COUC 601 Week 4 Group DB Forum 4 Example

Group Discussion Board Forum 4: Thread and Reply

COUC 601 Theories of Family Systems, Group Discussion Board Forum 4 (thread and reply)

Thread by [Student Name]

The prompt, the family example and the classmate's post are composites standing in for the course's own forum; the textbooks, Scripture and studies are real and described from their published sources; the requirements follow Liberty's public course guide for COUC 601.

Thread

When the Coleman family arrived for their first session, twelve-year-old Ethan sat next to his mother, Rachel, and answered most of the questions directed to her. His father, Mark, a long-haul trucker home four days a month, took the chair nearest the door. Rachel brought Ethan because of falling grades and stomachaches before school. A structural family therapist would notice the seating before any story was told.

Goldenberg et al. (2016) describe structural family therapy, developed by Salvador Minuchin, as focused on the family's organization: the invisible rules that determine how, when and with whom members relate. Families contain subsystems, such as the parental, marital and sibling subsystems, separated by boundaries. Boundaries can be rigid, leading to disengagement, in which members are isolated from one another, or diffuse, leading to enmeshment, in which members are overly involved. Clear boundaries allow both connection and appropriate separation. Minuchin (1974) argued that symptoms often arise when the family's structure fails to adapt to new demands.

The Colemans fit this picture. With Mark away, Rachel has drawn Ethan into an adult role. He keeps her company, hears her worries about money and her marriage, and feels responsible for her mood. The line separating Ethan from the parenting role has blurred, while the boundary around Mark is rigid; he has become a visitor in his own home. Ethan's stomachaches may express the strain of carrying an adult's burden.

In structural terms, the goal is not to make Ethan less close to his mother, but to move him back into the role of a son and to bring his father back into the role of a parent and partner. One tool is enactment. The counselor might ask Mark and Rachel to decide together, in session, how to handle Ethan's homework, and then prevent Ethan from interrupting. When the parents talk to each other rather than through their son, the boundary begins to shift. Between sessions, the counselor might ask Mark to call Ethan's teacher himself and ask Rachel to share her worries with Mark or a friend rather than with Ethan. Ethan, freed from his post as his mother's helper, could be encouraged to join a sports team or spend time with friends his own age, which is what a twelve-year-old needs.

Research on structural-strategic approaches is encouraging but mixed. Testing a related model across eight community agencies and 480 families of drug-using teenagers, Robbins et al. (2011) found that brief strategic family therapy engaged and retained families better than usual care and improved parent-reported family functioning, but the two groups' self-reported drug use followed similar paths over the year, although median drug use days were lower at the final observation.

Compared with Bowen theory from last week, structural therapy is more active and present-focused. A Bowenian counselor would coach Rachel to lower her reactivity and explore her own family history; a structural counselor would rearrange interactions in the room.

The Teacher notes that a cord of three strands is hard to snap (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Ecclesiastes 4:12). A family is stronger when parents stand together and children are free to be children.

Classmates: when have you seen a child carry an adult role in a family, and what might help them set it down?

Reply to Laura

Laura, your thread described a nine-year-old girl referred for explosive tantrums and argued that treatment should include her parents rather than focus only on her. I agree, and the research on systemic interventions for children's problems strongly supports your position.

Carr (2019) updated a series of reviews on family therapy and other systemic interventions for child-focused problems, drawing on meta-analyses, systematic reviews and controlled trials. He defined systemic interventions broadly to include both family therapy and family-based approaches such as parent training. The evidence supported their effectiveness, either alone or within multimodal programs, for a wide range of difficulties, including sleep, feeding and attachment problems in infancy, recovery from abuse and neglect, conduct problems, emotional problems, eating disorders, somatic problems and first-episode psychosis. Conduct problems, which would likely include your client's tantrums, are among the areas with the strongest support.

The structural lens adds a question about your case. If the girl's tantrums escalate most when her parents disagree about discipline, the problem may lie partly in the parental subsystem. Minuchin (1974) suggested that children's symptoms often reflect a family structure that has not adapted to stress, and a counselor might see whether the parents can form a united team before working on the child's behavior directly. An enactment, in which the parents practice agreeing on a response while the counselor coaches them, could be a practical starting point.

At the same time, the evidence for parent training reminds us that some of the most effective help is simple and concrete: teaching parents to praise good behavior, set clear limits and follow through calmly. Structural and behavioral ideas can work together, since a united parental team is better able to use those skills consistently.

A counselor could also invite the parents to describe a time when they handled a tantrum well together, since building on existing strengths often lowers defensiveness. I also appreciated your attention to the girl's own experience. Involving the family should never mean ignoring the child's voice, and children often feel relieved when the adults take responsibility for change. Finally, any work with this family should screen for stressors outside the home, such as school difficulties or a parent's depression, since systemic thinking looks beyond the family's walls as well as within them. Do you think the parents in your case would accept the idea that their relationship is part of the solution, or would they hear it as blame?

References

Carr, A. (2019). Family therapy and systemic interventions for child-focused problems: The current evidence base. Journal of Family Therapy, 41(2), 153-213. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6427.12226

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Goldenberg, I., Stanton, M., & Goldenberg, H. (2016). Family therapy: An overview (9th ed.). Cengage Learning.

Minuchin, S. (1974). Families and family therapy. Harvard University Press.

Robbins, M. S., Feaster, D. J., Horigian, V. E., Rohrbaugh, M., Shoham, V., Bachrach, K., Miller, M., Burlew, K. A., Hodgkins, C., Carrion, I., Vandermark, N., Schindler, E., Werstlein, R., & Szapocznik, J. (2011). Brief strategic family therapy versus treatment as usual: Results of a multisite randomized trial for substance using adolescents. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 79(6), 713-727. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025477