Adolescents Adjustment and it’s Relation to Family Communication

A study entitled, ““The Effect of Family Communication Patterns on

Adopted Adolescent Adjustment” written by Ruther, M. (2008) which tackles

about the changes of the adopted child and their growth to being an

adolescent. The authors found some risk that when the child grows up and

later realize him/her not a biological part of the family. Those risk are; being

uncomfortable and having difficulty on adjusting and communicating with the

family. The parent-child relationship might destruct when the said risk are

affecting their family.

They also concluded that parents of the child, biological or the adopted

family can influence the good or bad adjustment based on how they treat the

child throughout his/her growth. If they treat their child with approving

character and good communication, it will positively improve the child’s

adjustment and if they were treated in with conflictual interaction and angry it

is associated with poorer adjustment. They argued about how huge the

influence of parents on how they treat the child, especially those families who

have an adopted child will reflect their behaviour. A good communication is a

necessity for every family because it holds the connection and their

relationship with each other.

The authors prove the communication of the parents to child has impact

towards their adjustment to the environment by using a theory. Family

Communication Patterns Theory; they expanded the existing theory and

provided a strong explanation and its correlation towards the following

phenomenon. Shared social reality is the central to family functioning, it is

used to others to understand and being understood easier. It exists in the

family when the cognitions about an object needs agreement and accurate

understanding. Shared reality are efficient to avoid misunderstanding and

conflict within the family. It can be applied when the adoptive family explained

to the child that he/she is not biological, to avoid conflict Shared Reality is

applied. Part of shared reality is communication with one another more

accurately, avoid conflict and supporting the child’s adjustment. Adoptive

families might have a hard time applying the Shared Reality because they

don’t personally know the child or they have to still wait for its maturity to

explain the topic.