Calgary Child & Youth Conference on Developmental & Emotional Challenges

Over three transformative days, this conference brings together internationally recognized experts to deepen our understanding of the emotional, developmental, and educational needs of children and adolescents. On Day One (November 18, 2025), developmental psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld examines the emotional roots of behaviour problems, revealing how anxiety, aggression, impulsiveness, addiction, and other troubling symptoms share common underlying dynamics—and how these issues can be understood and addressed through a developmental lens. Day Two (November 19, 2025) expands the conversation to focus on both classrooms and clinical settings: Dr. Neufeld presents a two-phase model for unlocking student engagement and restoring curiosity, motivation, and well-being, while Dr. Patti Ashley explores the lasting impact of early attachment and developmental trauma and offers trauma-responsive strategies for healing and resilience. In the afternoon, Dr. Ashley provides research-based approaches to fostering social-emotional learning, equipping educators with tools to create emotionally supportive environments that promote growth and connection. Finally, on Day Three (November 20, 2025), Tamara Strijack, M.A. highlights the critical role of play in healthy development and offers insights from her book Reclaiming Our Students on how educators can build strong relationships to counter rising anxiety and aggression, while Dr. Carissa Muth delivers two skill-focused sessions: one on developmentally appropriate interventions for childhood anxiety and another on evidence-based strategies to strengthen executive functioning in children and adolescents. Together, these sessions provide a comprehensive, research-driven, and practical framework for supporting emotional health, resilience, and learning in today’s children and youth.

Info: Are there really 298 different disorders plus countless other syndromes of problem behaviour? Could it be that we have been missing something more fundamental about how the brain works and thus what can go wrong? Could there possibly be a common denominator across the spectrum of troubled experience and behaviour? Dr. Neufeld insists that there now are enough puzzle pieces to reveal not only the emotional roots of our troubled experience and problem behavior, but even the particular emotions giving us the most trouble in today’s society. Using the lens of development, he also helps us understand how these problems first develop in childhood and what they look like at their beginnings. In distilling these dynamics to their essence, he also opens the doors to reversing these problems in both childhood and adulthood.

Info: No issue has ever been more important in education than how to engage students in the learning process. The lack of engagement of today’s students is therefore quite alarming. The downward trend has been noticeable for some time but has become even more acute after the pandemic. Teaching longer or harder has not been the answer. Changing curriculum is a never-ending exercise but also somewhat futile in making the needed difference. Restricting digital devices helps somewhat but doesn’t get to the root of the problem. Curiosity is fading: motivation is waning; mental health is deteriorating; and teacher burnout is escalating. This isn’t the complaint of only one school district or region; this phenomenon appears to be rather widespread. Dr. Neufeld insists that we cannot address a problem we do not truly understand.

Info: This training provides clinicians and educators with a comprehensive understanding of the impact of developmental and early attachment trauma on emotional, cognitive, and social development. Participants will explore the neurobiological and psychological effects of early adverse experiences, including disruptions in attachment, neglect, and abuse. The training will focus on identifying trauma symptoms, understanding trauma-informed care, and learning effective strategies to support healing in children, adolescents, and adults affected by early trauma. Through case studies, video examples, and practical tools, attendees will deepen their knowledge of trauma-responsive interventions and develop skills to facilitate recovery, promote resilience, and foster secure attachment in their professional practice.

Info: This engaging and interactive professional development session is designed to equip educators with the knowledge, strategies, and tools needed to foster social and emotional learning (SEL) in children and adolescents. Grounded in research-based practices, this training explores the five core competencies of SEL—self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making—and their vital role in student success both in and out of the classroom.

Participants will learn how to create emotionally supportive learning environments, build strong teacher-student relationships, and integrate SEL into daily routines and academic instruction. Through real-world examples, hands-on activities, and collaborative discussion, educators will walk away with actionable strategies to support students’ emotional development, resilience, and well-being.

Info: We live in an age of technology, with information and entertainment at our fingertips, and at the fingertips of our children. While this reality may have its conveniences and advantages, it can also preempt the time and space needed for play in our children’s lives. Research is now confirming what age-old cultures have intuitively known all along, that play is actually a vital part of healthy development. What kind of play do children (and adults!) need in their lives? Is screen-play true play and how do we tell the difference? In this seminar, we explore these questions and discuss what we can do as caring adults to preserve true play in a world that is moving too fast.

This workshop is suitable for all those involved with children and youth: parents, teachers, helping professionals. Although the focus is children, the dynamics and insights apply to individuals of any age.

Info: As high as 20% of children in Canada will experience an anxiety disorder before reaching adulthood. For many of these children, symptoms of anxiety will impede their life and development to a degree that will create impairments into adulthood. Developmental vulnerabilities place children and adolescents at unique risk and also in need of specialized knowledge regarding the assessment and treatment of their anxiety symptoms. In this workshop, Dr. Muth will ground the assessment and treatment of anxiety for children and adolescent in a neurological understanding of human development. Presenting developmentally appropriate CBT and play therapy interventions, Dr. Muth will provide practical tools for working with children and adolescents with anxiety. Participants will walk away with the ability to identify anxiety symptoms and apply immediate interventions to address psychological symptoms and reduce the likelihood of continuation of issues into adulthood.

Info: Children are more anxious, aggressive, and shut down than ever. Faced with this epidemic of emotional health crises and behavioral problems, educators are asking themselves what went wrong. Why have we lost our students? More importantly: how can we get them back? Based on the book [co-written by the presenter], Reclaiming Our Students, this workshop will support educators with insights and strategies for how to build, nurture, and protect the student-teacher relationship in order to create the emotional safety needed for our students to thrive. We will also explore some of the common roots of troubling behaviour, including aggression and anxiety. Walking through various scenarios, we will practice together the art of reading our students and responding to their needs, in order for them to be emotionally healthy and receptive to learning.

Info: Planning, organizing, and emotionally regulating all are executive functioning that, when impaired, can significantly impact activities of daily living. In childhood this can range in presentation from the ability to complete homework, to the ability to refrain from anger outbursts. While executive functioning never fully develops until young adulthood, certain children are at risk for lifetime impairments. Risk factors include trauma, low socioeconomic status, stress or neurodevelopmental disorders such as ADHD or ASD. In this workshop, Dr. Muth will present tools that can be implemented in the therapeutic setting and have been evidenced to have a lasting impact on children with low executive functioning. Many skills have been suggested by professionals, such as exercise, computer games, music, but only a few have been found to have a lasting impact once the intervention ceases.

Info: OPTIONAL EVENING SESSION - Add on to your registration at checkout. - We all want our children to thrive – to become all they were meant to be, despite the challenges they may face. But how is this to be accomplished? What conditions are required for optimal functioning? How do we build resilience and support well-being in an increasingly wounding and stress-filled world? Dr. Neufeld will put the pieces together to reveal rather surprising answers to this quintessential question of human development. Regardless of the challenge, this knowledge will help set priorities as well as help focus on what matters most. A consciousness of the irreducible needs of children and youth is a much needed antidote to a society that has become outcome driven and a culture that has lost its intuitive wisdom.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Best Western Premier Calgary Plaza Hotel & Conference Centre, 1316 33 Street Northeast, Calgary, Canada