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Cultural Diversity & Ethical Boundaries: Overcoming Barriers to Counseling Effectiveness
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Ethics - Acculturative Issues in the Immigrant Family Acculturative Issues in the Separated Family It has been my experience that the adaptation process for children sent for by their parents is complex and therefore can be traumatic. First, they must undergo the stress of adapting to the host culture. Although such stress can produce positive and invigorating results, the opposite can also occur resulting in alienation and loneliness. Second, these children are living with adults calling themselves parents but whom the children have not experienced as parents. Even if the children accept the natural parent as parent, they may resent the abandonment of years ago. Third, children in this scenario are grieving the loss of the primary caretaker from the formative years and most likely the person they have experienced psychologically as parent. Fourth, the natural parent may resent and react to the child's apparent lack of gratitude for the opportunity to live in the U.S. At times, parents have reacted somewhat angrily: "If he or she wants to go back, I'll send him or her back." Children in this situation must deal with the conflictual feelings of wanting to return to their country of origin and experiencing yet another perceived rejection at the hands of the natural parent. The threat of replicating early separation trauma is very real in these families, and it is at this point that such families may present for counseling. Ethics - Counseling the Immigrant Family I [counselor] do not believe that your children disrespect you. What I believe is that they are trying to give you something of value and at the same time asking you to give them something of value. I believe this something to be your different cultural understandings and appreciations. BET encourages a different kind of interaction whereby parents and children can be given the opportunity to hear, understand, and accept the value of certain aspects of each other's culture. Parents listen and learn to appreciate from their children aspects of the dominant culture: children, on the other hand, listen and learn to appreciate their parents' nondominant culture. Parents are invited to share with their children how things were done in their native culture, and children are invited to share the customs of the dominant culture. The counselor blocks any attempt on the part of either subsystem to interrupt the other and reframes any disparaging remarks as stunting the family's growth toward biculturalism. When working with immigrant families, intergenerational conflict can be reframed as intercultural. The task of the family counselor is to facilitate a "multiculturalism" in the family, or as Szapocznik et al. (1984) preferred: facilitate the family's transition from intergenerational dysfunction to bicultural effectiveness. Biculturally effective families have members who feel at home both In the host culture and that of the country of origin. Personal
Reflection Exercise #5 Online Continuing Education QUESTION 12 |
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