Nearly every day I get an email or call about the upcoming Attachment & Trauma Network (ATN) annual conference. But I haven’t yet shared with you, dear readers, just how awesome this year’s conference is shaping up to be. So here goes.

I spoke yesterday with Dr. Liz Randolph a long-time and well-known attachment therapist. Securing her presentation was the last step in filling a 3-day conference agenda full of 30 workshops, three keynotes and a whole lot of fabulous networking. Liz is going to speak on the problematic behaviors of traumatized children and how to determine if there’s more going on than just PTSD and RAD, if the child has other disorders as well.

There are sessions about sibling relationships (both healthy and unhealthy), a lot on trauma and how to treat it, and several sessions that will be chock full of parenting techniques and ideas. This year we’ve added even more sessions on biomedical therapies and interventions for those interested in exploring how things like diet, supplements, neurofeedback, neurodevelopmental therapies, and HBOT could help their children.

The other addition is a day-long pre-conference institute that gives participants a chance to explore topics in depth. There are three to choose from:

1. Love & Logic Parenting presented by the co-founder of Love & Logic, Dr. Foster Cline. Love & Logic, for those who don’t know, is a methodology that parents and teachers can use designed to raise responsible children. The founders describe it this way:
Children learn the best lessons when they're given a task and allowed to make their own choices (and fail) when the cost of failure is still small. Children's failures must be coupled with love and empathy from their parents and teachers.

2. Parenting with Pizazz! presented by Deborah Hage, is a lively look at how to adjust our expectations of our special needs children in such a way that we accept what IS while learning techniques that have the potential to change problem behaviors in our children. Participants will gain an understanding of why what they may be doing isn’t working with their child, how the child’s disregulation is related to neurological impairment, and how to create a child-friendly family environment.

3. Biomedical Interventions for Traumatized Children will be presented by Dr. Phillip DeMio, Dawn Rossi and Lisa Porter. Dr. DeMio is a nationally known DAN! (Defeat Autism Now!) doctor whose practice now includes over 30 adopted children suffering from trauma-related issues. Dawn Rossi & Lisa Porter are two adoptive moms who through persistent research and dedication have made profound impact on their children’s trauma-based disorders through biomedical interventions. I’ve blogged about Dawn before. This day-long workshop will explore the many interventions that can heal the physical causes of a variety of disorders.

Curious yet? You should be! This is the only conference in the country focused on parenting traumatized children. To learn more go to ATN’s website. Or here’s a copy of this year’s agenda.