Children who have experienced early trauma and caregiver losses often encounter difficulties in their school environment.  Multiple factors contribute to children feeling emotionally unsafe, and unable to tolerate the feelings of shame, and lack of competence, that they encounter in this setting. This workshop will assist professionals in assessing whether a child is able to tolerate their learning environment, interpreting a child’s school based behaviors accurately and advocating for interventions that meet the child’s needs. Successful adaptations for children with trauma will be explored.

This workshop will address common concerns for children whose early experiences included food deprivation or food scarcity. Participants will understand how to look at the relationship between current feeding challenges and how they relate to safety, attachment and relational security. Attachment based strategies for responding to difficult eating and feeding behaviors will be presented and participants will hear creative interventions for shifting a child’s beliefs and experiences of eating.

This workshop will demonstrate relationships between early trauma, implicit memories, and sleep issues. Environmental adaptation in early brain development prepares children for the perceived risks involved with sleep resulting in behavioural patterns that are hard to shift. Participants will learn how to intervene with trauma informed, attachment based interventions when children persist in maladaptive sleep patterns based on early experiences.