Communicating with Children about COVID-19 and other Sensitive Topics and Feelings

Dr. Lauren Szyper

Training Description

The focus of this training is to support caregivers and providers of at-risk youth, including those involved in the child welfare system, in discussing sensitive matters in an age-appropriate manner. Assisting these vulnerable youth in being able to identify and verbalize unpleasant feelings and cope with them more effectively will be discussed.

Learning Objectives

• Participants will learn how to talk about challenging circumstances, such as COVID-19, in an age-appropriate manner.
• Participants will learn how to support children in learning how to identify and vocalize their emotions, especially unpleasant emotions.
• Participants will learn how to identify warning signs that a child is under stress.
• Participants will learn how to support children with age-appropriate stress management techniques.

Agenda

9:00-9:15 Time will be allotted for all participants to join and “sign-in”; Overview of the agenda; Review of training goals and objectives; Opportunity for participants to share why they chose to attend this training and identify anything they would like to be covered that may not be in the agenda or would like to go more into detail about.

9:15AM-10:30AM Talking with children about COVID-19; COVIBook (Manuela Molina); Coronavirus: A Book for Children (Elizabeth Jenner, Kate Wilson & Nile Roberts); Feelings identification with children; Labeling and identifying feelings; Modeling expression of feelings; Normalizing unpleasant emotions

10:30AM-10:45AM: Break (CEUs will not be issued for this time)

10:45AM-11:45AM California Surgeon General’s Playbook: Stress Relief for Caregivers and Kids during COVID-19 (continued); Signs of stress in children; Stress management techniques for children; Grounding exercises; Review of resources 

1:45AM-12:00PM Opportunities for final questions; Review of training objectives and assuring they have been met; Discussion of how participants will utilize what they learned in their day to day work; Complete evaluations

12:00PM:      ADJOURNMENT

This course meets the qualifications for (2.75) BBS CEUs for LCSWs and MFTs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences & is provided by Fred Finch Youth Center, CAMFT Provider #045295.