The Challenging Behaviors Collection

The topics in this collection tackle the most common emotional, behavioral and social issues facing child-serving organizations. Poverty, child abuse, ADHD, stress, bullying, suicide and addiction are addressed from the perspective of the developing brain. By understanding what happens in the brain in these contexts, you will be armed with the knowledge needed to apply the right interventions and supports at the right time. This is powerful science. UDO makes it powerfully practical.

Beyond Poverty

Beyond Poverty: Brain-Inspired Ways to Understand and Respond to Poverty

Poverty has a synergistic and pervasive negative impact on children’s brains. Given the many developmental windows occurring in childhood, poverty often wreaks havoc on the brain’s ability to grow and function optimally.

Child Abuse and the Brain

Child Abuse and the Brain: The Developmental Impact of Trauma in Childhood

Key discoveries in neuroscience have revealed a more comprehensive and sophisticated understanding of the impact of child abuse on the developing brain. With incredible specificity, scientists have mapped how the experience of abuse in childhood changes the growing brain and predisposes it to psychiatric disorders in adulthood. Child abuse produces severe stress in the brain.

Rethinking ADHD

Rethinking ADHD: What Works, What Doesn't and Why

Many believe that children with ADHD suffer from poor parenting or lack the moral fortitude to behave appropriately. Nothing could be further from the truth. ADHD is a physiological disorder of the brain with definite, predictable behavioral consequences. This workshop uses brain scanning technology to illustrate the physiological differences in the development of brains with and without ADHD.

Secrets of the Stressed-Out Brain

Secrets of the Stressed-Out-Brain: What Really Happens In There and What You Can Do To Conquer Stress!

Always wondered: “What’s going on in there?” when you are overwhelmed, anxious and stressed-out? Are you curious about how and why stress often leads to troubling patterns of thinking and behavior? Interested in some new, practical and enlightening ideas for shaping healthier behavior?

Battling the Bully

Battling the Bully: Brain-Inspired Responses to Bullying

Bullying has become a significant concern on many campuses as students with physical or cognitive differences intimidate and exploit their more vulnerable classmates, often with a social sophistication and discreetness that make it difficult for adults to observe and intervene with.

The Saddest Song

The Saddest Song: Teens, Suicide, and the Developing Brain

This workshop introduces participants to the emerging research findings on how the adolescent brain develops and functions regarding depression and suicidal behavior. The workshop will share with participants the significant insight gained into suicidal behavior over the last decade.

Trouble Letting Go

Trouble Letting Go: Understanding Addiction in the Adolescent Brain

In this workshop participants will learn why adolescents are more sensitive and more vulnerable to the effects of alcohol, nicotine, and drugs than adults are. This workshop will examine why this vulnerability exists and will provide concrete methods for both prevention and intervention.