Family History: The Rondeaus’ Family

In the Rondeaus’ family, Dawn seems to be the one that takes on a lot of responsibility when it comes to taking care of the kids or what’s going on in the household. Darren helps with the kids as well, and what we know so far is that he most of the times helps when it comes to driving. It is hard to tell if this has anything to do with their roles as parents, all we just know is that Dawn is over functioning in this family.
She does not want to wake up her husband because she believes that she can deal with the visit of he social worker but not her husband. The notes hint that this family did not have a good experience with the social services in the past but Dawn is willing to deal with the meeting with the social services about the daughter without her husband. The cases notes do not tell that she was forced to do that, it seems like she in fact was the one choosing to take on a lot responsibility.
She is the one who called the social worker when Renee was missing, and when the social worker visited their home she is the one who talked with him/her. We did not see any sign that shows that Darren warned Dawn not to wake him up, she decided that on her own and she admitted that she actually did not want to wake him up, he was stressed out be cause of their daughter. This part of the story was not explored but there is a chance that if the dad was encouraged to participate in this worker’s visit was going to. He has been helping with Renee by dropping her and going to look for her when she was missing.

It is obvious that he cares about his daughter, he is just overwhelmed and that is normal. Another possibility can be that in that family, the mom was supposed to be the one taking care of the house’s movements through unspoken rules. That part was not explored in the case’s notes but it could be a possibility since in some cultures women are automatically most likely to do more at home than men do, not to mention and taking care of the children. Dawn, Darren and Renee their daughter’s relationships are a triangle. Renee increases the tension between her parents and their relationship is being affected by her, the mom said.
They are overwhelmed with everything that is going on in their lives and as Dawn said they are going to lose their mind and their marriage because of her. Renee is the scapegoat in her family, she is blamed for everything that is not going well in this family. Her mom says that she s a” bad influence” to her brothers, she is going to make them lose their mind not to mention their relationship. The negative coalition that is between Renee and her parents made her cut off because she does not see her family as a loving one (it seems to be against her) and that’s why she did not want to go back to her home.
About the birth order, Renee is distant to her brothers while her brothers are close to each other. Renee’s brothers are close on age which could be the reason why they are close to each other than Renee is to them. Renee is distant to her family and we believe that her age stage may be contributing to it. Teenagerhood makes adolescents lose their closeness to their families and do what they feel like doing.
The reason why their closeness with their families gets impacted is because they do what is against what their parents tell them to do. When their parents question their decisions, teenagers feel insulted and feel like they are being disrespected which makes them rebel. Renee seems to be going through the teenagerhood though her home situation of being the scapegoat may make her look for the emotional support from her boyfriend “Skittles” despite their physical fights. Renee’s family is overwhelmed with what is going on their household which is affecting the way they interact or address the issue with their daughter.
The notes does not explore it but there could be a possibility that from their past experience (the mom having a teen pregnancy) Renee’s family may be being too protective which threatens and moves Renee away. Doing the genogram of this family, we observed some generational patterns, and we thought it they would help that family to understand why they are going though what they are going through right now and it would help them to understand each other more. We noticed that Dawn, got pregnant when she was a teenager at the age of 16. We are not sure if Renee is pregnant or not since it was not explored.
There is a possibility that she can get pregnant because as the mom said she is having sex with her boyfriend and we are not sure if she is educated about protecting herself. This can be seen as a generational pattern because it is almost the history repeating itself. One more thing that we noticed is that Dawn dated a guy that was 10 years than her when she was a teenager which is the same thing that is happening to their daughter except that “Skittles” is 7 years older than Renee.
Dawn and her daughter all have an experience of dating guys that way older than them in their teenage hood. Renee seems not to have her family’s support because she is considered the “bad person” in the family. It is fair to think her boyfriend is the only emotional support that she has so far which is why she is spending much time with him and does not want to go home. Before Renee’s auntie decided that she was not welcomed in her home, her auntie was part of Renee’s support system.
She once let her sleep on the couch. Even though we do not know Renee was not in her home, the letting her sleep on the couch speaks volumes about her relationship with her parents. It looks like her aunt was giving her a shelter. On Renee’s family side, Renee not wanting to go back home shows that Renee is not enjoying living with her family. Dawn herself was the one who asked the social worker not to bring her back home because she was affecting their lives and their relationship. From what Darlene’s daughter told the social worker, Renee found herself in a situation where she needed where to sleep. All of these things may be one of the reasons that Renee does not want to go back home.
Though there is a lot going on in this family, this family is willing to get help and help their daughter. They are overwhelmed which may be one of the reasons why they are taking some of the decisions that they are taking. We did see resiliency in this family. Though they had an under pregnancy (Dawn), they managed to self advocating. They tried to ask help when it was needed and they managed to stay together and raise their kids.
Though they did not follow up with one file, their history in the social services shows that they know that they need help and they are trying their. From the family’s feelings’ about their past support, the help that they got from these services providers are not working for them. It is important to notice that these services were voluntarily. They understand that they need help and they are willing to get out of their problems.
We thought the mediation services that they got in 2015 were needed even though they did not follow up. We do value their energy and willingness to seek help and we think that maybe the approach that has been used was not working for them as a result of not following up. The reason why we came to that conclusion is that they are still willing to access these kind of services even though they don’t have good feelings about their past supports, they are just trying their chances.