Parenting with Positive Behavior Support

A wonderful resource for parents as well as direct care staff … reflective of state-of-the-art positive behavior support. –Tim Knoster, Ed.D.

Meme was a consultant, researcher, educator, and advocate working with organizations that support children with significant behavioral challenges and providing information and resources through teaching and nonprofit work. She was married for over 30 years and had two young adult sons. Meme held a Ph.D. in Special Education and was certified as a behavior analyst. She published a variety of articles, chapters, and three books. She developed a comprehensive video and training package on PBS for parents of children with autism and other developmental disabilities and was a regular contributor to Parenting Special Needs Magazine. Meme worked with children with severe behavioral challenges and their families for over 30 years. She was a residential program manager, behavior specialist for a school district, staff member for a program assisting families and professionals of children with autism, adjunct instructor at USF, director of a state-wide PBS project helping schools to implement proactive, evidence-based interventions, co-training coordinator for the National Research and Training Center on PBS, research director of the Positive Family Intervention Project at USF, director and developer of the ABA and autism programs at All Childrenâ ™s Hospital, and Co-Principal Investigator of a National Institute on Health-research study focused on behavioral parent education. She taught Mastersâ ™ level courses in applied behavior analysis, consulted with agencies that provide family-focused behavioral support, and lead a nonprofit organization called the Home and Community Positive Behavior Support Network /).

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.

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 School of Education.