Strategies for Working with Parents of Children With Special Needs
This three day workshop will be dedicated to strengthening your staff’s ability to communicate effectively with parents by giving them insights, practical strategies and language that are useful when the parent-professional relationship is challenged.
The workshop will train your staff to:
- Predict the times when the relationship between provider and parent may be the most conflicted, such as at IEP meetings and at times of transition.
- Understand with new depth the challenges and pain that parents face at these “touchpoints”.
- Recognize and value defense mechanisms in YOU as well as the PARENT.
- Experience the positive transformation that occurs when YOU communicate from a different perspective, with different language that has different meaning.
- Reach out to promote shared decision-making that truly benefits your student.
This comprehensive training relies on Maria Trozzi’s Conceptual Model of Grief as a Catalyst for a Strengths-based Approach.
This powerful workshop will offer insights into the psychosocial issues that affect the family of the young child with special needs; in particular, the grief 'that keeps on giving' and gets stirred up at particular times in the developmental life of the child. How do you share this information with parents in a way that best prepares parents to effectively advocate for their child? Understanding the untapped 'grief' and learning strategies that work, especially when communicating with parents about the child's progress and needs, will be explored. How do you transform your communication approach to one that relies on ‘shared decision making’ when the parent appears defensive or aggressive? How do you ‘set the table’ for success when a parent attends her child’s I.E.P meeting? What’s the best way to respond to a parent’s vision statement when the specialist knows that the vision is unrealistic, yet wants to make a positive relationship with the parent?
The training will employ lecture, lively discussion, professional insights, and opportunities to practice the Transformative Communication Model.
Day One:
Is a six-hour day that introduces and familiarizes all professionals and para-professionals who work with parents of students with special needs to communicate more effectively with parents. With video, lecture, and discussion, the participant will be able to identify new insights, practical strategies and language that are useful when the parent-professional relationship is challenged.
Day Two:
Uses the second day to coach the participant to master the ‘transformative communication’ when the parent-professional relationship is challenged. Using real-life scenarios, videos and hands-on exercises, the participant will be able to understand, consider and reframe her approach at I.E.P. meetings, one-to-one parent meetings and her team meetings.
Day Three:
Builds on days one and two to consider the foundation and theory that frame the ‘transformative communication, coaches the participant to achieve mastery and focuses attention on the initial meetings of parents, re-visiting the ‘languaging’ of giving bad news, and the leadership criteria for chairing an I.E.P. meeting, meeting with advocates and non-educator professionals.
Helping Our Young Children Develop Resilience
As They Face Life’s Speedbumps
PAC
AN EVENING WITH MARIA TROZZI: |
Words, Strategies and Wisdom that Build Resilience in Families with Children with Special Needs |
Maria Trozzi, M.Ed., Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine, Director of the Good Grief Program and author of TALKING WITH CHILDREN ABOUT LOSS, will discuss the stresses that our families face as they deal with the often complicated tasks of living with a child with a disability. She has recently concluded a two-year research study, funded by a regional center for disabilities in Los Angeles County, that explores the stresses, both obvious and hidden, that can sometimes feel overwhelming and never- ending.
She will offer strategies for help parents to understand and cope, particularly at identified ‘touchpoints’ in the developmental life of their child. She will share her nationally recognized conceptual model for working with educators that helps them ‘walk in the parents’ shoes’ in order to understand and transform even the most difficult and challenging parent/educator relationships.
Lastly, Maria, a typical sibling of a brother who is disabled, will offer insights for helping siblings cope with the losses and gains inherent in a family with a child with special needs. Her book, TALKING WITH CHILDREN ABOUT LOSS, (Putnam-Penguin) will be available for a book-signing.
For more information or to
obtain a schedule:
The Good Grief Program
1 Boston Medical Center Place, Mat 5
Boston, MA 02118
Phone: (617) 414-4005
Fax: (617) 414-7915
E-Mail: mtrozzi @bu.edu
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