Presenter:

James D. Sutton, EdD
P.O. Box 672
Pleasanton, TX 78064
(800) 659-6628
Email: suttonjd@docspeak.com

Program Focus:

Participant Benefits:

This workshop will improve participants' ability to:

Intended Audience of this Program:

Needs Addressed by this Program:

Why is it that some youngsters can recite the behavior rules and consequences chapter and verse ... yet still violate those rules over and over again?

Why is it that it takes only one "cocked to explode" youngster to damage the learning environment for everyone?

Why is it our best strategies for managing the volatile, impulsive and aggressive youngster often don't work ... or seem only to make things worse?

These are not easy questions to answer. It's tough enough for anyone, but it's especially difficult for a child to control behavior that is slipping out of control.

Program Description:

There's nothing new about the need for anger management with this youngster. What is new is information affecting the way we look at the issue of problematic anger and how we manage it.

We know, for instance, that aggressive behavior is primarily learned behavior and that, regardless of how it looks from the outside, the aggressive child feels like a victim. This affects how the child thinks, or, in some instances, doesn't think. The highly impulsive youngster and the highly creative youngster are alike in one sense; they operate more out of "images" than traditional language. The problem is that the images of the impulsive and aggressive youngster are not pretty ones. Their behaviors follow the images.

The slowing down of impulsive thought and the damage it can create involves increased facility with language, the capacity to self-sooth and  manipulate images, and the ability of youngsters, with assistance, to rid themselves of victim status and accurately evaluate their progress. This program addresses these skills.

Program Objectives:

1. Internalize the two factors that researchers agree most influence impulsive and aggressive behavior.

2. Address why the angry child looks like an abuser, but feels like a victim.

3. Overcome what a youngster might experience as "advantages" of staying angry.

4. Grasp the concept of Emotional Bandwidth as it accounts for "normal" and problematic psycho-emotional functioning.

5. Understand  how rage operates primarily on images, not language.

6. Manage the characteristics of behavior that becomes "desperate."

7. Learn how activities and language can be used to "slow down" and even contain the rage response.

8. Teach a youngster the powerful connection between Needs, Feelings and Freedoms, and how to use them to achieve healing and better behavioral control.

9. Implement a detailed, step-by-step process for teaching a child the skills of anger management and interpersonal empowerment.

10. Employ an intervention that shows the child how to "manipulate" negative images using visualization and metaphor.

11. Consider other modalities for helping a youngster gain control over anger and destructive impulse.

Qualifications of the Presenter:

James D. Sutton, EdD

Agenda (2 to 3 hour format)