Webinars From the Field: Handling Everyday Upsets, Tantrums and Teaching Social Skills

Infants and toddlers are cute and cuddly, but they’re also challenging. They can’t communicate verbally, don’t have patience or impulse control, and don’t know how to get their needs met. These challenges result in behaviors such as biting, whining, screaming, hitting, and crying. As adults, we want to teach infants and toddlers skills like patience, communication, and cooperation. But the question is: How can we teach these high level skills to such young children?

Packed with practical knowledge and video examples, this webinar is a great starting point for parents and educators hoping for more cooperation and less conflict with young children.

In this webinar from the field, Certified Instructor Amy Zolessi provides a roadmap for equipping even infants and toddlers with important social skills. She starts with relationship-building and techniques like calming, noticing, and directly teaching young children how to meet their needs in a healthy and helpful manner. Amy then describes how to use processes like D.N.A. (Describe, Name, Acknowledge) and A.C.T. (Acknowledge, Calm, Target two positive choices) to effectively manage tantrums and their aftermath. Packed with practical knowledge and video examples, this webinar is a great starting point for parents and educators hoping for more cooperation and less conflict with young children.

Webinar Outline

  • 00:25 Introduction of Amy Zolessi and topic
  • 03:10 Practice downloading calm
  • 06:07 Importance of relationships in optimal development
  • 10:18 What is difficult about working with infants and toddlers?
  • 11:31 Skills we want to teach infants and toddlers
  • 11:46 Two stages to creating the relationship
  • 13:16 Calming
  • 25:21 Connection
  • 30:35 Noticing
  • 41:00 Practice with noticing
  • 50:01 “You wanted…”
  • 52:27 Teach them how to meet their needs in a helpful manner
  • 59:07 Teaching positive intent and learning empathy with conflict
  • 1:08:27 What are tantrums and what tools can we use to handle them?
  • 1:14:40 D.N.A. (Describe, Name, Acknowledge)
  • 1:25:31 A.C.T. (Acknowledge, Calm, Target two positive choices)
  • 1:33:52 Recap and closing

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Amy Zolessi

Conscious Discipline Certified Instructor

Amy Zolessi has a Bachelor’s of Arts Degree in Elementary Education and Spanish. She also holds a Master’s Degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. As a parent of three young boys and an early childhood educator for 10 years, Amy Zolessi knows children. She understands the challenges of parenting and teaching first hand and how Conscious Discipline [...]

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