ABSTRACT
All families construct ideologies to explain certain events and experiences (see Point 31). With repeating dif®culties these ideologies come to dominate how family members respond to particular behaviours. However, sometimes a piece of behaviour might be within the normal limits that one would expect of a person of that developmental stage in that context, but the family has failed to see it in this way. Families vary in the extent to which they believe themselves to be different from others and it is a common occurrence for individuals and families to feel that they are abnormal when they encounter a common dif®- culty. As this occurs frequently, there are typical `myths' that feed the idiosyncratic ideas that families have about particular problems.
