How Child & Family Therapy Works

While reading parenting books can offer excellent resources and tools, they cannot offer support tailored to your family’s specific needs. An important missing component is an assessment of what the challenges are and how they interact with your specific family. Because families are dynamic, multifaceted systems, there’s often significant interaction/reaction within the family on many levels. These interactions are unique to your family and impossible for a parenting book to address effectively and accurately.

Many times parents actually feel a sense of failure when the parenting approach or method in a book doesn’t transform their family challenges. Often books make compelling arguments for why their approach will solve your challenges. You may feel as though you have botched the approach. This is not the case. It simply means an accurate assessment of your family’s situation is lacking.

When families are exhausted, they sometimes resort to a strict rewards and punishments approach to parenting. Often this is to extinguish an annoying or undesirable behavior. This often is not helpful because it disregards family relationships and family dynamics.

A black and white rewards and punishment approach can be very painful for both parents and children. It can damage trust and connection. It is important for parents to model healthy boundaries within the family while also tending to their relationship with their child.

When a family has a struggle, it’s sometimes difficult to know if it’s a “normal” challenge. Families will often ignore a conflict or challenge for a while hoping it will resolve as their children grow or the family’s context challenges in some way.

And sometimes it will resolve!  And sometimes it won’t.

When it doesn’t, it’s important to acknowledge the challenge and take some action to address it. It’s important to seek support for your family challenge when you feel it dissolving connection and joyful times within the family. It’s impossible to have everything be pretty all the time in a dynamic family where everyone is changing and trying to get their needs met. Yet, when a challenge is around for a while and continues to impact negatively, it’s important to address it head on.

While it is important that families address challenges as they appear (not ignoring them), it’s also easy to get caught in a pattern of fighting or getting angry. Often parents sadly relay that the only way they can get their children to listen to them is to yell at them angrily.

This is exhausting for parents and children alike. And it eventually erodes connectedness over time.

While the most intentional and resourced parents yell and get angry from time to time, it’s important to get support when it feels like that’s the only tool you have in your toolbox.

Perpetual fighting within a family can bring additional challenges as well such as anxiety or depression. Fighting and just yelling at children (or other adults) can also leave your children with deficits in conflict resolution and communication their needs. It can also bring a sense of hopelessness and distance for all involved because it feels as though any interaction will bring conflict.

There is an abundance of online resources for parents these days. Many parents spend hours researching about their children or family dynamics. This can benefit parents by reducing shame and feeling empathy as well as knowing that other parents struggle similarly.

However, this strategy will not solve your challenges because it won’t offer a solution tailored to your specific family. Change within your family will be most effective if all or most people involved are working toward a common goal.

Researching online is a solo task. Family change is a family task.

While individual therapy is often helpful and can create much change for a family, it is not always a sure method of making things better for your family.

When children are involved, especially children under age 10, family therapy is the most appropriate method of therapy to address family related challenges.

Families are functioning systems. This is a lot like a car engine, where individuals are acting and reacting together all the time to make things happen. When each part of the engine is greased and functioning well, the engine will function well overall. When the engine isn’t functioning well, it’s important to assess and support all the parts of the engine to ensure the most effective tune up. It wouldn’t work very well to visit your car mechanic with only part of your car engine. They need to look at the big picture of the engine in it’s entirety.

When things are rough within a family, one or both parents may start to avoid spending time as a family. While this often brings relief in the short term, it actually can contribute to challenges in the long run.

When a family is avoiding conflict, they are also avoiding joy and connection.

If you are experiencing conflict or challenge within your family and are avoiding your family to reduce the stress, there are other approaches you can take.