Parenting through the Polyvagal Lens
a free webinar series
with Dafna Lender
Expert trainer and clinician Dafna Lender presents practical applications for building safety and connection with children. This free webinar series is designed for parents, caregivers, educators and anyone seeking to create meaningful relationships with children of all ages.
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Join the PVI community for 4 sessions:
Thursdays, September 12, 19, 26, & October 3, 2024
7:00-8:15pm Eastern Time
If you are unable to join us live in real time for any of the sessions, please register at the link below to receive the recording by email.
A strong parent-child connection facilitates attachment security, the child's resiliency, and the child's sense of self.
-Dafna Lender, LCSW
About
Parenting through the Polyvagal Lens
The Polyvagal Theory teaches us to focus on enhancing
a child’s sense of safety and connection through the parent-child relationship.
The Polyvagal Theory can help parents understand a child’s behavior from the point of view of the nervous system rather than as purposeful misbehavior. By understanding the behaviors from this nervous system perspective, parents can better understand and respond to otherwise baffling behaviors such as children acting chaotic or defiant, or shut-down and disconnected.
Join international attachment and family therapist and trainer Dafna Lender for this free four-part series as she explains this fascinating and helpful framework for understanding both our child’s -and our own- baffling behaviors.
Questions about this Webinar Series? Contact us at events@polyvagal.org
Webinar Outline
Join us on Thursdays, September 12, 19, 26, and October 3, 2024, for this 4-part series.
All sessions meet online from 7:00-8:15pm Eastern Time ​
(Convert this meeting time to your local time zone, here.)
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Session 1: September 12
Introduction to Polyvagal Parenting: Our autonomic nervous system as parents and children
In this session we will explore everyday examples of safety and connection (ventral), dysregulation (sympathetic/dorsal) and repair (return to ventral). We will learn how our nervous system influences our children and vice versa, and discuss ways to get yourself into a calm and open state (ventral) so you can influence your child in a positive way.
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Session 2: September 19
Understanding our vagus nerve: Becoming familiar with our polyvagal responses to our child
In this session we will examine how we act when things are going well, and where we go when we are stressed or shut down with our child. What does our personal history have to do with our autonomic responses? How can we begin to move towards ventral if we are frequently in sympathetic/dorsal? In this session we will learn exercises for self-compassion and reset.
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Session 3: September 26
Harnessing YOUR social engagement system to increase connection, safety and cooperation with your child
In this session we will learn exercises that help you to notice what your own social engagement system is communicating. We will explore ways to ​improve your own social engagement system signals so that your child begins to feel more relaxed and cooperative. We will discuss ways to provide leadership in your relationship with your child through movement, rhythm, and engagement so that a child will feel safe.
Session 4: October 3
How to co-regulate with a child to promote connection and collaboration
In this session we will explore movement and breathing exercises to create connection, activities to promote attachment, rhythmic activities for maintaining regulation, and techniques for counteracting shut down, guarded or angry behaviors.
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​Register to attend one or all of these sessions!
If you are unable to join us live in real time for any of the sessions, please register at the link above to receive the recording by email.
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Questions about registration or attending this webinar series? Contact us at events@polyvagal.org
About Your Instructor
Dafna Lender is an international trainer and supervisor for practitioners who work with children and families. She is a certified trainer and supervisor/consultant in both Theraplay and Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP), as well as an EMDR therapist. Dafna’s expertise is drawn from 25 years of working with families with attachment in many settings: at-risk after school programs, therapeutic foster care, in-home crisis stabilization, residential care and private practice. Dafna’s style, whether as a therapist or teacher, is combining the light-hearted with the profound by bringing a playful, intense and passionate presence to every encounter.
Dafna is author of Integrative Attachment Family Therapy (2023) and the co-author of Theraplay the Practitioner’s Guide (2020).
Dafna has been teaching about the Polyvagal Theory and the use of social engagement system since 2020. She instructs clinicians and parents to apply Polyvagal Theory in a practical way to increase self-compassion, co-regulation and connection between dyads. Dafna is the creator of the Vagal Match Assessment (VMA), a parent-child assessment, which helps clinicians understand the quality of a parent-child relationship from a polyvagal perspective.
Dafna Lender, LCSW
PVI Course Partner
Attend this webinar series for free!
This webinar series is presented free of charge, made possible in part by your generous support of Polyvagal Institute. PVI is a registered 501(c)3 non profit organization.
If you are financially able to make a monetary donation to support this and other community programming, we sincerely thank you.
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Learner Agreement
Polyvagal Theory teaches that community is an essential part of the human experience. At PVI, we strive to create a safe learning environment conducive to connection and belonging. Please take a moment to read the following details as you prepare to join this course.
Time Commitment
This free webinar series is composed of 4 live sessions (75 minutes each).
You will receive an email with the session recording if you are unable to attend a session live, or if you want to go back and review the content again later.
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We also invite you to explore the opportunity to connect with other learners and attendees in an online group setting via the PVI Community App.
