)
Maria Trozzi
Child & Family Resilience Expert
Maria Trozzi
Child & Family Resilience Expert
Biography
Maria Trozzi, M.Ed., is an assistant professor of pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine; Director of the nationally renowned Good Grief Program at Boston Medical Center, a consultant to the Child Development Unit at Children’s Hospital, and an author. Her credentials and expertise have established her as one of the foremost experts in the country on resilience as families, schools and communities face crises.
For the past three years, she has provided individual and group consultation and training workshops to Naval Special Warfare operators (SEALS) and their families pre- and post- deployment.
After Boston’s Marathon bombing, she provided crisis debriefing to the health care first responders as well as nearby affected schools and community organizations.
In the wake of the recent tragedy in Newtown, she continues to provide consultation, lectures and training to schools affected. She has provided crisis consultation after Columbine at Littleton, Colorado; Hurricane Katrina, at Ground Zero in the aftermath of 9/11; and in Grenada following Hurricane Ivan.
Since 1991, she has lectured nationally to professional audiences in every major city with Dr. T. Berry Brazelton as a regular faculty member of the National Seminar Series.
For nearly twenty years, as Director of the Good Grief Program, her training for educators and healthcare professionals focuses on promoting resilience in the face of loss via strategies that strengthen coping skills for families, institutions and communities. Immediately following 9/11, Trozzi’s principal work expanded to care for the loved ones and their families of the victims of the two planes that had emanated from Boston.
Trozzi’s interest in bereavement expands to the grief families’ experience when a child is diagnosed with a disability: the grief that keeps on giving. Her research is focused on identifying grief touch points – predictable times in a disabled child’s development when parents’ grief is exacerbated. Trozzi model for professionals and parents has taken this grief ‘out of the closet’ for both affected families and the clinicians that treat them.
She is a frequent contributor to both print and electronic media. She has appeared with Dr. Brazelton as co-host of his national television show What Every Baby Knows several times as well as several national news programs including Larry King Live, Early Show, CNN, NBC, and ABC.
Her first book, Talking With Children About Loss, was published by Putnam-Penguin and continues to be an essential reference for parents and professionals. She has authored several chapters in pediatric and academic textbooks, including research recently published in the December 2012 Journal of Palliative Medicine.
She lives in Boston and West Yarmouth and maintains a private practice dedicated to helping families face stressful life events.
Speaker Videos
Advice for Counselors
Speech Topics
Five to Thrive
Maria Trozzi, resilience expert, author, and former assistant professor of pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine, offers audiences an interactive and enlightening conversation about the stresses of parenting our middle schoolers today. Most importantly, Ms. Trozzi’s talk will focus on evidence-based strategies for promoting resilient, emotionally-competent young adults.
Parents of pre-adolescents often wonder if they will ever “re-connect” with their sweet, enthusiastic, loving 9 year- old child that disappeared at about twelve. Instead, parents report feeling adrift as to how to help their child navigate the stressors of growing up in 2019 that can challenge even the most experienced parents-- anxiety, depression, social pressure in the digital age, academic performance, isolation.
Trozzi’s refreshing and honest approach focuses on parents’ choices and courage to consider the longer view. She distills the “parenting information overload” to FIVE achievable strategies that help nurture competent, confident and independent young adults-prepared to successfully navigate a complicated world.
Finding Resilience… (After Looking in All the Wrong Places)
Join Maria Trozzi for an interactive and enlightening conversation about the new stresses of parenting our children today and evidence-based strategies for building resilience. Parents need words, a developmentally informed and thoughtful approach, and their confidence shored up as they navigate the maze of decisions that will affect their child’s well-being and success.
Trozzi’s refreshing and honest approach focuses on useful strategies that are often counter-intuitive for dedicated parents, but lead children to master the coping skills that promote resilience.
Some of the topics she will address:
- Creating the mix to produce an outstanding person: the surprising research
- Making informed decisions about screen time
- Dealing with life’s disappointments: when our children hurt, what to say and not to say
- Too many choices: How affluence can complicate parent decision-making
- How to ‘not hover and sleep at night;’ moving towards scaffolding your children
MINDFULNESS: What It Is, Why We Need to Learn About It
For many of us, what we envision about living a full life and what we DO daily are not synchronous. Well-being, the antidote to stress, is the third metric of an evolving definition of a successful life.
Yet, we unconsciously create our own stress with our over-business, over working, over connecting on social media and under-connecting with ourselves and each other.
This talk helps individuals look at closing the gap on what we say we value and what we DO to live our values. A hands-on, content rich conversation has the power to transform everyday lives.
Living with PTS, the Invisible Agent: Practical Strategies for Finding Resilience as You Live Your Best
As a clinician with over two decades of expertise and experience and as a wife of a Vietnam combat veteran, I know that PTS can be the thread that accompanies and impacts the warrior, his wife, the couple, and the family.
Workshops are designed for the warrior, his wife, the couple, and the parents. Each workshop is specially focused on identifying symptoms, letting go of shame, making peace with PTS, and developing a tool box of ‘go to’ real life strategies for ‘living your BEST life!’ The workshop is evidence-based, content rich, and process-driven.
Finding Resilience as You Face the Challenges of Family Life while Raising a Child with a Special Need
Maria Trozzi will explore the stresses that families face as they deal with the often complicated tasks of living with a child with special needs. She has recently concluded a two-year research study, funded by a regional center for disabilities in Los Angeles County, that explores the stresses, both obvious and hidden, that can sometimes feel overwhelming and never- ending.
She will offer strategies for help parents to understand and cope, particularly at identified ‘touchpoints’ in the developmental life of their child. She will share her nationally recognized conceptual model for working with educators that helps them ‘walk in the parents’ shoes’ in order to understand and transform even the most difficult and challenging parent/educator relationships.
Lastly, Trozzi, a typical sibling of a brother who is disabled, will offer insights for helping siblings cope with the losses and gains inherent in a family with a child with special needs.
)
)
)