Saturday, January 12, 2013

Photoessay #2859 - Capability

I tried something new, diagramming out the main issues with a family that I'm working as part of a Parent Group team.

The two outcomes were that the adult child (21 year old son)

Lives independently supporting himself
and
Stalemate - things stay the way they are or worse

The interesting thing was that every actions taken by the parents that would lead to Stalemate had to do with the capability of the adult son.  Was he capable?  Or did the parents believe he was capable?  One interesting stand is "I will embrace the idea that my adult child can live independently"

That often stands in the way of parents making a change in their family.  They don't believe their child is capable.  One way you can enable this is to do things for them that they could do for themselves.  For whatever reason.  The message we give is that we don't believe they are capable of doing it themselves.  Often the opposite of what we want!

We might think we're being helpful or generous or a good model.  But we are undermining them!

A portion of the diagram.  A pencil and paper exercise!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Not enough info to go on. I suspect that the even though the parents may be saying they will support their son's independence, they don't believe it. As someone once said, they have to make a "leap of faith." Oh, that was you.
C