Welcome to the Family Education Training Center of Hawaii

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Welcome to the Family Education Training Center
of Hawaii

• Week 2
• 415 sign-in take children to classrooms
• 430 buffet dinner paired sharing
• 500 how do we learn best?
• 520 What are features of adaptive families?
• 545 Open-forum counseling of family 2
• 615 Re-counseling of family 1
• 700 join children for Family Together activity
• 730 goodbye until next week
• Paired sharing As you eat, remember a
  particularly good summer day of childhood and
  describe this to another parent. What did you
  like best? How did your parents enable this
  situation? How do WE want to be remembered as a
  parent?

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Welcome to the Family Education Training Center
of Hawaii
Some of the people caring for your children today
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Week 2 Imagine you are starting a new job
tomorrow

• You are skilled in the basic work but do not know
  the specific tasks.
• How do you want your new boss to treat you on
  these first days?
• How do you want your co-workers to treat you?
• What conditions will help you do your best work?

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What is it like for our children

• To start school at the beginning of the year?
• To learn new skills at school?
• To learn new skills in sports, music, other
  areas?
• How might they learn and work best?
• What adult attitudes toward them might be the
  most constructive?

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Open-Forum Family Counseling

• Each week, one family, who volunteers, comes up
  front for a session of open-forum counseling

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What is open-forum counseling?
A parent, both parents or a family is counseled
in front of an audience.
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Features of open-forum counseling

• The counselor focuses on commonalities between
  this family and those in the audience
• The counselor focuses on immediate, commonsense
  solutions to manageable problems
• Audience input needs to remain respectful and is
  directly ONLY to the counselors

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How Open-Forum Counseling Differs

• Emphasizes strengths of families
• Deals with problems in the open
• Emphasizes commonalities across people
• Focuses on commonsense solutions
• Focuses on the future rather than the past

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Problems are seen as

• stemming from misguided beliefs about how to
  belong in social groups
• Children develop views on how to belong in their
  families of origin
• They extend these to the wider world

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• They interpret life events in relation to these
  beliefs
• Problems stem from these problematic
  interpretations
• For example, children may misinterpret that they
  belong ONLY when they can keep everyone busy with
  them

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Open-forum counseling ground rules

• First, the process is educational, not therapy
• Everyone is a co-learner, not just the up-front
  family

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Ground rules for open forum

• Information pertains to observable, public
  behavior, not pathology
• Many problems are common to all parents
• By discussing their problems, the up-front family
  helps all participants

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Stages of Open-Forum process

• Stage 1 The counselor wants to formulate the
  problem and earn trust
• S/he asks about the family constellation names,
  ages

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To formulate the problem, the counselor

• Asks the parents for their specific concerns
• Elicits specific examples, not diagnostic
  generalities or vague descriptions
• The latter reify hopelessness and discouragement

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How to elicit specific reports

• Success depends on the parents ability to define
  the problem in solvable terms
• So, the counselor asks what they are doing and
  saying at the time of the problem
• What would I see if I were there?
• What do the child and parents look like, feel and
  sound like during the problematic event?

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Stage 2 get a clear picture of family

• The counselor asks the parents to describe a
  typical day to get a feel for the family climate

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The counselor asks about a typical day

• To get a sense of the positive and negative
  patterns of interaction in their family life

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Stage 3 The counselor interviews the child(ren)

• The purpose is to figure out the constructive
  goals the child may be pursuing but in a
  misguided way with this misbehavior
• Find out about the childs strengths
• To help us see the family from the childs point
  of view

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How to interview the children

• Ask their views of what THEY want changed
• Find out about their misguided goals

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One way to determine childrens misguided goals

• Ask parents how they feel when the child
  misbehaves in that way.
• If the parent feels annoyedthe child is probably
  seeking attention
• if the parent feels angrythe child is rebelling
  
• if the parent feels hurtthe child is in revenge
  
• if the parent feels hopelessthe child is in
  withdrawal, feels helpless

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Second way to determine misguided goals

• Ask the child four Could it be? questions
• 1. Could it be that you dont mind your mother or
  do what she says because you want her to pay
  attention to you?
• 2because she thinks she is the boss but you want
  to be the boss and show her that you are in
  charge?
• 3. because she hurt you and you want to hurt
  back?
• 4. because you feel like a baby and dont know
  what to do?

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Stage 4 Recommend new behavior to the parents

• With children there or away, the counselor asks
  what the parents feel they should do
• If they want further recommendations, the
  counselor can give these
• The parents and counselor come up with one or two
  tasks for family to work on the next week
• For example, parents in power struggles are
  encouraged to move off into the distance whenever
  a child wants to engage them in a fight

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How to suggest changes

• Emphasize family strengths
• Elicit positive audience input
• Normalize their reactions

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Stage 5 bring closure to the process instill
hope

• Stress the commonality of all of our familys
  problems
• Emphasize the universality
• Build sense of community/solidarity in group