Dialogues On…Understanding Children who Struggle with Feelings and Behaviors

Dialogues On…Series:

“Understanding Children who Struggle with Feelings and Behaviors”

Wednesday, January 16, 2019

8:00 pm – 10:00 pm

Presenter: Leon Hoffman, M.D.

When children struggle they need to feel that the adults in their lives can make sense of them and do not dismiss them as impossible children who make everyone’s life more difficult. If children struggle a great deal they need to start experiencing that others do not see them exclusively through the prism of the difficulties and disruption they create but rather are mindful of their potential. In this discussion we will address:

• The importance of paying attention and trying to understand the unspoken needs of children
• How we can ascertain a child’s internal experience
• The notion that all behavior has meaning

Ideas for this topic were stimulated, in part, by A. Ionas Sapountzis (2018) Revisiting Bion’s “Notes on Thinking”: Implications for School Psychologists, Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, 17:3, 187-197, DOI: 10.1080/15289168.2018.1492821 and Leon Hoffman & Carrie Catapano (2015) Emotions Influence Cognition, The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 69:1, 296-315.

No CME or CE credits offered.