ABSTRACT
A chart of family development summarizes the Family Life Cycle, including the primary family stage markers, and core family tasks. There are two general categories of basic family functions: those that enable a family to exist and enhance intrafamilial relationships and, those that create bonds outside the family, with the community and the larger society, i.e., extrafamilial relationships. There are many reasons why the importance of family therapy sessions are overlooked and undervalued, and/or when they do occur, that the young children in the family are excluded. That young children represent a unique and valuable contribution to family therapy is an underlying supposition of our work. The critical functions of the young child as both identified and non-identified patients in family therapy are fully described in a recently published book. Two case examples will illustrate the importance and process of integrating child and family therapy.
