Foundations of Confident Parenting
Our interactive workshops combine practical parent-tested strategies grounded in evidence-based techniques and a supportive community. Parents* gain immediate access to functional, straight-forward tools to support them in meeting parenting challenges. During the six interactive workshops, parents have the opportunity to ask for specific help to apply the tools to their most pressing challenges. There is also a full hour open Q & A in the seventh week.
- Learn to identify why challenging behavior occurs
- Learn to generalize these understandings to new situations to reduce disruptive behavior
- Use this knowledge to help (rather than discipline) your child in challenging circumstances
- Learn to set your child up for success
- Learn to grow your child’s flexibility without reinforcing tantrums
- Become aware of common limiting beliefs, habits and emotional barriers that can interfere with effective parenting
- Create new thoughts and habits that uplift and support both you and your child
- Learn to trust and grow your parenting skills
Workshops are 60 to 75 minutes each and take place via Zoom
*Professionals who participate gain critical skills to provide ongoing support to parents.
Full and partial scholarships available. Email [email protected] to apply
Workshop 1 - Introduction to Six Strategies for improving interaction and reducing challenging behavior
APC teaches six strategies that, combined, are able to help parents address challenging behavior and navigate most parenting challenges. APC not only provides information about the strategies, but also teaches parents how to implement these strategies in real life circumstances. By using these strategies, parents learn how to interact more comfortably and effectively with their children and gain confidence in their parenting skills.
Workshop 2 - What your child's behavior is trying to tell you
A substantial factor underlying challenging behavior is the child’s dysregulation. This workshop helps parents understand some of the underlying causes of dysregulation in their child, and how to prevent or reduce it. In the workshop, parents learn how to identify skills their child may need to develop better self-regulation and how to teach coping skills. The workshop also offers parents tools to maintain and model their own self-regulation in the face of highly emotional interactions with their child.
Workshop 3 - Growing self-regulation skills and setting your child up for success
Another factor contributing to dysregulation is a demand on the child that is too far above his current skill level. In this workshop, parents will learn how to help their child grow by setting goals that offer a comfortable amount of challenge without causing tantrums and meltdowns. Parents learn how to set their child up for success in the areas they find most challenging. They also learn how to layer incremental successes to create substantial gains.
Workshop 4 - Setting boundaries and guiding your child to positive behavior
Setting boundaries is an important parenting responsibility, but helping our children learn to cooperate with those boundaries can be tricky and can result in problematic behavior. This workshop helps parents learn to identify the need that the child’s unwanted behavior is serving and the . Such understanding can help parents avoid unintended reinforcement of unwanted behavior. We also discuss positive reinforcement as well as when and how to effectively use consequences. Finally, we help parents understand why incentives or consequences they are currently using might be ineffective and how to consider the use of a different strategy.
Workshop 5 - Sensory needs and sensitivities, modeling flexibility and getting your child’s buy-in
This workshop teaches the three remaining strategies. We emphasize the need to be aware of sensory overload as well as sensory seeking behavior. We also help parents learn how inspire their children to want to participate in everyday activities (such as self-care, homework, chores, etc.) by combining their child’s interests with those activities. We also demonstrate how to increase cooperation by helping children understand why activities are important and how their participation will benefit them. Finally, we help parents learn how to help their children manage and reduce inflexibility.
Workshop 6 - How our beliefs, words and vision for and about our children shape our parenting
This workshop focuses on the parent and how we can replace our limiting beliefs and habits with new ones that uplift the parent and the entire family. We conduct exercises in shifting from hidden victim language to empowered language and visualizations designed to help parents combat negativity and bolster creativity. We also do an exercise designed to help parents acknowledge and release guilt. Though these exercises might seem to have little to do with autism, they are designed to address parenting stress. The research is compelling that reducing parenting stress improves outcomes in children with ASD. Finally, we synthesize all of the strategies to demonstrate to parents how much they have achieved during the series which results in increased parenting confidence and efficacy.