Upcoming Groups, Events, and Trainings
Upcoming Workshops:
Talking to Your Children About Race
Join Birchlawn Place Counseling Center, INC for a thought provoking one-hour workshop for parents and caregivers that provides actionable ways to talk to your children about race utilizing developmentally appropriate practices. This one-hour workshop is packed with information and covers a vast array of subject material as it relates to educating and talking to our children about race.
Subjects covered:
- Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP).
- Are children racist?
- Implicit Racial Bias.
- Colorblindness.
- Diverse Parental Interactions.
- Play Materials (non-scripted).
- Books.
Who: Parents and Caregivers
Duration: 1-hour Workshop
Upcoming Groups:
Emotion Coaching Group for Primary Caregivers
Primary caregivers will learn how to respond to difficult behavior through emotion coaching, validation, and modeling during this once weekly, eight-week group. The Gottman Institute shares that parents often wonder, “If I could do one thing for my child that would make a difference both now and, in the future, what would it be?” The answer found after decades of research; it is simply to build the child’s emotional intelligence. (The Gottman Institute, 2013) This group will help to educate primary caregivers on the valuable skills to be a successful emotion coach when difficult behaviors and situations arise.
Subjects covered:
- Understand the importance of emotional intelligence.
- Learn how to recognize, respond to, and validate what a child is feeling.
- Learn how to be an efficient emotion coach using the 5 Steps of Emotion Coaching with children of any age.
- How to model desired behavior from a child.
- Discover how to set limits and problem-solve with a child.
- Caregivers will be given the opportunity to process real-life scenarios and receive feedback and suggestions on how to respond to behaviors.
Who: Parents and Caregivers
Duration: 8 weeks/group sessions
Circle of Security® Primary Caregiver Group
Join us at Birchlawn Place Counseling Center, INC for a virtual, small, closed group of four primary caregivers. The Circle of Security® parenting approach is a program that promotes secure attachment between children and their primary caregivers. The model provides a map to help caregivers understand and respond to their children’s attachment needs while improving the developmental pathway of children and their primary caregivers. Every child comes into this world seeking a secure relationship and attachment with their primary caregiver. Our Circle of Security® group helps promote that security while concurrently strengthening primary caregivers’ abilities to observe and improve their caregiving skills. Our group facilitator uses their training and expertise in The Circle of Security® program that is an evidenced-based parent-child attachment model with over fifty-years of early childhood development research as they guide you through our Circle of Security® group.
Who:
- Primary Caregiver of a child age 7 years or younger.
- Note: Primary Caregivers will need to have a quiet space in which their child(ren) are not present and cannot overhear the primary caregiver for the duration of each group session.
Duration: 10-weeks/group sessions.
Resource: http://circleofsecuritynetwork.org ©2013
Attachment and Trauma 101
Join us at Birchlawn Place Counseling Center, INC for a virtual, small, closed group of four primary caregivers. Attachment and Trauma 101 is a group for primary caregivers of children that have experienced trauma and attachment disruptions of any kind. This group provides support and psychoeducation to primary caregivers experiencing the challenges of parenting children that exhibit emotional dysregulation and behavioral dysregulation associated with trauma and attachment disruptions. The group facilitator uses research based on years of attachment studies to teach primary caregivers how to respond to and support children when they are experiencing dysregulation. This group is appropriate for biological parents, kinship primary caregivers, foster parents, adoptive parents, or any primary caregiver that is providing care for a child that has experienced trauma and/or attachment disruptions. Group participants will be provided trauma and attachment 101 psychoeducation, aiding them in better understanding, “What do we mean by trauma and what does it have to do with attachment?”. Primary caregivers will learn about, explore, and gain a better understanding of the effects of trauma, how to create a safe place for children, how primary caregivers can more effectively manage and support their children’s emotions and behaviors related to trauma and/or attachment disruptions, and self-care practices for primary caregivers.
Who: Primary Caregivers
Duration: 8-weeks/group sessions.
Primary Caregiver-Child Attachment Group
Attachment plays a crucial role in the child’s social and emotional development, assisting a child in learning how their own behaviors impact their environment contributing to building a child’s sense of self-efficacy. Additionally, a child’s attachment has significant implications for the child’s bond and relationship with their primary caregiver and all future relationships with peers and other individuals they interact with throughout their lifespan. Current research in the field of psychology and child development demonstrates that a child’s attachment begins in utero and continues throughout the lifespan. Current research further supports the importance of children developing a healthy and secure attachment during infancy and toddlerhood within the primary caregiver-child relationship, specifically from in-utero development to age 3 years (36 months of age). In this small group consisting of two group facilitators, primary caregivers and their child will learn and practice play-based attachment interventions focusing on prompting developmentally appropriate levels of nurture, engagement, structure, and challenge within the primary caregiver-child relationship. All of the play-based interventions can be used by the primary caregiver and child in their daily life outside of a clinical setting as they work towards continuing to develop a healthy and secure primary caregiver-child bond and attachment, the foundation of the caregiver-child relationship, and the child’s social and emotional development.
Who: One Primary Caregiver and One Child (Age: Newborn to 36 months)
Additional Information:
- Groups will be formed based on the participating child’s age as follows:
- Group One: Children ages newborn to 4 months.
- Group Two: Children ages 5 months –12 months (1 yr.).
- Group Three: Children age 12 months (1 yr.) to 36 months (3 yrs.).
- Each small group will accept a maximum of six participants and requires a minimum of six participants for a new group to be initiated.
- Each primary caregiver-child set will receive an attachment kit for the primary caregiver-child set to utilize throughout the duration of the group. Each primary caregiver-child set will keep their attachment kit at the conclusion of the ten-week group, allowing for continued use of the materials used in the play-based attachment interventions in the home environment after the completion of the group.
- Note: There is a $25.00 fee per primary caregiver-child attachment kit that is not covered by insurance resulting in a $25.00 fee being billed directly to the client and/or entity that is identified on the intake paperwork as financially responsible for fees not covered by insurance. Birchlawn Place Counseling Center, INC will work with families experiencing financial hardship that results in them being unable to cover the $25.00 attachment kit fee ensuring the attachment kit fee is not a barrier for families eager to participate in the Primary Caregiver-Child Attachment Group.
Prenatal Attachment and Motherhood Constellation Group
The relationship with a child develops gradually, starting during pregnancy and continuing with various forms of reflection throughout a women’s pregnancy serving as a play space or the in-between area where the expecting mother is playing with the idea of becoming a mother. In this small group of expecting mothers, we will work on building their motherhood constellation, developing the expecting mother’s new psychological structure consisting of a representation of past attachment relationships, the baby, and self in relation to the baby. The motherhood constellation informs a mother of the needs of their baby and impacts a mother’s ability to interact and make sense of herself, her baby, and the future mother-child relationship. In this small group consisting of two group facilitators, expecting mothers will learn and practice Theraplay informed techniques and engage in reflective practice to assist in developing and entering a healthy motherhood constellation and increase the mother and child’s attachment.
Who: Expecting mothers (14+ weeks fetal gestation)
Additional Information: Each small group will accept a maximum of six participants and requires a minimum of six participants for a new group to be initiated.
Coffee and Conversations:
Ever wonder if you’re the only parent experiencing something or wondering if what you are seeing in your child is developmentally appropriate? Do you yearn to connect with other parents in a no pressure, informal manner, while enjoying some warm coffee kids free? Then please join Birchlawn Place Counseling Center Director, Brittni J. Timmerman, MS, LPCC, NCC, RPT at one (or all) of our monthly Parent-Caregiver Coffee and Conversations with fellow parents and caregivers in the Rochester Community. Our monthly Coffee and Conversation will have a topic of discussion. Brittni will provide brief psychoeducation at the start of the small group followed by continued facilitation of conversation associated with the topic among the parent, caregivers, and Brittni. Due to the small group format with no more than ten parents per Coffee and Conversations, advanced registration is required. Coffee and Conversations is free to all parents and caregivers. All Coffee and Conversations are from 8:00 am until 9:00 am.
Virtual Coffee and Conversations Coming Soon
Topic: Flipping Your Lid: Emotional and Behavioral Dysregulation
Topic: Foster Parent Toolbox
Topic: Parent’s Choice
Topic: Adoption: Trauma Society Expects Our Children to be Grateful For
Are you ready to register or have questions about any of our groups and events?
Please fill out the form below for more information and/or to initiate your registration for any group or event listed above.