Stop, Drop and Connect: A New Way to Handle Big Behaviors (Birmingham)

Parenting and working with children and teens through adoption or foster care often means facing big

emotions, unpredictable reactions, and behaviors that can feel defiant or confusing. Traditional parenting and discipline strategies—like consequences, lectures, or reward charts—often backfire when trauma, loss, or brain-based differences are part of the picture.

In this session, we’ll explore a trauma-responsive, connection-centered approach that helps parents move from reacting to reconnecting. Through real-life examples and practical tools, participants will learn how to respond to behaviors like raging, lying, and stealing with empathy and brain-based understanding. Instead of power struggles, you’ll discover strategies that calm the moment, build trust, and promote healing—for both you and your child.

Training Objectives:

1. Understand how trauma, loss, and neurodiversity impact behavior and emotional regulation in adopted and foster children.

2. Reframe challenging behaviors such as lying and stealing through a brain-based, trauma-informed lens.

3. Explain the concept of confabulation and use compassionate strategies when responding to perceived dishonesty.

4. Apply relational, connected responses that reduce anxiety and build safety and trust.

• FREE for foster/adoptive parents & Alabama DHR staff
• $55 for other professionals seeking 5.5 NBCC-approved CEUs