3b. Understanding your child with additional needs

About this course

This online course is for parents with a child with additional needs. It is for parents, relatives and friends of children who may have a physical or learning disability or who may have autistic traits. In the UK, you may be within the SEND (Special educational needs and disability) system. Some parents describe their child as differently abled or neuroatypical or neurodiverse or neurodivergent.

This course is in 2 sections. Level 1 lays the foundation for understanding your child. Level 2 looks at some particular aspects of parenting: sleeping and anger management, together with more about how we interact with each other. Understanding this can make it easier to work with your child's behaviour as well as supporting their development. Once you finish Level 1 you can progress to Level 2 if you'd like to. You can print off a certificate at the end of the course as well as one at the end of Level 1.

We know that there are many different families, with different backgrounds and shapes and sizes. We have tried to consider some of the different needs of different families in this course, but It hasn't been possible to account for all family backgrounds. If that is the case, we still hope that you find something helpful in the main ideas about developing close, connected relationships between parents and children.

If you have already completed 'Understanding your child' you will probably find this course repetitive. It uses the same ideas as 'Understanding your child', but customises them.