Playful | Present | Passionate
Dafna is an international trainer and supervisor for practitioners who work with children and families. She is a certified trainer and supervisor/consultant in both Theraplay and Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP). Dafna’s expertise is drawn from 25 years of working with families with attachment in many settings: at-risk after school programs, therapeutic foster care, in-home crisis stabilization, residential care and private practice. Dafna’s style, whether as a therapist or teacher, is combining the light-hearted with the profound by bringing a playful, intense and passionate presence to every encounter. She is as likely to break out into song as engage in serious intellectual discourse.
Spend 75 minutes every other week with a small community of 12 parents led by Dafna Lender.
Each session, two members of our group will have an opportunity to share and receive guidance from Dafna about how to work through personal and parenting challenges. This will offer us a space to learn, explore, and support each other. Every meeting will start with a grounding meditation and provide you with practical skills and exercises to try between sessions.
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Dafna is very excited to collaborate with Trauma Research Foundation to offer this complimentary workshop beginning on Wednesday, March 23. During each monthly session in this 8-part series, Dafna will focus on various challenges that parents face and how to approach parenting from a trauma informed perspective in order to promote secure attachment.
March 23, 2022 – How to regulate a child who is acting silly/chaotic
April 20, 2022 – How to provide a sense of organization and structure for a child
June 8, 2022 – How to regulate your reaction to your child
June 22, 2022 – How to respond to a child’s nonverbal signals
July 20, 2022 – How to deal with aggression and out of control behaviors
August 17, 2022 – How to validate a child’s feelings
September 21, 2022 – How to handle problem behaviors like a sore loser, a child who lies, steal
Join Dafna Lender for a 5-day course this winter and spring on Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, an approach which assists therapists and other professionals to understand and effectively support children, young people and their families.
Level 1
Sept 13-15, 19 & 20
December 1-3, 8 & 9
Level 2
June 14-16, 20 & 21
January 11-13, 16 & 17 (2023)
RESOURCES
Check out the latest interview with Guy Macpherson on his podcast The Trauma Therapist Project. They talked about Dafna's work with kids and families, her approach, experience and much more.
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Sit down with Dafna Lender as she shares with you conversations with 3 different experts: Peter Levine, Stephen Porges, and Bessel van der Kolk.
Theraplay is an intervention that focuses on enhancing the connection, trust and joy between a child and a parent. It involves interactive, playful activities using simple face-to-face reciprocal interactions, and involves using all of the senses, including rhythm, movement and touch.
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Dafna was a guest of The Trauma Therapist Project podcast recently, speaking about her work with kids and families, between other topcis.
Amrit and Dafna have a deep conversation about the power of play and laughter in parenting. A rich conversation about the power that play has to connect and have a harmonious relationship.
Sometimes, children have such strong meltdowns or tantrums that they could be in danger of physically harming themselves or others. In today’s How To video, Dafna shows gentle and effective ways to handle these moments as a parent.
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