The Transformative Gift of Charity: Supporting Families to Achieve Optimal Development and Lifespan Flourishing

The Transformative Gift of Charity: Supporting Families to Achieve Optimal Development and Lifespan Flourishing

Presented by Sister Elena Marie Piteo PhD

Friday, April 29th 4:00 - 5:30pm: Lecture and Q&A 

1.5 CEUs

This presentation provides a Catholic Christian model to support social and emotional development in children within the family. The presenter will examine how developing trusting relationships, understanding emotional regulation and how productively working through unpredicted challenges can support optimal human flourishing in childhood. The presenter will offer mental health professionals psychosocial research and theory as well as Aquinas’ conception of the acquired and infused virtues that can be used as tools to help children heal from emotional and relational difficulties. Attendees will learn how Aquinas’ conception of human nature is a foundation for understanding how it is ultimately the work of growth in charity-love offered by God’s gift of salvation that can help in everyday healing and flourishing.

Target Audience: Clinical and research/ academic members who work in the mental health field or who are psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers or family therapists

Course Content Level: Beginner

Learning Objectives: 

• Identify the factors that set the foundation for flourishing across the lifespan.
  
• Express how the insights of Aquinas’ approach can be integrated into the theories of developmental positive psychological science to provide a fuller account of how grace can transform human nature to aid human flourishing.
  
• Describe strategies to assist parents in helping their children to develop their social and emotional capacities.
  

Sister Elena Marie holds a Ph.D from the University of Adelaide in Australia. She worked on research projects specifically examining the effects of diet and sleep on cognitive, language, social, and emotional development as well as the impacts on mental health before entering the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia in 2011. She then continued her studies in education by earning an MAT at Aquinas College in Nashville Tennessee and taught in high schools in the United States. In the years following, she taught psychology and research methods in higher education institutes in Australia. She continued research in the area of child and adolescent mental health, social and emotional development. She currently serves as an assistant professor of psychology at Aquinas College.  Sister is also the Director of our Quality Enhancement Plan, which focuses on preparing educators to foster social emotional learning using a Catholic Christian model.

More information about this conference, including cost, cancellation policy, how to register and obtain CEUs is available through the link below. 

Additional Conference Informaiton