Behavior Is a Message
A 2-hour parent training with a certificate, taught by an adult adoptee who ran from school and snuck food at night as a kid.
What this course is
This course is for anyone getting ready to adopt or foster to adopt, and for parents in their first years with a child at home. It fits any kind of adoption, including foster care, domestic infant, international and kinship adoption, whether your child shares your race or comes from a different background.
Each lesson starts with a true story from Michael's childhood as an adoptee, and then turns it into steps you can use the same day. You'll learn to look for the need behind meltdowns, food struggles, running and lying, and to stay calm and close while you still hold limits. The course takes about two hours, and you can stop and come back whenever you need to.
What you'll be able to do
- Explain how early loss and trauma can drive a child's behavior, even when the child doesn't remember what happened.
- Help your child calm down during a meltdown before you try to talk it through.
- Respond to food hoarding and sneaking, running, lying and taking things by looking for the need underneath.
- Use discipline that keeps your child close, repair after you lose your temper and know when to bring in an adoption-competent therapist.
How the certificate works
- Take the opening quiz as a warm-up. It doesn't count toward your certificate.
- Work through the six lessons in order. Each one comes with a printable page you can fill in and keep.
- Type your plan right into the course, one line at a time. Each line comes with an example to help you.
- Pass the final quiz with at least 8 out of 10. You can retake it as many times as you need.
- Answer a short evaluation, and your certificate unlocks for 2 training hours.
Please check with your licensing worker or agency about how many hours they accept for self-paced training.
For agencies
This course covers training topics agencies already use, including trauma-related behavior, trauma-informed parenting, responding to children in crisis, attachment, mental health and accessing services and supports. Each lesson lines up with topics from the National Training and Development Curriculum (NTDC) and with the Hague training topics in 22 CFR 96.48(b). Beyond the Moment Adoption Studio isn't affiliated with NTDC. Agencies can license this course for all of their families, and you can set that up by emailing hello@beyondthemomentadoptionstudio.com.
About your instructor
Michael Gaither is an adult adoptee. He was born in Syracuse, New York, and spent about eighteen months in foster care before he was adopted. He grew up with a white family in Lincoln, Nebraska, and met his birth family in person for the first time at forty-nine.
He spent 30 years in education as a teacher and a principal, and 13 of those years running his own executive leadership coaching business for school principals. His book, I Was Your Black Child: What White Parents Raising Black Children Need to Hear Before It's Too Late, tells the story of growing up Black in a white household. Through Beyond the Moment Adoption Studio, he helps adoptive and foster families understand what their children may be carrying.
Course curriculum
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1Start Here
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2The Six Lessons
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3Finish and Get Your Certificate