Communications and Media

In the video The legacy of unresolved Loss, communication therapist, Monica McGoldrick mediates between David and his 15-year old daughter, Katelyn. David lost his wife, Katelyns mother, Diane and he has remarried. His new wife has given birth to a young baby. These changes in Davids life, coupled with stress at work have created communication challenges for David, especially with his teenage daughter.

From the video, the therapists advocates for clear and flexible communication between dad and daughter. This is consistent with the family systems perspective which is repetitive in nature.  Some repetitive patterns include adopting new rules, discovering new alignments, identifying clear boundaries and promoting more flexible family interactions. The father-daughter mediation in this case is likely useful because the mediator recognizes the family history in terms of how the members of the family is relating and communicating. It thus, made it easy for her to build rapport with both parties.

McGoldrick also offers a safe environment for communication with a structured process to promote a behavioral change from within the family members as well as an opportunity to think outside of the box in terms of looking at creative problem solving and resolutions. The behavioral change itself will promote a paradigm shift therefore, changing the pattern of behavior from within the system.
 
In admonishing the father to relate and connect with his daughter before she turns 18 and gets lost, McGoldrick used the opportunity to promote a change in how the family unit need to and should interact. The interaction should put into consideration how historically they had communicated.

This therapy will certainly be beneficial, because from the video, the young girl and her dad view negotiator party as a neutral third party who is trained in communication and problem solving skills to encourage people in conflict to work out mutually acceptable solutions.

Accepting parent teen conflict as a systemic issue reinforces neutrality by not associating the teen as being troubled but rather a symptom of greater issues. McGoldrick in this video works as advocate for all family members in conflict and assists the family members in validating their interests and needs and promoting understanding. She challenges the parties in conflict to find creative ways to resolving this disagreement in away that meets the expectations, desires and needs of all involved.

Some elements of Ecological Perspective are also present in this video because the family is creating, restructuring and adapting to a new environment. For instance, the addition of the new mom and eventually the young baby has completely changed the way the family interacts.

Though not clearly stated in the video, it could be inferred from the family dynamics that the teenage girl may not be accepting of the new mom. And in a larger context, could be the major source of misunderstanding in the family.

On Olsons Circumplex Model, this family would fit at the extreme of the Family Cohesion-Adaptability axes. In particular, it would fall at the disengaged section, where members maintain extreme separateness and less sense of family belonging. This is because in the video, the girl is happy to identify with Puerto Rico and she admits she has often visited the country alone. Because of the above mentioned reasons, family could said to undergo Separated section of Olsons Cohesion line.

It worth noting that this extreme alignment on the Cohesion-Adaptability axes is not  peculiar to Davids family only as chapter two of our book recognizes the fact that families that are well-function or balanced are often thrown off the balance by high stress, and an acting-out teenager.

While it is quite difficult to exactly determine from the video what the Relational Culture in this family is, there are many hints that lead to the belief that the David is majorly responsible for creating a world view that affects his familys attitudes, identities and actions. By his own admission, he is too stressed with work that he does not seem to have time to personally develop a set of understanding that guides interaction in his family. He also admits that he has been overwhelmed with the events in his family.

From the video, it not easy to point out some of the family rules regarding communication. Its however possible to say that David believed that is presence in the family is already enough even if he does not communicate. That is why McGoldrick is requesting him to just not be there for his daughter, but try to connect with her through effective communication.