Free Live Webinar for Clinicians & Parents
What dysregulated kids need instead
with Dafna Lender, LCSW
Integrative Attachment Family Therapy
Learn to recognize when validation, reassurance, and talking may actually be increasing a child's dysregulation, and what to try instead.
Free. Register once, attend live or watch the replay.
For clinicians working with children and families, offering understanding, validation, empathy, and connection is often at the heart of the work. These relational approaches can help children feel understood, strengthen connection with caregivers, and support greater regulation.
But sometimes, more talking doesn't help.
A child may be caught in an obsessive negative-thought loop, and reassurance keeps the cycle going. Talking about feelings may increase rather than decrease arousal. An empathic tone may feel irritating or even threatening to a highly dysregulated child. Or a caregiver's attempts to acknowledge and understand intense emotions may inadvertently amplify the reaction rather than settle it.
When this happens, both clinicians and caregivers can get pulled into doing more:
More explaining.
More validating.
More reassuring.
More negotiating.
And the more adults talk,the more dysregulated the child becomes.
In this free webinar, Dafna Lender will explore how clinicians can recognize the moments when talking, reasoning, and even well-intentioned attempts at emotional connection are not helping, and how to identify what a child may need instead.
These principles can inform both your direct work with dysregulated children and the way you help caregivers respond outside the therapy room.
Using fewer words · shifting to a calm and matter-of-fact tone · maintaining clear boundaries · incorporating movement or sensory experiences · offering simple choices · using quiet presence · allowing time for the nervous system to recover
The goal is not to become less relational, accepting, or empathic. It is to develop a more nuanced understanding of regulation, and to recognize that connection does not always look like talking about feelings.
For clinicians, this means becoming better able to notice what is actually happening in the moment, understand why a familiar intervention may not be working, and help caregivers respond in ways that fit the needs of this particular child at this particular time.
If you've ever watched a caregiver try everything they know to calm a child only to see the child become more upset, or found that your own efforts to connect, validate, or talk things through seemed to make matters worse, this webinar will help you understand why and expand the range of responses available to you.
Dafna Lender, LCSW, is an internationally recognized trainer, supervisor, and consultant specializing in Integrative Attachment Family Therapy and working with children and families impacted by trauma, disrupted attachment, and emotional and behavioral dysregulation.
Her work helps clinicians move beyond simply managing behavior to better understand what is happening underneath it, and respond in ways that strengthen regulation, connection, and the caregiver-child relationship.
September 30, 2026
12:00 to 1:00 pm ET · 9:00 to 10:00 am PT
Register now and you'll receive access to the replay for 30 days.
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