When children carry histories of trauma and parents bring their own unhealed attachment wounds, cycles of misattunement and disconnection can quietly shape family life.

Whether in adoptive families or biological ones, these patterns often repeat across generations—leaving both parents and children struggling to feel safe and connected. This session introduces paired attachment therapy, an approach that helps repair these hidden wounds by addressing the needs of both parent and child, creating space for new patterns of trust, attunement, and healing.

Key takeaways:

• How unspoken attachment wounds emerge in parent–child dynamics
• The unique challenges of adoptive families and parallels in all family systems
• Paired attachment therapy to restore safety, attunement, and trust
• Strategies for breaking generational cycles and fostering secure connection

For many children who've endured abuse, the perpetrator's voice doesn't disappear—it becomes part of their inner world. This training will help you identify when that dynamic is at play and where to start intervention.

You'll learn to:

• Recognize behaviors that signal internalized perpetrator dynamics
• Assess dissociation and defensive adaptations in children and teens
• Apply polyvagal, EMDR, play, and expressive arts interventions in treatment
• Support safe, healing relationships with non-offending caregivers

Trauma reshapes the developing nervous system, leaving kids struggling to feel safe, brave, and connected. This session gives you practical tools to restore regulation and resilience—using polyvagal and somatic strategies that can be applied in therapy, schools, families, and community settings.

You'll learn how to:

• Spot the behavioral and physiological signs of dysregulation across settings
• Use somatic and sensory-based tools—grounding, breathwork, movement—for immediate intervention
• Adapt polyvagal, EMDR, expressive arts, and sensorimotor psychotherapy techniques for children
• Engage caregivers, teachers, and community partners to build trauma-informed networks of support

Children and teens who experience trauma often carry more than symptoms—they carry beliefs about safety, trust, and self-worth. But trauma doesn't just create wounds; it can also spark transformation. This session explores how post-traumatic growth (PTG) helps young people move beyond survival toward resilience, meaning, and connection.

You'll discover how to:

• Differentiate recovery, resilience, and transformation—and why kids need all three
• Spot the five core manifestations of post-traumatic growth in youth
• Shift from symptom management to strengths-based, belief-focused care
• Use narrative, body-based, and creative tools to help kids rewrite their stories and reclaim hope

Walk away with a practical framework to guide kids from cycles of fear and limitation into lives shaped by strength, gratitude, and purpose.

Parents and caregivers often avoid difficult truths, believing they're protecting their child—yet this avoidance leaves children confused, lonely, and disconnected from their own stories. This session will give you the tools to help families break through the silence, speak the unspeakable with sensitivity, and build narratives that restore safety and connection.

You'll learn how to:

• Support caregivers in moving past avoidance to create developmentally sensitive narratives that heal rather than harm
• Transform posttraumatic play into pathways for truth-telling and coherence
• Use attachment-grounded explanations to strengthen caregiver–child connection

When children with FAS, NAS, ADHD, or ASD also face significant social adversity or trauma, the effects are magnified. This session offers a holistic, trauma-informed lens to understand these overlapping pathways while giving you practical tools to support resilience and healing.

You'll learn:

• How prenatal substance exposure and trauma compound developmental challenges
• Symptoms of underlying neurodevelopmental and emotional needs
• Strategies to connect behavior with its drivers—from sensory and executive challenges to overlooked health needs
• Family partnerships to create safe, stable environments that foster recovery and growth

Even the best therapeutic strategies can fall flat if children don't feel safe in their closest relationships. True healing happens when parents step into their role as primary co-regulators—helping their children's nervous systems shift from threat to safety. This session equips you to bring parents into the process with simple, evidence-informed tools that foster connection, resilience, and recovery.

You'll learn to:

• Recognize cues of safety and threat that shape child–parent interactions
• Apply co-regulation strategies for parents—breathing, grounding, rhythm, and repair
• Translate neuroscience into everyday language parents can understand and use
• Partner with families without blame, building systems of safety across home, school, and community

For some children, trauma rewires the stress-response system so that safety cues backfire—turning calming strategies into triggers for panic, meltdowns, or aggression. When adults misinterpret these explosions as defiance, the cycle of trauma deepens. This session reframes “out of nowhere” behaviors through the lens of vagal reversal, showing clinicians how to advocate for kids in homes, schools, and communities with a systemic, compassionate approach.

Key takeaways:

• Vagal tone reversal and its role in explosive trauma responses
• Flooding, physiological arousal, and hidden signs of distress
• Systemic roles of adults in recognizing pain versus defiance
• Resilience research highlighting the power of one caring adult

Many clinicians think dissociation in children is rare and tied only to extreme trauma—but it's actually common, adaptive, and shows up in everyday clinical work. Misunderstanding can leave kids mislabeled, ashamed, and unsupported.

This session gives practical, evidence-informed strategies to recognize, normalize, and address dissociation across all developmental stages.

Key takeaways:

• Recognize the full spectrum of dissociation —from subtle attention shifts to full depersonalization—and finally make sense of it.
• Use the window of tolerance to explain dissociation clearly to clients, families, and schools.
• Concrete interventions tailored to each developmental stage that actually work in real-world settings.
• Reduce shame, build resilience, and create systems of support that stick.