Course Description:

As clinicians, we want to be in a position to help parents deal with any issues pertaining to our clients. We must find ways to support parent competence, serving as a resource for them (Czapanskiy, 2014). Parents require strategies to help them connect with and nurture their children. Most importantly, the support of parents might include assisting them in managing their own emotions, (Harvey, 2017), most particularly anger. Raising a child with Special Needs bring along many challenges and parents need guidance with managing the emotions that come along with raising typically developing children and children with SN. As health professionals, we can help, direct, educate, and counsel parents, including self-care tips. We often need to gently guide them through the different stages of grief, shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing, and acceptance. In this course we will focus specifically on the stage of anger. The bulk of the course will discuss skills that we can use to help parents manage the run-of-the-mill frustration and anger they may experience in the long term, as they move through their day with their child.