A Fake Family - Real Progress

This week in class, our teacher asked for volunteers. I would not have raised my hand if I knew that I had to play the mom in a pretend family that was doing therapy intervention. Our teacher—who is an actual family and marriage therapist—was showing us how Salvador Minuchin- a well-known marriage and family therapist—handled situations where children came in on a regular basis for asthma attacks. Minuchin had recognized patterns in families of children who were frequently admitted to the hospital.

My fake husband (I have not yet learned his name), my fake daughter (Emma), and I were only given the prompt that Emma has frequent asthma attacks and that we were asked to attend a therapy session as a family. We sat down in front of our class of 30 and had to pretend to be a family of at least 11 years.

The first test was how we sat down. My Fake Husband sat down at the far corner of the chair. When I saw him sit, I thought to myself about how my family would have sat when we were growing up. It was Dad, child, child, child, and Mom, so I sat far enough away that Emma could sit in the middle. To my surprise, she sat on the other end of the bench, so the seating order was dad, space, mom, space, and daughter. I didn't think too much of it because we were basically strangers until two minutes prior. What stunned me, however, was our teacher exclaimed, "Excellent!" He then turned to the class and shared, "By the way, this is almost always how a family would sit. When they first came in."

That got me thinking about how easy it is to let your family become strangers in your house. What I found interesting was that almost all the intervention was the therapist helping "mom and dad" learn to appreciate each other better. It was taking the "unspoken" things in our "relationship" and vocalizing them. For example, as the mom, I shared my fears, and the dad shared his gratitude for my hard work dealing with our daughter's asthma attacks.

I share all of this to elaborate on family mapping. While Salvador Minuchin talked with the family, he would map how the family functions. He had symbols to represent how a family functions. This varied vastly and included how the husband and wife dealt with one another and where the kids fell in the mixture. The goal is to get mom and dad close together on the map with healthy boundaries with their children and then healthy boundaries with the outside world.

It was pretty fascinating how our 10-minute family intervention actually changed how our "family" map looked. Initially, the guy and I were far apart, and the child was closer to me. Later, through clever therapist tricks, the husband and I moved closer in real life and on the map.

In our family simulation, I was horribly embarrassed, but I was also solely focused on the child. I thought my fake husband was a grown man who could come up with some good answers, so I let him. It never really occurred to me that he might need help. I was far too focused on myself and the kid to take a moment to consider how he might be doing.

If family life seems off-balance and too cluttered, I urge you to vocalize your appreciation. Think about those in your family and about how they might need help or in what ways you can show your appreciation. It will do a world of good. I believe most families care for each other's well-being, but they don't know how to show it. Ask them, and now for the important part, do it. If it can be done in our pretend family, it can be done in your real family.