Tina’s Most Requested Programs

Dr. Bryson’s specialty is the developing brain, but she has spoken and taught on virtually every possible topic related to raising and educating children who thrive. Here are a few of her most popular topics.

The Whole-Brain Child

Your toddler throws a tantrum in the middle of a store. Your preschooler refuses to get dressed. Your fifth-grader sulks on the bench instead of playing on the field. Do children conspire to make their parents’ lives endlessly challenging? No – it’s just their developing brain calling the shots! 

In this workshop, Tina Payne Bryson demystifies the meltdowns and aggravation, explaining in a clear and practical way the new science of how a child’s brain is wired and how it matures. Dr. Bryson uses stories and humor to introduce parents to twelve Whole-Brain strategies, including:

• Engage, Don’t Enrage: Keep your child thinking and listening, instead of purely reacting
• Name It to Tame It: Corral raging right-brain behavior through storytelling, appealing to the left brain’s affinity for words and reasoning to calm emotional storms and bodily tension
• Move It or Lose It: Use physical activities to shift your child’s emotional state
• Let the Clouds of Emotion Roll By: Guide your children when they are stuck on a negative emotion, and help them understand that feelings come and go
• Connect Through Conflict: Use discord to encourage empathy and greater social success

By applying these immediately practical strategies to everyday parenting, you can turn outbursts, arguments, and fears into opportunities to integrate your child’s brain and foster vital growth. The result? Kids who are happier, healthier, and more fully themselves.
 

The Whole-Brain Child in the Classroom

In their book THE WHOLE-BRAIN CHILD, Tina and Dan Siegel introduce parents and other caregivers to practical strategies based on cutting-edge brain science.  A central principle of the book is that the strategies can help parents not only survive difficult moments with their kids, but actually use those very moments to help their children thrive. In her “The Whole-Brain Child in the Classroom” workshop, Dr. Bryson takes this central concept and applies it to teacher-student interactions.  The best teaching strategies are the ones that not only help instructors maintain order and cover material effectively, but that also challenge kids to become all that they’re meant to be.  Displaying her trademark warmth and humor, Tina uses video, discussion, stories, and lots of personal experience to help her audience think more deeply about who they want to be as individuals, and how they want to interact with the young minds they’re nurturing and helping to grow.  The latest scientific research–with a special emphasis on neuroplasticity and the changing brain–is presented in a way that’s clear, interesting, and immediately practical.  One primary focus of this workshop is the importance of creating a culture within a classroom–and, even better, within an entire school–where students, parents, teachers, and administrators all recognize the crucial role of relationships in learning and brain development.

10 Brain-Based Strategies for Helping Children Handle their Emotions: Bridging the Gap Between What Experts Know and What Happens at Home & School

Dr. Bryson discusses how to reduce the backwards steps taken when a child leaves the therapy office or classroom. Therapists and teachers often feel they make good progress with a child, only to have that progress undermined when the child goes home to parents who mean well but sometimes don’t understand foundational parenting principles. Using stories, case examples, and plenty of humor, Dr. Bryson explains ten simple, scientifically grounded strategies that will help children handle their emotions better and make better decisions—even in high-stress moments.

Attendees will be exposed to the most important and frequent lessons Dr. Bryson teaches parents in her own office.  As a result they will learn to:

• Understand why emotional responsiveness is an essential intervention strategy for developing the brain and creating long-term mental health and resilience;
• Identify when parents need to make shifts at home, versus when a child actually needs therapy;
• Comprehend the connection between reactivity and the threat-detection system in the brain;
• Reinterpret seemingly maladaptive behavior as purposeful, adaptive behavior with a meaning, and how to shift it.
• Learn to communicate these basic concepts to parents;
• Understand the importance of emotional responsiveness
• Develop creative questions that reveal more about a child’s temperament, the parenting style, and family life;
• Use a sensorimotor lens to decrease emotional reactivity;
• Understand the importance of emotional responsiveness, regardless of the context or situation;
• Wait for the teachable moment, and know when to avoid talking about feelings and problems;
• Understand when to uncover and challenge a parent’s theory about a child’s reactivity;
• Distinguish between a child’s “can’t” and a child’s “won’t”;
• Allow development to happen, even if it’s not on our preferred schedule. 

Discipline Without Tears

Based on the ideas from Tina’s upcoming book.  The goal of this workshop is to help us rethink we what know about discipline, based on new knowledge about the brain, AND to get some practical tools, phrases, and approaches to start using immediately.  In this workshop, Tina addresses the discipline issues parents most often ask me about.  Discussions will center around how to make nurturing and authority go hand in hand, how to get our kids to listen better, and how best to respond to all types of misbehavior at every age.  We’ll talk about how to use new approaches to discipline that can help us get a more “thinking” response from our kids, maintain connection to our children, and lay the groundwork for optimal brain development.   There will plenty of time for questions and discussion regarding specific challenges you face.

Parenting with the Brain in Mind

What if parents had a simple and practical way to use the latest scientific research to be better parents and help their children be happier, healthier, and more successful? Parenting with the Brain in Mind introduces parents and teachers to essential and groundbreaking science in an accessible, interesting, and practical way, so they can then apply that knowledge in their breakfast-table, grocery-store, temper-tantrum, everyday care-giving world.  Drawing on cutting-edge science, this presentation will use stories and humor to teach practical information about a child’s brain and offer a new perspective on some of the most pressing concerns, along with some tools and strategies for addressing them:

• How can I help them better handle their emotions at home and in school?
• How can I discipline in a way that’s more effective and loving?
• How can a new approach to dealing with tantrums help their brain develop?
• How can I communicate more effectively with my children when they’re irrational?

The “Brain-in-Mind” perspective, along with the many practical tools that result from it, can empower parents to raise kids who are happy, healthy, balanced, and more fully themselves.

Teaching the Developing Brain

In this invigorating in-service workshop, Dr. Bryson applies her “Parenting with the Brain in Mind” insights to the classroom.  The focus is on better understanding the role of experience and focused attention on the ever-developing brain.  Using stories, examples, and a lot of humor, Tina encourages teachers to keep their own developing brains in mind as they nurture their students’ growing minds, as well as to apply their new knowledge to classroom management and their teaching styles.

The Teen Brain

Understanding the radical changes happening in the brain during the teen years can explain teen behavior, help you understand and connect with your teen, and parent or teach your teens more effectively.

Adult Attachment: My Story, My Brain, My Relationships

(How relationships have shaped our brain, and how we can break free of bad relational patterns with our children and others we love.)

The best predictor of how well children turn out is that their parents have made sense of their own history and life story.  We each have mental models of how relationships are supposed to work.  These models are based on past relationships and determine how we function in current relationships with our significant others, family, friends, and children.  In this workshop, we’ll explore what adult attachment is, what it has to do with our relationships, and the way we tell our story.  We’ll also look at how attachment experiences have impacted the way our brains work.  By understanding our experiences through the lens of our attachment style and the attachment styles of other people in our lives, we can gain insight into who we are, how our relationships work, and how to change from the inside out.

Sexual Abuse Prevention: The Time to Start Talking is Now

Statistics tell us that one-fourth of girls and one-sixth of boys are victims of sexual abuse by age 18.  The age kids are most at risk is ages 8-12!  As parents, you need to know:  How do sexual predators get access to children?  How does it happen?  Why don’t children tell?  How and when do I talk to my kids about sexual abuse?  What can I do to protect my children?  Get answers to these questions and more as we discuss how to empower ourselves and our kids against sexual abuse.