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Sharing a family meal every day is a powerful antidote to drug and alcohol abuse and addiction.This podcast explores how different families engage around challenging subjects. We host the conversation at a local restaurant partner, led by our Program Director Theresa Bairos, LMFT. Join us!
EPISODE 3
Supporting Students Who Are Supporting Their Families
By Stephen Kaplan
Recently I was running a workshop about supporting our most challenging students. One of the themes of the workshop is developing support networks for families.
We ask school staff to think about whom they would call if they needed a cup of sugar, if their car broke down, if they needed someone to watch their kids while they ran an errand, and if they needed someone to talk to about a rough day.
How might you answer these questions? Reactions to this exercise were strong… especially as people began to think about how much had changed if we reflect on what it might have been like when we were children, and our parents answered these questions, to how we answer them now. The first two answers would typically be some version of Publix or AAA (we wouldn't ever think of actually calling a person).
And then, the other answers were focused on participants’ immediate families… spouses, parents, and siblings. This feels like a very contemporary American phenomenon where our social connections in our community have taken a backseat to our focus on the nuclear family.
Imagine that you are a family that recently immigrated to the United States. To get here, you’ve already left all of your social support back in your location of origin.
You may be arriving to an established community from your origin, but you will still need to create the broader connections you had previously…. and you’re arriving to a place where the dominant culture is very focused on the network of the nuclear family. Add to that that you may not speak the language very well or at all. When you need a metaphorical cup of sugar or a fix for your car, who would be available to call?
Often in families where adults have poor social support networks, the children can end up serving in the role of parental support or can take on the responsibilities of the parent. This process is called parentification.
This can mean sibling care, elder care, parental care (especially if the parent is experiencing an illness or facing a substance use or mental health challenge), interpreting to English as the parent goes about daily tasks, cooking and cleaning beyond age-appropriate chores, etc.
According to the American Association of Caregiving Youth, it is estimated that 23 percent of middle school students and 17 percent of high school students in Florida give care.
Youth who are parentified may exhibit stress and anxiety, psychosomatic symptoms, curtailed development, lack of secure attachment, and an inability to connect with their own feelings. All of these are risk factors for substance use.
So, what are our strategies to help a student who might be facing this challenge? In addition to working on the presenting issue for the student from the list of symptoms above, as school counselors, we have connections to all kinds of formal supports… the work we do connecting families to community agencies would fall into this category.
However, really our core task should be to help develop the social support network for both the student and the parent. Encourage exploration of support within the extended family, networks within a religious tradition if the family is taking part, friend networks of the youth, non-family family (the adults and peers a youth might call auntie/uncle and cousin but may not be related to by blood), and social connections from employment if the parent is employed.
Formal supports have an end date; services always end at some point. However, a strong social support network for the family means that it will be less likely that a child will need to fill the parental role. That means the child has one less risk factor for substance use.