Learning about My family

Wow. I learned so much about my family this past week. Both the good and the not so good. We talked in class about family rules. These rules aren't ones that you talk about during a family home evening discussion or a family council. In a way they kind of set themselves. No one has to establish them or really enforce them most of the time they just exist. When you really stop to think about it, every family has a lot of these rules that you don't even realize until you stop to write them down. There are rules such as where you sit at the dinner table, if it's okay to talk back to your parents, when to use your parents first name if ever, who has the last say in a decision, rules about grades in school, and so many others. These rules really define a family and make each one unique.

We also talked about different boundaries. These boundaries deal with the way people in the family interact and communicate with one another. There are three main types of boundaries. They are diffuse boundary, rigid boundary, and clear boundary. The best type to have is the clear boundary. These boundaries are used when mapping out the relationships between family members. The boundaries look like this:

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  is a diffuse boundary. This indicates that the family members that this is between are too involved in each others lives. There is more space in between than there is boundary.

____________________  is a rigid boundary. This indicates that the two people have little communication and rarely interact with each other. There is like a brick wall between the two people.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - is a clear boundary. This indicates that both people understand the family rules, but they don't try to be overly involved in each others business. They have a good understanding of how much interaction is appropriate. There are equal amounts of space and boundary between them.

Here is an example of how you would set up a family relations boundary picture:



This is just an example and each family's picture will look different but this one shows all the different boundaries. See if you can find all three. The M stands for Mom, D is for Dad and C is for child.

To wrap up, I really learned a lot about my family this week. I learned that you can solve family issues by redefining the boundaries between the members and also by making new rules if that is needed. If your family is having problems, draw up a boundary picture and see where you can help.