New Online Workshop Addresses Children's Social and Physical Aggression

November 13, 2018

Eugene, OR — When children act aggressively toward adults or other children, it can be difficult for resource parents to know how to respond. One key is to focus on the reason why children are aggressive and not just the aggressive act. “Parents will need to intervene in different ways, depending on the type and the underlying purpose of their child's aggression,” explains Dr. Rick Delaney, the instructor of a new, online advanced parenting workshop just released by FosterParentCollege.com.

Generally, when children act aggressively they are either responding to perceived threats or danger (called reactive aggression) or they are attempting to gain something, like social status (called proactive aggression). The new workshop, Social & Physical Aggression, explores both reactive and proactive aggression, and the role of past trauma experiences. It is designed to help foster, kinship, and adoptive parents develop effective parenting strategies for addressing their child's aggressive behavior.

In this workshop, participants examine two family studies, one of a young boy with reactive physical aggression and another of a teen girl with proactive social aggression. Using discussion board activities and interactive exercises, participants explore strategies for parenting children in care who are aggressive, including using empathy or the social information processing model.

Part of Foster Parent College's Advanced Parenting Workshop series, Social & Physical Aggression is a six-credit-hour course designed specifically for resource parents. It is available on the FosterParentCollege.com website.

The creation of Social & Physical Aggression was made possible through a Small Business Innovation Research Grant (#R44 HD056645) from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to Northwest Media, Inc., parent company of FosterParentCollege.com.

To watch a short preview of the Advanced Parenting Workshop on Social & Physical Aggression, visit fosterparentcollege.com/course-info/aggression. For more information about the workshop, contact Lee White at Lee@northwestmedia.com.