When Skills Don’t Match Expectations: Understanding the Brain Behind Challenging Behavior
When Skills Don’t Match Expectations:
Understanding the Brain Behind Challenging Behavior
Details:
Days: Wednesday, November 4, 2026
Time: 11:00 am – 1:00 pm EST, 10:00-12:00 pm CST, 9:00-11:00am MST, 8:00-10:00am PST
Cost: $69 Parents, Caregivers; $99 Professionals
2 CEs $10 for Florida LCSW, LMHC, LMFT, and CMSW through CEBroker, Certificates provided for self-reporting for others.
DESCRIPTION:
Children with FASD and other brain-based differences may struggle with cognitive skills that are easy to overlook but essential for navigating everyday life. Difficulties with flexibility, processing speed, attention, working memory, executive functioning, and conversational demands can all affect a child’s ability to follow directions, shift gears, solve problems, manage frustration, and respond in ways adults expect.
When these underlying skill differences are missed, children are often viewed through a behavioral lens and described as oppositional, unmotivated, inattentive, manipulative, or unwilling to cooperate. This training helps participants look beneath the behavior to better understand what may be happening cognitively. Participants will explore common areas of lagging skill development, including rigidity and perseveration, slow processing pace, working memory, executive function, and the often-hidden demands of conversation. Emphasis will be placed on recognizing when expectations exceed a child’s current capacity and identifying practical ways to adjust demands, provide scaffolding, and create more successful interactions across home, school, and community settings.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
• Describe the role of the nervous system in shaping behavior, stress responses, and regulation in both children and adults
• Identify indicators of dysregulation and early signs of overwhelm across settings and individuals
• Explain the process of co-regulation and the influence of adult nervous system states on child functioning
• Analyze the impact of cognitive load and fatigue on a child’s capacity for regulation and adaptive functioning
• Demonstrate the application of scaffolding strategies and preventative accommodations to support regulation and reduce overwhelm
FACILITATOR:
Eileen Devine, LCSW
Eileen Devine is a licensed clinical social worker and founder of Brain First Parenting and the Think Brain First Training Program for professionals. With over 20 years of clinical experience, she is an internationally recognized expert in supporting families raising children with FASD and other neurobehavioral conditions, as well as the professionals who serve them. In addition to her clinical work with parents, Eileen delivers dozens of workshops and trainings worldwide each year for parents, educators, mental health professionals, and agency leaders. She is also a trainer for the Center for Adoption Support and Education’s (C.A.S.E.) accredited Training for Adoption Competency (TAC) Program, where she teaches clinicians across Oregon to provide adoption- and foster-competent care. Eileen lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two teenage children, one of whom has Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, a serious and lifelong brain-based condition.