Description:
Clinicians often work with families who feel confused and overwhelmed by children whose behavior does not respond to typical parenting approaches. Increasingly, research in neuroscience and trauma highlights how differences in brain development can significantly influence how children learn, regulate, think, and relate to others.
This training will explore how brain-based differences, including the effects of trauma, toxic stress, and prenatal exposures, can impact the development of cognitive skills that children rely on to navigate daily life. Participants will learn how common brain-based characteristics like developmental asynchrony, cognitive rigidity, and lagging relational skills can contribute to behavioral challenges that are frequently misunderstood by caregivers and systems.
Using a Brain First framework, this session will help clinicians deepen their understanding of the relationship between neurobiology and behavior while also strengthening their ability to help parents interpret their child’s challenges through a developmental and brain-based lens. Emphasis will be placed on practical ways clinicians can help caregivers shift from behavior-focused interpretations toward approaches that emphasize understanding, accommodation, and relational safety.
The training will include opportunities for discussion and clinical reflection throughout the session.
Learning Objectives:
Participants will be able to do the following:
- Describe how trauma, toxic stress, and other neurodevelopmental differences can influence brain development and behavior in children.
- Explain the concept of asynchronous development and how differences between chronological age and developmental capacity can impact expectations placed on children.
- Identify common cognitive skill differences that may contribute to behavioral symptoms.
- Apply a brain-based framework to help caregivers better understand the connection between a child’s neurobiology and their behavioral presentation.
- Discuss ways clinicians can support parents in shifting from behavior-focused interpretations toward developmentally informed and relationally supportive responses.
Agenda:
- Introductions and Orientation to the Brain First framework
- Brain development, trauma, and neurobiology (brief review of key concepts with knowledge that they are familiar with information from the TAC module
- Asynchronous Development and Lagging Cognitive Skills
- Behavior as a Reflection of Brain Function
- Helping Parents Shift Their Lens
- Closing reflections and final questions
Speaker: Eileen Devine, LCSW
Eileen Devine is a licensed clinical social worker and the founder of Brain First Parenting. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two teenage children. She has over twenty years of clinical experience, and for the last ten of those years, has focused solely on supporting parents across the globe, all of whom have kids with neurobehavioral conditions.
Eileen has been extensively trained in the neurobehavioral model through FASCETS as well as the Collaborative Problem Solving model through ThinkKids. In addition to her one-to-one and group work with parents, she facilitates dozens of workshops and trainings each year for parents, teachers, and mental health professionals and is a trainer for the Center for Adoption Support and Education’s (C.A.S.E.) accredited Training for Adoption Competency (TAC) Program, where she instructs other clinicians across the state of Oregon on what it means to be an adoption and foster competent therapist.
In addition to her clinical expertise, Eileen is the adoptive parent of a teenage daughter who lives with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD).
Continuing Education:
Center for Adoption Support and Education, 1972, is approved to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Regulatory boards are the final authority on courses accepted for continuing education credit. ACE provider approval period: 3/3/2026 – 3/3/29. Social workers completing this course receive 1.5 Clinical continuing education credits.
Center for Adoption Support and Education (C.A.S.E.) has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7463. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. C.A.S.E. is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.
Center for Adoption Support and Education
3919 National Drive, Suite 200
Burtonsville, MD 20866
