Programs for Parents and Caregivers
Please click on the links below for more information about the programs:
(** 2020 Winter Programs)
Alpha Children: “Who’s in Charge?”
Christmas Stars
Discipline that Doesn’t Divide
DIY Photo Canvas Art Making
Emergency Preparedness for Families
Familiar Routines and New Experiences
Felt Story Make and Take: Winter Inspired
Foundations for Healthy Relationships
Kokedama Workshop
Making Sense of Anxiety
Making Sense of Counterwill
Making Sense of Preschoolers
Making Sense of Sensitive Kids
Meal Time Stress and Nutrition
Nourish: Why food and relationship belong together
Parenting with Positive Discipline
Raising Children in a Digital World
Speech and Language Development
**Tears, Tempers, and Turmoil: Understanding Frustration and Aggression
You’re Not the Boss of Me: Understanding Resistance in Children
Very Berry Jam Making
Why Play Matters for Emotional Health and Well Being in Kids
Parenting with Positive Discipline
A workshop for parents and caregivers of children (0-6 years old). The principles of Positive Discipline will help you and your family feel encouraged and empowered through non-punitive parenting methods that help kids develop the valuable social and life skills needed to thrive. Key ideas: Disciplining with kindness and firmness; Reducing power struggles; Encouraging personal responsibility; Finding joy in parenting.
Date & Time: TBA
Emergency Preparedness for Families
The session will cover general emergency preparedness including workplace and personal and family. The goal is to provide information to ensure you and your family are prepared. It also covers what is required to develop your personal and family emergency plan, and how to conduct a Hazard hunt and what to do when an earthquake strikes.
Date & Time: TBA
Felt Story Make and Take: Winter Inspired
Children enjoy a variety of felt stories and songs during out circle time! Be inspired and learn to make your own set for home. Join other parents and caregivers and indulge in some creativity during this hands-on workshop. Learn tips on how to further enrich and encourage literacy and language development in your own home. *Patterns, materials, stories/songs, and childminding will be provided*
Date & Time: TBA
Making Sense of Preschoolers
No one is more susceptible to being misunderstood than the preschooler. Precocious, brazen, obsessive, endearing, hysterical, impulsive, anxious, delightful, unreflective, dogmatic, generous, unstable, aggressive, resistant, compulsive, and anything but consistent. Dr. Neufeld leads us into the interior landscape of the preschooler in this six-hour DVD sessions. He will provide insight into their shyness, separation anxieties, aggression, resistance, oppositionality and more. Making sense of these confusing yet wondrous creatures lays the foundation for intuitive and fruitful interaction with them. Childminding and light supper (for children) provided.
Cost: $60 | Facilitator: Eva Svensson
You’re Not the Boss of Me: Understanding Resistance in Children
Understanding resistance in children and why they say “no” has instinctual roots that are not well understood. Their need to defy, disobey, and work to rule are some of the most troubling dynamics in adult/child relationship. Although the reaction is quite normal and even healthy in certain circumstances, it can be highly disruptive and disturbing, making life difficult for parents and teachers. Strategies on how to handle this misunderstood and troublesome reaction will be discussed. Childminding Provided.
Date & Time: TBA
Nourish: Why food and relationship belong together
The connection between food and relationship has become separated from one another despite how they were meant to be intertwined. This new presentation will weave together the pieces of the feeding and eating puzzle by drawing on the fields of attachment science, neuroscience, developmental psychology, to cultural tradition. Come relish and savour in a thought provoking walk around our most basic human needs and what they unearth about what is truly essential for survival. Childminding provided.
Date & Time: TBA
Speech and Language Development
This presentation will include topics including: Late bloomer versus Speech and Language delay; Norms for Speech and Language Development in the preschool years; when to seek professional help -and what to look our for; what you as parents can do to help your child’s development and how to find a Speech Therapist. This presentation is during drop-in hours, childminding can be arranged on a one-to-one basis, talk to staff.
Date & Time: TBA
Making Sense of Anger
Some children seem to be more intense and sensitive in their response to sensory stimuli in their surroundings. We can all feel overwhelmed at times but for some sensitive kids it can get very stressful, evoking strong emotions they don’t know how to make sense of. In order to help sensitive children live in their world we need to start by making sense of them and appreciating things through their eyes. There is much parents and teachers can do to help sensitive children find rest so they can play and grow. Childminding provided.
Date & Time: TBA
Raising Children in a Digital World
The digital world is here to stay, changing our society in ways that have far reaching consequences for our children. What are the implications for raising children? How do we harness the spectacular connecting potential and yet avoid the pitfalls of attachment technology gone awry? How do we prepare them to live in this new world and yet preserve what is required for healthy development to take place? We have followed our children into the digital world and yet for their sakes as well as ours, need to restore our lead in order to avoid the insidious dangers that live in the shadows of this potent technology. Deborah will look at the digital revolution as a developmentalist committed to helping adults help children become all they were meant to be. Childminding provided.
Date & Time: TBA
Foundations for Healthy Relationships
This workshop for parents will focus on talking to their preschool children about their bodies, relationships, body safety and sexuality. The workshop is tailored to meet the unique needs of the group, always creating an open, positive and culturally-sensitive space for the participants.
Date & Time: TBA
Meal Time Stress and Nutrition
Date & Time: TBA
Alpha Children: “Who’s in Charge?”
A growing number of children are presenting as demanding, prescriptive, bossy and controlling. A disturbing number of these alpha children are turning into bullies as well. Alpha children tend to have difficulties letting themselves be parented or taught. This is making the child-adult dance much more difficult than it used to be or needs to be, despite the plethora of advice-giving and strategies available today. The surprising roots of the alpha complex will be examined, opening the doors for lasting change in the family, classroom, and society. Childminding provided.
Date & Time: TBA
Making Sense of Anxiety
As many as 20% of children qualify for an anxiety disorder diagnosis, making it the most common mental health issue. Anxiety can take many forms including obsessions, compulsions, phobias as well as other perplexing behaviors. We cannot treat something we do not understand so making sense of anxiety is fundamental in making headway. This presentation will bring a fresh and promising perspective to one of our most troubling human problems.
Date & Time: TBA
DIY Photo Canvas Art Making
Ignite your creativity and design a display worthy wall art while your children are downstairs playing in the comforts of Family Place. Bring your favourite photos to mount on a 8″ X 10″ canvas. Paints, decorative adhesives etc. will be supplied. Childminding provided.
Date & Time: TBA
Familiar Routines and New Experiences
Come make a simple visual tool for adding fun and literacy to your child’s daily routine and learn about resources to help your child adjust to new experiences. Childminding provided.
Date & Time: TBA
Tears, Tempers, and Turmoil: Understanding Frustration and Aggression
The expression of frustration and aggression in children and teens can take on many forms including temper tantrums and various forms of attack. Part of making headway requires understanding the roots of frustration and aggression and how to deal with the resulting behaviours. This presentation will focus on strategies for dealing with a frustrated child while preserving one’s relationship to them. It will address the importance of setting limits and helping children learn they can survive futilities that are part of life. Childminding provided.
Date: Wednesday, February 12th | Time: 4:30pm to 6:00pm
Cost: $20 | Facilitator: Christie Mackie, MA, RCC
Making Sense of Counterwill
Counterwill is a name for the instinctive reaction of a child to resist being controlled. This resistance can take many forms: opposition, negativism, laziness, noncompliance, disrespect, lack of motivation, belligerence, incorrigibility and even antisocial attitudes and actions. It can also express itself in resistance to learning, despite the multitude of manifestations, the underlying dynamic is deceptively simple –a defensive reaction to perceived control or coercion.
Counterwill is undoubtedly the most misunderstood and misinterpreted dynamic in adult-child relations. The simplicity of the dynamic is in sharp contrast to the trouble it creates –for parents, for teachers, and for anyone dealing with children. It creates a perplexing dilemma in that what is most demanded or expected from a child can become the least likely to be realized.
Understanding the role of counterwill in the development process is the key to knowing how to handle it. A three-pronged approach to safely defusing counterwill and to handling the resistant child or adolescent will be discussed.
Childminding provided.
Date: Wednesday, October 23rd | Time: 4:30pm to 6:00pm
Cost: $20 | Facilitator: Christie Mackie, MA, RCC
Discipline that Doesn’t Divide
One of the biggest challenges faced by parents, caregivers and educators is the safe discipline of children in their care. Given that connection is the greatest need a child has, discipline that protects this attachment is critical. Seven principles of attachment safe discipline will be discussed along with an understanding of the 4 most common principles that erode attachment and threaten development. Childminding provided.
Date & Time: TBA
Making Sense of Sensitive Kids
Some children seem to be more intense and sensitive in their response to sensory stimuli in their surroundings. We can all feel overwhelmed at times but for some sensitive kids it can get very stressful, evoking strong emotions they don’t know how to make sense of. In order to help sensitive children live in their world we need to start by making sense of them and appreciating things through their eyes. There is much parents and teachers can do to help sensitive children find rest so that they can play and grow. Childminding Provided.
Date & Time: TBA
Very Berry Jam Making
Join Diane for a fun afternoon learning the basics of healthy jam making and canning while the children are in the care of our childminders in the playroom. Take home a jar of your own homemade jam. Let’s get jammin! Childminding provided.
Date & Time: TBA
Why Play Matters for Emotional Health and Well Being in Kids
Play is fuelled by emotion and this was nature’s design. Without play, our children lose the emotional playgrounds necessary for them to flourish and mature. What does play offer a child’s emotional world? How do the primal emotions come to the surface in play? The presentation will address why play and emotions go together and what happens when this space is threatened by screens, instructions, structured activities and entertainment.
Date: Friday, September 27th | Time: 1:00-2:30pm
Cost: $20 | Facilitator: Dr. Deborah MacNamara
Kokedama Worshop
Come join us for a fun, mindful activity working with simple natural materials to make a Japanese Kokedama. Participants will be hands on in creating a beautiful moss ball plant and learn helpful tips for care to help keep new string garden beautiful and healthy. Supplies and Childminding provided.
Date: Thursday, November 14th | Time: 3:00-4:30pm
Cost: $20 | Facilitator: Sue Ellen Elman
Christmas Stars
These stars are beautiful in the Christmas tree or anywhere in your home. They have great potential to become a treasured family Christmas craft.
Date: Wednesday, November 27th | Time: 3:00-4:30pm
Cost: $5 | Facilitator: Eva Svensson
