Special Interest Courses:
Courses consist of home study combined with on-location meetings with Pamela. The home-study portion is completed via access to the Neufeld Institute's virtual campus, which houses course resources, a moderated discussion forum, and monthly live on-line Q&A sessions with Neufeld Institute faculty. The working "text book" for each course is a video-recordings of Dr. Neufeld teaching, and many supplementary resources are also available to students on the campus. A core component of these courses are the on-location classes in which Pamela will answer questions and discuss practical application of the approach in your family. For more information about the format of these courses, please contact Pamela.
Bullies: Their Making and Unmaking:
There are two main ways that bullies are treated in our schools and programs. First, sensitivity programs are attempted. "tell the bully how you feel!" the bullied children are told. This backfires terribly as the bullies act conciliatory in front of the adults, and then turn around and use their new knowledge to cause deeper pain and humiliation. The second standard method is to consequence the bully. A "zero policy" stance is taken in many places - the bully is suspended, expelled, timed-out, and suffers from the removal of privildges and the imposition of sanctions. Neither of these approaches has proved sucessful in changing the bully's natural inclination to exploit. This course presents a new a fresh perspective in making sese of bullies. How can we reverse the dynamics that caused bullying in the first place? There is hope here for every bully - as long as there is an adult who is willing to take responsibility to make a difference.
The Art and Science of Transplanting Children:
This course was created for those who care for or work with foster, adopted, and step children. If you work with foster children, if you are a step parent, if you have an adoptive child, this is the course for you. How does early or frequent separation impact a child, what might we expect to see, and how can we ameliorate those effects? Why does the step-parent naturally tend to be seen as "wicked", and why does the foster or adoptive child yearn for their birth parents even though they are in a good situation and were resuced from a terrible one? How do these attachment forces affect our children, and how can we work with these forces to provide for these vulnerable children what they need.
The Teachability Factor:
This course was created for the teacher and school support staff. Whether you teach kindergarten, are a behavioural specialist or school psychologist, or a homeschooling parent, this material will make the difference in understanding the students in your care. What are the requisite conditions in order for students to learn? Why do some students seem to learn more readily than others, even though each has the same general level of intelligence? What are we missing when we are curriculum, approach, or skill based in our interactions with students? How can we serve both the most mature and independent student, and the student who has trouble learning and behaving? This course gets to the root of these questions, addressing the three factors that are core to our children's capacity to be taught. And if the child is immature and unteachable? Never fear, there is a fourth, fall back measure through which we can reach most any child...
Attachment Puzzle:
Finally after years of requests, Dr. Neufeld has put together a course specifically for therapists, counsellors, psychiatrists, and psychologists. This course addresses the core problems caused by attachment problems, first outlining what those attachment problems might look like, and then laying out how it is that they can affect every area of a person's life. Dr. Neufeld brings all his years of study and distillation to making sense of where diagnosable problems are borne, and what can be done about them.