You Can Take a Horse to Water But You Can’t Make it Drink’: Exploring Children’s Engagement and Resistance in Family Therapy

O’Reilly, Michelle; Parker, Nicola

doi:10.1007/s10591-012-9220-8

Cited by 37 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 42 publications

(46 reference statements)

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“…Understanding parents' reasons for attending therapy and their desired outcomes is important (Edwards et al ., ). Often families are difficult to engage in therapy (Campbell, ), particularly children (O'Reilly and Parker ), and acquiring an understanding of parental expectations of therapy can be useful in predicting barriers to participation in treatment (Nock and Kazdin, ). Guidelines for outcomes in health are useful and provide a framework for measuring success in services.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Notably, however, just because the parents and child ostensibly appear to formulate agreement for the reasons of therapy, this does not necessarily constitute agreement with the treatment goals or direction. It does not mean that the child engages (see O'Reilly and Parker, ) and neither does it mean that the therapist accepts or aligns with these constructions. In fact, the therapist has a therapeutic endeavour to transform these original negative positionings to achieve the therapy goals and these endeavours play out over the course of a number of sessions.…”

Section: Part One: Constructing the Reasons For Needing Family Therapymentioning

confidence: 99%

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‘We're here to get you sorted’: parental perceptions of the purpose, progression and outcomes of family therapy

O’Reilly

2013

Journal of Family Therapy

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This article reports research on family therapy interactions. The research uses discourse analysis to explore the ways in which parents construct their reasons for requiring family therapy, the outcomes they desire from it and orientations to their progress. The analysis suggests that parents often position their child as the problem and this is something that is rarely challenged or questioned by the child. Parents express a desired outcome of ‘fixing’ the child and highlight this as what they believe the purpose of family therapy to be. During therapy they emphasize their progression and consider improvements in family functioning. By understanding parental perceptions we can move research forward in understanding engagement in therapy and attrition, and integrate guidelines on service improvements with what parents feel is beneficial. Practitioner points Parents manage their presence in family therapy in many ways and typically position the child as the reason for their attendance. Offering the child some time alone with the therapist has potential to uncover the child's perspectives on goals and outcomes which may be inhibited by parental presence. Anticipating that the child may be described in derogatory or negative ways at the start can help the therapist to reframe the problem in more helpful ways.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Part One: Constructing the Reasons For Needing Family Therapymentioning

confidence: 99%

‘We're here to get you sorted’: parental perceptions of the purpose, progression and outcomes of family therapy

O’Reilly

2013

Journal of Family Therapy

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“…She then addresses Petros directly and asks him whether he remembers the question he had asked in the previous session. Petros hesitates, which can be seen as a form of resistance (O'Reilly & Parker, 2013) and as the expression of silent disagreement around a sensitive topic. Within this family context, Costas's relationship with Katia 'too soon' after Vera's death is considered a moral breach, as was explicitly described by Costas's in-laws.…”

Section: Children's Participation Around Delicate Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discourses of development in the consulting room: Analysing family therapy with children

Avdi

2015

Feminism & Psychology

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This paper aims to highlight the potential contribution of the arguments developed in Burman's Deconstructing Developmental Psychology for exploring the implications of discourses around development for the practice of family therapy with children. Through the analysis of one brief systemic therapy with a stepfamily, formed following the mother's death, this paper examined how discourses from developmental psychology, including representations of children, father, mother, stepmother and family, are implicated in the construction of the problem and in the positioning of the participants. The diverse ways in which the family members made sense of their difficulties and the positions they assumed were shown to be intimately linked with culturally dominant representations of the biological nuclear family ideal and with representations of parents as responsible for their children's difficulties. The position of stepmother in particular was shown to be characterised by conflict and ambiguity, reflecting discourses that idealise motherhood and vilify stepmothers. Moreover, the children were found to be positioned as 'half-members' at several points in the conversation, whilst at other points they themselves resisted calls to a more equal positioning, particularly when disagreeing with the adults' talk. Family therapy, as an institutional practice, was shown to be intimately linked with developmental psychology accounts about childhood, family life and parenthood and Deconstructing Developmental Psychology was shown to provide valuable insights in researching family therapy with children. Based on the analysis, it is argued that paying attention to the social, ideological and cultural context in which family therapy takes place opens up novel ways of conceptualising and researching the process of therapy and allows the exploration of taken-for-granted assumptions about childhood, adulthood, parenthood and the family.

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“…Both video recordings and transcripts of clinical sessions have been interrogated to examine how therapists conduct their sessions (e.g. Borsca and Rober, ; Campbell et al ., ; Gale and Newfield, 1982; Hutchby and O'Reilly, ; O'Reilly, ; O'Reilly and Parker, ; van Parys and Rober, ). These studies have largely involved looking at other people's practice.…”

Section: Researching What Family Therapists Do From Outside and Withinmentioning

confidence: 99%

The ethics of researching one's own practice

Helps

2017

Journal of Family Therapy

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Practice-based research is increasingly utilized as a postmodern, qualitative research method. It can help systemic practitioners understand, develop and communicate about their everyday practice to others. In this article I review some of the literature on practitioner research and focus on the challenges of researching one's own practice. Using illustrative examples from transcripts and field notes gathered during my research on how I begin conversations with families who seek a diagnostic assessment for an autism spectrum condition for their child, I explore the ethics involved in the twofold task of providing a clinical service and conducting systematic research. I argue that a dynamic relational ethics of care can be employed to navigate the challenges of adopting a dual research and clinical focus

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You Can Take a Horse to Water But You Can’t Make it Drink’: Exploring Children’s Engagement and Resistance in Family Therapy

Abstract: N. (2013). 'You can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink': Exploring children's engagement and resistance in family therapy. Contemporary Family Therapy, 35(3), 491-507.

Cited by 37 publications

References 42 publications

‘We're here to get you sorted’: parental perceptions of the purpose, progression and outcomes of family therapy

‘We're here to get you sorted’: parental perceptions of the purpose, progression and outcomes of family therapy

Discourses of development in the consulting room: Analysing family therapy with children

The ethics of researching one's own practice

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