Self-Regulation Interventions for Children & Adolescents: Reduce Frustration, Emotional Outbursts & Oppositional Behaviors

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Laura Ehlert, PsyD Related seminars and products

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Laura Ehlert, PsyD, is a child clinical psychologist who has worked with children and adolescents with severe emotional/behavioral issues for over 30 years.  She maintains a private practice in Burnsville, Minnesota where she specializes in working with clients who struggle with information, executive functioning and sensory processing deficits, and their associated emotional, behavioral and mental health issues.  Dr. Ehlert has worked with thousands of youth in a variety of settings including hospitals, residential treatment centers, partial hospital programs, school day treatment and outpatient mental health settings.  She holds a doctorate degree in clinical psychology where her training focuses on developmental issues of childhood, and child psychopathology issues.

Professionals who have worked with Dr. Ehlert in the past have often commented that the perspectives and interventions she offers succeeded where others have failed. All behavior has function and is goal driven. Therefore, our understanding from the child’s perspective and being able to collaborate with the child to better know what information they do or don’t have in any difficult situation, is vital. If you want to resolve the problem that is creating the difficult behavior, you must first understand what is behind that behavior.

 

Speaker Disclosures:

Financial: Laura Ehlert maintains a private practice.  She receives a speaking honorarium from PESI, Inc. Laura has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.

Non-financial: Laura Ehlert has no relevant non-financial relationship to disclose.
 

Additional Info

Program Information

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Objectives

1. Communicate how sensory, language, and executive skills impairments create fight/flight/freeze and defensive responses that lead to dysregulation and related behavioural issues in children.
2. Choose the appropriate intervention strategies to improve student skills including self-control, social success, emotional regulation and task completion.
3. Employ behaviour modification techniques and problem-solving strategies to diffuse students' escalated and oppositional behaviour.
4. Implement environmental strategies to accommodate children’s processing deficits and emotional regulation needs.
5. Utilize problem-solving strategies to develop appropriate behavioural expectations and coping mechanisms for improved self-regulation skills in students.
6. Apply cognitive restructuring strategies to reduce frequency, severity and duration of children’s behavioural and emotional outbursts.

Outline

Perspective-Taking and Meaning to Improve Behaviour
The intersection of sensory, cognitive, affect and motor systems

• The “Set-up”: Child’s expectation + delayed development = failure
• Develop appropriate expectations: Pitfalls and strengths of developmental models
• Strategies for triggering triggers: Reinforcing desired behaviour
• De-escalation strategies and precursors to problem-solving

Sensory Deficits
Interdependence between sensory processing and perception

• Strategies to reduce sensory triggers
• Desensitize strategies to reset the “panic switch”
• Manage the environment to reduce sensory overload
• Experience your own dysregulation to sensory challenges

Language/Learning Deficits
Incorporate language processing into our understanding of behaviour

• Your emotional response to their language challenges
• Recognize, validate and problem-solve common language deficit triggers
• Social Pragmatics insight and behaviour
• Suggestions for accommodations and modifications for the classroom

Executive Functioning Deficits
Effective supports to overcoming EF roadblocks

• Problem-solving strategies to improve organization, working memory and metacognitive deficits
• Environments that manage fidgeting, restlessness and inattention and provide positive social-emotional regulation
• Experience how we might set kids up to fail without realizing it

Behavioural Strategies
Empower children to make positive choices and take responsibility for their behaviour

• Create realistic expectations through better understanding of the child’s process
• Successful “resetting” through behaviour modification and skills coaching
• Environmental structures and nurturing words that regulate
• Reduce tantrums and emotional dysregulation through cognitive restructuring

Problem-Solving Strategies
Teach flexibility, tolerance and decision-making

• End power struggles and the blame game
• Improve child’s acceptance and personal responsibility for behaviour
• Create realistic expectations
• Use language as a self-regulation tool

Brain Training
Increase task completion, social success and emotional control

• Music and rhythm
• Cerebellum Stimulation Training
• Brain Gym®
• Yoga & mindfulness
• Neurotherapy models
• Limitations of research and potential risks

Neuro-Biological Considerations

• Diet/food
• Supplements/vitamins
• Sensitivities/toxins
• Movement and exercise to regulate the brain

Target Audience

• Counselors
• Social Workers
• Psychologists
• Psychotherapists
• Psychiatrists
• Therapists
• Marriage and Family Therapists
• Speech-Language Pathologists
• Teachers
• School Guidance Counselors
• Case Managers
• Nurses
• School Administrators
• Educational Paraprofessionals
• Occupational Therapists
• Occupational Therapy Assistants
• Other Helping Professionals who Work with Children

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