Invite Caroline Maguire, M.Ed., To Be Your Next Keynote Speaker

Are you looking for a charismatic keynote speaker with expertise on Social Emotional Learning (SEL) and Social Skills development for children and adults?

Caroline will research your industry, your issues, and your audience in advance in order to successfully capture the essence of your event. She will then tailor the presentation, incorporating humor and audience participation, into unique and distinctive actionable tips.

Watch Caroline’s Latest Tedx Talk

To request Caroline Maguire as a speaker for your event, please complete our request form.

Keynote Speaking Engagements:

How to Get Along with Everyone: The International Conference on ADHD

Social Skills After COVID: Learning Disabilities of America Conference

Why Will No One Play with Me? SENG Conference

District Social Skill development Presentations: STARNET Chicago Public Schools

Connection Matters – Building social skills with a game plan: Woodlynde School

Speaking Engagements Praise

"I want to send you a personal thank you for the excellent webinar last night. I was "in attendance" and really enjoyed it. You found the perfect balance of content and strategies to support both remote teaching and parents coaching, as well as classroom based supports teachers might provide directly. I was watching the chat and folks were very enthusiastic and appreciative of your knowledge and ideas. We enjoyed working with you and hope we can work together again in the future!"

"Caroline has a wonderful way of taking her deep knowledge of ADHD children and making it applicable and relatable to all parents. She was engaging, set the entire crowd at ease, and let us know that none of us are alone. Carolyn offered specific and accessible tools and resources and reassured us that our kids will all be okay. Her insights and experience are invaluable to those of us struggling to understand and help our children succeed socially. We could literally feel the love."

"Caroline always does such a great job! Her slides are beautiful and informative. Her presentation moves along well; she's so interesting and thoughtful. She's a joy to listen to and learn from."

"This webinar was excellent; it's solidified a lot of information my daughter is receiving from her therapist but helps me manage it as a parent."

"I just wanted to say thank you so much for being such an inspiration to the ADHD community and thank you so much for hearing what everyone had to say in class. It was worth taking this course just to hear you talk today."

Sample Topics:

Educators and Parents: Coaching social skills with a game plan

In this presentation, Caroline Maguire, M.Ed., PCC, will introduce the tools and demonstrate the coaching processes parents and professionals need to become a child’s social skills coach based on her groundbreaking book and training curriculum, Why Will No One Play with Me? Helping children manage their own behaviors and emotions, build healthy relationships and make good decisions will be detailed in this presentation. You’ll explore the social emotional challenges facing children of all ages, discover learning through play, stress management strategies, the importance of SEL in a crisis and adult wellbeing. Caroline will provide scripts to follow when talking to young children, tweens and teens about difficult issues including age-sensitive SEL knowledge and activities. Coping with feelings and resolving conflict is a top priority now as we experience anxiety from the pandemic. Audience: Parents, Teachers, early childhood, special educators, early intervention, teacher’s assistants, OT, psychologists, SLP, social workers, audiologists, speech-language pathologists

Parents: How to Help Your Child or Teen Socialize in an Unprecedented Era

In this presentation, Caroline Maguire, M.Ed., will discuss the potential long-term effects of the pandemic on children’s social, emotional, and cognitive development. Social, emotional and behavioral skills are more important, and more difficult, than ever due to school closures, social distancing, schools reopening (but looking different), the slower pace of learning, and the probability of more school closures in future. Helping children manage their own behaviors and emotions, build healthy relationships and make good decisions will be detailed in this presentation.

Parents of Middle School Through High School - Connection Matters: Building Social Skills during Challenging Times

This online program is geared to students who have learning differences, special needs and/or anxiety. Social and emotional learning or SEL is more important, and more difficult, than ever due to the pandemic. Helping children manage their own behaviors and emotions, build relationships and make good decisions will be detailed in this presentation. Older children have a different experience of school closure, social distancing and school reopening. Caroline will provide scripts to follow when talking to tweens and teens about difficult issues. Coping with feelings and resolving conflict is a top priority now as we experience anxiety from the pandemic.

Educators and Parents: Coaching Social Skills with a Game Plan

In this presentation, Caroline Maguire, M.Ed., PCC, will discuss the potential long-term effects of the pandemic on a younger children's social, emotional, and cognitive development. She will introduce the tools and demonstrate the coaching process parents need to become their child’s social skills coach based on her groundbreaking book and training curriculum, Why Will No One Play with Me? Adjusting to change is always difficult, and there is a real worry that young people with learning differences, whose education and social development have been disrupted, might be some of the worst affected by the pandemic. With her renowned expertise, you’ll explore the practical and emotional challenges facing children, discover learning through play and stress management strategies, the importance of SEL in a crisis, managing remote learning fatigue, adult wellbeing, and age-sensitive SEL knowledge and activities all being included.

Playing Well with Others at College and Beyond

Social skills are a strong indicator of a student’s future success. To succeed at the college level, students need social skills to "play well with others." As a parent, you likely want to do everything in your power to prepare your child for college success. Caroline Maguire will discuss the tools needed to support a college-bound student who struggles to manage dynamic social interactions as well as the college student who needs guidance to tap into school and peer resources.

Parents: My Kid Just Doesn’t “Get It”: How to Help The Oblivious Kid Cultivate Self Awareness

As parents, you watch frustrated as your child is oblivious, seems to lack empathy, alienates others, ignores overtures of friendship, or seems to say all the wrong things. Caroline will demonstrate activities that parents can engage in to improve their child’s self-awareness without shaming. Finally connect the dots between evaluating whether your child’s perspective is accurate and improving self-awareness.

Educators: Classroom and Family Engagement- Social Emotional Learning to Address Bullying, Social Drama and Dilemmas

Social Emotional learning permeates everything we do: at school, home, in the community or at work. This workshop introduces educators to the fundamentals of harnessing social emotional learning to address common social dilemmas in the classroom and in parent/family training. Learn how to utilize the core SEL competencies to address disruptive behavior, executive functioning challenges, stress, social awkwardness, emotional self-regulation and time-management. Caroline is the coach’s coach. Learn clear and consistent coaching models that identify, address, tailor and practice appropriate social skills. Walk away armed with materials that can simply be shown in the classroom or passed to parents to provide support and help answer the myriad of parent questions.

Educators: How to Improve Self-Awareness, Empathy and Theory of Mind in the Classroom

Developing empathy, self-awareness and building Theory Of Mind should begin in early childhood. These essential social emotional skills are interdependent of each other and are the keys to well-being and understanding others! Research shows that self-awareness affects every aspect of life: job success, academics and relationships. Recognizing emotions, and helping a child develop empathy, self-awareness and perspective taking can be taught even in distance learning. Educators will learn how to use play based methods to help children learn to read others, foster perspective taking and empathy for others. These competencies can have life-long implications as we try to develop a more inclusive and caring society.

Adults: Why Chit Chat Is the Answer to Social Connection

Learn the Art of Getting Along with Everyone. Social struggles are common for many people. Friendly chit-chat and banter do not come naturally. Forcing conversations with coworkers, school peers, neighbors and community members can leave you feeling awkward, rejected and exhausted. What’s at the heart of this? Caroline Maguire, M. Ed, will introduce the deep-seated relationship between self-awareness and social connection. The ability to self-evaluate, to “read the room” and to predict reactions - from ourselves and others - is intimately connected to how we contribute and relate. You will walk away with an understanding of your specific limitations and the tools that you or your child need to build self-awareness. Learn helpful suggestions on how to be the kind of individual others find interesting and attractive. The good news is that with understanding and practice, we can greatly improve self-awareness and in turn, create limitless, meaningful connections.

Educators and Parents: COVID Repair - How to Help a Child or Teen (Re)Build Social Emotional Skills in an Unprecedented Era

Are we sure our kids are going to be OK? What happens without adequate social emotional support? Social distancing has isolated and stressed all of us, but it has caused children and teens to lose valuable opportunities to practice social skills, and to make and keep friends. No one knows the implications of COVID, racial tensions, political divide, and social isolation on children. In this presentation, Caroline Maguire, M.Ed., will discuss the potential long-term effects of the pandemic on children’s social, emotional, behavioral and cognitive development and what parents can do now at home to strengthen social skills. She will describe the red flags of exaggerated anxiety and isolation and explain how to help children manage their own behaviors and emotions, build healthy relationships and make good decisions.

Adults: TMI (Too Much Information)

Oversharing, Blurting and Interrupting-Do You Share TMI (To Much Information)? Yesterday wasn’t the first time you said the wrong thing or told someone you barely knew your whole life story, including gory details. Some details and topics, especially about others, are just not meant to be shared.. and yet, here you go again. Adults with ADHD often move too fast in relationships, sharing too much, too soon. You crave closeness, hate boring dialog and often misread or fail to grasp social cues. Caroline Maguire, author of Why Will No One Play with Me, shares valuable insight on how to better read others’ attempts at friendship, how to control the impulse to over-share and how to repair a friendship when you mistakenly said too much. Friendships and connection are a basic human need, so learn how to build mutual respect and intimacy in all of your relationships

Educators: Turn Table Time and Recess Into Social Emotional Learning Opportunities without Prep!!

How can educators promote critical Social Emotional Learning (SEL) skills into already packed schedules? Caroline Maguire, a leader in social skills development, will demonstrate how recess, table / circle time and even walking through hallways can provide excellent, no-prep SEL learning opportunities. Learn how to help children who struggle with self-regulation, anxiety and introversion learn to be flexible, try new things and join a group. By incorporating simple prompts and specific toys and games, play can be the way to help children learn to navigate into a group.

Educators: Play Coaching to Build Social, Emotional and Behavioral Development in Inclusive Classrooms

This presentation will outline the play coaching model designed to help educators recognize and implement Social, Emotional and Behavioral Learning (SEL) in their inclusive classrooms. Play coaching provides opportunities to support learning goals - for children with diverse learning differences, socio-economic backgrounds and experiences - that are teacher-initiated and yet can be child-led. Caroline Maguire will explain how play coaching seamlessly incorporates evidence-based principles of how children learn while infusing SEL activities. Play coaching is intentionally flexible, enabling professional discretion to develop activities that simultaneously align with their curricular and SEL objectives. Learning Objectives: • Increase teachers' capacity and opportunities to introduce play coaching into regularly scheduled course content. • leverage the joy of play to allow children to connect authentically with content. • Help teachers set up play coaching environment and provide support • Ensure the students retain agency as they engage with the materials, their peers, and their teacher

Teachers and Parents: Making Friends as a Gifted Child: Social Emotional Training

Gifted children share many of the traits as their same age-peers and yet have distinct differences. Finding like-minded peers who share their interests may be a challenge. Caroline will discuss what parents and educators can do now to strengthen social skills. She will describe the red flags of exaggerated anxiety and isolation and explain how to help gifted children manage their own behaviors and emotions, build healthy relationships and make good decisions. Three learner outcomes: How to impact a gifted student’s behavioral outcome – Participants will understand the importance of social and emotional assessments in order to evaluate a gifted students’ socio-emotional well-being. SEL competency is as equally important as academic performance. Learn concrete exercises to help gifted children read others, foster perspective-taking and express empathy (not just sympathy). Create gifted student connectedness and healthy school-based relationships to cultivate equitable learning

Parents: Helping Disconnected Kids Find Social Connection

Isolation can create devastating effects on children, yet parents can help their kids build social connections. We often want to jump in and “fix” things, but the longterm solution is to empower them to seek healthy friendships. In this presentation, Caroline Maguire, M. Ed., will give concrete strategies adapted from Why Will No One Play with Me? that include what signs to look for, how to start the conversations and how to problem solve together in order to build important coping and friendship skills.

Educators: Strengthen Executive Function Skills in Early Childhood

This presentation will outline how educators can understand and recognize executive function challenges and how to implement evidence-based play modifications and interventions in inclusive classrooms. Play coaching provides opportunities to support learning goals - for children with diverse learning differences, socio-economic backgrounds and experiences - that are teacher-initiated and yet can be child-led. Play coaching is intentionally flexible, enabling professional discretion to develop activities that simultaneously align with their curricular and SEL objectives. Learning Objectives: · Increase teachers' capacity and opportunities to introduce play coaching into regularly scheduled course content. · leverage the joy of play to allow children to connect authentically with content · Help teachers set up play coaching environment and provide support · Ensure the students retain agency as they engage with the materials, their peers, and their teacher

Educators and Parents: Social Spy: Managing Social Skills and Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Concerns

Learning to be an effective social observer is critical to navigating the tricky waters of making and keeping friends. In this presentation, Caroline Maguire, M. Ed., author of Why Will No One Play with Me?, shares an exercise that she uses with her clients called The Social Spy. The purpose of the exercise is to improve one’s ability to notice and observe the behavior of people in certain social situations. As a Social Spy, you observe (discreetly), hold back, and take an inventory of the group or situation’s mood, tone, members, energy, etc. She will share how to put social spy into actual practice. She’ll explain how to prepare, where to go, what to look for, how to share the data and then how to put it to work daily. Social Spy helps children: • Sharpen their understanding of how others interact  • Observe the unspoken rules of different environments  • Identify positive social behavior  • Compare their behavior to others

Parents and Educators: Social Emotional Training for Teachers and Parents of Kids with ADHD

Does your child have a hard time making and keeping friends? Should you step in? If so, when? And do what? Finding like-minded peers who share interests can be a challenge for children and teens with ADHD. As parents, we know that there is a fine line between interfering and supporting, especially when it comes to friends. Too much support and we can interfere with development, not to mention possibly muddling your relationship. Too little, and we leave a big tangled web of social skills development to kids who already struggle with executive function challenges. Social skills, like any other skill, can be learned at any age. Caroline Maguire, M.Ed., PCC, will demonstrate the proven coaching processes that will help you engage with your child or teen to develop positive social behaviors She will discuss the potential long-term effects of the pandemic on children’s social, emotional, behavioral and cognitive development and what parents and educators can do now to strengthen social skills. She will describe the red flags of exaggerated anxiety and isolation and explain how to help children with ADHD manage their own behaviors and emotions, build healthy relationships and make good decisions. Attendees of this webinar will learn to: 1. Understand how executive function challenges directly affect social skills. 2. Coach a child or teen to initiate connection and express needs with peers and adults 3. Identify and harness their special talents to problem-solve, make friends and build self-confidence 4. Explore the evidence-based coaching techniques that have been shown to help struggling children and teens with ADHD 5. Recognize the ways in which the pandemic has resulted in an escalation of symptoms affecting teens with ADHD 6. Identify the roadblocks that can get in the way of open communication, and how to get around them.