Family crisis can affect family systems in many ways. It can bring families closer together or pull them apart depending on how the family reacts to crisis. When we successfully resolve smaller crises, it trains us how to deal with larger ones.
I had a difficult time thinking of a list of ten crises that my family went through. I feel like I had a very mild childhood. My family has somehow always been very close. I think if something external happened to our family, we would be okay. We would draw closer together. I think, because we’re so close, it would be harder if something happened internally to forgive one another and move on.
One time my little brother, Ryan, who was two at the time, was getting out of his stroller and somehow got his leg twisted in the foot rest and fell down. He cried for a while but we didn’t know what happened, and he didn’t want to walk. My Mom finally realized, after holding him and watching him go more and more pale, that he was going into shock. She rushed him off to the hospital where they found he had fractured his femur. When they came home Ryan was in what they call a hip spica cast, which started at his sternum all the way down to his right toe (it was his right femur that was fractured) and down to just above his left knee. They put a bar between his legs to use as a handle to help carry him.
This is an example of something external, no one was at fault, we all just felt bad for Ryan and we all wanted to do whatever we could to make him comfortable or distract him from his reality. So we all played with him A LOT. The home video is pretty funny. He actually got pretty good at scooting around on his tummy! He really like scooting around on the tile floor (he could go faster) rather than the carpet.
This, in the end, gave our family a common goal. One of us was in need, so we pulled together and everyone helped out.
