Description
LIVE STREAM: May 13, 2026 from 8:30am – 4:00pm (Calgary, AB) 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 22, 2026. Please allow 3 – 10 business days for footage to be processed. Extensions cannot be granted under any circumstances.
May 13, 2026 | Day One
Tears and Tantrums: Making Sense of Frustration and Aggression in Children and Teens
Presented by Deborah MacNamara, Ph.D.
8:30am – 11:45am
Frustration and aggression are among the most distressing behaviours adults face in children and teens. They can show up as tears, tantrums, temper, hostility, verbal attacks, physical aggression, bullying, shaming, or self-directed harm. While the most extreme acts capture our attention, what is often more concerning is the steady buildup of attacking energy—visible in children’s interactions, language, play, fantasies, and emotional tone.
Traditional behaviour-management approaches often fail with aggressive children, and in many cases make matters worse.
In this presentation, Dr. Deborah MacNamara offers a developmental and relational understanding of frustration and aggression, reframing aggression not as a behaviour problem to control, but as a signal that something essential is missing in a child’s emotional processing. Drawing on attachment science, neuroscience, and developmental theory, this talk helps adults move beyond reacting to incidents and toward addressing the roots of aggression.
Participants will learn how frustration is meant to be processed developmentally, why aggression emerges when that process breaks down, and how adults can set limits and provide leadership without escalating attack or damaging the relationship. Particular attention is given to tantrums in young children, rising aggression in older children and teens, and how to help children learn they can survive the inevitable frustrations and futilities of life.
This presentation is relevant to parents, educators, and helping professionals who want to respond to aggression with clarity, confidence, and compassion—while still holding firm boundaries.
Play as the Missing Engine of Human Development: How Play Shapes Emotion, Attachment, and the Becoming of a Person
12:45pm – 4:00pm
Play is often treated as optional, frivolous, or something children do once the “real work” of learning and socialization is finished. Yet from a developmental perspective, play is not a luxury—it is how growth happens.
In this presentation, Dr. Deborah MacNamara explores play as one of nature’s most powerful and underappreciated tools for shaping emotion, attachment, and human development. Drawing on developmental science, attachment theory, and neuroscience, this talk reframes play as the primary way children process emotion, build relational safety, and grow into their own persons.
Play—the kind that builds brains and forwards development—is becoming increasingly endangered. Premature pressure to perform, early academic demands, structured activities, and screens have crowded out the emotional playgrounds children need most. At the same time, rates of anxiety, aggression, and emotional stuckness continue to rise.
This presentation helps participants understand why play and emotion are inseparable, how play preserves emotional well-being and attachment, and why the loss of true play has such far-reaching consequences. Rather than offering entertainment ideas or “play strategies,” this talk restores a developmental understanding of play—what it is, what it does, and why humans of all ages depend on it, especially in times of stress.
