Managing Family Life Involving a Member with Emotional or Physical Challenges

Reproducible Activities to Address the Challenges Families Face Today

The beauty, distinction, and uniqueness of this particular series is:

EVERY family member has the opportunity to complete a scale on how they feel about themselves, about other family members, as well as how they perceive the other family members feel about them.

All families experience struggles, stress, and crises at one time or another. These will often disrupt the unity and functioning of the family and its members. The focus of this workbook is to explore the aspects of living with a family member or being the family member with an emotional or physical challenge, and to help ALL of the family members effectively adjust and manage the situation in the best way possible.

When family members learn that they have developed an emotional or physical challenge or that another family member has special needs, many of them will go through stages resembling grief. Regardless of their makeup and family dynamics, family members proceed through various stages related to being responsible for caring for a special needs family member.

This workbook contains the materials facilitators need to work with changes that occur in the family structure, functioning, and level of stress related to being responsible for caring for a special-needs family member.

The Managing Family Life Involving a Member with Emotional or Physical Challenges Workbook can be used independently or as part of an integrated curriculum. You may administer any of the assessments and the guided self-exploration activities to an individual or multiple family members with whom you are working, or you may distribute any of the activities over multiple sessions. Feel free to pick and choose those assessments and activities that best lead to the desired outcomes. The assessments and activities are divided into four chapters to help you identify and select assessments easily and quickly.

Chapter I: Stress
This chapter helps all family members explore the types and levels of stress they are experiencing as part of a family with a person with an emotional or physical challenge and with other family members.

Chapter II: Changes
This chapter helps all family members explore and manage the changes to their personal and family life when having a person with an emotional or physical challenge as a member of the family.

Chapter III: Feelings
This chapter helps all family members explore how they manage their current feelings associated with their family situation.

Chapter IV: Positivity
This chapter helps all family members explore the various ways that having a person with an emotional or physical challenge as a member of the family can have a positive effect individually on family members and the family as a whole.

All assessments and worksheets in this workbook are fully reproducible for your convenience.

This workbook is also available in PDF eBook format, making it simple to store on your computer or mobile device and to access with a PDF viewer. The PDF format allows you to easily print copies of the activities and worksheets during therapy and counseling sessions.

Managing Family Life Involving a Member with Emotional or Physical Challenges Card Deck

Need a creative way to start your session? Use the Managing Family Life Involving a Member with Emotional or Physical Challenges Card Deck. The open-ended questions will break the ice with both kids and adults and stimulate conversation. Use them alone or in conjunction with the corresponding page in the book.

Sample Questions:

When you begin to feel stress in your family situation, what types of activities do you do to let go of the stress?  How do these help you?

What is empathy?  How can you be more empathetic toward other members of your family?

In your opinion, how has being a part of your family provided you with opportunities? Describe some of these opportunities.