Parenting With Positive Behavior Support ─ A Practical Guide to Resolving Your Child's Difficult Behavior

Karen Childs is the proud mother of a determined, confident 9-year old daughter and a 13-year old son on the verge of young adulthood. She enjoys managing her children's school, church, sports, scouts, and social activities. Karen also works part-time for Florida's Positive Behavior Support Project at the University of South Florida. In this position, Karen guides the development of school-wide positive behavior support systems and helps teachers and families support children with challenging behavior. Karen's professional experiences include teaching students labeled as severely emotionally disturbed, conducting research on positive behavior support for children with difficult behavior, coordinating state centers on family involvement in education, and training parents and educators on family involvement and transition to kindergarten. This variety of experiences has proven to be very useful to Karen in dealing with the many kinds of challenges she faces in her most important role as a parent. Karen has a M.A. in Special Education from the University of South Florida focusing on emotional and behavioral challenges.

Meme Hieneman is a full-time mother and part-time faculty member at the local university. She has two sons, ages 3 and 5, who are thoughtful, energetic, and generally well behaved, but also typical in that they test her skills and patience on a regular basis. She has a husband who is a true partner in parenting. Meme was in the unique position of being able to leave her full-time employment to stay at home with her children, and now balances a life of preschool, play dates, and professional outlets. Her work involves serving as director of the Positive Family Intervention Project and teaching classes out of the Department of Special Education. In her professional career, Meme worked has with children with severe behavior problems for more than 19 years. While working full-time, she was employed as a group home manager, behavior specialist for a school district, staff member for a program assisting families and professionals of children with autism, director of a state-wide project helping schools to implement positive behavior support, and co-training coordinator for the national Research and Training Center on PBS. Meme has a Ph.D. in Special Education from the University of South Florida and an undergraduate degree in psychology, and maintained certification in behavior analysis for 15 years.

Jane Sergay has raised three daughters in partnership with her husband Stephen, a neurologist in Tampa. She feels that her greatest joy and most fulfilling work has been parenting her happy, thoughtful, and capable daughters: Amanda who is a medical resident in dermatology, Rebecca who is a second year law student, and Samantha who is about to start her freshman year in college. While raising her children, Jane developed a parenting education program, and for the last 20 years has been teaching seminars, workshops and individual sessions focused on positive and effective parenting skills. Until recently, she was a faculty member at the University of South Florida, directing programs that emphasize parent involvement in the schools and parent teacher partnerships. She looks forward to working part-time for the Hillsborough County School System in the Department of Family Literacy this fall. Jane's professional work has consistently centered on enhancing the well being of children and their parents. While working in Boston, Jane helped design a model program and taught preschool in an educationally integrated classroom. She continued her work guiding parents in teaching basic skills to children with exceptional needs, researching qualities of good parenting, and teaching classes in child development at the university level. She earned an undergraduate degree in Speech Pathology and Audiology from Boston University and an M.Ed. in human development from the Harvard Graduate Sc