Family therapy can promote healthier communication among its participants, strengthen relationships, and help resolve conflicts that have not been able to be resolved otherwise. Working with a family as one system has been proven to be more effective and can promote the quickest change. A family, like a machine, cannot function individually. It needs all of its parts to be working together in order to run. If a family is in need, all members must be invested and participating if change is to happen. In a four-person family, each family member is ¼ responsible for its functioning, and is vital to the change that can occur with therapy.

Children and adolescents have healthy and unhealthy coping skills, communication styles, and internal decision making abilities that could be learned or inherited. When sad, a healthy child has age appropriate coping skills that he or she will use as a defense against feeling sad. When a healthy adolescent is confronted with making a positive decision, he or she has the cognitive ability to problem solve and make the right choice. When children or adolescents lack the proper coping skills or decision making abilities, it can cause depressive thoughts, anger, detachment from family, poor decision making, and substance abuse, which could worsen in time without therapy.

Therapy, whether it is family or individual, can strengthen relationships, increase coping skills, and improve decision making and communication styles. Most importantly, you will be able to give help to your child who is in pain. You will also be participating in a process that does not put you in the role as the authoritative parent, but an advocate and an ally for who should be the most important person in your life... your child.