As a place to start when working with troubled children and teens is to explore how their place in the family structure impacts them. This background knowledge can provide a platform for dealing with whatever is bothering them. If nothing else, it helps you get to know them better and if it provides what you need to help them, you are way ahead. If not, you have not lost anything. The presenter’s experience and that of his students who have used this knowledge tells him that often this concept of how birth order can impact emotional stability and development can provide the very key to both understand and help them.

As a result of attending this session, you will be able to:

1) Explain the theories around the impact of birth order on the inner growth and development of children and teens; then,

2) Use these principles of birth order theory to explain the growth and development patterns of clients and design an effective treatment plan.