Abbotsford - Surrey - Vancouver
  • Monday to Saturday 9am - 5pm
  • 604-562-8308

Workshops for General Parenting

A Child’s Song is pleased to offer the following workshops for parents:

Please contact us if you would like to inquire about booking a workshop for your group.
Please check the Calendar for information about upcoming events hosted by A Child’s Song.

Tackling Tough Behaviors with Effective Parenting Strategies

Responding to frustrating behaviors can often be a vicious cycle of being too lenient and regretting it and then being too harsh and regretting that too. Parents want to stay connected with their children but at the same time set necessary boundaries and limits to ensure safety and wellbeing.

This workshop helps parents to establish a well thought out parenting plan for managing behaviors. Contributors to positive parenting and the importance of conscious parenting are discussed. Parents will leave with a three step strategy for responding to difficult behaviors giving parents a framework to guide their decisions.  This is a practical workshop that will leave parents inspired to try their new strategies right away!

A Parenting Approach to Raising Mini Super Heroes

We all want to raise confident, happy children that contribute to the world in a meaningful way! But how do we do this amidst all the craziness of busy schedules, competing demands and confusing behaviors?

This workshop will touch on the key aspects of creating a home environment that grows healthy kids with superpowers of resilience, compassion and creative energy! Parents will leave with practical ideas for managing behaviors, and strengthening the parent-child relationship, through attachment focused responses that teach responsible behavior and empathy. Raising superheroes is all about giving our kids the experiences they need to have healthy responses to life’s challenges.

Understanding Anxiety: Strategies for Parenting Your Anxious Child

Anxiety is the most common mental health concern for children and can leave parents feeling helpless to make things better for their child. Knowing how to respond in a helpful way to a child’s worries and concerns, within an attachment framework, is what this workshop is all about.

If you are a parent of a child who displays:

  • complaints of frequent stomach pains or headaches

  • sleep problems or difficulty concentrating

  • avoidance of situations or places because of fears

  • difficulty separating from you (clinging, crying, and/or tantrums)

  • behavioural changes such as moodiness or a short temper

  • refusal to go to school or getting into trouble at school

  • constant worry (repetitive)

  • development of a nervous habit, such as nail biting

  • sudden and/or frequent panic attacks

…your child is probably struggling with some big feelings!

This workshop is designed to provide parents with an understanding of what anxiety is all about and how it impacts children.  It will also provide parents with practical strategies to help their children successfully manage their big feelings.

Therapeutic Play to Strengthen Parent-Child Connection

Early child therapists theorized that playing with a child, in a non-directive way, would encourage a secure relationship between the parent and child, while providing the child freedom and room to express him/herself. In the context of non-directive play, children are free to express their innermost thoughts and feelings. A child’s behavior and self-expression within the play is determined by how the child feels, and what’s on their mind, which offers parents a window into the child’s inner world.

In these special playtimes parents can learn to build a different kind of relationship with their child – one where the child feels understood and accepted as they are. When children feel accepted and understood in this way, they often will play out their problems, and in the process, release tensions, feelings and problems.

This workshop will provide parents with the how-to’s of this special playtime, as well as address parental concerns regarding their child’s response to non-directive play and about the types of play their child may engage with, and the parent’s own reactions to those choices.

Tweens Still Need to Play

Tweens need to play in order to develop into confident and competent young people. Their need for self-directed, unstructured ‘free play’ remains consistent even as they enter middle to late childhood. Technology offers children access to unlimited information and immediate social contact but it does not promote the development of self-regulation, empathy and creative thinking. These things are crucial to healthy development – in particular, the child’s ability to learn, socialize and make good decisions.

As parents we can create opportunities for unstructured and self-directed play time within our day to day life. While some of the ways in which children play may look different as they grow older the need to create, build, pretend and be self-directed remains consistent well into teenage years.

This workshop will focus on the importance of play for teens, how play can look different for this particular age group, and how to foster a playful environment in your home.

Making Sense of the ‘Senses’: Understanding Sensory Integration in Children

Sensory integration refers to how a child’s nervous system takes messages from the senses and turns them into appropriate physical and behavioral responses. Children take in information through their five senses (sound, sight, smell, touch and taste) all day long. Children react in many different ways to sensory input.

Some children crave endless amounts of action, movement and intensity. Other children appear to be perpetually overwhelmed by the input they are expected to tolerate in their day. When a child’s internal regulatory system is overwhelmed, the result is emotional and behavioral reactions, otherwise known as BIG UPSETS.

Parenting children with sensory differences can be confusing at times. Children who are sensory seekers seem to have no fear, and are often ‘too hard’ or too rough on their environment and those around them. Children who are easily overloaded by sensory information find regular daily activities such as getting dressed, riding in the car, being in crowds and having to contend with multiple noises at the same time overwhelming.  Meltdowns are easily triggered and it can be difficult to calm them.

Understanding the different ways children process sensory information can help parents to understand their child’s unique sensory experiences and set them on the path of exploring how to meet their needs effectively.

In this workshop, a clinical therapist and a paediatric chiropractor partner together to present a brief overview of sensory differences, and how to make sense of any sensory processing difficulties your children may be experiencing. A variety of different interventions and strategies will be presented, that parents can either access or implement themselves, to improve their child’s level of comfort with the world around them and continue to build positive parent-child relationships.

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