Couple and Family Assessment

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Melissa Moy

FRCD 4123

April 3, 2000

 

          On March 31, 2000, I decided to go about and see if I could answer the question, “Is the style of adaptability constant in all children of a family, or does adaptability differ according to personal perception?”  The obvious construct for this study is adaptability, and the target variables are:

1) Discipline- do they seem to have any restraints placed upon them either by themselves or their parents? 

2)    Negotiation techniques (used or not used) – when the children are argued with, do they try to persuade the other person by using negotiation?

4) Roles- is the child active in anything other than the family?

5) Rules- the basic rules that the child lives by or the morals they perspire to. 

          During this study I decided to interview my participants in order to get some information from them that I could not get by simply observing them. Of course, while I was interviewing them I was also observing their behavior towards each other and their reactions to my questions. I used the diary approach, after the children finished answering all my questions, I wrote down what I found was important to the study.  I gathered all the information according to my perspective; that is, I asked for each child’s perspective and interpreted it in my own way. 

Because I work at the Stillwater YMCA I decided to use some of the students there, mainly a pair of siblings.  This was obviously very convienient for me.  For this study I used a twelve-year-old female and her younger brother who is five.  For confidentiality reasons I will refer to the older child as Mindy, and the little boy as Shane.  The entire assessment took no more than 30 minutes.  I chose to do this assessment with this pair simply because they where available to me on a night that I was not busy.

          For these children, the YMCA is a natural setting.  They each spend many hours here.  I personally know these children very well.  I teach kindergarten to Shane and many times Mindy has been know to come to me for advice.  Therefore, I would be considered an insider.  Unfortunately, I don’t have much knowledge about the family history, or about the relationship that the children’s parents have. 

On the day that I decided to do my investigation Mindy and Shane where left at the YMCA by their parents with the understanding that Mindy would keep an eye on Shane.  Unfortunately, when I first spotted the two of them Shane was drawing on the wall and Mindy was carelessly lying on the couch in the lobby.  That is when I decided to take action. I asked Mindy if she would mind taking a few minutes to answer some for a paper that I had to write.  She said, “That would be cool.” 

I started asking Mindy questions about her goals, and how she intends to reach those goals.  I also asked about extracurricular activities that she participates in. This was in order to see what different types of roles she has besides sister and daughter. Finally, I asked her about what she does when someone disagrees with something that she says or does. I asked this in order to get some idea of the basic ways that she deals with conflicts in her own judgement.

When I asked about goals she didn’t seem to have many.  She said that she hopes to finish school, but she wasn’t sure weather that was high school or college.  When I asked for more she said that she had no idea.  When I asked her about the extracurricular activities, she said that she was on the cheerleading squad, but that was all because she spent a lot of time watching out for Shane.  I then asked where Shane was.  She said, “I don’t know,” with a little smile. When asked about conflict, she said that she just shrugged it off, she “didn’t care what everyone else thought.” 

She left to go to play and Shane walked into the room, so I asked him the same exact questions that I asked his sister.  He seemed to have some similar answers.  When asked what he wanted to do in the future, he shrugged and said, “I dunno.”  When asked about extracurricular activities he said that all he did was come to school, go to the YMCA, and play.  Finally, when I asked him about conflict, he confidently yelled, “no one argues with me!”

From all the questions and the observations that I made, the found that in this case, the adaptability behaviors of the children where very close.  Neither of the children took on much leadership.  The older child was put in charge of the younger child, but she did not seem to take that responsibility very seriously. The children also did not seem to have much discipline.  The way that Shane was drawing on the wall when I first spotted him, is an example.  Also, the fact that Mindy was not at all alarmed by the fact that her little brother, whom she was responsible for, was misbehaving is a sign that she just didn’t understand that there was something wrong with it.  Also, neither of the children seemed interested with fighting with other people to prove a point.  They just seemed as though they didn’t care.  They didn’t have any roles outside of the family, except for Mindy’s cheerleading.  Also, they didn’t seem to have any set rules that they thought where important to live by. I have a couple of biases that may have accounted for the findings that I got.  First, I have known Mindy and Shane for a long time.  Therefore, I have seen them act up.  This may cause me to expect the worse out of them.  Also, I have a person bias that children are like the parents, so one child is going to be much like the next.

According to my findings, these children would be considered chaotic in the area of adaptability. I say this because they seem to have no understanding of right and wrong.  They don’t have many rules to live by, and according to this interview, they have little or no ambition.  They are just, as Mindy put it, “Along for the ride.”