Family Theories

Family Age Students With Learning Disabilities The impact of family motivation on college age students with learning disabilities may be a deciding factor in regard to the student's success or failure. College age students with learning disabilities obviously have more immediate needs in cooperative learning settings when compared to typical students. Educators cannot just tell the student to just sit-down and read five chapters of Freud.

These students have problems like dyslexia, AD/HD, or English as a second language to name a few and they may have had additional help in the past that may not be available at an older age. When there are obvious underlying issues, the family, teachers and the students themselves have to work more closely together in order to reach the desired positive outcomes.

"Teaching effectiveness is inferred from the product that was created; it is the product that is the indicator of scholarship." (Cranton, 2000) This report aims to provide general background information about the application of Family Theories. The underlying object of this is study was to understand the implications of Family Theories as they pertain to college age students with learning disabilities and how these principles can be used to set up programs to help assess and correct a student's problem areas if possible.

This type of work offers opportunities to assess personal rewards from family and other external resources while also providing insights into the intrinsic rewards a student receives from within. There is little doubt that being a student with a specific problem or learning disability can often bring to light related personal phobias and cause unwarranted justifications that the family and teachers may not understand or appreciate and therefore the students often create emotional atmospheres that travel a full spectrum of emotions.

Literature Review Family Stress and Family Systems Theories are both developmental theories that have been applied from the broader area of Family Science. Family Science investigates the reasons that some family entities have an ability to adapt and grow even though the family unit faces greater numbers of situational stressors and transitional events while other family systems face far less stress and transitional related events and completely break down under those circumstances.

These theories offer methodologies that can be used to measure and interpret why families facing hardship or change develop unique ways to cope through new found strength or improved physical capabilities that have been shown to be able to enhance the development of individual. In studying college age students with learning disabilities' families, these theories help define the family population and each member's role in helping the student achieve success.

Whether the family represents a nuclear, extended, or some other type of family, it is always critical to determine the primary care giver within the family in order to understand where corrective actions or questions can be answered and addressed.

Environment within the family system is "viewed as an open system and a component of the larger community and society, with the assumption that families benefit from and contribute to the network of relationships and resources in the community." (McCubbin, 1993) Whoever the primary caregiver is, either biological parents, grandparents, or some other significant person, college age students with learning disabilities can achieve and excel in their learning environment.

"The range and depth of the family's repertoire of coping and problem-solving strategies when employed to manage a crisis situation are related to the level of family adaptation, and this is a positive relationship." (McCubbin, 1993). Understanding the patterns that are demonstrated at the individual and the family level is a key application of the Family Stress and Family Systems Theories.

By identifying outcomes, it is possible to determine the break through levels of established patterns at the individual level, the family level, or both so that a student's resilience can be assessed by either response or behavior. Name of Theory: FAMILY SYSTEMS THEORY The process of successfully coping and adapting to inherent stress factors on a family and the family support system is vital to understand. Family Systems Theory is a viable tool used to do just that. Family Systems Theory's legacy arose from the works of Ludwig Von Bertalanffy's.

Von Bertalanffy worked on a more general systems theory that provided insights into a new and different way of looking at science. He proposed that instead of the bland mechanistic models, he provided general systems theories that proposed that human organisms are more 'complex, organized, and interactive.' This was a radical approach that shifted from the more linear causal model to broader and more holistic orientations. His theories now have found acceptance in fields like community planning, computer programming, computer science, and as they apply here, the social sciences.

Today, this methodology is one of the better known theoretical foundations that direct empirical investigations of families where clinical interventions of the family unit are developed and applied. The process examines ways that family units interact with one another to form the basis for the whole family. Instead of simply focusing on separate parts, the process focuses on the interconnectedness and other interdependencies of all of the parts.

This view then allows one to view minute changes in each component of the system and then apply those changes to how they affect the rest of the system and then reverse the idea to see how the overall system affects the one component. The application of Family Systems Theory perspectives to college age students with learning disabilities has particular relevance because of families are made up of many individuals and each has his or her own unique history which affects all aspects of bonding as a unit.

Family systems theory permits us to understand the inner workings and organizational complexities of families though the measure of their family interactions. Strategies J.M Patterson points out some basic strategies that can be applied to college age students with learning disabilities based on the Family Systems Theory.

They include: balancing the illness with other family needs maintaining clear family boundaries developing communication competence attributing positive meanings to the situation maintaining family flexibility maintaining a commitment to the family as a unit engaging in active coping efforts maintaining social integration and developing collaborative relationships with professionals (Patterson, 1995) One of the more critical views of dealing with any mental or physical disability, family harmony and balance are key components of success for dealing with the stress related to the intrusion.

Family members have an opportunity to create clear family boundaries that may seem simple but are very effective from drawstring from other potential problems. Something as simple as setting out a college age student's clothing to be worn for school the night before a stressful test can maintain social integration and enhance family flexibility while reducing stress on the student themselves. So something like setting out clothing is a viable diversionary tactic that can free mental capacity that then can be redirected towards the true dilemma which might be.