Wednesday June 4th
Christchurch - Otautahi
Session 1 - KEYNOTE A: Dr Deborah MacNamara
Beyond Behaviour: Understanding Emotional Defence and the Roots of Resilience.
Deborah MacNamara Bio
Deborah MacMamara is a clinical counsellor and educator with more than 25 years’ experience working with children, youth, and adults. She is on faculty at the Neufeld Institute, operates a counselling practice, and speaks regularly about child and adolescent development to parents, childcare providers, educators, and mental health professionals. She is also the author of the best-selling book Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (Or Anyone Who Acts LikeOne), a children's picture book The Sorry Plane, and her new book, Nourished. Deborah resides in Vancouver, Canada with her husband and two children. www.macnamara.ca
What lies beneath challenging behaviours, attention problems, and signs of stress in the children and teens we work with? As helping professionals, we often find ourselves counting and tracking behaviours, implementing strategies, and seeking solutions - yet something crucial may be missing from our understanding.
Join Dr. Deborah MacNamara, award-winning author and faculty member at the Neufeld Institute, for a fascinating exploration of emotional defense and its profound impact on children's health, development, and well-being. Drawing from cutting-edge research in attachment science, developmental psychology, and neuroscience, Dr. MacNamara reveals how emotion lies at the heart of many challenges we see in our practices, classrooms, and therapeutic settings.
This presentation offers a paradigm shift in how we view stress and resilience in children. Rather than seeing emotional defense as something to be eliminated, we'll discover its protective wisdom and learn how to work with rather than against these natural processes. You'll gain fresh insights into:
- The surprising role of emotional defense in children's development
- Two key strategies to soften the defenses
- Why emotional health should be our collective priority in supporting children
- Practical ways to recognize and foster emotional well-being in our work
While focused on children, these principles have implications for clients of all ages, offering hope and new pathways forward. Whether you're a parent/caregiver, counsellor, teacher, social worker, or other helping professional, you'll leave with transformative insights that will forever change how you view and support the children in your care.
This session bridges theory and practice, offering both deep understanding and practical applications that you can implement in your professional work immediately. Come prepared to challenge your assumptions and discover a more nuanced and effective approach to supporting children's emotional health and resilience.
Session 2 KEYNOTE A: Dr Deborah MacNamara
Beyond Behaviour: Understanding Emotional Defence and the Roots of Resilience.
Deborah MacNamara Bio
Deborah MacMamara is a clinical counsellor and educator with more than 25 years’ experience working with children, youth, and adults. She is on faculty at the Neufeld Institute, operates a counselling practice, and speaks regularly about child and adolescent development to parents, childcare providers, educators, and mental health professionals. She is also the author of the best-selling book Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (Or Anyone Who Acts LikeOne), a children's picture book The Sorry Plane, and her new book, Nourished. Deborah resides in Vancouver, Canada with her husband and two children. www.macnamara.ca
What lies beneath challenging behaviours, attention problems, and signs of stress in the children and teens we work with? As helping professionals, we often find ourselves counting and tracking behaviours, implementing strategies, and seeking solutions - yet something crucial may be missing from our understanding.
Join Dr. Deborah MacNamara, award-winning author and faculty member at the Neufeld Institute, for a fascinating exploration of emotional defence and its profound impact on children's health, development, and well-being. Drawing from cutting-edge research in attachment science, developmental psychology, and neuroscience, Dr. MacNamara reveals how emotion lies at the heart of many challenges we see in our practices, classrooms, and therapeutic settings.
This presentation offers a paradigm shift in how we view stress and resilience in children. Rather than seeing emotional defence as something to be eliminated, we'll discover its protective wisdom and learn how to work with rather than against these natural processes. You'll gain fresh insights into:
- The surprising role of emotional defence in children's development
- Two key strategies to soften the defences
- Why emotional health should be our collective priority in supporting children
- Practical ways to recognize and foster emotional well-being in our work
While focused on children, these principles have implications for clients of all ages, offering hope and new pathways forward. Whether you're a parent/caregiver, counsellor, teacher, social worker, or other helping professional, you'll leave with transformative insights that will forever change how you view and support the children in your care.
This session bridges theory and practice, offering both deep understanding and practical applications that you can implement in your professional work immediately. Come prepared to challenge your assumptions and discover a more nuanced and effective approach to supporting children's emotional health and resilience.
Session 3 - WORKSHOP A: Adrienne Wood
Peers and Screens: Making sense of the rise in poor adolescent mental health
Adrienne Wood Bio
Adrienne Wood runs her own practice: Heartsync NZ supporting parents and professionals to understand complex and challenging behaviour from a Neufeld-informed relational developmental approach. Adrienne is a former High School teacher and lecturer in Human Development. She is Mum to two now-grown kids, and is on Faculty with the Neufeld Institute.
What's causing the shocking rise in the poor mental health of our rangatahi?
We know the vital role attachment plays in the emotional wellbeing of our kids. However, we don't always understand what might be getting in the way of our connection with them. Kids are increasingly orienting around each other rather than the ones who raised them and screens are fuelling this drive like never before.
Adrienne unpacks recent research that tracks the mercurial rise in poor adolescent mental health and the consecutive rise of smartphones and risky screen use. Learn how as parents and as professionals we can shield our rangatahi from the worst of the online world using Neufeld Institute wisdom around connection, play and in finding our lead with them once again.
Session 3 - WORKSHOP B: Sandy Hitchens
An Invitation to Play: Rediscovering the innate power of play within and beyond
Sandy Hitchens Bio
Sandy is Team Leader of Neufeld Aotearoa and is on faculty with the Neufeld Institute. She works as a counsellor, supervisor and parent consultant through her private practice and in primary schools in Christchurch. Sandy enjoys opportunities to teach and present courses and workshops based on Dr Neufeld's attachment- developmental approach for parents and professionals. She loves to spend time with her husband and 4 adult children and enjoys walking, drinking good coffee and planning adventures.
Science confirms what we instinctively know - play is vital for well-being, not just for children but at every age. This experiential workshop invites parents and professionals to reconnect with their own sense of play and playfulness, offering practical ways to invite and nurture it in the children and young people they support. Together, we'll explore how adults can rediscover play for themselves and how professionals can help parents embrace play to foster emotional connection with their children and support the emotions that can otherwise get in the way of relationships.
Come curious, leave inspired and rediscover the superpower of play- how it takes care of our emotions and helps us better care for the emotional lives of those around us.
Session 3 - WORKSHOP C: Michele Maurer
Soft Hearts and Warm Invitations: Essentials for right relationships
Michele Maurer Bio
Michele Maurer is on Faculty with the Neufeld Institute and a Registered Marriage and Family Therapist with 35+ years' experience. Michele works as a relationship counsellor and parent consultant in private practice in Vancouver, Canada. She is a clinical supervisor and instructor for mental health providers across the province of BC. Michele has worked with children, youth and families in widely diverse settings, from the emergency room to a log at the beach and so many places in between. No matter the setting, connecting with people from a place of providing care is central to the work. Michele earned her master's degree in Couple and Family Therapy in 1997. Married for 25+ years, she and her husband enjoy parenting and playing with their two grown children.
Discover how and why it is vital to nurture deep, lasting connections between children/teens and adult caregivers through warmth, invitation, and cascading care. We will discuss the interface of secure relationship and mental health troubles. Explore also how insights about our most important connections help make sense of us throughout the lifespan.
This engaging talk explores the power of and the essential keys to establish and preserve attachment, even or perhaps especially, in troubling times. Whether you're a counselling professional, an educator or a parent, take home the essentials to strengthen your most vital connections.
Session 4 - KEYNOTE B: Dr Gordon Neufeld
The Current Crisis of Wellbeing: What is happening to our kids?
Gordon Neufeld Bio
Dr. Gordon Neufeld is a Vancouver-based developmental psychologist with over 50 years of experience with children and youth and those responsible for them. A foremost authority on child development, Dr. Neufeld is an international speaker, a bestselling author (Hold On to Your Kids), and a leading interpreter of the developmental paradigm. Dr. Neufeld has a widespread reputation for making sense of complex problems and for opening doors for change. While formerly involved in university teaching and private practice, he now devotes his time to teaching and training parents, educators, and helping professionals. His Neufeld Institute is now a world-wide charitable organization devoted to applying developmental science to the task of raising children. Dr. Neufeld appears regularly on radio and television. He is a father of five and a grandfather to six.>
How is it that, with children being more educated than ever and with knowledge now at our fingertips, children and adolescents are becoming increasingly more troubled? How is it that, in an age when kids are finally being seen and heard, when parenting is more child-centered than ever, when schools are finally prioritizing the well-being of students, their suffering is increasing? We have never had more mental health professionals, more advocacy and literacy around mental health, or more mental health services available to us. What are we missing here?
Never has a fresh new approach to mental health been more needed. We have largely been battling against symptoms with little insight to guide us. Dr. Neufeld will unravel this alarming epidemic, tracing the symptoms back to their developmental roots. Only when we understand how troubles evolve can we even begin to hope to address their roots, whether it is individually or societally.
Dr. Gordon Neufeld will put the puzzle pieces together for us so that we can be more effective in getting to the roots of what is happening with our kids and thus support their well-being both generally and specifically, whether at home, at school, or in treatment.
Evening Session Dr Deborah MacNamara
Beneath Behaviour: Guiding children from emotional turbulence to maturity
Dr Deborah MacNamara Bio
Deborah MacMamara is a clinical counsellor and educator with more than 25 years’ experience working with children, youth, and adults. She is on faculty at the Neufeld Institute, operates a counselling practice, and speaks regularly about child and adolescent development to parents, childcare providers, educators, and mental health professionals. She is also the author of the best-selling book Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (Or Anyone Who Acts LikeOne), a children's picture book The Sorry Plane, and her new book, Nourished. Deborah resides in Vancouver, Canada with her husband and two children. www.macnamara.ca
Every tantrum, resistance, and frustration in children reveals their developmental struggles and emotional immaturity. In this illuminating presentation, discover how to interpret these challenging behaviours in toddlers through teens that often leave adults confused and exasperated.
Learn why the path to emotional maturity is longer than we expect, and how adults can confidently guide children through developmental storms without adding to the turbulence. Rather than seeing difficult behaviours as just problems, you'll gain insights into the emotional forces driving these actions and practical strategies to lead children toward maturity.
By understanding what lies beneath the behaviour, parents, teachers, and caregivers can transform moments of opposition into opportunities for growth, helping children develop the emotional maturity to engage with the world responsibly - even when no one is watching.
Session 3 - WORKSHOP C: Kaye McKean