Smart Love Family Services professionals are available to present workshops on a wide range of parenting and child development topics to parents, educators and health professionals. Our workshops are presented at schools, parent groups, day care centers, businesses, churches, synagogues, community centers, parks, agencies and other organizations. You can either select a topic from the list below or suggest your own. For more information, please email us at contact@smartlovefamily.org.​
NEWBORNS
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Parenting: What’s it all about
All babies are born with a starter supply of happiness and a desire to be close to their parents. This workshop covers the goal of parenting, the foundation of self-esteem and how day-to-day parenting decisions will foster your baby’s inner well-being and optimism about the world. Includes practical strategies and illustrative examples.
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Parenting Together: Joys and challenges of parenting as a couple
A couple’s relationships with each other and with their child are the most powerful tools in raising a happy and successful child. This workshop presents a loving approach to parenting that will enhance your relationship with your child, strengthen your partnership and help you enjoy parenting more. Common parenting concerns and ways to resolve them in effective and positive ways are addressed.
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Infant Development: What to expect in the first year
This workshop outlines important developmental milestones and helps you understand your baby’s behavior at each stage of development from birth to 18 months. You will learn what is reasonable to expect and how best to promote your child’s healthy development and foster his inner well-being and happiness—every parent’s desire. Features practical parenting strategies, numerous examples and an open forum to discuss specific concerns.
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Sweet Dreams: Helping your infant fall asleep happy
All babies come into the world with optimism and a desire to be close to their parents. This workshop helps you understand your baby’s age-appropriate developmental needs and how to help her fall asleep lovingly and respond to her cries. We will also discuss the need to balance the life-changing experience of parenting an infant with your own need for sleep. The first half of the session will be informational. The second half will be an open forum where parents can share challenges, ask specific questions and troubleshoot situations with the instructors and other families.
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TODDLERS AND PRESCHOOLERS
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Smart Routines: Eat, Play, Potty
This workshop provides advice on setting child-friendly routines around meal times, playtime and choosing to use the potty. The focus is on understanding what is developmentally appropriate at each age and then helping children enjoy these important life skills free from power struggles and conflict. Learn how to recognize your child’s motives and how to balance his desires with his health and safety. Includes many practical tips to safeguard your child’s emotional health during the toilet-choosing process.
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Real Deal on Self-Esteem: Understanding how your child’s mind works.
This workshop outlines the most up-to-date research on infant and child development. You will learn that your loving, responsive and caring relationship with your child is the most important factor in helping her develop healthy self-esteem. We will also discuss how to use discipline in a way that preserves your child’s self-esteem and your relationship. We will show you that it’s never too late to begin building a more positive relationship with your child no matter her age or parenting styles used in the past.
Child Development: Knowing what to expect at each stage of development
This workshop covers important developmental milestones and helps you understand your child’s behavior at each stage of development. You will learn what is reasonable to expect at each age and how best to respond to promote your child’s healthy development. The result is a close and loving relationship for you and your child that will last a lifetime.
Discipline Redefined: How to effectively manage your child’s behavior.
This workshop shows you that you no longer have to resort to hard discipline or soft permissiveness to guide your child. There is a better, more enjoyable way. We will show you how to stay in charge of your child’s behavior while building his own capacity for healthy self-control. The result is that you will raise a child that grows up to be a happy and successful adult who makes positive and constructive choices in his life.
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Sibling Rivalry: How to resolve conflicts and promote a peaceful, fun and cooperative family life.
This workshop provides guidance on creating a more peaceful family life on a daily basis. We will help you understand why siblings fight, how to help each of your children feel he or she is important and how to handle tricky situations such as homework, bedtime and vacations.
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Sweet Dreams: Helping your young child fall asleep happy
This workshop helps parents understand young children’s age-appropriate developmental needs and how to lovingly help them fall asleep, respond to their cries, getting up at night, wanting to sleep with you, etc. We will also discuss the need to balance the life-changing experience of parenting a young child with your own need for sleep.
SCHOOL AGE CHILDREN AND TEENS
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School Readiness: Planting the seeds for school success
This workshop presents an understanding of how young children become successful learners and how their parents can help them start their school years off on the right foot. We will show parents how to foster curiosity, a life-long love of learning and the self-regulation they will need to succeed.
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Back to School: Helping your child succeed in school
This workshop helps you understand how children view learning and what parents can do to instill the joy of learning in their children. You’ll learn how focusing on children’s effort, rather than the grade they get, helps them enjoy the learning process during class time and homework time. Also includes solutions to make returning to school after vacation breaks less stressful.
Peer Relations: Helping your child navigate the world of friendships
The elementary and middle school years are a time of intense focus on friendships. This workshop discusses ways to help children navigate the occasionally stormy seas of peer relations. We will help you understand the nature and goals of friendship, the relationship ideal and its effects on how your child forms friendships and the impact of children’s age-appropriate belief that they can make their friendships go exactly how they want them to.
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Bullying and Teasing
This workshop addressed the causes and effects of teasing and bullying, and how to recognize when a child is the target or the bully. We will help you understand the most effective ways to help children in these situations and the important role of parents in helping their child make positive choices in life, including seeking out healthy friendships.
Internet Safety: How to keep your kids safe in cyberspace.
This workshop covers Internet safety guidelines within the context of child development. We will discuss the potential risks in the ways children use the Internet and how parents can help them use the Internet while keeping them safe.
Taking Teens Seriously as People
Many parents hope that their teens have learned to take good care of themselves while they are no longer around to guide them in their everyday lives. This workshop helps parents understand adolescent development and common behaviors that can be perplexing or difficult. We will help you re-connect with what it’s like to be a teen and what teens need from parents and caregivers. You will learn how teens’ minds work and what they need psychologically to thrive so that you build close, loving relationship with your teen so that she will turn to you for guidance rather than to unhealthy behaviors. Also covers how to manage and regulate adolescent’s immature or problematic behavior in a way that fosters self-esteem and resilience.
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SPECIAL NEEDS
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Smart Love Approach: Parenting children who have been diagnosed with ADHD/ADD
This workshop helps parents regulate their child’s active behavior or inattention while protecting his self-esteem. You will learn a new alternative to traditional discipline that you can use more effectively to help regulate your child’s behavior. Parents will learn how to strengthen their relationship with their child while supporting his constructive and positive motives.
Smart Love Approach: Fostering healthy self-esteem and self-regulation in children with special needs
This workshop helps parents recognize and understand the unique strengths of their special needs child; how to foster an inner self-worth in their child that transcends her disability or condition; and how to strike the right balance in accommodating the child’s disability while still maintaining an enjoyable family life. Also addresses parents’ own feelings of loss and anger over having a special needs child.
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Smart Love Approach: Helping children and their families cope with childhood chronic medical illness
Having a chronic medical illness can have a profound effect on how children with this condition feel about themselves. This workshop helps parents understand that the way that they care for their child can have an important impact on how he learns to cope with his medical condition. Includes many family intervention strategies to help parents manage a chronic illness and maintain an enjoyable family life.
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Smart Love Approach: Helping children and families cope with loss
This workshop helps parents, teachers and caregivers respond to children who have experienced a loss in their lives such as, divorce, trauma, an adoption, serious health issues, a new baby or a grandparent moving in/out of the family. Parents, teachers and caregivers will learn how to recognize behaviors that show a child is trying to cope with a loss, how to understand the loss and how best to respond to the child.
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HEALTH PROFESSIONALS
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Applying Intrapsychic Humanism to understanding and treating eating disorders
This workshop addresses the meaning behind eating disorders in the context of child development and caregiving, as well as how psychopathology gets expressed in the eating disorder. We will discuss how to effectively apply the principles of Intrapsychic Humanism™ to the treatment of eating disorders, which helps patients develop a healthier inner well-being and self-esteem.
Psychosocial interventions for children with chronic medical illness
This workshop outlines how the dimensions of a child’s illness affect psychosocial adaptation, what types of illnesses put children at highest risk of mental health problems, and how to recognize medical, psychological, social, family and school adjustment issues. We will review the types of mental health services available to address psychological issues for children with chronic medical illness.
Helping pediatricians identify childhood mental health problems
This workshop outlines the need for mental health services and how pediatricians can recognize mental health symptoms, such as depression and anxiety; disruptive disorders, such as ADHD; and family stress disorder in children. You will also learn how mental health problems affect medical care and the special case of children with chronic medical disease. Also includes a discussion of available mental health services to address childhood mental health problems.
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The Smart Love Approach: Understanding social-emotional development in children.
This workshop explores how a child’s mind develops through childhood, how self-esteem is built and fostered and the importance of the caregiving parenting relationship from the perspective of Smart Love. You will learn a new and effective way to manage children’s immature behavior, called “loving regulation,” that doesn’t rely on harsh disciplinary measures.