This theme helps participants learn how chaos, threat, neglect, and other adversity during development can alter the developing brain and that, in turn, can change the ways children think, feel and act. Participants will understand the major stress-responses we use to cope with perceived and actual threat and the reasons for and range of adaptive symptoms from inattention and distractibility to avoidance and shut-down. Also covered are the reasons for rejection and testing and recognition of the survival skills and coping strategies that result in a complex range of behaviors.

• Realize how childhood trauma, including abuse and neglect, can impact the developing brain, and how this can have an ongoing impact on the child’s development.
• Recognize the impact of trauma on behaviors.
• Understand how challenging behaviors can be coping or survival strategies caused by underlying trauma.
• Understand triggers and how they impact children’s behavior.
• Understand the main strategies we use when under threat (arousal and dissociation).
• Understand that fear and threat change the way we think, feel, and behave.

• Belief that learning information about the potential effects of trauma on children is essential.
• Accept that they will need to learn a trauma-informed way to parent.

• Learn to recognize the range of “sensitized reactions” of children who have experienced trauma and loss.