As a child growing up in a rural county, I didn’t have soccer practice or dance recitals; no play dates or playgrounds. I had trees to climb, woods to explore, bikes to ride and adventures to be had. I had bare feet in the grass, wincing on the gravel driveway, rocks digging into my soles. I had walnuts to crush, plums to eat, flowers to pick, bugs to catch. I had my little brothers to bug me, my mom to take care of me, my dad to laugh with me and my grandparents to hold me. I had books to read, worlds of words to get lost in. I had Saturday morning cartoons, Sunday morning church, and fireflies to catch every night. The world I grew up in was small, a close-knit rural area without street lights or sidewalks. Doors were left unlocked and everyone knew each other and, more likely than not, was kin to each other. Men gathered at the store every morning for coffee and news, families went to church picnics and family reunions. Everyone was Catholic and (almost) everyone went to church on Sunday. When the neighbor’s son was arrested and when the school bus driver was diagnosed with cancer, everyone knew. When a family was faced with medical bills they couldn’t afford, there would be a benefit at the church gym; everyone would donate what they could and enjoy dancing, eating, and drinking into the night. Every Saturday my mom and grandma and I would ride 20 minutes into town; groceries from Kroger, a quick stop at the post office and the library, then to Wendy’s for fries and hamburgers. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this quiet little town and the people that lived there would forever influence me, and the person I would become. Unique Family Characteristics My family’s earliest traceable ancestors came to the USA in the 1600... ... middle of paper ... ...tent effective services. Increasing my self-awareness is another method for ensuring that my own personal, familial issues do not negatively impact clients. Becoming aware of potential pitfalls is the first step toward addressing and preventing such issues from arising. Conclusion My family is like many others in that we have our problems and difficulties as well as our own unique strengths and abilities. Past generations and the environmental context have influenced each individual’s development and growth, mine included. Through a thorough assessment of my family’s characteristics and dynamics, I am better able to understand my own beliefs and behaviors. This concept can also be applied to the families I work with. Through increased self-awareness and understanding of my own history, I am better able to provide competent, effective services as a social worker.
Fred, Wilma, and Rose present an interesting perspective when looking at their family through a Structural Family Systems Theory. When trying to work with the family a social worker will utilize Functional Family Therapy in order to understand their structure and maybe ameliorate some of the family’s problems. Using Rose and her family as the clients it will be able explain what interventions we can use when we learn the constructs of the theory.
Everyone’s story begins with family, every experience within this complex system is integrated into who one becomes and what one values. In constructing a genogram of my family of three generations, starting with my grandparents, my parents and myself I have been able to identify patterns on both my paternal and maternal sides of the family. The patterns found were language barriers, affaires, divorce, abuse, anxiety and miscarriages.
Visualize living in a beautiful 4-bedroom home near the mountains. Now, imagine the transition to living in a car. Eventually you will shift from receiving government assistance to attending graduate school while working for the federal government. That is a snapshot of my life. Life has thrown me lemons, and I have done my best to make the sweetest lemonade. I have sustained employment since my senior year of high school, and have maintained above a 3.0 throughout my collegiate career. The roughest period was the 2007-2008 school year when I lost an uncle, grandmother, and best friend during a five month period. Nevertheless, my experiences never deterred me from achieving my dreams. I want to support children and families potentially headed down similar paths. In order to become this leader in serving children and their families, I am turning to the Human Development and Family Studies for further guidance.
At age twelve I started middle school. To me life was still as simple as it would be for a fifth grader. But when I was twelve, the month December would bring the cruel realities of the world down on me. My grandfather officially had dementia, I would move away from my child home, to Pocasset, Oklahoma to take care him. This was my first passage into adulthood. This is when I learned how to go through hard situations and not letting work fall behind, that hard times will come, but that won’t stop me from the important things. This was the first time I understood, how hard adulthood could be.
In social work profession, it is notably important that a practitioner be able recognize aspects of their decision making that may be motivated by uncontrollable circumstances such as past experiences, family values, and personal values. Uncontrollable circumstances, such as the examples listed above, all attribute to personal biases a practitioner may display when working with individuals, groups, families, or communities. A personal bias is the negative or positive perspective or demeanor, both knowingly and unknowingly, of any particular individual, or group of individuals, based on different diversity factors that may skew the way that an individual interacts or perceives an individual or group (Miller, Cahn, Anderson-Nathe, Cause, Bender, 2013). Therefore, as a social worker, the importance of practicing self-awareness is that it helps the practitioner to shuffle through personal biases, and in return, aid in social justice and be effectively responsive to diversity factors in the practice setting (Bender, Negi, Fowler, 2010).
In addition a positive self-awareness gives a sense of continuity, wholeness and consistency to a person. In relation to nursing, self-awareness helps nurses to learn about their strength and weaknesses. “It helps nurses to deliver better client care thus; client gets well soon and builds a trusting relation between the client and the nurse. Self-awareness helps nurses to identify several problems that might be a cause I providing better care”(Nancy Burns, 2005).
In todays society it is ordinary to live life in a bubble; we are concerned about our families and friends but nobody else. As a child I remember asking my mother about all the other kids out in the world without parents or food to fill their empty stomachs. I was informed at a young age that not everyone is as fortunate as I am. A little over a year later, my family would make the decision to adopt a baby boy from Guatemala. Not only did I learn to not take advantage of the luxuries I have, I also discovered that family doesn’t always have to be blood.
Randy Gerson, McGoldrick explains that a genogram is a starting point for a clinician, but the responsibility of the clinician is to delve deeper (via client interviews) in order to fill out the context of what his family genogram reveals. She says tracking certain patterns “can lead the clinician to hypotheses about the family’s adaptive style” (McGoldrick and Gerson). The therapist has a responsibility to use thorough questioning techniques in order to uncover as much about the family history as possible, as this information will likely reveal what the patterns are. These give all involved a map for how to deal with future crises. The authors state, “Seeing the family in its historical perspectives involves linking past, present, and future, and noting the family’s flexibility in adapting to changes” (McGoldrick and Gerson). Even so, it’s also McGoldrick’s assertion that every lead on a genogram cannot be followed, and so it is the clinician’s responsibility to spot and treat the most potentially harmful family patterns. Likewise, what’s “missing” is equally important; therefore, a therapist must note the connections clients and their families have failed to make, as teaching how to achieve these connections may cause the healing needed for individual differentiation (McGoldrick and
We spent these early married years living simply, but living well. It’s wonderful when you can embrace poverty for the wealth of life experiences. Home was found in each other’s arms and with family we’d discovered in those newly around us, in our church and our neighbors.
Family systems therapy began during the early 20th century; specifically emerging during the “golden age” in the 1970’s and ‘80s based on the pioneering work of Nathan Ackerman, Virginia Satir, and Salvador Minuchin (Shoai, 2014). Historically, families have been viewed as functioning under systemic patterns. Rather than viewing problems as belonging to the individual, the therapist sees the problem as created and maintained by the family (Shoai,
This is extremely hard for me to do. I am not one to delve into my family with friends, let alone people that I hardly know. I view my family as something of a challenge. It has always been a challenge. A challenge from how on one side of my family almost didn’t make it to America, to how I came into this world, to how I was raised, and to my adult life. I am sure that you are looking at this thinking, this might not be how I want this paper structured. But to trace how my family looks at items like divorce, economic demography, child rearing, and even life itself…it should be told this way.
In Rural America as a Symbol of American Values, John R. Logan talks about America being a “historical museum” because of the boundaries of rural areas are changing. People are leaving rural areas and heading to more urban areas. “With only a quarter of Americans living in nonmetro areas (John page1)”. This is taking the majority of the population and putting them into more metro areas that create a lower population that is depleting the population of society in nonmetro areas. This is creating a ghost town for these areas that use to hold the majority of the population.
For my observation I decided to visit my sister’s house and compare it to the household I live in. The reason for my decision was to compare parenting between teens living with their parents and adults living with their parents. Most appealing to me within my choice was the hopes of picking up on habits within a parent who is involved in his career as an officer verses parenting habits within single mothers or those who weren’t fully prepared to raise children at the time they conceived them. During my observation I noticed there were a few specifics that I didn’t fully attend to when considering my subgroup. Some of those important specifics includes that one of my brothers is physically disabled and the other involves the absence of one parent within the household I live in. Consolingly, this task allowed me to identify the differences within families and the impact it can have on parenting. Further, it allowed me to grasp the full efforts that take place during nurturing and educating a child. The first day of my observation I discovered many things.
My early life can be wrapped up in 3 unsophisticated words: eating, sleeping, and learning. Ten outstanding years were spent at United Day School, and I can't ideate a life without them! During my elementary and middle school life, I was involved with an evident amount of traveling. Towards the end of my fifth grade year, my peers and I embarked on an adventure to discover Mo-Ranch, a camp center, near the spring fed Guadalupe River, with plenty of adventurous activities. We had the incredible opportunity to visit it three more times! During my last year of middle school, my class and I had the once-in-a-lifetime chance to visit Washington D.C. for an entire week. It was remarkable. Furthermore, somewhere in between school and the holidays,
I am a product of an old farmhouse, a flock of sheep, and miles of exploration. Until I was about four years old, I had only lived in a typical American neighborhood, but my life (A.K.A. my playtime) was changed radically when my family and I moved to my Great Grandparents’ former home. This quaint, little, hand-built farmhouse was truly an experience. There was only one small bathroom, no air conditioning or heating, a bad rodent infestation, and several broken windows. We only lived in this palace for one year, but some of my happiest childhood memories are from this year.