Training

I attended an all day training session today to fulfill my hours for my foster care license.  They call it the Spring Training Blitz here, where hundreds come to get their required training hours in a single day.  There were seven morning trainings to choose from and seven afternoon training sessions.

In the morning I went to a session on motivation.  The trainer was excellent and really knew her stuff.  She was a child and family therapist.  Unfortunately, she spent almost the entire time talking about developmental stages and what happens when kids experience trauma or are otherwise interrupted during those stages.  She shared many reasons why kids lack motivation, but she didn't really get into how to help them become motivated other than to say that they need to learn what they missed during each developmental stage. 

A couple take aways from this class:

• Kids can't process working to change more than three things at a time.
• The more you externally motivate, the less a child develops internal motivation.

The afternoon session that I attended discussed keeping children safe in the digital world.  Topics covered included internet safety, password strength and security, monitoring software for both computers and smart phones, and rules regarding electronic devices.  I thought this training presented some really good information.  I signed up for an email which will outline how to set the privacy settings on social media. 

This day was made possible by my fabulous friend, also a foster and adoptive parent, who watched all of my children along with her brood.  We all met for an outdoor barbeque to end the day.