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[Back to index of June articles] FAMILY MATTERS: By Margaret M. Treadwell What is your vision for your family? The couple who had chosen family counseling rather than send their rebellious teenager for individual therapy looked at me with puzzlement. Finally… Mother: "I never asked myself that question. I guess I just want my daughter to be happy. The problem is, the harder I work to make her happy, the more rebellious she becomes." Father: "Hmmm. I only think about vision when I go to the eye doctor. I created a mission statement for my law firm that might be called my vision for the organization. Maybe I could modify it for my family - depending on how you're defining vision." The Roman philosopher Seneca said that a sailor who doesn't know his destination can't distinguish a good wind from an ill wind. Yet I continually meet parents who occupy successful leadership positions at work while never contemplating a direction for their families or personal lives. How can children be expected to create committed goals, when family leaders have yet to do that for themselves? Energy to stay the course is easier if you know where you're going. Hence the question "Where are you going with your life?" might create more productive dinner table conversations for families than anxious homework queries and activities planning. Webster's Dictionary defines vision as "something seen otherwise than by ordinary sight… beheld as in a dream or ecstasy, or revealed, as to a prophet." Most good leaders are visionaries, but many report that vision doesn't have to be the "great big hairy dog kind of prophecy" - a clergyman's quote. It is simply seeing a situation from a different slant. For example, Victor Frankel, disgusted with life in the concentration camps, began to visualize lecturing in warm, well-lit places - imagining himself on the other side of the barbed wire. His survival story teaches the importance of having a vision - something that gives us the strength to persist through confusion and challenge. Sometimes parents will do for their children things they never would be willing to do for themselves. The parents contemplating vision in my office (who gave permission for me to tell their story) were divorced when their daughter was 5 years old. One had a committed partner, and the other a new marriage. They had barely spoken since the contentious legal proceedings until one of them read a study which showed that troubled teens whose birth parents are cut off from each other have a better prognosis for healing if both parents are willing to sit in the same room, keep emotional tensions low and work on parenting despite their divorce. After several sessions in which old grievances about what went wrong were expressed and then put aside in order to accomplish this goal, I coached each to begin writing a vision for their daughter and their respective families. Many families have found that putting their vision in writing helps bring it to life. At our next meeting, this was the conversation: The process of creating a vision demanded clarity from each parent. The clearer they became about their own beliefs, the more expansive and flexible they could be with each other. Their respective visions became open to revisions until they created a coherent whole - including the goal of mutually parenting their daughter as she grew into taking more responsibility for her own life. Toward the end of our work, the parents took their daughter to lunch (not therapy!) to let her know their family vision and ask for her thoughts and ideas to be included in the final version. When, a year later, they came in for a "well check," their daughter was doing better at school, had more loyal friends and had celebrated her 16th birthday with both of her parents, their respective partners and her stepsiblings, all gathered in the same room. The daughter said it was her happiest birthday. Margaret M. "Peggy" Treadwell is a family psychotherapist. She is the director of The Counseling Center at St. Columba's, D.C. [Back to index of June articles]
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