https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/northern-balancing-our-minds-tickets-33259309490?aff=es2

Prince George is proud to be one of five communities in British Columbia that will host a Balancing Our Minds youth summit in 2017. The youth summit is a free, day long event for high school aged youth to learn about mental health, engage in fun activities and participate in thoughtful dialogue.

In Prince George, the youth summit is called Northern Balancing Our Minds (NBOM) and it will be the first to addresses the culture, lifestyle and interests of youth living in northern British Columbia. NBOM will entertain, delight and encourage young people to make mental wellness a priority – both for themselves and for others.

Lighting the Way: Attachment Through the Years

On May 11th 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM free evening sessions available for registered delegates and the public to attend.  Registration is not required however attendance will be limited by the number of seats available.  Arrive early to ensure a spot.  See details below.

http://www.unbc.ca/events/42463/lighting-way-attachment-through-years#free-sessions

Attachment and Screens: Happy Kids & Angry Birds

Speaker: Vanessa Lapointe

Note: session will take place at UNBC

As a society, we have never before experienced a revolution as swift and all encompassing as the Technology Revolution. The result is we are growing up children in a time when their brains and worlds are being changed and shaped by forces we could not have imagined even 10 years ago.

Facebook didn’t exist just over a decade ago. Twitter and Instagram are a foreign language to many adults. And actual play in the real world is often replaced by screen time, with the average Canadian child being exposed to approximately 7.5 hours of “entertainment technology” per day. The challenge is that this has happened so quickly, we have not culturally had an opportunity to adjust our practices and build in safeguards and check-points to ensure that this does not harm the influential brains and minds of our growing children.

This workshop will focus on how technology exposure and use might be harming our children, how technology might be used to actually benefit the development of our children, and some ideas and guidelines to implement in our children’s exposure to and use of technology to ultimately protect and nurture their well-being.

Denise Findlay – Parenting Through Crisis

(NOTE: this session will take place at the Prince George Native Friendship Centre located at 1600 3rd Avenue, Prince George)

Life is full of unpredictability. Families experience unexpected losses, illness, addictions, sudden changes and other crises. What can we do as parents to ensure our children adapt to life’s ups and downs? How can we ensure that they recover from these inevitabilities? It is not necessarily what happens to us but rather what happens in response to what happens to us. This is where we as parents and teachers can make a profound difference for our children who are experiencing crises whether personally or within the context of their families. During this session Denise will share her own experience leading her family through profound crises while ensuring her children continued to adapt, thrive and recover. Specifically, Denise will provide relational insight into…The keys to resilience and adaptation; Provision of fundamental needs in order for development to continue to unfold; The signs that a child may be stuck and how to get them unstuck; The importance of ritual.