Grooming good community skills:  Effectively dealing with challenging behaviors

The primary focus of this workshop is to equip parents and teachers with the critical skills needed in helping children with special needs incorporate into the community. It will show teach parents and teachers how to help children with Special Needs adapt to their school, and community environments with greater ease.  This is probably an area in which parents and teachers of children with special needs experience a high degree of anxiety.

This workshop focuses on teaching parents and teachers with skills that enable them to avoid behavior problems when taking their children to public places such as the supermarket, the movies, or the doctor’s office. Our children need and deserve the opportunity to participate fully in their community.  If your child's behavior problems include aggression, self-mutilation, throwing self on floor, screaming, biting, difficulty going to a restaurant, grocery store, doctor's office, and other necessary places, this workshop is for you. Some specific areas of focus for this workshop will include: 

• Identifying and addressing environmental stimuli that may be offensive or irritating to your child that may be causing their inappropriate behaviors. 
  

• Assessing your child's level of behavior difficulty and establishing developmental appropriate goals and objectives designed to address the problem behaviors. 
  

• Learn about developing Behavior Supports or SPECs (Structure, Physiological, Environmental, Communication, and Sensory issues) to help normalize and improve your child's behavior.
  

• Learn how to develop effective work and social schedules to reduce your child's anxiety and improve their basic self help skills (work, getting dressed, and ready for bedtime).
  

• Learn how to identify and address environmental sensory issues like lighting, noises, and temperature, and even certain colors may be contributing to your child's behavior problems.
  

We've all been through it; the embarrassment of our children running and screaming in public places and refusing to go to certain necessary places such as the dentist, grocery store, or to the mall. There are effective methods for dealing with these challenges. The solution is often times more simple than we think.  Come and learn about common techniques that have been proven on hundreds of children with special needs that you can implement to help that special child in your life. The presence of a diagnosis should not mark the absence of having a full social life. Our children are a part of this world, and as part of this world, they deserve to derive the most from it.