Trauma-Informed Tools
Bring Hand in Hand's pioneering tools into your family, school or practice.
Overcome challenging child behaviors, avoid burnout, and nurture strong, adult-child relationships in 8 weeks or less.
A trauma-informed program
you can trust
Get a complete introduction to Hand in Hand's five simple, practical, and therapeutic tools.
These 6-8 week courses teach you how to build support for yourself as a parent or professional working with children, and give you tools that fosters a child’s ability to learn, connect, and build confidence.
- Weekly mentorship with Hand in Hand Instructors
- Small-group classes with peers
- Online. Attend from anywhere in the world
6-Week Course For Parents
Hand in Hand's Foundations Course for Parents and Caregivers
Empower yourself as a parent with tools you can rely on to become the secure base your child needs. Overcome challenging behavior, heal old hurts from your childhood that cause anger, worry and confusion to flare, and build a family rich with laughter and connection.
- Understand how emotions can drive your child's behavior off course.
- Respond to difficult behaviors like defiance, anxiety and aggression with confidence and clarity.
- Deep-dive each Hand in Hand listening tool one-by-one to learn how each works, how to get the best from the tool, and ways to adapt it for your family,
- Heal your own past hurts, uncover triggers and break generational trauma cycles with weekly in-call Listening Partnerships that restore your energy for parenting.
- Weekly 90-minute mentoring call with a Hand in Hand Instructor.
- Small group sessions with like-minded parents so you can build support for being the parent you want to be.
- Access a library of video classes and texts to further your learning
- Attend online, in a class that suits your schedule.
8-Week Course for Educators and anyone working in early care and educational settings.
Hand in Hand's Foundations Course for Educators
Learn five effective tools shown to ease educator stress. Decrease overwhelm, build support for yourself and access evidence-based strategies to help children learn, even if they face difficult challenges.
- Gain a new understanding of children's emotions and behaviors, along with concrete short and long-term strategies you can use to address challenging behaviors
- Strengthen the social-emotional foundations necessary for children’s learning
- Transform classrooms into sources of connection and resilience
- Restore your energy and enthusiasm for the important role you play
- Strengthen the home-school partnership
- Foster more positive, playful, and joyful interactions with the children in your care
- Attend a weekly 60-minute mentoring call with your Hand in Hand Instructor and a small group of educators
- Practice peer-to-peer support in small group classes led by an experienced mentor
- Gain personalized support and guidance every week
- Enjoy access to a full library of additional resources, including texts and video sessions led by Hand in Hand's founder, Patty Wipfler.
8-Week Course for All Professionals Working with Children and Families; Therapists, Coaches, Health and Wellness Professionals, and people interested in using these Tools in their workplace or community.
Hand in Hand's Foundations Course for Professionals
Emotional and behavioral issues are of real concern for increasing numbers of families. Evidence shows that when stress is high for either the child or the parent, good support is helpful for both. This program will help you hit new breakthroughs in your sessions, and provide a child's entire care team with useful, actionable information they can use to grow and move forward.
- Learn a paradigm-shifting approach on how emotions function and how they can be responded to in order to shift challenging behaviors, increase connection and encourage growth.
- Begin using five concrete trauma-responsive caregiving and peer-support tools that attend to both the emotional needs of adults and the children in their care, buffer children against hard times, and disrupt the transmission of trauma to the next generation.
- Join discussions and discourse on developmental theory, with a focus on practical and experiential application.
- Learn tools that strengthen the social-emotional foundation necessary for children's growth, learning and recovery from old hurts.
- Increase your confidence in responding to children’s emotions and behaviors.
- Attend small group mentoring with 90-minute weekly meetings online led by a Hand in Hand Instructor.
- Gain expertise in the approach as you introduce and practice the tools in your own family and with those you work with
Student Testimonials
About Hand in Hand
For 33 years, Hand in Hand has supported parents and professionals to nurture social-emotional health for themselves and the children in their care. Hand in Hand provides tools to support children's emotional development, which helps parents strengthen their parent-child connection. Hand in Hand has five unique tools, and is a trauma-responsive, evidence-based approach.
FAQ
Most frequent questions and answers
Each of the five Listening Tools in the framework works well independently and in tandem. You can begin using the tools right away and you will see results almost as soon as you begin to use them. During the class, you can draw on guidance from your Instructor to problem-solve and trouble-shoot how to get the best from the tools. You'll also learn how to build support for yourself after the class, and you'll find Hand in Hand's community a warm and vibrant place to ask questions and gain support.
Expect to spend between 4 and 6 hours per week working through the materials, including your mentoring group calls. It does pay to keep on top of the week’s modules because you will use your group sessions to really explore the focus topics.
That said, you can begin using what you learn from day one, (as in, the minute you log into your online learning space). Feel free to go ahead and read through the modules, videos, and audios ahead of schedule if that helps you better manage your time.
Even better, many participants say they look forward to connecting with peers and receiving support and understanding in weekly call-groups.
This time allows you to unload your struggles, whether that’s related to your time-stretched schedule or other things that keep you up at night.
You emerge calmer and more energized knowing you have a supportive, wise community caring for you. In fact, many past call groups keep their weekly calls going long after sessions end.
It’s definitely the program's secret sauce, and one that keeps on giving. Like you.
In six to eight weeks, you’ll have built a wonderful supportive space for you when times get hard, and you’ll have a whole new and workable system to bring to your family or your work.
And you'll be using them to connect, support and strengthen relationships year after year.
You have a great foundation, since the Hand in Hand philosophy is very much aligned with leading trauma-evidence findings.
In addition to sharing a paradigm-shifting understanding of children’s emotional functioning and behavior, this is one of the only programs to offer practical, non-punitive tools that support current theory on social-emotional well-being and foster real healing and change.
The Hand in Hand approach addresses strategies to enhance children's and adults' well-being with equal importance.
Both concrete and profound, the Hand in Hand Parenting Listening Tools can provide immediate support and relief to an overwhelmed parent, and offer the possibility of long-term transformation.
If you are an educator or professional working with children and/or parents, you'll also benefit from this restorative element of the program.
Each weekly session is a mixture of instruction, sharing of personal experience using the Listening Tools, mentoring in the use of the approach, and group listening time that is grounded in our approach.
Calls last 60 minutes in the Starter and Foundations Class, and 90 minutes for the Professionals Intensive courses.
You’ll learn from one another and from your own personal emotional work in the class, giving you direct experience of the tools as you practice them.
Calls are warm, open, and responsive. Many past participants so look forward to the support and connection gained through the calls that they continue them even once the intensive is over. We find them a wonderful way to dial back into the approach, and build support for the strenuous work you do.
6-Week Starter Class: when you join today, you get access to your own personal dashboard and the 6 modules that comprise the course. Take some time getting familiar with this rich collection of resources. We'll ask you to indicate your availability for your 90-minute weekly mentoring call, and introduce you to the Instructor leading your section. No more than 5 other parents will be enrolled in your section, so personal attention for you and your situation is guaranteed.
8-Week Foundations Course: when you sign up, you'll have access to your personal dashboard and the 8 modules, including videos, audio, and booklets, that comprise the course. You can begin absorbing the information immediately. You'll let us know when you are available for your 90-minute mentoring call, and we'll introduce you to the Instructor leading your section. We have calls available at a wide variety of times across many time zones, and the groups are small, so you'll receive personal attention weekly.
8-Week Professionals Intensive: Register with us, and we'll give you immediate access to the 8 modules that comprise your course–videos, booklets, and audio resources you'll learn from and enjoy. You'll have access to these materials for a whole year. You will then choose from a variety of mentoring calls at various times suitable for professionals in a wide range of time zones. We'll sign you up with the Instructor leading your section, and your call will begin within a week or two. The groups are small–no more than 4 professionals–so you'll get personal attention for your thoughts, feelings, and questions.