Description
LIVE STREAM: April 29, 2026 from 8:30am – 4:00pm (Victoria, BC) Please adjust your start time according to your specific time zone.
ON-DEMAND: Recorded footage & course content (certificate, videos, quiz) will be available until June 8, 2026. Please allow 3 – 10 business days for footage to be processed. Extensions cannot be granted under any circumstances.
April 29, 2026 | Day One
Making Sense of Anxiety in Children and Teens: A Developmental Approach to Alarm, Safety, and Emotional Well-Being
Presented by Deborah MacNamara, Ph.D.
8:30am – 11:45am
Anxiety is now the most common mental health challenge of childhood and adolescence. As many as one in five children and teens meet criteria for an anxiety disorder, with many more struggling below the diagnostic threshold. Anxiety rarely looks the same from one child or teen to the next. It can appear as worry, avoidance, obsessions and compulsions, phobias, panic, perfectionism, shutdown, irritability, or a range of perplexing behaviours that leave adults unsure how to help.
We cannot treat what we do not understand.
This three-hour presentation offers a fresh, hopeful, and developmentally grounded way of making sense of anxiety—one that moves beyond symptom management and behavioural control, and instead looks at what anxiety is doing, why it shows up, and what children and teens need to feel safe enough to grow.
Drawing on attachment science, neuroscience, developmental psychology, and Dr. Deborah MacNamara’s clinical experience, this presentation reframes anxiety as a state of heightened alarm in the nervous system, not a character flaw, weakness, or problem of coping skills. Participants will learn how anxiety interferes with emotional processing, learning, attention, and adaptation—and why many well-intended strategies can unintentionally intensify anxiety rather than relieve it.
Rather than asking how to make children “calm down” or “push through,” this presentation asks a more essential question: What is making it so hard for them to feel safe?
This is a deeply compassionate, insight-based approach that restores confidence to adults and offers a promising path forward for children and teens struggling with anxiety.
Making Sense of Anxiety in Children and Teens: A Developmental Approach to Alarm, Safety, and Emotional Well-Being
12:45pm – 4:00pm
Resistance and opposition are among the most challenging and misunderstood behaviours in childhood and adolescence. From toddlers who refuse to cooperate to teens who push back against every request, resistance can feel personal, provocative, and deeply unsettling for the adults who care for them.
Yet resistance is not always a problem to eliminate.
In this presentation, Dr. Deborah MacNamara offers a developmental and relational understanding of resistance and opposition, introducing the concept of counterwill—the instinctive, defensive reaction that arises when children feel pressured, coerced, or controlled.
Counterwill can take many forms, including opposition, negativism, noncompliance, avoidance, lack of motivation, disrespect, belligerence, and resistance to learning. While the expressions may vary depending on age and personality, the underlying dynamic is deceptively simple: a child or teen resisting felt coercion.
This presentation explores why counterwill is a normal and necessary part of human development, why it is especially pronounced in toddlers and adolescents, and how it is meant to serve both attachment and the development of a child’s will. Participants will gain insight into why power struggles intensify resistance, why what is most demanded often becomes least likely to happen, and how well-intended efforts to manage behaviour can unintentionally escalate opposition.
Most importantly, this presentation offers a way forward. Rather than increasing control or backing away from adult responsibility, participants will learn how to respond to resistance in ways that preserve relationship, dignity, and leadership, while respecting the developmental purpose of counterwill.
