Location
Urban Strand - Navarro
Focused Area
Youth-At-Risk in Urban Settings
Relevance to Focused Area
This workshop ties directly into the “Urban Setting” theme. By helping school, community and support staff better understand the emotional and behavioral challenges of youth who have experienced childhood trauma, the content strengthens attendees’ skills in developing and enhancing relationships with self-defeating students. Secondarily, it also supports the “Rural Setting” theme, since such problems and behaviors are not limited to urban settings.
Primary Strand
Mental & Physical Health
Relevance to Primary Strand
This workshop relates directly to "Mental and Physical Health" strand. It offers staff a deeper awareness of the incidence and impact of childhood trauma on students’ health and behavior. It also teaches them to recognize and respond therapeutically to four self-defeating patterns of behaviors common to such youth.
Brief Program Description
Many children and youth in being served as “at-risk” have experienced childhood traumas, and have learned to become relationship-wary. To avoid deeper loss and pain, many have learned to control disappointment by sabotaging relationships. This inspiring workshop explores four self-defeating behaviors, offering valuable insights and skills needed to maintain a helping role with very challenging youth.
Summary
Each year, nearly 6 million children and youth are reported to be abused or neglected, representing what many experts believe to be only the tip of the iceberg. Many of these youngsters have experienced repeated neglect and abandonment, and a substantial number have been physically, sexually, or emotionally abused, leaving them relationship wary. Nearly 500,000 children and youth are in foster care, and most have been in numerous placements, transitioning from extended family members to various foster parents, some to groups homes or juvenile justice/mental health facilities.
Whether encountered in classrooms or communities, these youth offer unique challenges to educators, counselors, and support staff. To avoid deeper loss and pain, many have learned to control disappointment by sabotaging relationships with caring adults. They push us away in anger, then call us back in desperation, creating unhealthy (and exhausting) “rubber-band relationships.”
This inspiring workshop first explores the incidence and impact of childhood abuse and neglect among children and youth in the foster care / group home system. It then examines four common self-defeating behavior patterns, aggression, passive-aggression, dependency, and avoidance, emphasizing the relationship sabotage nature of each. It closes by offering valuable insights and skills needed to avoid relationship traps and instead maintain an effective helping role with each dynamic.
Though these concepts have clinical roots, they are presented in a practical, easy-to-understand manner, and reinforced with moving video clips, vivid case stories, and thought-provoking small group exercises. Participants receive a useful handout, and electronic access to a valuable article summarizing the content, both of which they may freely share with colleagues. (Note: While this workshop is based on the presenter’s TBM foster care training program, the session is purely educational in nature.)
Evidence
This workshop offers information and insights grounded in research by Drs. Nicholas Long (Conflict Cycle), Fritz Redl (Life Space Interviewing), and Sandra Bloom (Trauma-Informed Care). The practical application of such theory is based on the presenter’s 25+ years of classroom instruction, research, training, and university teaching.
Format
Individual Presentation
Biographical Sketch
Dr. Steve Parese began his career as a wilderness counselor and special educator, working special needs youth in a variety of therapeutic, community, and correctional settings. Since leaving his teaching position at George Washington University in 1998, Steve has become a well known international speaker and author. He specializes in crisis intervention and crisis counseling for agencies serving at-risk youth, as well as workforce development for organizations serving challenging adults.
Start Date
10-25-2016 8:15 AM
End Date
10-25-2016 9:45 AM
Recommended Citation
Parese, Steve B. Ed.D., "“Leave Me Alone… Wait, Come Back!” Rubber-Band Relationships with Traumatized Children." (2016). National Youth-At-Risk Conference, West (2015-2017). 7.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/nyar_vegas/2016/urban/7
“Leave Me Alone… Wait, Come Back!” Rubber-Band Relationships with Traumatized Children.
Urban Strand - Navarro
Many children and youth in being served as “at-risk” have experienced childhood traumas, and have learned to become relationship-wary. To avoid deeper loss and pain, many have learned to control disappointment by sabotaging relationships. This inspiring workshop explores four self-defeating behaviors, offering valuable insights and skills needed to maintain a helping role with very challenging youth.
