Structural Family Therapy for Ms. Maria Sanchez Family, Essay Example

Evaluation of the Family

Ms. Maria’s family is comprised of a grandmother, a mother, a father, a son, and a daughter. They are immigrants who came to the United States to look for greener pastures. However, the father is a stepdad to Maria’s son from a past marriage, but the daughter, Maritza, is from Maria’s recent marriage to Manuel. In addition to the above, Maria also lives with her mother. They are all Latinos, but Jose is darker than all the other family members. Therefore, because the teachers at Jose’s school tend to favor light-skinned Latinos and because he has a particular accent, he has been skipping school and hanging out till late in the neighborhood. Therefore, due to the above issues and the fact that Jose’s mother and his stepfather do not know how to speak fluent English, Jose seems to disrespect them. Hence, he sees them as dumb. On the other hand, his sister is always present at home but does little socialization with other children in the neighborhood. Nevertheless, Maria’s job as a home care worker is not good enough for the family because her husband has not been able to get a regular job because he is still undocumented, leading to Maria’s application for food stamps. Therefore, increased conflicts between Maria and her son have led to seeking structural family therapy from the neighborhood agency despite being advised by her mother to seek help from a spiritualist.

Nature of The Model I Have Selected

The model I have selected to assist this family is referred to as the structural mapping technique to widen the issues beyond the individuals in this particular family. The theory of a structural family tends to provide a strategy that assists in discovering the obstacles which limit the family unit from attaining its objectives, thus assisting the therapist in joining the family in one vision of moving from where they are to where they ought to be (Soria-Jimenez, 2021). Therefore, after observing the interactions in the family, I have been able to build up a proposition that indicates that the mother and the son tend to be enmeshed while the stepfather is disengaged. My interventions aim at changing the family organization by assisting the duo to be psychologically closer to each other to support the needed change. In turn, there will be a transformation in the family arrangement if the significant other responds to Maria’s needs while Maria is in a space that she can express her needs more directly and openly. Suppose the couple learns to communicate much better with each other and focus on their children. In that case, they will be able to get over resentment and hostility from their son, hence creating an appropriate atmosphere for acceptance and love.

In addition to the above, as a structural therapist, I intend to promote change in the behavior of all family members by ensuring that the husband supports the mother tremendously because the mother is the breadwinner. It will enable Maria and her husband to have a spousal and realigning subsystem so that the husband cannot have the chance of more social life in the neighborhood rather than in his own home. Instead of expecting the son and daughter, who are very young, to do as they please and satisfy their mother’s emotional closeness, the father should be more loving and more involved at home because he has more time at home. In addition, by trying to learn English, the son will be more respectful to his fatherand might open up about what he is experiencing at school. In addition, the son will stop being rebellious against his parents, especially his mother, for the sake of the struggle for autonomy and freedom, thus creating a better relationship between himself and both parents.

The rationale for My Selection

The rationale for my selection is based on a parental subsystem that includes enhanced communication. Therefore, both parents ought to step up and create a hierarchical structure and agree on various mutual acceptance methods that include rewards and consequences to discipline, listen, or communicate to their son and the daughter. The most exciting thing about this hypothesis is that there seem to be countless ways by which various families solve their troubles. As a structural counsellor, I will give attention to the dynamics involving Maria and her offspring, Jose, and the dynamics between Jose and his stepfather. By observing the family issues from a spherical angle, I will definitely see how every family member, including the grandmother, is affected and the effects on other family members. In addition to the above, by changing and unbalancing the diffused boundaries in the unmeshed subsystem between Maria and her son and the rigid boundaries between the disengaged stepfather and son subsystem, I will encourage a change of behavior in every family member. Nevertheless, the alteration of the underlying structure in the family will eventually lead to ripple effects in all transactions between the family members. All couples and parents tend to have complementary patterns that can be exaggerated, thus leading to dysfunctional subsystems (Lindblad-Goldberg, & Igle, 2019). For instance, if the wife tends to be submissive, then the husband should play a stricter role in being a better disciplinarian to the children, not only by punishing them by stepping forward to listen and understand the problems and issues they are going through.

Assessment of the Current and Long Term Picture of the Family

Maria does not undermine her husband’s ability by being less shielding and more lenient with her son. However, they might criticize each other in the future due to how they handle their children; hence, they might end up engaging in constant fights. The other main factor that might lead to future fights is that the husband does not constantly provide for the family financially or emotionally. Therefore, the children will perceive mixed messages from their parents in the long run, thus making their behavior deteriorate or even worsen (Thayyil & Rani, 2020). By looking at the future of this family interaction, as a structural therapist, I have evaluated that one significant risk is an occurrence of a cross-generational coalition between the children and their mother. The reason is that their father is undocumented and faces deportation to his original country, which is Guatemala.

The father might be excluded in the future because he seems to do very little in terms of emotional and financial support, and he shows no effort to improve his situation. However, as a structural therapist, some of the protective factors that I will offer this family will be to establish a hierarchical structure so as to assist the parents in functioning together as an effective, cohesive, and reliable executive subsystem. In addition to the above, it is essential to understand a normal family (Wei, 2021). The reason is that all families tend to experience problems in one way or another. However, the difference between a normal family and others is that it can be flexible to adjust to developmental and environmental stressors.

Literature Review

The failure to settle rigid or diffused interpersonal limitations might lead to family conflicts. Therefore, structural family psychotherapy intends to alter the family arrangement to facilitate the family to get to the bottom of its inconveniences by utilizing its resources. The first step in the therapy session involves opening up, which involves presenting the complaint (Colapinto & Lee, 2019). It also involves requesting every family member express their views about the underlying problem by listening reflectively to their woes and showing admiration to everyone. In addition to the above, before the family unit members are prepared to talk about the underlying issue in a spherical viewpoint, they should have a sense of acceptance from the therapist. Therefore, to make a precise evaluation, the information concerning the family unit is collected through accommodation, enactment, and joining techniques.

The next step in the context of family assessment involves exploring the family patterns, which entails presenting the problem. Therefore, a structural counsellor should go further than the representation of the problem to a level of mapping down the underlying family composition early enough in the sitting by observing the meeting order of the family unit during the therapy session (Colapinto& Lee, 2019). At this particular point, the limitations that describe alliances, affiliations, and coalitions often start to materialize.

More often, a structural assessment tends to base on the assumption that the difficulties in the family reflect how the organization of the family. Therefore, the first question a structural therapist should ask is; what are the family members doing to assist in maintaining the patient’s symptoms? In return, to get the appropriate answers, the parent’s parenting styles, their interactions, and how their parenting techniques harmonize each other ought to be assessed. In addition, it is essential to pay more attention on the couple’s correlation, how they tackle the issues at hand, and how they disagree and agree.

Ways in which I Would Adapt My Interventions in View of the distinctive Temperament of the Family

I will definitely explore the parent’s past to comprehend where they learned their parenting skills from and how they established their techniquess of relating to each other, and their parenting techniques. In addition, I will ask the parents about their childhood in terms of sexual orientation, religious, ethnic, and socioeconomic aspects (Byers et al., 2021). In many situations, many family members, especially children, often think that the ways the parents relate to each other or their parenting skills cannot be changed. However, when they understand what they inherited from their folks, they comprehend that the parents can unlearn the older un-functional methods and discover new ones that are more effectual, efficient, and reliable.

My Assessment of the Intervention

It will involve redefining the problem and exploring alternatives. I will apply accommodating, joining, and enactment to observe and modify the family’s interventions. I will also use the aspect of reframing to assist the family unit in identifying how their deeds tend to uphold the dilemma. Thereafter, I will slowly shift the focus from the child who seems to have a problem (Jose) to the parental or spousal subsystem. The above interventions aim at aligning the spousal subsystem with the interpersonal boundaries. Spouses ought to express what to the child’s negative emotions so that they can be able to maintain closeness to each other (Tadros & Finney, 2018). Therefore, the concept of requesting both parents to assist each other in parenting so as to change the situation can be utilized.

On the other hand, certain critical questions can be addressed to the parents; they include: Your son desires to recognize that you are a nurturing and caring parent, so, how can you prove to be a better parent and mother as your son wants you to be? Can you give your son authorization to communicate his opinion on aggravation? It is a unique conversation that will eventually open up both the mother and the father to avoid future conflicts with the son and how to communicate with the children without fear of confrontation because the children will have more confidence in themselves and have confidence in themselves.

Suppose both spouses re-establish clear boundaries in their parenting subsystem as a structural therapist. In that case, I will then move on to construct an efficient and effective hierarchical parenting system by setting clear generational limits within the family system. In the long run, I will also intercede by cheering both spousess to find out if their approach in altering the child’s behavior is successful and not (Minuchin, 2018). I can even challenge the parents by asking a certain question. For example, “I have noticed that when the stepfather starts questioning his son about his actions, you, the mother, has jumped in to defend your son, in any way, do you assume that the stepfather can harm your son?” After that, I will direct the family unit to establish a better and fair approach to listening, disciplining, and parenting their offspring.

The stepfather will earn affection and respect from his son by emotionally connecting with him in the long run. Eventually, the son will get excited about talking to his parents about the issues he has been undergoing in school and also his interests. Also, they can even spend some quality time together by going on a special outing or by playing a game (Colapinto, 2019). Besides, the parents will value spending time with the other child, even if it is for twenty minutes a day. It is essential to understand that when counseling a family as a unit, the family conflicts are usually related to psychological symptoms.

References

Byers, T., Newton, K., Whitman, T., & Jones, C. W. (2021). Prevalence of and Relationship Between Caregiver Adversity Scores and Child Client Eco-Systemic Structural Family Therapy (ESFT) Outcome: Implications for Family Based Mental Health Services (FBMHS). Community Mental Health Journal, 1-12.

Colapinto, J., & Lee, W. Y. (2019). Complementarity in Structural Family Therapy. Encyclopedia of couple and family therapy, 549-551.

Lindblad-Goldberg, M., & Igle, E. A. (2019). Ecosystemic structural family therapy. Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy, 832-836.

Minuchin, S. (2018). Structural family therapy. In Families and family therapy (pp. 1-11). Routledge.

Soria-Jimenez, E. (2021). Structural Family Therapy for Immigrant Latino Families: a Grant Proposal (Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach).

Tadros, E., & Finney, N. (2018). Structural family therapy with incarcerated families: A clinical case study. The Family Journal, 26(2), 253-261.

Thayyil, M. M., & Rani, A. (2020). Structural Family Therapy with a Client Diagnosed with Dissociative Disorder. Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine, 0253717620969067.

Wei, Q. (2021). The Construction of Therapeutic Alliance and Application of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Structural Family Therapy. International Journal of Social Sciences: Current and Future Research Trends, 10(01), 1-6.

Colapinto, J. (2019). Structural family therapy.Family, 3-17