Child and Adolescent Groups at the Brookline Center for Community Mental Health help young people overcome challenges so they can enjoy fuller lives and experience brighter futures. Led by experienced clinicians, each group addresses a specific social or emotional need and age group. Some groups feature discussion, while others focus on play. All provide a safe environment where children and teens can express their concerns and develop life-enhancing skills. If you are interested in learning more about one of the groups listed below, please contact our Intake Team at 617-860-2084 or complete our Intake Form.
Groups Fall 2022 – Spring 2023
Open for New Members:
Sprouting Skills: K-1st Grade, Gender Inclusive
This group welcomes K-1st graders needing support with social skills and emotional regulation. We’ll use collaborative play, mindfulness, and expressive arts to build strategies that children can use to foster connection and manage big feelings across settings. Group will provide a structured, therapeutic environment in which members can try new activities, make new friends, build up their self-confidence, and fill up their toolbox with coping skills to support their well-being at home, in school, and in the community. This group will serve as both a compliment to individual therapy and as an introduction to services at the Brookline Center.
Tuesday 4:30-5:15
Setting: In Person
Friends and Feelings: 3rd-4th Grade Gender Inclusive
This group focuses on emotional regulation/expression, interpersonal skills, and self-esteem building through play and conversation. Topics discussed will cater to the current needs of group members and will be most relevant to third and fourth graders, such as conflict with peers, family issues, and concerns about school.
Mondays at 4:00 – 4:45pm
Setting: In Person
Awareness, Activities… Action! 4th – 6th Grade Males
This group focuses on helping boys build skills to develop emotion regulation and behavioral control in order to better manage feelings, reactions, and frustrations that come up during social interactions. Using a combination of unstructured play/movement and skill-building activities, this group serves to increase members’ awareness and choices in social situations and adding tools to their toolbox to better manage their emotions and behavior in the moment (with some fun games and movement in the process!).
Wednesdays 4:00pm – 4:45pm
Setting: In person
SPARX (Supporting Play And Relational ConneXion): 5th – 6th Grade Males
This group seeks to facilitate peer interactions and bolster social skill development in boys who present as neuro-diverse, including those diagnosed with, or suspected to have, Autism Spectrum Disorder or other neurocognitive difficulties. Using a combination of play-based interventions and behavioral approaches, this group fosters social reciprocity and cooperative play skills through in-the-moment practice during play, where these skills are often most needed and hardest to use.
Mondays 3:00pm – 3:45pm
Setting: Zoom
Friendship and Self-Regulation: 5th – 6th Grade Females
This group focuses on helping young girls build skills to develop friendships, and to better manage feelings, fears, and frustrations that arise during social interactions. Using a combination of unstructured play and skill-building activities, this group serves to increase members’ self-confidence in social situations and adding tools to their toolbox to better manage their emotions and behavior in the moment (while having fun in the process!).
Tuesdays 5:00pm – 5:50pm
Setting: In-Person at The Center
Connect & Cope: 6th-8th Grade Females
This is a group for girls seeking to increase their skills to cope with difficult feelings and circumstances. The group focuses on helping members build skills through use of kids’ yoga and related activities. Using a combination of therapeutic activities and connective conversations, the group will focus on helping members relate to one another, believe in themselves, and build on their own strengths.
Tuesdays 3:30 – 4:15pm
Setting: In person
Middle School Gender Exploration: 6th-8th Graders
This is a group for middle school aged young people with expansive gender identities (transgender, agender, gender non-binary, genderqueer, or genderfluid) or who are exploring these possibilities. This group will provide a space to explore personal gender identity, delve into gender as a construct, and seek support for gender-related stress. This group is open and flexible to the ways gender interacts and intersects with other parts of young people’s lives, such as sexual orientation, social and educational goals, family dynamics, etc., and may include skills training in order to meet group members’ needs.
Wednesdays 6:00-6:50pm
Setting: In person
Power Up! 6th – 8th Grade Males
This is a therapeutic group for male-identified middle schoolers seeking to connect with peers. This group explores and experiments with various ways participants can be powerful – through effective communication, positive relationships, mindfulness, and more. In the context of peer interactions, participants will learn to use their power to boost their positive experiences day-to-day. Group activities include emotion check ins, peer discussion, and activities like whole group game play.
Mondays 4:00pm – 4:50pm
Setting: In Person
Gender Exploration Group: 9th-12th Graders
This is a group for young people who are gender questioning or who identify outside of the gender binary (including, but not limited to, those who identify as transgender, agender, gender non-binary, genderqueer, or genderfluid). This group will provide a space for adolescents of all genders to explore their own gender identities, delve into gender as a construct, and seek support for gender-related stress. It will be primarily a process group but, like gender, the structure can be flexible and may incorporate skills training in order to meet group members’ needs.
Wednesdays 5:00pm-5:50pm
Setting: In person
High School+ Boys Group for Building Social Skills
This is a process group for high school males who struggle socially, some of whom have a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder. It focuses on building interpersonal interaction skills such as relating and talking to each other and cooperating. This group blends activities with intentional conversation to support its members to progress towards their goals.
Thursdays 6:00pm – 6:50pm
Setting: In-Person
Girls Teen Process Group: 9th – 12th Graders
“What is the greatest lesson a woman should learn? That since day one, she’s already had everything she needs within herself, it’s the world that convinced her she did not.” (Rupi Kaur) This group is designed to offer a safe and supportive space for high schoolers who hold female as part of their past or present identity to navigate the everyday challenges in their lives. Group leaders help facilitate discussions and activities around self-confidence, relationships, decision making, mood management, body image, media messages, self-care, and more. The group strives to offer participants the opportunity for creative self-exploration, insight into coping with stressors, and to empower them to show up in the world and in their relationships with courage and strength.
Tuesday 6:00 pm – 6:50pm
Setting: In person
Adolescent DBT Group: 8th-12th Grades, Gender-Inclusive
This group is for adolescents seeking additional support around emotion regulation, interpersonal skills, and distress tolerance, and well compliments individual therapy.
Wednesdays at 6-6:50pm beginning in March 2022
Setting: Zoom
Inside Parenting: A group to bring out the best in parents
This time-limited group provides parents with an opportunity to examine how they parent their kids in light of how they were parented. What do you want to carry forward from your childhood? What do you want to leave behind? Come talk with others who are thinking through the same questions in order to be and become the best parent you can be. This time-limited, virtual, group will meet as a consistent group and is a clinical service that will be billed through insurance.
Fridays at 10am, Beginning early May, Time-Limited to 10 weeks
Setting: Zoom
Waiting List for New Members:
Process & Play: 3rd-5th Grade Gender Inclusive
This group will serve as both a compliment to individual therapy and as an introduction to services at the Brookline Center for 3rd-5th graders needing support with social skills, coping skills, and emotional regulation. The group will use yoga, movement, play, mindfulness, and skills-building activities to build both self and interpersonal awareness and foster greater confidence in school, family, and social settings.
Tuesdays 4:00-4:50pm
Setting: In Person
Boys’ Process Group: 9th – 12th Graders
This group is focused around making connections and building friends through conversation and play. The group structure and style takes into account the specific areas of challenge for each group member. Common themes include social anxiety/inhibition, impulsive behavior, increasing mental flexibility, managing frustrations, effective communication and difficulties with mood regulation.
Wednesdays, 5:00pm- 5:50pm
Setting: In-Person