Contact
Melissa and Sissy are available for seminars, speaking engagements, and interviews. Each of the following seminars is six hours and can be broken down into one or two sessions. Melissa and Sissy can also be brought in to speak to adults, "tweens" or teenagers on a variety of subjects relatable to parenting, girls, children, and adolescents.
Would you like to book Melissa & Sissy to speak at your event? Find out how to contact brandWAVES, their management, for seminar, interview, or general speaking engagement information.
-----------------------
Raising Girls
Based on their book of the same title, Raising Girls journeys into the heart of girls to help adults understand their daughter's different stages of development: what is normal, what is not, and how to relate effectively. They also speak at length on the issues at the heart of girls today: relationships with friends, families, and boys, as well as a variety of topics they are facing culturally such as media influences, eating disorders, and self-mutilation. Drawing on fifty-five years of combined counseling experience, the authors help parents, counselors, teachers, and anyone in the life of a girl help to call out the unique identity God has given their girl they love.
-----------------------
Modern Parents, Vintage Values
How do I get my children to respect me? How do I encourage them to say "thank you"? How do you teach safety, in this day and time, without instilling fear? In this day and time seems to make all of the difference. Children today are up against a host of struggles and pressure than were foreign to us as we were growing up. Technology, peers, culture...all of it can appear to stand in direct opposition to the character we are trying to instill in our children.
Modern Parents, Vintage Values is a seminar based on Melissa and Sissy's book of the same title. In the seminar, David Thomas sometimes joins them as they tackle the issues we see most predominantly affecting kids and families in today's culture: entitlement, respect, technology, fear, anxiety and depression, to name a few. They not only help us understand these issues, but help parents and grandparents instill good old vintage values in the midst of these issues...values like compassion, integrity, and gratitude. In this seminar, Melissa, Sissy and David lay a foundation that helps equip parents to bring children back to timeless truths, to vintage values and to a sense of confidence in who they can be in spite of "this day and time."
-----------------------
Raising Kids of Character
With Melissa, Sissy, and David Thomas
What do you want the most for you child? A successful job? Confidence? A marriage that lasts? Happiness?
We would guess that you want all of these things and so much more.
We would also guess that you know, as well as we do, how fleeting these things truly can be...
So, what can you offer a child? What can you build into your son's life that will carry him through the joyful and the difficult times of marriage? What can you build into your daughter that will shore her up for a life that will contain its share of happiness and sorrow? What can you give each of them that will strengthen them in ways that are deeper and more lasting than their circumstances or feelings?
We believe the answer is character.
As counselors with over sixty-five years of combined experience, we believe that character is one of the most important and most difficult things to instill in the life of a child. We want to help. In this seminar, our hope is to offer you hope as you parent your child. We'd love for you to join us for a day to reflect on what it means to develop strength... tenderness... compassion... wisdom... and much more in the life of your child. No matter what his or her age, we want to offer you insight into how to help your son or daughter become all that God has created him or her to be.
Raising Kids of Character - a six-hour seminar led by Melissa Trevathan, M.R.E., Sissy Goff, M.Ed., LPC-MHSP, and David Thomas, M.S.S.W.
Join us as we talk about:
- Who Your Kids Are--a developmental look at the emotional, physical, and spiritual growth of your child from birth to their early twenties
- What Your Kids Need--what you can offer them at every stage
- Who Your Kids Can Be--how to develop a vision for all of the good and depth of character God has placed inside of them
-----------------------
The Back Door to Your Teen's Heart
With David Thomas, M.S.S.W., Director of Men and Boys' Counseling at Daystar
To the degree that kids can predict you, they will dismiss you. And, most likely, any of us who have ever lived with, taught, counseled, or simply loved adolescents have felt the fiery sting of dismissal. It feels like everything we try bounces off the shell these kids develop around 10-12 years of age. Melissa Trevathan and Sissy Goff, both counselors with a combined 55 years of working with kids, along with fellow counselor and author David Thomas, lead us on a journey into the hearts of these adolescents. With laughter, Biblical truths, and a simple, but direct honesty, they help us walk through the back door and back into the lives of the teens we love. Based on the book, The Back Door to Your Teen's Heart, Melissa, Sissy, and David offer a seminar based on this back door approach to understanding and connecting to teens.
-----------------------
Mirrors and Maps
&
Growing Up Without Getting Lost
In August of 2008, Youth Specialties/Zondervan released Mirrors and Maps and Growing Up Without Getting Lost, as companions to Raising Girls. From those books, we are offering conferences for girls to speak directly to them and to what is happening to them. This conference will help a teenage or "tweenage" girl understand what God is doing inside of her right now - emotionally, physically, and spiritually, and how to become more of the amazing girl God is creating her to be.
Mirrors and Maps - a seminar for 11-14 year-old girls
Growing Up Without Getting Lost - a seminar for 15-19 year old girls
-----------------------
Endorsements
"Life is a steady teacher if we allow it to be. And all of us, through God's mercy and redemption, learn as we go. It's never too late to love our children well. Raising Girls has re inspired me to dream for my daughters, to see their distinctiveness and their potential."
-Amy Grant
"Sissy, Melissa and David have helped our television audience for years and now their secrets of loving and living with teenagers are available for all of us!"
- Debbie Alan, News Channel 5 Network
"I am so grateful for the wisdom I received from the Raising Girls
seminar. I definitely gained an understanding that will help me
parent through this next season of raising my daughter."
-A parent
"I have my role models. They are truth-sharers and truth-seekers. Sissy and Melissa
have not only offered me a revelational understanding of myself, but have taught and
challenged me to grow further in the ways I was specifically designed to."
- Chelsea, age 17
"Wow, what a difference you have made in many families! The parents
who came to Raising Girls left with new insight ready to face the
challenges of raising their daughters."
-Charlotte Scholl, Guidance Counselor, Battle Ground Academy
"Melissa and Sissy are providing a safe, supportive, nonjudgmental
environment for children and parents to try and become the best they
can be."
-A parent
"Sissy Goff and Melissa Trevathan's 'Raising Girls' workshop speaks to
the needs of today's girls and their parents. Combining a wealth of
personal experience and professional knowledge, they understand the
challenges of developing and celebrating girls' gifts and identities
coupled with a rich compassion for the complex social and emotional
needs that our young women face today. Melissa and Sissy bring their
perspective to bear on the skills that parents and educators alike
can use in daily interaction with girls and all the children we care
for. The workshop presents a thoughtfully created philosophy on the
lives of girls and a practical approach to parenting and mentoring
girls to become the women God created them to be."
-Brenda Boon, Director of Lower School, The Oak Hill School
“What a valuable resource for girls! We have known Melissa over the years as youth leader, mentor, and friend, and Sissy as a gifted counselor and mentor to many teens in our community. Now, they are authors who have produced a work that will help girls all over the country discover who God is calling them to be.”
---Michael W. and Debbie Smith, Author, Songwriters, and Recording Artist, Parents of 5 (for Growing Up)
Coming October 2010
Modern Parents, Vintage Values talks about the specific issues facing kids today, helping parents to more fully understand the challenges being faced.
In today's complex world, parenting a girl is harder than ever. It takes more than love. It takes insight into the things that make your daughter tick as she grows from childhood to young adulthood.
