Children in schools today come from increasingly diverse and complex families. As illustration, more than 1 million families are impacted annually by divorce. In fact, approximately 13.7 million single parents are raising 21.8 million children, and 1 in 3 Americans are stepparents, stepchildren, stepsiblings or part of a stepfamily. Furthermore,
Tag: family counseling
Counselors play a fundamental role in the well-being of children and adolescents, including serving as advocates against abuse. We are trained to assess and intervene if clients are experiencing sexual, physical or emotional abuse or neglect. Children are a particularly vulnerable population given their size, power status and general lack
Counselors’ skills and expertise as mediators, relationship builders and client advocates are critical to improving the lives of children in foster care and providing support to both foster and biological families.
For decades, white Americans have adopted children of color here in the United States and from other countries such as South Korea, Guatemala, China and Ethiopia. In many cases, these children are raised in white families with no awareness of the culture they came from. This was particularly true in
It can take anywhere from four to seven years for a stepfamily to successfully blend, according to Joshua M. Gold in his book Stepping In, Stepping Out: Creating Stepfamily Rhythm. The formation of a stepfamily is “uncharted water for everyone,” he says. Not only do parents and children each carry
“T here is no excuse for our society’s not putting scientific knowledge into practical use. … We must remember — the first few months of life are not a rehearsal. This is the real show.” — Irving B. Harris A casual conversation on any given day: “Oh, you’re a
As counselors, we come in contact with clients who are angry or heartbroken and oftentimes feel defeated. This sense of pain and loss is frequently realized in the forensic setting in which I work with parents who are desperate to rebuild a parent-child relationship that is severely damaged or estranged.
When Russian author Leo Tolstoy wrote in his novel Anna Karenina, “Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” he was definitely on to something. A dysfunctional family environment has myriad effects on its members — effects that are intricately woven by factors such as personalities, communication abilities, attachment
It was 25 years ago when Bette Stewart’s husband was diagnosed with a mental illness. “I felt angry and alone, like my life was coming apart at the seams,” she recalls. “I asked the psychiatrist for help. I know now that if (my husband) was an alcoholic, I would have