Courses & Seminars

Based on Dr. Gordon Neufeld’s series The Power to Parent and Relationship Matters

The strength and depth of our relationship with our child is the key to having the ability to parent well. Without a working relationship all efforts to teach, guide, influence and discipline will not only fail but push our child further from our intended goals.

The first part of this presentation will focus on understanding our child’s attachment needs and how parents are vital to bringing children to rest in their pursuit of their attachment needs. The second part will reveal a creative framework for reconnecting to your child in meaningful ways.

Based on Dr. Gordon Neufeld’s course Making Sense of Anxiety

Anxiety and alarm are powerful emotions that move us to take action. Understanding how the alarm system works is the focus of this presentation and examining ways we can support our children to take up a positive relationship with anxiety so that it does not hinder. This course can be adapted to parents of children or teen.

Based on Dr. Gordon Neufeld’s course The Art and Science of Transplanting Children

This presentation aims to support parents who have been separated from their children for a length of time either through overseas work, illness or long distant parenting. The focus is on understanding why parenting after separation can be challenging and ways to rebuild a strong relationship with your child built on love, trust and respect.

Based on Dr. Gordon Neufeld’s course Making Sense of Anxiety

This presentation aims to support parents who have children with life threatening allergies. The focus is on understanding the experience of anxiety, consider how it helps, evaluate how it hinders, and provides strategies to mitigate anxiety in ourselves as well as our children.

Participant Feedback For This Course: 

“Rebecca was extremely articulate and made a big (heavy) topic relateable and relevant.”

“This workshop really helped me to more fully understand my own anxiety and my child’s anxiety about her allergies. I came away with great ideas on how to move forward. Rebecca provided a warm, safe environment.”

“I appreciate the information that Rebecca Janke shared with us. I feel more confident in my ability to cope and manage my own anxiety as I support our daughter through her anxiety.”

“Rebecca did a great job connecting theory to practice and provided a concrete tips and suggestions on how to help reduce anxiety in ourselves and our children. Living with life threatening allergies is anxiety provoking for parents and children; learning to find the balance between healthy anxiety and maladaptive is difficult but now feels possible!”

Rebecca is the author of Parenting with Intention, Purpose and FUN! This is a six-week course that runs once a week for two hours or can be clustered to fit into a two day workshop.  This course is an overview of parenting with an emphasis on setting parenting goals and direction, healthy discipline, and fostering and maintaining a strong parent/child relationship.

Participant Feedback For This Course:     

“The theories on discipline were excellent and super relevant to parenting.”

“This course was so great that we passed up Canuck playoff game tickets!”

“It was helpful to look at the bigger picture and root causes to issues and then apply them to behaviour situations as well as situations where you seek to build attachment.”

“We came to the course looking to learn about attachment and discipline and the course covered these topics extensively. It was a good mix of theoretical and practical application.”

General information about the three-part Power to Parent series

This three-part Power to parent series delivers the best that developmental science has to offer to those who are our children`s best bet – parents and those who support them. The effect of the material is to restore parents to their natural intuition as well as to their rightful place in their children`s lives. The principles and dynamics apply to children of any age. Although some attention is given to the more perplexing problems of childhood, the general thrust of the course concerns issues and challenges facing most every parent.

This parent education series offers a complete approach to parenting. Rather than dumbing parents down with prescriptive solutions and superficial strategies, this series truly informs and educates so that parents can become the true experts in their children’s lives. The basic attachment and developmental needs of children are uncovered so that parents can become the answer to these needs. Challenging problems are explained is such a way that the root problems can be addressed.

Dr. Neufeld has had exceptional success as a parent consultant, working with thousands of families over the years. In this three-part series, he shares the insights and understandings that have changed the ways of countless of parents to the benefit of thousands of children.

Though it is recommended that participants take the three part series in sequence, it is not a requirement.

Part I of the Power to Parent series focuses on the child-adult relationship as the context for raising children. Parents and professionals learn how this relationship is meant to develop, what can go wrong, why parents must matter more than peers, how to cultivate a context of connection, how to win back one`s child if need be, and more. Parents and professionals are also introduced to discipline strategies that are attachment-safe and developmentally friendly.

Part II of the Power to Parent series focuses on how to help children realize their potential as human beings. Since growing older is no guarantee of growing up, knowing how to foster maturation is key to raising children. The material is presented in such a way that engages parents while educating professionals as well.

Part III of the Power to Parent series focuses on the typical challenges of parenting. Every child gets stuck from time to time on the road to maturation. Dr. Neufeld helps equip parents to read the signs of a child in trouble, live with a sensitive child, cultivate resilience in a child, lead an alpha child, soften a defended child, discipline a stuck child, and more. Dr. Neufeld offers effective and safe practices that honour and preserve the relationship, even when the problems seem daunting.

Registration is Currently Open for This Course.  Contact Rebecca for Details

The impact of attachment disruption, even when in the best interest of the child, can be deep and profound. This course provides effective and encouraging strategies for resolving these challenges and bringing these children to their full potential as human beings. The material is useful for all those who are involved with transplanted children: adoptive parents, adoption agencies, foster parents, step parents, teachers, supporting relatives, social workers, psychologists, pediatricians.

Participant Feedback For This Course:

“Every parent of any child (transplanted or not) should take this course.”

“This is a fantastic course to gain a deeper understanding and new perspective of what challenges our transplanted children may be experiencing and provides some great tools for deepening the relationship”

“Excellent course!  It gave us new insight into how to parent better.  We are excited to try out the tools that we have been given.”

“We are parents to a 10 year old and about to be parents to a 7 year old – we have learned key techniques which we have begun to apply immediately.”

“This helped me understand how to work with my future child in a way that helps him/her feel more connected and safe.  It gave me a new perspective on attachment issues our family will face.”

“This course assisted us to understand some our children’s past behaviour and gave us the tools to successfully manage predictable future behaviour.”

“Although we don’t yet have a child, the course material was useful in anticipation of receiving one. It has helped us to manage our expectations and we’ve both seen it impact our adult lives as well as dealing with others.”

“Understanding how natural attachment unfolds has given me a great framework for understanding what is happening (or not!) within my child. Rebecca Janke promoted discussion that gave me very practical tools that I have implemented to help bridge some of the separation that I didn’t realize was driving the difficult behaviour we had in our home. A very valuable course!”

Crossing the bridge from childhood to adulthood has never been so daunting. The time of adolescence is longer than ever and yet society today offers little support in understanding or facilitating this transition. This course is designed to be used by parents, grandparents, teachers, administrators, professionals – anyone who desires to make sense of adolescence. Parents of pre- teens will find this course invaluable as preparation for what lies ahead.

Participant Feedback For This Course:

“The material gave suggestions but also hope in our ability to parent our adolescent.”

“A very helpful class about making sense out of adolescence! It was encouraging to learn to stay attached to our teens and build the attachment to them.”

“A lot was packed into each session but reading through my notes afterwards allowed it all to sink in! 8 weeks was a perfect amount of time. I would enjoy doing this series again!”

“I feel much more equipped with the knowledge I’m taking away from these 8 weeks of learning.”

Based on Dr. Gordon Neufeld’s course Making Sense of Adolescence

It is no secret that parenting changes when our children become teenagers. What appears to be a secret is how to support our teens through this process! This presentation will examine the developmental purposes of the six rites of passages of adolescence, the benefits and pitfalls of each stage and what our children need from us to mature.

Based on Dr. Gordon Neufeld’s series Making Sense of Adolescence and Relationship Matters

The strength and depth of our relationship with our child is the key to having the ability to parent well. Without a working relationship all efforts to teach, guide, influence and discipline will not only fail but push our child further from our intended goals. The first part of this presentation will focus on understanding our child’s attachment needs and how this changes with the developmental stages of adolescence. The second part will reveal a creative framework for reconnecting to your teen in meaningful ways

Based on Dr. Gordon Neufeld’s work on Making Sense of Adolescence as well as Making Sense of Aggression

One of the tasks in adolescence is to develop a sense of self as a viable and separate being. This involves resisting the input and ideas of others. This presentation focuses on how to navigate the resulting defiance and turn it into positive development of self. In addition, a framework for dealing with frustration and counterwill will be revealed.

Based on Dr. Gordon Neufeld’s work on Making Sense of Adolescence as well as Heart Matters: The Science of Emotion

Our emotions are the engine of maturation and fuel our ability to adapt and develop resilience. The focus of this presentation is to understand the emotional language of our adolescents and support them to develop healthy emotional expression and thereby the ability to adapt to the things they cannot change and develop resilience

Based on the work of Dr. Gordon Neufeld, Dr. Deborah MacNamara, Dr. Gabor Mate, Dr. Bruce Alexander and Mark Haden, MSW

The relentless pursuit of a stimulus that harms is the basis of addictive instincts and energy. This presentation focuses on understanding how addictive patterns are formed and ways to satisfy an insatiable hunger that can hardly be soothed.