There are now 16 webinar topics, each one is described below. Please let me know if you have any suggestions of other issues that could be covered in future webinars.
Overall, 92% of all parents who have joined any of the webinars felt more confident in their parenting abilities as a result of attending.
When asked about how helpful these webinars have been, the average score that parents gave them was 9.6 out of 10.
For more information about any of these webinars, please have a look at our booking page for any upcoming scheduled dates – https://yvonnenewbold.com/webinars-workshops-courses-and-books/
1. How to reduce extreme behaviour in SEND children
This two-hour webinar looks at the reasons why children with additional needs can develop extreme behaviour, which may include: –
Some of the issues covered in this webinar are –
- Physical violence towards other people and/or pets
- Controlling behaviour
- Self-harm
- Property destruction
- Using inappropriate and offensive language
Some of the issues covered in this webinar are –
- Sensory Issues
- Communication
- Routines
- Resistance to change.
- Transitions
- Processing speed
- Theory of Mind
- Masking
- Why it is important to move away from traditional parenting strategies.
- Why it is not your fault, or your child’s fault.
- Looking at how judgement and blame from others affects parents and why your child’s behaviour is not your fault.
- The importance of self-care in parents
During the session there is a strong focus on solutions, strategies, approaches and the importance of thinking differently.
For more information, please email yvonne@yvonnenewbold.com
2. How to keep brothers and sisters safe and happy
This session gives parents a chance to step back and look at their own family dynamic and examine what works well and what works less well. During the two hours, the webinar covers sibling rivalry, conflict, communication, resentments, feelings of unfairness, parental guilt and worry and how this can influence a parent’s ability to handle situations as they arise, and possible emerging mental health concerns in children. It is packed full of strategies to encourage better relationships between brothers and sisters, regardless of any additional needs. It also looks at how to prioritise safety which includes how to design a safety plan, how to explain about a child’s additional needs to the other children in the family and how to ensure that every child knows that they are valued, loved, and treated fairly. This session is extremely popular with parents who often carry significant levels of fear and stress about the effect of difficult behaviours on their other children, and they leave with practical and doable strategies that they can try straight away.
For more information, please email yvonne@yvonnenewbold.com
3.How to feel happier and less exhausted as a SEND parent
This session is co-presented by Yvonne Newbold and Malcolm Cooper.
There is no point sharing great strategies with you as parent/carers which will help you to support your SEND children if you are too exhausted, crushed and broken to be able to implement them consistently. Often, by the time you come across our series of webinars, you may have had years of coping with very difficult behaviour which may have resulted in numerous injuries, and it is hard not to lose hope.
Finding appropriate services to help your child with their difficult behaviours sometimes feels almost impossible. The reality is that there are far too few services in place to respond to the needs of children who have both an additional need and extreme behaviours. There is also very little training about why SEND children can develop challenging behaviour, so instead of being able to offer help, sadly the situation is often misunderstood, and parent/carers feel blamed, judged, or shamed instead of given the robust help, support and understanding that they so desperately need. Challenging behaviour in children with an additional need is not caused by poor parenting skills; on the contrary, most parents coping with these challenges every day are highly skilled, responsive, and exceptional parents.
The cumulative effect of relentlessly coping with the unpredictability and fear of a child’s challenging behaviour, whilst also often being blamed for being the cause of it takes a huge toll on our resilience, emotional well-being, and mental health. This webinar is designed to help you start to build yourself back again, working towards regaining your self-esteem, self-worth, and self-belief.
If you are going to be able to lead your child beyond their violent or otherwise extreme behaviours, you will need to believe in yourself, and be mentally strong enough with consistently high enough energy levels to keep going and not to give up. You will need to be able to dig deep to find inner resources you never knew you had, because you will need to be emotionally resilient enough to withstand the inevitable setbacks and disappointments along the way.
This session is all about empowering you to feel good about yourself, and to be the very best possible version of yourself.
During this webinar, you will gain a better understanding of the negative impact of the on-going traumas you have experienced from your child’s behaviours, and the drip-drip cumulative effect of the negative judgement and the lack of support that you may have endured.
Some of the issues that this session covers include: –
- How to manage guilt and worry
- The effect of shame
- How to reset your inner critical voice so it becomes your best friend.
- The importance of regular self-care
- How to self-care so that it isn’t yet another chore on the to-do list.
Malcolm’s contributions to this session are invaluable. He has devised several self-calming strategies that each take less than two minutes to do, due to his own first-hand understanding of the relentless unpredictability of living with a violent child who also has very high care needs. He will lead you through a series of these strategies, explaining along the way how the body’s stress response lowers our natural immunity and the importance of self-care to overall well-being and our ability to cope.
The session ends with a 10-minute deep-relaxation exercise led by Malcolm, which for many parents is the first opportunity they have had to completely relax and unwind in a very long time. You will leave the session with an effective toolbox full of strategies that will help you to relax and recharge in a matter of minutes.
For more information, please email yvonne@yvonnenewbold.com
4. Understanding childhood controlling behaviour and how to address it.
Children who use controlling behaviour with their families is a common issue that affects a large proportion of SEND families coping with other forms of extreme behaviour. It is a very stigmatising issue, which is very emotional and shrouded in secrecy and shame. It is very seldom discussed, and one of the strengths of this webinar is how validated people feel when they realise that they are not alone, and that this topic is being discussed openly. This session looks at the underlying reasons for this controlling behaviour, and how parents can regain control and get their family back on track.
The webinar starts by looking at: –
- What is control?
- What it can look like in children
- Why it happens.
- How it makes you, the parent, feel
- How other people can make you feel about it
- How to get your child back on track.
The webinar moves on to look at the children that this affects, and how it is caused almost always by anxiety, and why anxiety has almost the exact opposite meaning as feeling safe, which is what every child (and adult) craves. The two-hours is packed full of strategies about how to help your child feel safe enough to relinquish overall household control, and how to re-establish the parent as being in charge.
Parents leave the webinar feeling relieved and full of hope over a situation that they most likely have kept incredibly quiet about due to shame for a very long period of time.
For more information, please email yvonne@yvonnenewbold.com
5. How to be heard as your SEND child’s expert advocate
What is this webinar about?
If you would like to be able to speak up more confidently in meetings about your child’s needs in a way that will influence outcomes, this is exactly the Workshop you need.
Why meetings can be so hard for parents
When a child has an additional need, parents often feel that important decisions are taken out of their hands. When this happens, families often have genuine concerns about their child’s needs not being met. Additionally, when a child’s needs are not always visible and cause behavioural issues, parents often feel judged and blamed. That means that you can feel wrong-footed before the meeting has even begun. Add in the whole cocktail of mixed emotions that any parent is likely to feel when their child’s well-being and future is being discussed, and it is sometimes hard for parents to speak up because they do not want to let the tears flow or for their frustration to sound like anger in their voice.
What we will cover during the workshop
This Workshop is all about how to counter those misunderstandings and assumptions, and to empower parents to confidently communicate in a more effective and collaborative way, so they can be regarded as an equal and expert member of the team around their child.
The strategies we will discuss will work equally well across a range of settings and situations including:
• In school meetings• With service providers• On the phone• In writing• At medical appointments• During hospital admissions• In person or online and in large or small meetings
Some of the issues we will cover include –
- How to decide what your child needs you to ask for.
- Planning and Preparation.
- How to communicate more effectively.
- How to be heard clearly, confidently, and assertively.
- How to be regarded as your child’s expert.
- How to work with professional staff in partnership and collaboration to get the best decisions for your child.
- Meeting Dynamics – what else might be going on in the room?
- How to harness your emotions so they have a positive impact on how you successfully advocate
- After the meeting – useful follow-up strategies.
For more information, please email yvonne@yvonnenewbold.com
6. How to help a demand avoidant child cope better with life
This webinar looks at why children who are very anxious can also become markedly demand avoidant, and how you can support these children to cope better with everyday life.
We start by looking at: –
- What does “demand avoidant” mean?
- Why, if a child avoids demands, it does not necessarily mean that they would always meet the criteria for a diagnosis of autism with demand-avoidance traits, or of Pathological Demand Avoidance, which is commonly abbreviated to PDA.
- Why children sometimes become demand avoidant.
- The link between demand avoidance and anxiety
- How to identify and address the underlying causes of this anxiety
- Effective strategies that can help are shared from the very start and all the way through.
This webinar explores in depth some of the possible underlying reasons behind the anxiety that is likely to be causing any demand avoidance, and what a parent can do to minimise this anxiety by addressing the root cause. We also discuss how lowering demands can be helpful as a short-term strategy, but it is seldom the whole answer, and long-term it becomes unrealistic and unsustainable.
We look at some common difficulties such as school refusal or bedtime refusal, masking, and how demand avoidant behaviour can sometimes tip over into controlling behaviour. We look at how to use visuals to aid understanding and communication when emotions are heightened, and the importance of giving a child far more time than seems necessary to allow them to process information.
We also look at why praise can be difficult for children whose anxiety levels have become so extreme that they are using demand avoidant behaviour to cope with daily life. Plus loads more.
Parents leave this workshop feeling lighter, more hopeful, and optimistic, less alone, and with a fresh approach towards supporting their child.
For more information, please email yvonne@yvonnenewbold.com
7. Understanding Communication and how it impacts on behaviour
When there have been difficult behaviours present for a number of years, often the child-parent relationship inevitably suffers as a result, which means that the lines of communication are significantly reduced and any attempt to communicate may result in defensiveness or aggression. This webinar is full of tips, tricks, and strategies to re-establish connection with your child through communication. It also explores the most common communication impairments in children with additional needs and how to identify if and where your child may be struggling to communicate.
Among other things, this webinar will cover: –
- The differences between expressive and receptive communication and how they are quite different skills.
- 10 different methods of communication that we nearly all use
- How all behaviour is a form of communication
- How communication issues can lead to behavioural episodes and how to counter them
- Common communication issues in SEND children and how to address them.
- Rigid thinking and inflexibility, the problems this can cause and how to overcome them.
- The importance of regulating our own tone of voice and how to do that even when emotions are becoming heightened.
- Why “no” can be a trigger word and what to say instead.
- Why talking about feelings is so hard for children and what to talk about instead.
- Alexithymia
- And lots more
Throughout this and all the webinars there are tips, tricks and strategies that can all be put into practice straight away. You will leave this webinar feeling more confident about being able to identify and support your child’s communication needs, with the skills and tools you need to build towards establishing a better quality of communication with your child and your whole family.
For more information, please email yvonne@yvonnenewbold.com
8. Understanding anxiety & how to reduce it in both you and your child
During this session, we will be looking anxiety, what it is, why it happens, what it feels like and how it affects you and how it affects your child. We’ll explore the link between anxiety and extreme behaviour issues, as well as the link between anxiety and additional needs. The whole two hours are packed full of ideas, suggestions, and strategies that you can use to help to lower anxiety levels in your family, and it finishes with over 50 “top tips” that can give you an instant boost when anxiety levels are running particularly high.
Here are just some of the areas we will be covering –
- What is anxiety?
- Common anxieties in adults
- Common anxieties in children with additional needs
- Common anxieties parents can have about their child with additional needs.
- How anxiety affects us both physically and mentally
- Common anxiety symptoms and how to recognise them in both yourself and your child.
- Physiological changes that happen due to anxiety
- What happens to our autonomic nervous system?
- What anxiety can feel like
- The difficulties of getting help support and understanding when anxiety is invisible.
- How it can affect behaviour, sometimes leading to violence, property destruction, offensive language, becoming controlling, avoiding any demands, and including violence
- Why anxiety happens.
- How you can lower anxiety levels in both you and your child
Joining this session will give you a much greater understanding of why anxiety can have such a significant impact on you, your child and on your family life, and you will have a toolbox full of practical and easy strategies to make life easier on everyone.
For more information, please email yvonne@yvonnenewbold.com
9. How to boost your SEND child’s self-esteem
Self-esteem is all about how we think about ourselves and value ourselves. It drives the decisions and choices we make, which in turn influence how we live our lives. This means that self-esteem can determine how successful we are, the quality of our relationships and our academic and career achievements. Left unchecked, it can lead to depression, anxiety, and several other medical conditions. Parents leave the session with a better understanding of why SEND children often have lower self-esteem, together with the skills and several dozen strategies that they can get started on immediately to work with their child to help them to feel much better about themselves.
For more information, please email yvonne@yvonnenewbold.com
10. How to reduce stress with SEND children about screen & internet use
When a SEND child’s behaviour is off-the-scale of extreme, often one of the most common behaviour triggers is internet or screen related, and things can often escalate when a child is asked to move onto doing something else. Maybe your child loves gaming, or perhaps they want to watch YouTubers from dawn until dusk, or it might be that social media or something else completely has caught their full attention. Whatever their passion, many children with additional needs can be very resistant to coming off the internet, which can quickly lead to conflict, extreme behaviour or even violent episodes in some families.
This session will look at why the internet and screen time hold such a strong appeal for your child, and we will look at the positives as well as the negatives, as well as how to keep them safe online.
During the session, we will look at lots of the common difficulties that families face with their child’s internet use, as well as sharing dozens of very practical and easy ideas, suggestions and strategies that can make a big difference.
Here are just some of the areas we will be covering –
- Gaming, looking at the most popular games and what their appeal is, as well as looking at in-game purchases, why children want to buy so much and what you can do to limit spending.
- YouTube – we will discuss some of the most popular YouTubers, who they are, what they do, and why your child loves them so much.
- Social Media – the pitfalls and the pluses
- Online social interactions – supporting your child to manage online friendships successfully.
- Internet Safety – and how to communicate risks to your child.
- What your child may be gaining or learning from their internet usage
- The impact of Anxiety and low Self-Esteem on a SEND child and why being online makes them feel safer and happier within themselves.
- Internet addiction – when should you be concerned?
- Packed full of practical strategies, ideas, and suggestions that you can start using straight away.
- Plus, lots more
For more information, please email yvonne@yvonnenewbold.com
11. Additional needs the teenage years & how to navigate extreme behaviour
The teenage years are hard for all young people, but particularly so for children with additional needs. This session looks at puberty, mood, risk-taking behaviour, communication, dislike of change, internet safety, teenage withdrawal, and lots of other things, as well as exploring some of the underlying causes for difficulties, and what can be done to counter them.
The session will explore school-based issues, puberty related issues, the changing social expectations and the differences in socialisation that affect teenagers. There is a focus on the importance of parents being able to fill the gaps in understanding, particularly around internet safety and sex education, that some children with a learning disability or autism might not otherwise be able to fully comprehend.
Some of the more difficult issues are also covered such as self-harm, teenage drug or alcohol abuse, the vulnerabilities of some SEND teenagers to exploitation or coercion to take part in criminal activities.
The session is jam-packed from start to finish with easy and doable strategies that could make a huge difference in a parent’s relationship with their teenager, and parents leave feeling more empowered and optimistic about their ability to support their teenager more effectively.
For more information, please email yvonne@yvonnenewbold.com
12. Sensory processing, its effect on behaviour, and what you can do to help
This webinar will take a look at the importance of each of the eight senses and how tough things can become for a child if they process sensory input differently. We will look at why this can then impact severely on behaviour patterns and how you can identify and address the sensory processing issues and reduce difficult behaviour at the same time. This session will share dozens of ideas, strategies and approaches that you can use straight away to make life easier for your child and family.
For more information, please email yvonne@yvonnenewbold.com
13. Change transitions and routine, how and why they impact on behaviour and what you can do to help
Many children with additional needs rely heavily on things remaining the same to feel safe and secure in their environment. Some of this group of children are so sensitive to the smallest of changes in routine, or a new transition, that when it happens it can precipitate extreme behaviour episodes. This webinar is designed to enable better understanding of why this can happen, and then to share dozens of ideas, suggestions, approaches and strategies that really work to help a child cope better with unavoidable changes much more easily and calmly.
For more information, please email yvonne@yvonnenewbold.com
14. How to survive the SEND school holidays with a calm and happy family
The school summer holidays are supposed to be a time to be together as a family making precious childhood memories and having lots of fun. However, for many families who have a child with a disability or an additional need who can sometimes get so anxious that they behave in dangerous or difficult ways with very extreme behaviour, those long weeks ahead can be filled with apprehension or even dread.
The focus of this webinar is on parent and child emotional well-being, and it’s full of practical ideas and suggestions that can make family life easier and seem much more doable so that things are happier and calmer for everyone at home.
For more information, please email yvonne@yvonnenewbold.com
15. How to overcome the guilt, self-doubt and criticism of being a SEND parent
When a child behaves in ways that can be extremely difficult or dangerous, even if that child has a disabililty or additional needs, it’s very common that parents are judged, blamed and criticised for either “causing” or “allowing” the behaviours to continue. If only it were that simple! Extreme behaviour in SEND children is a very complex issue and it’s nearly always caused by very high levels of anxiety, not because of any lack of skills in a parent. Yet the repeated parent-blame can be so harmful, significantly damaging a parent’s self-esteem, self-confidence and their overall mental well-being. This group of parents need help, support and understanding, yet instead they can become judged, blamed, shunned and isolated.
I was once that parent and I know first-hand how hard it was. When you are told often enough that it must be all your fault, eventually you start believing it too which destroys self-belief, self-worth and causes very real mental health issues. At the very time you need to be the best and most responsive parent that you can be to support your child past their extreme behaviour episodes, you are often left feeling guilty, broken and believing that you’re failing as a family.
This session is about unpicking all of this, looking at why other people find behaviour issues so difficult to understand and what you can do to help, as well as how to protect yourself from being affected by all the negativity that often gets so unfairly directed at you.
Topics covered include –
- Why your own emotional health matters
- Parent-blame and judgement – why it happens
- How it affects you and what you can do to protect yourself
- Identifying your own psychological needs and how to get them met
- How to manage the very difficult feelings of things like
- Shame
- Anger
- Humiliation
- Fear of failing
- Judgement
- Worry
- Embarrassment
- Feeling that you’re “not enough”
How to manage relationships more positivity with
- Your co-parent
- Extended family
- Professional staff working with your child
- How to increase your chances of being heard and understood
- Why your own self-esteem and anxiety levels matter
- How to be kind to yourself
Packed full of practical suggestions and strategies that you can try straight away
For more information, please email yvonne@yvonnenewbold.com
16. How to plan Christmas around your SEND child’s needs
Christmas can be a very difficult time for children with additional needs and their families. So many of the things that are considered essential elements of a successful and happy family Christmas can cause huge distress to many SEND children and can even lead to difficult behaviour episodes. However, with some thought and planning around your child’s individual sensory and communication needs, coupled with an understanding of why a child may be unsettled by the changes in routines and change, this session will help you plan a Christmas day that works well for your whole family.
Due to the uncertainty of on-going pandemic restrictions, the content of this webinar will be decided towards the end of 2021.
For more information, please email yvonne@yvonnenewbold.com
This is what parents have said after attending Yvonne’s webinars –
“Yvonne’s webinars have helped our family in ways other professionals and services haven’t been able to. Yvonne understands our lives and how challenging they can be and has helped me see things through my child’s perspective and think of ways to help him through difficulties rather than see him as challenging. She has brought communities together to support each other and offer solutions and think creatively. My home is a happier, calmer place overall and much of that has been down to the inspiring support and advice that Yvonne and her Facebook group and webinars have given me. It turns your understanding upside down – from challenging behaviour to a child that is finding life challenging- now we can work as a team more and I think ‘what can I do to help my child through this?’ Rather than ‘how can I stop my child behaving like this!?’ From judgement to understanding, and consequences to compassion. It has turned our lives around.”
“I have been fortunate enough to attend several of Yvonne’s webinars.
They did not disappoint. They are delivered in such a warm and welcoming manner, by someone who you can instantly tell understands what you are going through, who has infinite experience and knowledge on the subjects she talks about and most importantly who genuinely cares about the struggles you and your family are going through.
The webinars give useful tips and strategies that are easy to take away and implement and explain things clearly, so you come away thinking about things differently. Yvonne responds to comments made throughout the webinar, personalising it to the people attending. She also lets us know where to go to find extra information and support.
Especially at this time, when so much support has been taken away from SEND children and their families, these webinars are a lifeline to many. I am extremely grateful to have been able to attend them.”
“I am a single parent with three children each of whom has additional needs and displays differently presenting complex behaviour. I enrolled on the webinar about gaming and found it incredibly informative as well as interesting and extremely helpful. Yvonne’s ability to research and distil novel information is incredible. I sounded much more hip as a Mum after the session and I had some great suggestions as to how I could improve our situation. I thoroughly recommend them.”
“When I joined Yvonne’s training sessions and Facebook support group my daughter was in a desperate state. She would have 7 to 10 meltdowns a day, threaten self-harm, hurt me and others and break things she loved. She is now in a very different place. I have learnt more of what she can and cannot manage, and I have adjusted to understand her way of communicating, rather than expecting her to learn mine. She is much more able to communicate her needs, has a better understanding of herself, and VCB is an occasional problem rather than a constant struggle. Our relationship is extremely close, and we can work much more as a team to tackle things. I’ve massively adjusted my expectations of what we/she can manage, and it’s really paid off as she’s just so much happier.”
“I’ve watched a couple of Yvonne’s webinars and they have been so useful for me and my family. Yvonne has such a lovely, gentle manner and is very down to earth. She is so kind and respectful of everyone and makes people feel so valued and welcome in her talks. The advice she gives is invaluable and comes from a place of experience, giving such hope to so many families. I run a support group for parents of children with additional needs and always refer them to Yvonne’s webinars and resources when they are struggling as I have found that they’re the only strategies that work with our children. Yvonne puts parents like us first even though she has such a lot to deal with in her own life and spends so much time and effort making sure everyone else is ok. Her webinars are informative, entertaining, and practical and easy to listen to. She responds attentively to questions posted by people throughout and follows these up if people need more information. She listens to and asks for feedback so that she can improve on the content and structure of everything she does. As a parent I would be lost without Yvonne’s help and advice, particularly during this pandemic where her webinars have been useful and invaluable to so many of us.”
“I have attended a number of Yvonne’s webinars and I have benefitted so much from them all. They are full of insight, compassion, and hope. Yvonne has a wonderfully friendly style putting you at ease and making you feel like you are not alone. Not only does she provide insight into how my child must be feeling, but she also provides practical strategies for me to follow to help him cope better. I am a better parent for following her advice. My son is better supported because I understand more of what he needs. Thank you, Yvonne.”
“I have a child with extreme behaviour, and it is HELL! Yvonne’s webinars have been invaluable. They helped me deal with difficult situations better, they remind me that the traditional parenting ways really do not work with kids like mine – and overall, this decreases family stress levels. So, they have been extremely useful.”
“Yvonne and her methods and her deep fundamental understanding of the causes of send VCB have transformed the lives of my autistic pda daughter, my adopted daughter who is her sibling, and myself. It is not my child’s fault. It is not my parenting. Her basic and overwhelming need is to feel safe. That may manifest in a focus on controlling us, or on what looks like anger and destructive ness, but when I see my darling daughter through the lens Yvonne gave me, I see nothing but a frightened wee girl who needs to feel safe. It has been utterly transformative to look through this lens. I can at last meet her needs, and that enables her to function at a higher level. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has safety as the most basic and self-actualisation at the pinnacle. My 2 daughters and I now have a shot at that and are now very rarely trapped at that most basic level. Yvonne has been the key in the lock for us. I bless her from my heart. Oh yes, and her book, The Send Parent’s Handbook, was a hand reaching out to me in the darkness. I wept several times reading it. It broke that terrible isolation I was in and let me know i was not alone.”
