Parenting Children with Developmental Trauma

Are You Parenting a Child or Teen Living with the Impact of Early Trauma? This 12-week online course helps you understand your child’s unmet developmental needs—and shows you how to fill in the gaps so healing can begin.

You’ve tried the rewards charts, using a calm voice, the firm consequences... and nothing seems to work. This program goes beyond behavior management to help you rebuild what your child missed developmentally—from the bottom up.

Program Details

12-Week ONLINE Parenting Group
Led by Andrea Chatwin, MA, CCC | Clinical Therapist and Parent Educator
11 Prerecorded teaching videos sent weekly to your inbox
10 Live Zoom discussion sessions (options to accommodate different schedules)
Parent Handbook
Private Facebook page to engage with other group members for support and strategies
Resources for meeting your child’s unique needs

Next Group Begins: September 30, 2025 (Register here)

IS THIS COURSE FOR YOU?

You're doing everything you can but nothing feels like enough and your frustrated with the lack of progress.

Do you find yourself experiencing any of these parenting struggles?

Attachment difficulties—your child doesn’t trust, connect, or seek comfort the way other children do even though you have been parenting them for a long time.
Defiance or oppositional behavior—no matter what you ask, they resist and refuse even when it doesn’t make any sense to do so.
Lying, stealing, hoarding food—even when you are consistently meeting their needs.
Tantrums, aggression, or complete shutdowns—over every little thing that doesn’t go their way, sometimes even when they do get what they want.
Constant conflict—with you, with siblings, with peers or teachers
Developmental delays—your 10-year-old acts more like a 4-year-old emotionally
Peer struggles—your child pushes others away, can’t maintain friendships or seems to get obsessed over one peer and wants to control the relationship
Lack of motivation—no matter how much encouragement you give or incentive you provide they don’t seem to want to try anything new and don’t strive for success.
Sleep issues—bedtime battles, night-time anxiety or increased energy, constant waking
Taking all your time and attention—leaving little room for your other kids, your partner or yourself

If you’re nodding along to more than one of these… you’re not alone and it’s not your fault. You’re parenting a child whose early life didn’t give them the foundation they needed—and that’s exactly what this course is designed to help you rebuild.

COURSE OVERVIEW:

Filling in the Gaps of Missed Experiences

This 12-week course will help you move beyond traditional parenting techniques and into a therapeutic, developmentally informed approach—one that starts with understanding what your child missed, not just what they’re doing "wrong."

We'll explore how trauma in the first 12 years of life impacts emotional regulation, attachment, and brain development—and how to recreate those essential experiences in your current parenting, even if your child is much older now.

We will walk through developmental stages from 0-18 months all the way to adolescence and address how missed experiences at each stage result in the types of behaviors and patterns of relating to others that are the toughest to shift. No matter what age your child is at now you will benefit from understanding what they need help catching up on and what will be coming in the years ahead.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:

How trauma disrupts cognitive, emotional, social, and neurological development
The reasons or missed skills behind the behavior—so you stop feeling confused, triggered, or terrified that things might get worse.
A framework for understanding your child’s multiple developmental ages and how they impact behavior and attachment.
Therapeutic ways to respond to defiance, lying, aggression, and other harmful behaviors.
How to build trust, safety, and connection—even when it feels impossible.
How to create a personalized parenting plan to meet your child where they are, rather than where their chronological age expects them to be.

THIS COURSE WILL HELP YOU:

✔ Understand your child’s behavior & ways of interacting with the world through a trauma lens

✔ Respond instead of react—using calm, intentional, therapeutic tools that have been planned.

✔ Shift out of survival mode into a sense of confidence in responses to complex issues.

✔ Build your child’s sense of self, safety, and trust in YOU!

✔ Feel more confident, less alone, and more equipped to meet daily challenges.

What Parents are Saying

"Andrea helped us stop seeing our child as ‘difficult’—and start seeing what he actually needed from us to feel safe and connected."

Foster Parent

Smithers BC

"I finally understand why my child hoards food, lashes out, and lies about everything. More importantly, I now know how to respond in a way that helps her feel safe enough to consider other alternatives to her current behavior."

Adoptive Mom

Calgary AB

"I don’t want to sound dramatic, but this course was life changing for our family, particularly for me and my partner but also for our teen. We learned so much about what she needed from us to FEEL safe, and it was surprising. We had no idea that under all that defiance was a scared kid who didn’t know how to do what we were expecting her to do and still be able to protect herself."

Adoptive Dad

Surrey BC

"I didn’t realize when I decided to parent my two nieces that their first two years of life would have such an impact on their as they got older. We struggled to feel connected, struggled with behaviors and school was a huge source of stress for everyone. This course gave me the insight I needed to see how I could try to give them what they didn’t get in those first two years. Once I focused on that instead of the current problems we were experiencing, I started to see things change."

Aunt & Parent

Winnipeg MB

About your Facilitator

Andrea Chatwin, MA, CCC Clinical Therapist

Founder of A Child’s Song

With over 20 years of experience supporting families navigating trauma, adoption, and complex emotional needs, Andrea’s work is rooted in compassion, clinical insight, and the belief that healing always begins with connection. Andrea is an adoptive parent of two teenagers and has therefore experienced firsthand the unique challenges of parenting through adoption. She founded A Child’s Song because of her passion for supporting adoptive, foster and all permanent families in developing strong parent child connections. She is committed to providing parents the tools they need to be therapeutic parents.

WHAT’S INCLUDED:

11 Prerecorded teachings with weekly scheduled release dates
10 Live Zoom Q & A discussion sessions with Andrea Chatwin (morning & evening options will be provided)
Printable workbook + resources
Customizable parenting plan templates
Private Facebook page for peer and facilitator support
Ongoing access to tools and materials even after the course ends

HOW IT WORKS:

Join from anywhere—your home, your car, your phone
Listen to prerecorded sessions anytime during the week leading up to the live discussion
Join live sessions to discuss the previous teaching topics (morning or evening options)
Follow discussions on Facebook to ask questions, get feedback, and connect in a supportive space that can only be accessed by group members.

RESERVE YOUR SPOT NOW

Parenting Developmental Trauma: Filling in the Gaps of Missed Experiences

📆 Spots are limited to ensure a safe and supported group experience. Everything is included for $887 + tax.
The next group runs from September 30, 2025 through December 9, 2025.

STILL HAVE QUESTIONS? Email the facilitator directly: info@achildssong.ca to confirm that this group is a good fit for YOU!