Neufeld-Hirose Conference: Towards Flourishing Children & Youth | Day Three

Workshop #9: Disordered and Troubled Attachments & The Current Youth Mental Health Crisis | PRESENTED BY Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D.

The alarming rise in anxiety, depression, despair, and attention problems, begs for an explanation. The prevailing premise blames the social isolation experienced during the pandemic.  When the dots are joined however, another picture emerges that reveals the attachment roots of mental health. This current mental health crisis provides us with a unique opportunity to understand the underlying dynamics, giving us a guide to better take care of our children, our students and ourselves.

Workshop #10: Towards Flourishing in Adolescence: Special Challenges in Helping Teens Navigate Their Emotional World | PRESENTED BY Tamara Strijack, M.A.

Adolescence is a unique time – no longer a child, but not yet an adult. And navigating this time seems to be more difficult these days – with the impact of social media, bullying, depression, higher rates of suicide, and increasing diagnoses of disorders. Making sense of what is going on during this time can shed light on what is needed to restore emotional health. How do we make room for all that is stirred within them on this journey from childhood to adulthood and compensate for stuckness, especially when we can often feel stuck ourselves in dealing with them? How do we make it safe to process their inner world and the often-wounding world they find themselves in. In this session, we will explore the developmental changes, the emotional drives and the body’s natural defense system that is designed to protect from too much wounding, as well as the natural ways through to emotional health.  And most importantly, we will look at our vital role as caring adults in our adolescents’ lives – whether coming as an educator, counsellor, parent or mentor.

Day Three Afternoon 12:45pm – 4:00pm: 

Workshop #11: Managing Behaviour Without Rewards | PRESENTED BY Eva de Gosztonyi, M.A.

When students have difficulty with their behaviours teachers are often advised to implement a reward system. However, developmental science and trauma research do not support these systems, warning of unwanted side-effects for children’s development. These systems are known to lose their effectiveness over time, are complicated to implement, and rarely result in long-term change. Of concern is that they can significantly affect the all-important child-adult attachment relationship, can increase anxiety even among the “well-behaved”, and can cause discouragement and a sense of shame for the student who cannot do better despite best intentions. This presentation will provide an analysis of what works and does not work, and why. Then effective alternatives to help manage behaviour in the classroom such as increasing the students’ desire to please their teacher, simple classroom alterations that can make behaving appropriately easier, and suggestions for how to respond when behaviour is challenging, will be described.

Workshop #12: When Feelings Go Missing: Moving Through Emotional Defense | PRESENTED BY Deborah MacNamara, Ph.D.

We are meant to be full of emotion but sometimes there is simply too much emotion or there isn’t time for feelings. What gets in the way of feeling? We have an emotional unconsciousness that operates outside of direct awareness. This is not a mistake, but part of the brain’s sophisticated capacity to defend and inhibit emotional awareness to serve survival needs. How does the brain inhibit vulnerable emotion? How can we create the conditions for the defenses to come down? How can we become conscious of defenses operating when they are meant to blind us in the first place? Developmental science helps to provide answers to these puzzling emotional questions.