strategies • Focusing assessment to obtain relevant information • How to use enactments and task assignments as diagnostic tools • Strategies to identify developmental and psychiatric problems.

Session 2: Temperamental Styles • Characteristics of different temperamental styles • Concrete strategies to deal with each temperamental style • Helping parents who feel misunderstood, blamed, and hopeless

Session 3: The Second Family and Reconnecting the First Family • Roots and indicators of disconnection between adolescents and their family • Concept of the Second Family • Strategies to reconnect family relationships

Session 4: Self-Esteem, Resilience, and a United Front • Strategies to nurture self-esteem in children and adolescents • Strategies to nurture resilience in children and adolescents • Importance of parental unity • Concrete strategies to help parents create a united front in the family

Learning Objectives

1. Describe clinical assessment procedures that quickly focus on relevant information about the child and family
2. Describe procedures that help to identify characteristics of temperament, and misinterpretations of kid's behavior based on temperament
3. List 5 concrete strategies to help parents provide leadership and connect with their children
4. Describe the importance of the "second family" to disconnected adolescents
5. Describe interventions to nurture self-esteem in children and adolescents