Designed for clients in our counseling therapy and coaching programs, this section of the Online Learning Portal contains courses to promote better parenting, dealing with difficult parenting situations, etc.

Trust-Based Relational Intervention® was developed primarily at Texas Christian University by Dr. Karyn B. Purvis and Dr. David Cross, as an attachment-based, trauma-informed intervention designed to meet the complex needs of vulnerable children.  But if TBRI® is effective in working with and addressing the needs of children who have become vulnerable because of the physiological and psychological changes that occur through abuse or neglect, how much more might we expect these principles, based in solid science and common sense, to work in other situations, with children who aren't suffering from such profoundly difficult developmental deficits?  Hence, this course in "Trust-Based Parenting," in which we've attempted to bring all the technology, developmental understanding and neuropsychology that has become available only in the past few years, to bear on challenges that parents face every day, whether with birth children or with those who have come to us through adoption, or as part of a family blending process.

For parents of adopted children many things are different than with birth children.  Even though you may have received your child immediately after she was born, or when he was just a few days old, deficits in the attachment process have undoubtedly occurred.  For many adoptive parents, the time a child languished in an orphanage overseas, or in some other less-than-desirable situation has taken a toll.  Nobody likes to think about these things, but when we take upon ourselves the responsibility of adoption, we also assume whatever deficit may have occurred prior to the child's entry to our loving home.  This course speaks to the issues of attachment, to the resulting developmental deficits that occur when attachment is not complete, and to skills and methods parents can use to rebuild the developmental process.

Children and youth who have experienced foster care or orphanage-rearing have often experienced complex developmental trauma, demonstrating an interactive set of psychological and behavioral issues. Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI) is a therapeutic model that trains parents to provide effective support and treatment for at-risk children. It has been used effectively with children and youth of all ages and all risk levels. This course provides an overview of TBRI and shows examples of how it is applied.