Presented by Maxine McClean, Occupational Therapist at Sensational Kids. 

Many children present with challenging behaviours that sometimes leave us stumped and wondering what on earth has happened! This course will help you to identify some of the reasons why your child may be presenting with challenging behaviours and will provide you with some strategies to help them to manage their feelings. Sensory Regulation refers to the nervous systems ability to regulate, organise and prioritise incoming sensory information, inhibiting irrelevant information and prioritising relevant information. This allows a child to respond appropriately and effectively to sensory stimuli in their environment and thus achieve and sustain an appropriate level of arousal, i.e. to focus and engage effectively. Difficulty with Sensory Regulation can impact on emotion regulation. Emotion regulation is our ability to understand and manage how we feel and how we respond to situations in everyday life. It impacts our interactions with others and with our environments. The inability to self-regulate can lead to behaviours such as anger/aggression, withdrawal or anxiety. As a result, children who struggle to maintain emotional regulation may have difficulties forming relationships, learning at school, transitioning between tasks and environments, and more. It is important for children to learn the skill of regulating their emotions so that they can thrive in their day-to-day lives.

Course Objectives:

• Highlight the difference between sensory regulation and emotional regulation and their impacts on everyday life and interactions.
• Understand what impacts on a child’s sensory and emotional regulation – back to basics and more
• Understand the difference between a meltdown and a tantrum
• Introduce different levels of regulation to support children in developing regulation skills.
• Understand co-regulation.
• Help parents to understand and achieve regulation for themselves in order to co-regulate children with emotion regulation difficulties.
• Identify triggers within the environment that may lead to emotional outbursts.
• Help children to identify what emotions they are feeling and use ways to express their emotions.
• Introduce strategies to support sensory regulation and tools that children can use to achieve self-regulation.
• Introduce behaviour management strategies for parents to manage tantrums/anger outbursts.

Who will benefit from attending this session:

• Parents who identify that their child:
  • Has frequent outbursts/tantrums or meltdowns
  • Has difficulty expressing themselves
  • Has difficulty regulating their emotion and behaviour
• Parents who want to improve their ability to identify emotions both in themselves and in their children, and support their children in developing the skills needed for sensory and emotional regulation.

When you purchase a course with Sensational Kids you're supporting a child in therapy. 100% of the profits from our courses go towards subsidising therapy services for children in our Child Development Centres in Ireland

What you'll get:

• 30-minute course video delivered by an Occupational Therapist from Sensational Kids. Watch in your own time for up to 30 days after you purchase the course.
• Course slides for download
• Course certificate

For questions on this course please contact [email protected]