- The course is being filmed in Montreal in the summer of 2013 with about 100 participants from diverse cultures and backgrounds.
- The course aims to help individuals make sense of children and their development.
- The focus is on providing a theoretical foundation that can be applied to various roles and situations involving children.
- The course has been taught since 2001 and the content has been affirmed and validated by contemporary science.
- The purpose of refilming the course is to create a more compatible structure for continuing education.
- The course consists of 20 teaching sessions, approximately an hour each.
- The course will be supported with supplemental material for those taking it through Continuing Education.
- The approach focuses on children because understanding childhood helps in understanding adult issues and development.
- The distinctives of the approach will be discussed in the beginning of the course.

- The approach discussed is called the attachment-based integrated developmental approach, but is commonly referred to as the Neufeld approach.
- The approach is focused on making sense of children, particularly preschoolers, in order to understand their potential and address any challenges or issues they may have.
- It is an insight-based approach rather than a skill-based approach, emphasizing the importance of understanding the child and their behavior.
- The ability to see and interpret children correctly is crucial in determining how to interact with them.
- The development of eyes, or the ability to read children, is foundational in this approach.
- The focus is on theory and understanding, with practice following from theory.
- The best way to understand and apply this approach is to think about specific children and try to make sense of them from inside out.

- The focus should be on observing and understanding children's behavior, not just on what to do in response
- Diagnoses are simply descriptions and do not provide explanations for behavior
- Understanding the cause and reason behind behavior is important for effective intervention
- Developmentalists aim to understand the unfolding of human potential and how to help children reach their full potential
- The primary intervention is not telling people what to do, but giving them a different perspective and understanding of the child
- Introducing children to others in a way that helps them make sense of the child can lead to positive changes in the interaction
- The course will provide a lot of information, and it is best to focus on understanding rather than trying to remember everything that was said.

- The best way to take in this course is not to try and remember what is said, but to gain insights that will stay with you.
- Many courses are ineffective because people forget the information shortly after completing the course.
- It is important to have a child or student in mind when learning, as this will help you see them differently and retain insights.
- The course focuses on understanding children and their potential, rather than just good behavior or fitting into society.
- The theory presented in the course is a model that explains and predicts human behavior and helps individuals realize their potential.

- Human potential can be distilled into three key factors: maturation, vulnerability, and attachment.
- Maturation is the spontaneous unfolding of human potential, but can be hindered by impediments.
- Vulnerability plays a significant role in human potential, as our brains have defensive mechanisms to protect us from overwhelming vulnerability.
- Attachment is important in the context of human potential, and it is crucial to find rest and balance in relationships.
- Genetics and learning theory are not as significant in the realization of human potential as maturation, vulnerability, and attachment.
- Intelligence does not determine the unfolding of human potential.
- The focus should be on understanding and removing impediments to allow children to grow, mature, and realize their potential.
- It is important to provide conditions for children to feel their emotions and have rest from the relentless pursuit of contact and belonging.
- The goal is to understand how to unlock the mystery of human potential through the three key factors: attachment, vulnerability, and maturation.
- Maps, rather than methods or directions, are important in realizing human potential, as they provide a big picture and allow for flexibility in finding alternate routes.

- The video discusses the complexity of understanding children and the limitations of linear explanations.
- The speaker emphasizes the importance of internalizing different theories and perspectives to see children in a three-dimensional way.
- The goal is to understand children in the context of their potential development, rather than comparing them to a standard.
- The speaker mentions a book called "Maps of the Mind" by Charles Hampton Turner, which explores different perspectives on child development.
- Different specialists may have different views on a child's behavior, but it is important to see them holistically.
- The course will focus on maturation, emotional health, and attachment to gain a comprehensive understanding of children.
- It takes time and practice to develop the ability to see children in a three-dimensional way.
- The speaker criticizes the habit of using complex language to appear more knowledgeable and emphasizes the importance of finding a language that does not divide.

- The speaker discusses the simplicity and similarity of various theories in child development.
- They emphasize the importance of using a language that unites rather than divides parents, professionals, teachers, and administrators.
- The speaker believes that parents and teachers should be in control when working with children and that contrived interventions take away from natural intuition.
- They express concern about the materialistic turn in culture and the loss of connection to intuition.
- The speaker describes their role as a theorist who joins the dots and creates a theory by synthesizing and distilling existing knowledge.
- They use the metaphor of an elephant in the room to represent the unspoken and unaddressed aspects of human behavior that need to be brought into consciousness.
- The goal is to create a model that can make sense of children's behavior and help unfold their potential.

- The course is being filmed in Montreal in the summer of 2013 with about 100 participants from diverse cultures and backgrounds.
- The course aims to help individuals make sense of children and their development.
- The course has been taught since 2001 and the content has been affirmed and validated by contemporary science.
- The purpose of refilming the course is to create a more compatible structure for continuing education.
- The course consists of 20 teaching sessions, approximately an hour each.
- The approach discussed is called the attachment-based integrated developmental approach, commonly referred to as the Neufeld approach.
- The approach focuses on understanding children, particularly preschoolers, in order to address any challenges or issues they may have.
- The development of eyes, or the ability to read children, is foundational in this approach.
- The focus is on theory and understanding, with practice following from theory.
- Diagnoses are simply descriptions and do not provide explanations for behavior.
- The primary intervention is giving individuals a different perspective and understanding of the child.
- The course will provide a lot of information, and it is best to focus on understanding rather than trying to remember everything that was said.
- The theory presented in the course is a model that explains and predicts human behavior and helps individuals realize their potential.
- Human potential can be distilled into three key factors: maturation, vulnerability, and attachment.
- The goal is to understand how to unlock the mystery of human potential through the three key factors.
- Maps, rather than methods or directions, are important in realizing human potential, as they provide a big picture and allow for flexibility.
- The speaker emphasizes the importance of internalizing different theories and perspectives to see children in a three-dimensional way.
- The course will focus on maturation, emotional health, and attachment to gain a comprehensive understanding of children.
- It takes time and practice to develop the ability to see children in a three-dimensional way.
- The speaker criticizes the habit of using complex language to appear more knowledgeable and emphasizes the importance of finding a language that unites rather than divides.
- The speaker believes that parents and teachers should be in control when working with children and that contrived interventions take away from natural intuition.
- The goal is to create a model that can make sense of children's behavior and help unfold their potential.

I'm most pleased to welcome you to this course.

For those of you taking this course for Continuing Education, I just want to give you a little bit of an idea of the venue here.

There's about 100 individuals taking this course here.

And like our students in Continuing Education, the audience is very diverse, representing different cultures, different countries.

We have individuals here from, we have a person here from South America, from New Zealand, from the United States, from across Canada, representing again diverse cultures.

I want to distill to the essence our understandings of making sense of children so that it is applicable in every venue, in every culture, and this always creates that kind of challenge.

We also like our continuing education audience in this venue represent various roles with children.

Some are here as educators, as administrators, helping professionals, daycare providers.

How many of you here in the audience are parents?

But we're all here for 1 reason, come together for 1 reason, and that is to make sense of children.

And so that, I welcome you for that purpose and that our time together is going to be directly addressing the unraveling of the mysteries of childhood and of development.

Many of you in this venue, as well as in Continuing Education, come with different exposure to the material.

It's unique in the sense that it is in this course that I try to give the underlying structure of the theory in such a way that individuals can use it to solve their own problems.

I tired basically of giving direction, thinking that the model that I was working from, the approach that I'd spent my life putting together, I could teach and I could teach it, and my hope was, is that I could teach it in such a way that if individuals understood it, they could address their own issues, their own challenges in interacting with children.

They could find their own directions from that.

And so I shifted from focusing on the practice to basically focusing on the theory and being able to teach that.

I've created now about 20 courses and these 20 courses are some are problem-centered, some are concept-centered, some are age-centered, like the preschoolers making sense of preschoolers, making sense of adolescents, and so on.

But this is the only course, it's a flagship course and the signature course, in that way that actually gives the underlying structure.

So whether you're fresh this material or whether you've been to a number of courses before, hopefully you'll find something very unique in this particular course that it lays a foundation that it will enable you to take the challenges you have, the questions you have, and be able to take the knowledge that you've gained from this course to solve some of those issues, whether they're in education, whether they're as a therapist, whether in direct treatment, as a play therapist, as a parent, whether as an adolescent, for adolescents or for preschoolers, for young children or whatever.

So my desire is to make it universal, as universal as possible in terms of application.

I created and taught this course first in 2001, that's 12 years ago now, and a lot of information has been generated in the last 12 years and been made available to the public.

I'm pleased, very pleased, that all of the major points of this course have only been affirmed.

I have not had to change any of the content per se.

And I'm thrilled with that, actually, that that was not the issue.

The issue was not updating it in terms of content, actually the picture that emerged has been more affirmed, is even more validated by contemporary science.

What the purpose of refilming this course, it was first filmed in 2007, and the purpose for refilming it is basically to try and create a more compatible structure for continuing education.

Being able to structure it so there's discrete themes to each session and so that it's more easily supported and so that teams of teachers can take it together or train together as helping professionals or groups of parents and so on.

So that's a little bit about the history of the course.

The structure of the course will consist of 20 teaching sessions.

And these 20 teaching sessions are going to be approximately an hour.

It's hard for me to be able to predict this exactly, but approximately an hour.

Sometimes I don't quite know the stories that are going to come or how long they will take.

This is always a bit of a challenge when you don't get to do a rehearsal.

And it wouldn't work for me anyway because I couldn't remember.

I wouldn't be able to remember what I did.

So that's the advantage of the course you get, is you get it as if it's fresh and I think it's meant to be that way.

Hopefully I can teach it from the place that I am, I can both feel my heart, use my head and am in the middle of the place as a parent, as a professional, as a teacher, and so on.

And if I can do this it's rather fresh but I can't always predict the time.

But that's the basic structure of the course.

For those taking it through Continuing Education, that course will be supported with all kinds of resource material, the supplemental material.

For those taking the course here in Montreal in this venue.

We'll have some question and answer times.

Now I get asked, well why don't you teach about adults?

I used to teach personal growth courses for adults.

They take such a long time to grow up and to change.

And it seemed to be too much, we were thinking of ourselves too much.

I found actually when I shifted it to children, it was much easier 1 step removed.

And I've had many students come to me and said, I came thinking I was coming as an administrator, a principal, a teacher, a parent, or in the thinking of my students, of my children, and I found out I was taking it for myself.

And so, and I need to come again so that I can think of so and so, And sometimes I've had individuals come 3 or 4 times each time from a different place and thinking it from a different place.

The material actually applies equally to adults.

But I find that it's much more direct, much more transparent, much more understandable when we understand these things, make sense of the children, because that is, that is to be the time of the major unfolding of human potential of development.

The problems that, the stuckness that begins in childhood haunts us in adulthood.

We have to look at things and address things there, but they're so much easier to understand if we can understand them in children.

And so I have decided to focus on children only, but you're welcome to focus wherever you wish.

And I think you'll find it equally applicable no matter what your focus is.

To start at the beginning, where do we start?

I'd like to start with taking a step back and taking a look at what the distinctives are of this particular approach.

What are the distinctives of this approach?

I called it, when I was teaching this approach at university to my students, I simply called it the attachment-based integrated developmental approach.

That's quite a mouthful, it's quite a handle.

And students tired of this, and then began to just say this is the Neufeld approach.

I first of all thought, no, no, I can't accept this.

But then I wasn't able to come up with a proper alternative.

The approach, as you're going to see in our next session, has a rich, rich history of literature, rich history of source theorists and so on.

This is simply my formulation, my articulation, my synthesis, my distillation of it, much of the theory and all of the dots of the facts, they are not mine.

But my part of this has been to be able to formulate it, to articulate it, and since it lacks a proper name, this formulation, many of my students have taken to calling it the Neufeld approach, and so that hopefully you can live with that and that will be okay with you.

What I will attempt to do and what my job here to do is to present a cohesive, a coherent, a comprehensive approach to making sense of children and to use all the material available in science, in theory, in research, in practice, professional practice to come to that particular articulation.

So we'll begin with the fact again of our theme.

It is making sense of children, making sense of children of all ages, but the younger that we can make sense of them, I especially think if you can make sense of the preschooler, you have the keys to making sense of any pathology, of any problem, of any challenge.

Those of you that are familiar with preschoolers know they qualify for probably 10 diagnosis right off the bat.

They qualify for oppositional defiant, they qualify for conduct disorder, they qualify for attention deficit disorder, they qualify for bipolar disorder, they call it certainly qualify for obsessive-compulsive disorder, and on and on and on you would go.

And there's a good reason for this and we'll get to that.

But the point is, if you can understand a young child, if you can make sense of them from inside out, you do have the keys for making sense of the unfolding of human potential.

And so this material applies there's there's extra challenges that adolescence but the basic dynamics is still unfold in the same way they still do there's there's a particular challenges especially when attachment become sexualized when there's a new kind of consciousness and I deal with this in some of my adolescent material.

But basically the issues that we're going to look at, the very very basic issues of the unfolding of human potential are the exact same issues.

First of all, it's about developing insight, not skill.

And in this way, it goes against some of the prevailing current in today's literature, because much of today's literature is skill-based.

The idea is that if you had the right strategy, If you learned the right skill, you would know what to do.

And so it is skill-based, not insight-based.

That is why the theme is making sense of, to understand.

We cannot truly address a problem that we don't understand.

If the child is an enigma to us, our interaction will be off-base.

If we misread the child, our interactions can again do more damage.

We must understand, and so this is an insight approach, that it is in our seeing, it is what we see, not primarily what we do.

And so the focus here is very, very heavily not on practice but on the model on seeing, on what we see.

I know that for myself, there is no greater determiner of what I do than what I see.

In fact, this is a fundamental truth, that the greatest determiner of what we do is what we see.

So no matter what our skill base is, If we saw an aggressive child as wounded, that's what we would address.

If we saw an aggressive child as frustrated, then that's what we would address.

Now the fact is, is that our seeing would determine our doing.

When we encounter oppositionality, do we see defiance?

And our interactions will be very, very different.

You with the same skills, in the same classroom, the same parent, depending on what you see, will determine what you do.

In the Middle Ages, 1 of the roots of the words, or in Old English, for counselor, is seer.

And the secret is in the seeing, because if you would see correctly, you would know what to do.

And so the counselor was the seer, the wise 1, the 1 with eyes.

And that's what I would like to share with you.

This is about, in this course, it's about eyes.

It's about developing eyes, developing the ability to read children, even when problems are rather off-putting, even when problems are rather odious, when they're confusing and complex.

If we can read children correctly, then our dance will be informed.

And so this is a very old dance we have with children.

As teachers, as parents, as grandparents, a very old dance.

And the dance is only going to be as informed as our eyes are informed.

And so again this is absolutely foundational.

A developmental approach is an insight-based approach.

The question I've gotten asked most often in my professional career, of course, is what do I do?

I remember in university teaching this material, I would have students who say, well can we just skip the theory please?

I would be invited to give professional development in schools and they would say, well we're all professionals here so you don't have to tell us about the theory just tell us what to do.

I would say that's not very professional is it?

It's not very professional because if and I would say to my students directly when I had the clout as a professor to say to them if you ask me, if you're asking me what to do, it's obvious to me that you do not yet see.

Because if you saw what I saw, there would be plenty of ideas coming into your head.

That doesn't mean that the application would be simple.

But you would have ideas about what to do that would flow from what you see.

As soon as it stands on its own the dance is broken.

It follows from and is only as good as our eyes are.

And the best way to make sense of this material or of this course is to actually have in mind 1, 2, or 3 children that you care about, that are in your care, and try to make sense of them from inside out.

And watch as you make sense of them how much that informs the dance, how much that informs the interaction, without ever trying to think of what to do.

And so that is the question, the most most important question to align with the purpose of this course is what do I see when a child does this, when a child does that, when this happens and so on.

And then sitting with that, letting this material inform that that is the, that is key.

It's about explanations, not diagnostic descriptions.

Now there's an explosion of diagnosis that is happening.

With every release of this diagnostic statistic manual that is used in North America and the international 1 that is used internationally, there's many more kind of problems that diagnosis that are released.

What we have to realize is a diagnosis is simply a description.

For instance, an attention deficit disorder.

When you, as a clinician, those of you that are clinicians and what a clinician will look for to see as if it coexists 3 traits, 3 characteristics.

The child is distractible, the child is impulsive, and the child is restless.

If 2 out of those 3 coexist and are rather stable, we would all qualify for that after having too much coffee.

We would all qualify in certain situations and circumstances.

But if those characteristics are fairly stable, the child qualifies for a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder.

Now when they're impulsive, we say they're impulsive because they have ADD you can't say that you can't say that there is no explanation it there We cannot use a diagnosis to explain.

As we go along we're going to find the explanations for impulsiveness.

We're going to look at explanations for restlessness.

A person is not restless because they have a diagnosis.

Unfortunately, many are losing their way with this and don't understand this anymore.

That's why these diagnoses only lead to symptom management.

When you're diagnosed, it tells you the medication that should be used, and but we all know that there's no cure for any of these things, they simply manage symptoms.

And so as a developmentalist, as we look for more, We want to find out what is the cause, what is the reason, what is the etiology, because if we can understand it there is a chance for a change.

And so the more we can find out about having a sense of the explanations, the more effective again our interaction is going to be.

It's about the big picture and not getting lost in the details.

As a developmentalist, I often get asked, well, are you an expert in attention problems?

Are you an expert in this or gender issues and so on?

And a developmentalist by nature is not an expert.

Because if you're an expert in something, it's too easy to lose the forest for the trees.

Because you are a developmentalist, the question, the question that is key for a developmentalist is the unfolding of human potential.

How do we realize our full potential as human beings?

Now when we understand that, when we have a perspective, we can inform the details, we can inform specific issues, we can inform specific challenges.

But if you only know of a particular problem or challenge, completely outside of the context of what the yearning of development is, of the larger issues that are there.

I often get asked, we'll probably go to this, when I'm involved in continuing education for pediatricians.

It says, well, all this is fine for children who don't have a diagnosis.

The more things are awry, the more important we understand how human potential was meant to unfold.

That is a key for the child in any kind of problem that represents it, the learning disabled child.

The more challenges that are there, the more that we understand what are the conditions that are conducive for the unfolding of human development.

It's about introducing children to those responsible for them.

The primary intervention is not telling people what to do.

Because in telling people what to do, first of all, you may not have a right to tell people what to do.

Furthermore, they may not have the relationship with you that makes it go down easy.

And so if they like you, they'll try to do what you tell them to do.

If they don't like you, they'll resist that.

But the primary intervention is not that, because if you tell a person what to do, they become dependent upon your directions.

Now you need to be able to figure out every step of the way to be able to orchestrate them, because they're no longer thinking for themselves, they no longer have their own ideas.

And so the issue is not to tell people what to do.

This is what I'm going to try and do in this course.

I'm going to try and give you my eyes, the map that I use, the model that I've developed in my life's work, and to give you what I see when I see a child, what I see when I see aggression happening or oppositionality or resistance or whatever it is and you give them their eyes and so this is by far the most effective intervention.

So what do you do when as a teacher you're working with a parent or as a parent you're talking to a teacher is you introduce that child to the other in a way that helps them make sense of that child from inside out.

If you can do this, their dance will change without you ever having to tell them what to do.

I have had the most powerful interventions in a five-minute phone call with a counselor, with a teacher, with a therapist and so on because all I did was simply reframe, put a different spin on it, change the way the person saw the child.

And I knew from there that the dance would change.

Also from thousands of consultations over the years, when I would ask, what made the difference for you?

And over and over again, when I saw the child differently.

When I saw the student differently, then things began to change.

And so if that is true for us, this is our primary way of intervention for others, is to be able to simply introduce them to the child in a different way.

It's about making sense, I say, of a child near you to align your own objectives here with the objectives of the course.

There's another reason, is that we're going to go through an awful lot of information in this course.

And some of you may at times feel a little bit overwhelmed, like it's too much.

You're ingesting more than you can digest and it's making you sick.

And So it's just the way it happens when you teach this way.

And it would be better if we all took a week between every session and could digest it and so on.

And the best way, the best way to take in this course is not to try and remember what I said.

The best way to take in this course is not to try

The best way to take in this course is to when something has made sense to you, You see the child a little differently and that's why it's important to have a child or student in mind.

When you see the student a little differently, when you've had that insight, you don't lose that insight.

The problem with many courses is that after the course there's a little bit of excitement because you've learned a whole lot and you've got pages and pages of notes.

And then after 2 weeks you can't remember anything.

And it gets really discouraging and you read over those notes and they all seem a little bit like a foreign language to you, you don't get it.

The fact is, is that's not the way we're meant to take in the material either.

If you keep in mind a child and you've gained an insight, that will stay with you.

You will find that that insight will come over and over again with others as well.

So don't try to hang on to the information.

Just allow yourself to align yourself with the purpose of the course and it's simply to make sense of a child.

Make sense of a child and allow this simply to inform your eyes and as it does you won't lose those insights.

Again to our primary theme, what we see determines what we do, therefore it's an insight approach.

And again, why it is that there is far more theory, using theory in the sense that theory informs practice, that There is a certain way of thinking, a certain assumptions, a certain model that is used, and the practice flows from that.

And so the practice flows from that model, excuse me, as well as an understanding of the child in the context of that material.

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Intensive I - session 1