Being a parent to an infant or small child can be hard. Sometimes all the different challenges you face can seem overwhelming—despite loving your child and wanting what’s best for him or her.
At the Brownsville Child Development Center, our outpatient clinic serves families with infants, toddlers, and children up to age seven. The clinic offers a variety of services to support your child’s development and wellbeing, including:
- Comprehensive evaluations to help you understand the struggles your child is facing
- Individual play therapy and evidence-based interventions such as Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) and Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) to help your family overcome any barriers
- Parent support groups to help parents feel less alone and gain concrete skills
- Collateral/individual therapy for parents to help those parents whose own experiences may be impacting them
Child-Parent Psychotherapy
Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) is a way to help families with children 0-5 who need help managing and improving behavior, communication, and attachment. A 12-month intervention, it helps encourage a loving, nurturing and safe home life. CPP helps parents and young children who have experienced:
- The loss of a parent and/or caretaker
- Serious injury or illness
- Economic stress or homelessness
Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) is a way to help families with children who have been affected by a traumatic event, such as loss or separation from a caregiver, physical or sexual abuse, witnessing domestic violence, or a man-made or natural disaster. Children who have experienced such an event may exhibit:
- Angry outbursts, nightmares or anxious thoughts
- Avoidance of people and places that remind them of the event
- Temporary loss of skills they have learned, such as toileting
- Repetitive play about the event
This intervention helps children and parents develop coping skills for trauma symptoms, talk about the trauma without becoming overwhelmed, and eventually understand what happened in a new way so that it is less frightening.
Play Therapy
Play therapy is to children what talk therapy is to adults. Play is a child’s language. Adolescents and adults use languages like English, Spanish, French to express themselves. However, no matter what verbal language children speak, children express themselves best through their natural language—the language of play.
What Results Can I Expect?
Both CPP and TF-CBT help children gain control over their symptoms and improve their behavior and
relationships. They also help families learn skills that support healthy development. Your therapist will
work with you and your child to:
- Help you build a strong, nurturing, and safe relationship
- Learn more about your child’s needs
- Understand your worries and past experiences, and how they may affect your parenting
- Help your child overcome any barriers to reaching his or her full potential
Community Music Making
Wednesdays, 12:30–1pm on Zoom
Let’s make music! Sharing music with your little one is a great way to strengthen your connection to one another while supporting your little one’s social emotional development and overall well-being. The Jewish Board’s Brownsville Child Development Center (BCDC) welcomes you and your little one(s) to Brownsville Music For Us, our community music making group for families.
Brownsville Music For Us is a free, drop-in family-centered, therapeutic community music making group focused on early childhood development. In adherence to COVID safety precautions, Brownsville Music For Us is currently a virtual group for parents and their little ones ages birth to 5 years old. We hope this family-centered community music making group will support the general health and well-being of the whole family. We will make music together using songs and everyday objects found in your home. Brownsville Music For Us is also designed to strengthen community ties by giving families space to meet new families they may not have known before.
Brownsville Music For Us happens on Wednesdays from 12:30-1:30pm. For more information and to register for the group, please bcdccommunitymusic@jbfcs.org.
How Much Do These Services Cost?
The Brownsville Child Development Center accepts most major insurance plans, including Medicaid. We also offer a sliding scale for families without insurance coverage. No family will be turned away regardless of coverage or ability to pay.