ABSTRACT
Counselors and clinicians are being presented with an explosion of grandparents who are parenting their grandchildren coming to their practices. The grandparents are often reluctant to take on the role of parenting their grandchildren, but are willing to do so to provide a safe haven for their neglected or abused grandchildren or to keep their grandchildren out of foster care (Minkler, 1994). These burdened families enter therapy with a plethora of challenging problems. Clinicians faced with these families require solutions that are multi-layered, complex, and challenging to help the grandchildren to thrive and to prosper. One such solution is to build on the naturally occurring resilience in the grandparents and to nurture it in the grandchildren. A family systems approach along with cognitive-behavioral model is employed to build resilience and to aid a multigenerational family to bounce back. This is presented in a case study on Josephine and her grandson, DeShaun.
