Now I don’t know about you guys but when I hear the word system
what usually comes to mind is some kind of assembly line. A machine. At the
very most a series of routines that a company or group has in order to get
through certain situations. But have you ever thought as the family as a
system? A series of interwoven pieces that are all connected. One cannot move
without affecting the others and, a lot of the time, if one piece breaks down
or is misplaced, the entire thing can break down. That or it needs to be
rebuilt in such a way that it can function without it’s missing piece.
Wow. Not sure where that came from. My fingers are doing the
talking at the moment more than I am. Anyway, that is what we have discussed in
my family systems class for the last week. Basically there are two types of
families. A highly integrated family and an unintegrated family. An integrated
family, is the family that is close knit. They have rules both spoken and
unspoken, rituals, and traditions. The unintegrated family well…..it lacks
those characteristics. The family does not usually function as a unit but
rather as individual pieces.
My family is a pretty good example of a integrated family.
We had rules, rituals and traditions. Some of them were openly addressed or
spoken of, some of them were not. For class one of the challenges were to write
down rules that we could remember from our family, both ones that were openly
taught and ones that were silent in other ways. Hmmmm, let me see if I can
think of some good examples. A known and addressed rule in my family was, no
curfew. As long as we let Mom and Dad know where we were, who we were with and
what we were doing we were fine. I am sure if any of us had pushed those boundaries,
such as staying out all night on school nights of being out multiple nights in
a row those rules would have been added on but that was the rule. An unspoken
rule was, as kids, if you were sick, you slept on the couch. Honestly this was
not something I really thought of, it was something we just did. Only later did
I realize that we did it so we could be close to Mom since her and Dad’s room
was just on the other side of the living room wall. She was never far away.
As for rituals and traditions, there are the more common
ones. Holiday and birthday traditions. But have you ever stopped to think of
the ones that are not outright acknowledged. For example the way some families
do their morning routine. Who goes first? Many members of a family brush their
teeth in similar ways because they learned it from each other.
For these unaddressed or unspoken rules much of the way we
learn them is through feedback. Often times this feedback is not spoken. Sometimes
the person giving the feedback might not even be aware that they are doing it.
They are simply unconsciously imitating behavior that was shown to them. For
example a disproving look when someone steps out of line. A clearing of the
throat. In my family, it was silence. I am not even sure how this got started
but much of the time, when we became upset for some reason or another, we went
silent. Not sure it was the healthiest method of dealing with things but it is
what we did.
Now the thing that we need to be careful about with these
unspoken rules is called pathological communication. A way of telling a rule
that can easily be misunderstood. For example if a teacher says there are no
such thing as stupid questions, but when a student asks a question that the
teacher thinks is not credible she will huff, roll her eyes and tap her foot in
impatient. She says one thing but her body language, the pathological
communication is saying another. To put this in a family setting a father might
tell his children it is not okay to hit but goes home and hits mom when he is
drunk. Often times the message that we do NOT intend to send speaks louder than
the ones we do.
All these rules, rituals and traditions, it is what binds
the family together. Makes them move as a unit rather than simple, wayward pieces.
Of course this does not mean that there is no individuality within the unit, it
just means that, often times, they are interconnected. What one pieces does,
affects the other.
Until next time my readers,
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