The mother was in over her head.

Her baby had been taken into foster care because he wasn’t thriving and was in danger of dying. An older child was struggling because the mother was so overwhelmed.

A judge ordered the mother into a parent-child psychotherapy program, and she came to the Reginald S. Lourie Center for Infants and Young Children in Rockville with a lot of reluctance. She joined a group made up of other Latino mothers. There, she found a place where she could relate to other women and feel supported by the women and the therapists. She stayed for several months, got back on her feet and her children returned to her care.

Helping parents achieve healthy relationships with their children is a cornerstone of the Lourie Center’s work. In a recent article published in the journal Zero to Three, Lourie Center experts say that early intervention with parents who have certain risk factors for abuse or neglect can help reduce poor social and emotional development in the children.

“What we’re hoping to achieve with these patients is a more secure relationship and a positive attachment with the child,” said Betty Ann Kaplan, director of Parent-Child Clinical Services at the Lourie Center. She and Jimmy Venza, associate executive director of the Lourie Center, are co-authors of the article “Changing What You Know and Do.”

A parent’s natural tendency is to respond to child’s needs so that the child feels safe and secure, Kaplan said. But when things impinge on that natural tendency—poverty, trauma, or abuse, for example—it’s hard for the parent to be emotionally available.

“If a parent hasn’t been understood or hasn’t had their needs met, it’s very, very hard to do this for the child,” Kaplan said. “We nurture the parent so they can nurture the child.”

The center’s parent-child psychotherapy program uses group therapy, unstructured playtime, meal sharing and other activities to connect the parent and the child.

For example, Kaplan said, participants and their children always have a project to do. But parents aren’t asked to help the child with the project; the parent and the child both complete the project.

“The whole basis for healthy parent-child relationships is sharing experiences,” she said.

That, and security. If you feel secure that someone is there to catch you if you fall, you’re more willing to try new things, Kaplan said. But if you don’t feel that security, or feel you’ll be rejected or hurt if you ask for something, you’re less likely to do so.

“We tend to create the world we believe in,” Kaplan said. “What we’re really talking about is trying to change people’s internal world model to one that is safe and responsive.”

And that’s why, she said, success isn’t just that the mom ordered to attend the program was able to get her children back. It’s also the mom knowing that if she starts to fall, someone from the center will catch her.