SSW Family Systems 4 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which family lifecycle stage is most relevant when a school social worker assists a family with a child transitioning to kindergarten?
- Families with adolescents
- Families with young children (Correct answer)
- Launching children stage
- Family in later life
Correct answer: Families with young children
Carter and McGoldrick's family lifecycle model identifies 'families with young children' as the stage involving tasks related to school entry and early childhood.
Question 2: A school social worker learns that a family recently immigrated and the child translates for parents in all official situations. From a family systems lens, this PRIMARILY represents:
- Appropriate role flexibility given cultural context
- A boundary violation requiring immediate intervention
- A parentification dynamic that may create stress on the child (Correct answer)
- Evidence of disengagement between parents and school
Correct answer: A parentification dynamic that may create stress on the child
Language brokering places adult-level cognitive and emotional demands on the child, creating parentification stress even when it is culturally normalized.
Question 3: According to Minuchin, a family where members are overinvolved in each other's lives with diffuse boundaries is described as:
- Disengaged
- Enmeshed (Correct answer)
- Differentiated
- Triangulated
Correct answer: Enmeshed
Enmeshed families have boundaries that are too diffuse, with members overly involved in one another's functioning and limited individual autonomy.
Question 4: When using narrative family therapy with a school-aged child, the social worker helps the child 'externalize' the problem. This means:
- Blaming another family member for causing the problem
- Separating the problem from the child's identity so the child can address it (Correct answer)
- Removing the child from the family temporarily
- Sharing the problem with school staff for external support
Correct answer: Separating the problem from the child's identity so the child can address it
Externalization (White & Epston) positions the problem as separate from the person, empowering the child to see themselves as capable of confronting it.
Question 5: A school social worker is conducting a family assessment. Which indicator suggests HEALTHY family functioning?
- Rigid, unchanging rules applied uniformly to all members
- Clear boundaries with flexibility to adapt to change (Correct answer)
- Strong alliance between one parent and children against the other parent
- Avoidance of conflict to maintain peace
Correct answer: Clear boundaries with flexibility to adapt to change
Healthy families maintain clear but permeable boundaries that allow for both structure and adaptability in response to developmental and environmental demands.
Question 6: In Bowen theory, 'emotional cutoff' refers to:
- A therapeutic technique where family members take turns speaking
- Managing anxiety by physically or emotionally distancing from the family of origin (Correct answer)
- A legal separation from an abusive family member
- A planned period of no contact recommended by the therapist
Correct answer: Managing anxiety by physically or emotionally distancing from the family of origin
Emotional cutoff is Bowen's term for handling unresolved attachment to parents by distancing — physically or emotionally — which does not resolve the underlying fusion.
Question 7: A school social worker notices the school-aged child always mediates between divorced parents who refuse to communicate directly. The child is MOST likely functioning as:
- A parentified go-between caught in a cross-generational triangle (Correct answer)
- A naturally empathic sibling mediator
- An appropriately autonomous child exercising agency
- A scapegoat absorbing family tension
Correct answer: A parentified go-between caught in a cross-generational triangle
The child is triangulated into the parental subsystem, acting as a messenger and buffer — a cross-generational coalition that burdens the child inappropriately.
SSW Family Systems 4
Which family lifecycle stage is most relevant when a school social worker assists a family with a child transitioning to kindergarten?