THE FOLLOWING TRAINING'S ARE BEING OFFERED ON FRIDAY

SESSION A (8:00AM-10:00AM)

A1 (KEYNOTE SPEAKER & PANEL OF ADOPTION EXPERTS) What to Expect When You Didn’t Expect to Raise a Child with Special Needs: An Overview
Thanks to a fictional mother named Eve, parents of children with ADD/ADHD, ASD, and other mental health conditions, developmental disabilities, and behavior disorders are learning that, although parenting a child with special needs is quite different from raising a child who is developing in a typical manner, there is a predictable course to the special needs parenting journey. Eve grew from the startling similarities in feelings and experiences revealed by parents of kids with special needs in the book Easy to Love but Hard to Raise: Real Parents, Challenging Kids, True Stories (DRT Press, February 2012), a collection of essays about what it’s really like to raise kids with “invisible” disabilities. Kay Marner, the book’s co-editor, combined those common truths to create the composite character, Eve, and wrote her fictional life story, in what she believes to be the first and only attempt to quantify and describe the typical course of the special needs parenting journey.  Trainer: Kay Marner

 A4  Astonishing Listening
Parents and professionals serve the critical, and corrective, function in being able to witness their children with a more dispassionate, clear-seeing eye.  All too often we are engaged in what are we going to do about someone, rather than how we will be with someone. One of the more difficult challenges facing parent in helping their children is to develop compassionate empathy. All too often, helpful parents & professionals are too busy telling children what to do, think, or feel, rather than actually listening to them. During this session Jeff will address barriers to listening, the difference between open and close ended questions and seeing and feeling the bridge that compassionate empathy makes in having relationship with others.  Trainer: Jeff Cotton, MFT


SESSION B (10:15AM-12:15PM)

B1  What to Expect When You Didn’t Expect to Raise a Child with Special Needs: An In-Depth Discussion
In the keynote address, conference attendees were introduced to “Eve,” a fictional mother whose life story captures and describes the typical course of the special needs parenting journey. In this interactive workshop, participants will discuss the five distinct stages of the special needs parenting experience, from infanthood through young adulthood, and the feelings and dilemmas typical of each stage, and answer the question: How closely does Eve’s story match your experiences raising a child with special needs? Participants will leave knowing:  YOU ARE NOT ALONE!  Trainer: Kay Marner

 B2  The Disappointed Parents: Reconciling the Grief of Unmet Expectations
Parent grief and disappointment is often the unidentified reason parents of foster and adopted children seek professional services.  Parents report being disappointed in their experiences, in their children, in their families, in the system and in them self. The prolonged and intense emotional impact on these families ranges from anger, sadness, depression, and even relinquishment of the child.  Families describe being unprepared.  Parenting a child with mental health problems and/or extreme behaviors is not unique to children in the foster care system.  Parents and helpers become exhausted in their efforts to ‘fix’ the child who has problematic behaviors or explaining their child to others. This workshop address these issues as a normative crisis for foster/adopt parents and discusses way to cope and reconcile.  Trainer:  Deena McMahon, MSW, LISW

 B3  Trauma Doesn’t Tell Time
In the first year or so after adoption of a child from foster care, it’s easy for adoptive parents to remember what a difficult journey their child has been through.  As time passes, parents expect their children’s challenging behaviors, anxiety, and mistrust to fade away.  And oftentimes, they do.  So why does an adopted child still react when lunch is delayed by five minutes if they haven’t gone hungry in eight years?  Why is it still difficult for them to trust that moms and dads will meet their needs?  Trauma Doesn’t Tell Time will help adoptive parents understand exactly why – despite years in a safe and loving home- children adopted after traumatic beginnings still feel and act as though they are stuck right in the middle of their trauma.  Trainer: Robyn Gobbel

 B4  Caring for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning Youth in Foster Homes
LGBTQ youth are present within many foster homes and yet, because they are socialized to hide their orientation they are often invisible to the foster parents who care for them.  Most foster parents have inadequate practice knowledge about this population and as such may rely on myths or stereotypes to guide them.  Child welfare systems are now seeking ways to build competency in this area and improve practices and policies that effect LGBTQ youth.  In a non-threatening, affirming environment, this workshop will provide information, tools and strategies to build competency to care more effectively with LGBTQ youth in foster families.  Trainer: Gerald P. Mallon, DSW

 B5  Relevant Skills/Real Stuff: Helping Kids Manage Their Decisions, Communication and Anger
One of the greatest keys to empowering our children/youth is to equip them with relevant skills to help them navigate through the real stuff they are contending with in their everyday lives! This training targets three specific skill topics: positive decision making, assertive communication and effective anger management. Participants will gain an in-depth understanding of what skills we can realistically teach our children/youth to help them climb this mountain of stuff and how we can teach these skills in a way that they buy into it! This course is tailor made for parents of children ages 10 to 17!  Trainer: Tommy Ross

 B6  How to Speak with Kids about Difficult Things
Sympathy is particularly non-therapeutic for abused and powerless children who often see themselves as damaged. Sympathy inadvertently supports the view of their damage while empathy supports their wholeness and wellness. This training will focus on recognizing the myriad differences between sympathy and empathy, practicing transforming sympathy to empathy and asking wide-open questions to engage the witness inside the youth.  Trainer: Jeff Cotton

 

SESSION C (2:00PM-4:00PM)

 C1  What to Expect When You Didn’t Expect to Raise a Child with Special Needs: An In-Depth Discussion
In the keynote address, conference attendees were introduced to “Eve,” a fictional mother whose life story captures and describes the typical course of the special needs parenting journey. In this interactive workshop, participants will discuss the five distinct stages of the special needs parenting experience, from infanthood through young adulthood, and the feelings and dilemmas typical of each stage, and answer the question: How closely does Eve’s story match your experiences raising a child with special needs? Participants will leave knowing: YOU ARE NOT ALONE!  Trainer: Kay Marner

 C2  The Disappointed Parents:Reconciling the Grief of Unmet Expectations
Parent grief and disappointment is often the unidentified reason parents of foster and adopted children seek professional services.  Parents report being disappointed in their experiences, in their children, in their families, in the system and in them self. The prolonged and intense emotional impact on these families ranges from anger, sadness, depression, and even relinquishment of the child.  Families describe being unprepared.  Parenting a child with mental health problems and/or extreme behaviors is not unique to children in the foster care system.  Parents and helpers become exhausted in their efforts to ‘fix’ the child who has problematic behaviors or explaining their child to others. This workshop address these issues as a normative crisis for foster/adopt parents and discusses way to cope and reconcile.  Trainer: Deena McMahon

 C3  Trauma Doesn’t Tell Time
In the first year or so after adoption of a child from foster care, it’s easy for adoptive parents to remember what a difficult journey their child has been through.  As time passes, parents expect their children’s challenging behaviors, anxiety, and mistrust to fade away.  And oftentimes, they do.  So why does an adopted child still react when lunch is delayed by five minutes if they haven’t gone hungry in eight years?  Why is it still difficult for them to trust that moms and dads will meet their needs?  Trauma Doesn’t Tell Time will help adoptive parents understand exactly why – despite years in a safe and loving home- children adopted after traumatic beginnings still feel and act as though they are stuck right in the middle of their trauma.  Trainer: Robyn Gobbel

 C4  The Challenges that Foster Children Face While in Public Schools
This session focuses on the many challenges that foster children face while in public school, preventing them from succeeding both in an academic and behavioral sense.  During the presentation, foster parents will examine the challenges including relationships between the child and their teachers, lack of transcripts lack of attendance and high dropout rates, as well as be equipped with strategies designed to help them become stronger advocates for their foster child.  Trainer: Dr. John DeGarmo

 C5  Reconciling Dreams, Banishing Guilt & Overcoming Grief
The emotional impact of parenting a child with special needs begins at diagnosis and continues throughout the child’s life. In this workshop, Jolene identifies the emotional responses that are universal to any special needs diagnosis, including lost dreams, guilt, and grief. The manifestations of the emotions are described. Strategies and supports available to families are also be explored. The information presented in this workshop was gathered during interviews with more than fifty parents of kids with special needs, educators and health care professionals who support them.  Trainer:  Jolene Philo

 C6  What to Do When Your Buttons Get Pushed
Many individuals have an extremely high rate of reactivity with self and others.  Buttons are seen as the “emotional baggage” from the past. They can wreak havoc on their ability to enjoy healthy relationships and are often at the core of much of their interpersonal conflicts, struggles and dramas. This training lays the foundation for individuals to see buttons in a new light; not as something to get rid of, but rather how to be in relationship with their own buttons and the implications it has for true freedom. Trainer: Jeff Cotton