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FULL TRAINING DESCRIPTION:
Children with FASD and other brain-based differences may struggle with cognitive skills that are easy to overlook but essential for navigating everyday life. Difficulties with flexibility, processing speed, attention, working memory, executive functioning, and conversational demands can all affect a child’s ability to follow directions, shift gears, solve problems, manage frustration, and respond in ways adults expect.
When these underlying skill differences are missed, children are often viewed through a behavioral lens and described as oppositional, unmotivated, inattentive, manipulative, or unwilling to cooperate. This training helps participants look beneath the behavior to better understand what may be happening cognitively.
Participants will explore common areas of lagging skill development, including rigidity and perseveration, slow processing pace, working memory, executive function, and the often-hidden demands of conversation. Emphasis will be placed on recognizing when expectations exceed a child’s current capacity and identifying practical ways to adjust demands, provide scaffolding, and create more successful interactions across home, school, and community settings. LEARNING OBJECTIVES: By the end of this training, participants will be able to:
- Identify common lagging cognitive skills that can contribute to challenging behavior, including flexibility, processing speed, attention, working memory, and executive functioning.
- Explain how cognitive rigidity and perseveration can affect a child’s ability to shift, adapt, and respond to everyday demands.
- Describe how slow processing pace and working memory differences can impact a child’s ability to understand and respond to directions and conversation.
- Differentiate between behavior that may appear intentional or willful and behavior that reflects a mismatch between expectations and cognitive capacity.
- Apply practical scaffolding and accommodation strategies to better align expectations and demands with a child’s cognitive abilities.
CONTINUING EDUCATION HOURS:
2 Continuing Education hours are available for Florida-Licensed Clinical Social Workers, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists, Licensed Mental Health Counselors, and Certified Master Social Workers through Florida CEBroker. Certificates will be provided to everyone, and can be utilized for self-reporting.
The Florida Certification Board recognizes this training in the areas of child welfare, and mental health. |
