The chosen family, the Lincolns, has four members. Both the father and mother have well-paying jobs. Joe, the first-born of the family, is in junior high school while Sam is in middle school. The chosen family differs from mine in several ways. First, this family is not as religious as mine. Secondly, the parents’ values are very different from my family’s. For instance, they believe that discipline should also be physical.
They have spanked their children as a way of ensuring discipline and advocate for the same. The family has several individual concerns and the main idea is to treat the individual concerns using a solution-based approach to fix the family as a unit.
Whereas the family does not acknowledge any religious laws, they are cautious of legal law. They show no strong ties to any societal rules as well. My family adheres to both legal and religious rules but with no special attachment to any cultural or societal laws. Thus, one of the similarities is that we both adhere to legal law. The family employs a traditional approach to family roles. The father is the main family breadwinner despite both parents working. The mother takes care of the household by cooking and cleaning. The responsibility of raising the kids is on the mother, although the father is also actively involved.
Gold (2016) explains that there are many cultural filters that counselors can use when interacting with their clients. Counselors often need the right information to work effectively work. In the case of the Lincolns, I would need to know their religious beliefs, their ethnicity, their views on gender, culture, and society, and also their personal preferences (Pedersen, Lonner, Draguns, Trimble, & Scharron-del Rio, 2015). Taking this into consideration, one of the things that will make working with this family difficult is their rigidity. The parents strongly believe that their way of life and the perspective of others is right.
I intend to overcome this challenge by making the family more open-minded. This can be achieved through more exposure and controlled contact with different cultures and people. I believe I will be very comfortable working with all aspects of the family. Some of their main concerns include the fact that the children feel that their parents do not understand them; the mother also claims that the father is cheating, and the father believes that he has not achieved all he would have wanted by his age.
All the family issues mentioned have to be addressed at the mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem. The family is a closed system, thus, all interventions employed will be at the same level. This means they will directly affect the individual family members. This was one of the factors that I considered when choosing an intervention. I also thought about the needs of the individual family members. Thirdly, I took into account the overall health and well-being of the family as a unit. On the same note, I believe that the family will appreciate being treated individually as opposed to as a group. This is because they have different needs.
Treating the individual members does not in any way under-pin the importance of the family as a unit. Once individual issues are addressed, the whole family can be reunited and treated as a unit. The family would least appreciate the division for initial treatment purposes.
In conclusion, the family members have individual concerns that should be addressed separately. This can be done through various therapeutic sessions. It is important to note that the treatment of the individual relationships will also translate into the treatment of the family unit.
References
Gold, M. J. (2016). Stepping in, stepping out: Creating stepfamily rhythm. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.
Pedersen, B. P., Lonner, J. W., Draguns, G. J., Trimble, E. J., & Scharron-del Rio, R. M. (2015). Counseling across cultures. New York, NY: Sage.