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Higher-Ability or Non-Compliance? Developmental Neurogenetics Informed parenting interventions for “difficult” children.
November 4, 2023 @ 9:00 am – 1:00 pm
Join us for an in person Quarterly Parent Seminar with a three-hour training (certificates available), lunch, and trauma informed childcare! All foster, adoptive, and relative caregiver parents, plus the teachers and professionals who support our families and children are invited. To register, complete the form below. For payment, use the paypal QR code or bring cash or check in person.
Training Description Summary:
15-20% of young people are “sensitive” to the effect of their environment. This sensitivity manifests itself in multiple ways, including increased behavioral, emotional, and learning challenges, which predisposes them to become easily dysregulated, defiant or bored; but also to being empathic, creative and intelligent in very unrecognized ways. Our difficult, disordered, disrespectful, disorganized, defiant, and disabled child will be explored in this presentation through theory and research to help parents and teachers conceptualize “difficult” children’s challenges by using practical interventions to enhance the environmental support needed for their optimal development.
Full Training Description:
“What if the children about whom we worry most were actually those with the greatest promise? What if those youth whose lives are marked by turmoil and difficulty were plausibly heirs to the brightest, most creative futures? What if seemingly blighted and troubled childhoods could give way, under conditions of encouragement and support, to adulthoods bearing not simply normal lives and passable achievement, but deep, rich relationships and inspired accomplishment? What if even the very real burdens of a child’s uncommon fragility could be reshaped, under responsive conditions, into the tangible advantages of human resilience? What if, in short, the apparent frailties and disarray of some young lives were redeemable – through the alchemy of nurturing families or communities and transformative care?
– W. Thomas Boyce, The Orchid and the Dandelion
Research suggests that 15-20% of young people are “sensitive” to the effect of their environment. This sensitivity manifests itself in multiple ways, including increased behavioral, emotional, and learning challenges, which predisposes them to becoming easily dysregulated; but also to being empathic, creative and intelligent in very unrecognized ways.
In essence, these children have brains that become easily bored, question rules and authority, and require constant stimulation. This is just because of the way they are neurobiologically wired. Thus, the same neurobiological wiring (which is determined by the interaction of genes and environment) that results in them having emotional, social, behavioral, and learning challenges, is the same that allows them to feel at a very early age the injustice in the world. Thus, they are interested in complex social, political, and philosophical issues at a very early age.
Instead of seeing these children as difficult, disordered, disrespectful, disorganized, defiant, and disabled, this presentation provides the theory and research to help parents and teachers conceptualize “difficult” children’s challenges by using practical interventions to enhance the environmental support needed for their optimal development.
Expert Therapist Trainer Bio:
Thedy Veliz, MBA, MA, LMFT is a child and family therapist in private practice in Los Gatos, California who is currently working on a PhD in transformative studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He works with children which he deems “Non-Formulaic” and has developed a therapeutic approach that primarily depends on coaching caregivers to utilize interventions that take into account these children’s sensitive nervous system. This approach is informed by diverse fields including attachment theory, developmental neurobiology, genetics, evolutionary science, and the science of the individual – a conceptualization of the science of learning that expands on how sensitive children are at a disadvantage in traditional educational systems due to the difference in the way they take in the world, process information, react to stimuli, remember past experiences, learn, make meaning, and develop adaptive defensive behaviors to survive in an environment in which they don’t feel safe and understood. Veliz has a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering, a masters in business administration, and a masters in counseling psychology. Prior to becoming a psychotherapist, he held positions in engineering design and finance management at energy and technology companies.
