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Early intervention is always better than crisis management - but it is never too late to do the right thing.

The teenage years require a delicate balance between the young person's need to gain independence, and the parent's need to retain authority.

Wouldn't it be nice if children would simply listen and learn.

If you are headed in the wrong direction as a parent - you are allowed to make a U-turn.

"Moody" and "unpredictable" are adjectives parents will often use when referring to their teenagers.

The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice. (Peggy O'Mara)

If it  was going to be easy to raise kids, it never would have started with something called "labour".

Removing a child from a traumatic environment does not remove the trauma from the child's memory.

Some hope their children will be like sponges soaking up the truth and wisdom imparted by their parents. However appealing this philosophy might be, it seldom seems to catch on with their children.

Children today are under enormous pressures rarely experienced by their parents or grandparents. Many of today's children are being enticed to grow up too quickly and are encountering challenges for which they are totally unprepared.

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11 Problems Associated with Providing Foster Care to “Disturbed” Children

1. removal from the “maltreating” home is delayed
2. “maltreating” parents continue to sabotage current placement
3. increase in severity of disturbance in today’s foster / adopted children
4. inadequate preparation and follow-up support to foster /  adoption parents
5. failure to equip foster / adoption parents with practical   therapeutic strategies
6. foster / adoption parents receive a “disturbed” child, and are then later misperceived that they might  be the source of the child’s disturbance
7. the foster / adopted families are excluded from the “treatment team” though they are the ones who  often know the child best and who have the greatest  therapeutic impact on them
8. foster parents are given the most responsibility and  the least amount of authority
9. foster parents are asked to become intimately involved with the child, yet are “chastised” if they become “overly zealous advocates” for the  child
10. little or no respite care to allow for parent refueling
11. the “experts” don’t have the answers
 
OVERCOMING ATTACHMENT DISORDER IS NO EASY TASK –
THE REWARDS HOWEVER LAST A LIFETIME
 

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Workshops

+ Behaviour Management (now available online)

This full day or 2 evening workshop will introduce you […]

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+ A Parent’s Guide to the Teenage Brain

  A teenager’s brain is not just an adult brain […]

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+ Reading Rescue

A program for children with reading problems

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+ A Guided Tour of ADHD (now available online)

This workshop will present the facts, myths, misconceptions, controversy and […]

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See more of our workshops


Contact

2720 Rath Street, Putnam, Ontario
NOL 2BO

Phone: (519) 485-4678
Fax: (519) 485-0281

Email: info@rickharper.ca

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Parents' Comments

“We are foster parents who took in a 13 year old girl (going on 18!) and she ran us through the wringer. Rick helped us learn how to set limits that made the difference.”

(G.E. – Strathroy)