Posted: November 29th, 2014

Pressures and Challenges / Choosing to Be Single Role-Play

Pressures and Challenges / Choosing to Be Single Role-Play

Pressures and Challenges

There are many different forms of the American family today. Reflect on your own genogram, the Contemporary Family interview clips, and your readings to consider what messages you have been given about sexual identity and family roles from multiple levels: family of origin, your community, and mainstream society. How are these ideas influenced, challenged, changed, or maintained by the media, education, religion, or advocacy? As a counselor, how will you be challenged when working with families different from your own?

Response Guidelines

Respond to at least two other learners by asking questions and adding comments that expand and deepen the conversation. Your responses to other learners are expected to be substantive in nature and reference the assigned readings, as well as other theoretical, empirical, or professional literature to support your views and writings. Please remember to be respectful of the ideas and experiences of others.

Choosing to Be Single Role-Play

For this discussion, you will pair up with another learner in the course to do a short role-play (15 minutes each) over the telephone or Adobe Connect. Each of you will have the opportunity to be the therapist as well as the client (described below). Use an audio recorder or the Connect room to record only the portion of the role-play where you are the therapist.

Client Part for Role-Play

You are a single parent of one child, age 4, and are financially stable. You find yourself often questioned by friends and relatives about why you are not married. You have decided to attend counseling to discuss some of the pressures and challenges you are facing from your family and friends over your choice to raise your child alone. You may add details to this role-play as you see needed.

Transcription and Analysis

After the role play, listen to the recording of yourself as the therapist. Transcribe the questions you asked as the therapist, and analyze the skills you used in these questions, indicating whether you wished you had asked a different question. There is more information to help you with this process in Resources: the transcription template and sample, and a resource document with basic counseling skills and question types. Attach the transcription form to your discussion (do not paste). Reflect on what you learned about single parenting, both from playing the therapist and the client. Then complete the discussion post, described below.

For your discussion post, reflect on the role-play itself—what insights you had about single parenting from playing the counselor and the client, your awareness of yourself as the therapist, how you developed questions during the role-play, and what multicultural and diversity issues you paid attention to:

What was surprising or interesting to you about the experience of single parenting portrayed in your role plays?
What did you like about the therapist when you played the client? Was there anything you wished were different?
What were you curious about but did not ask when you played the therapist?
What did you like about yourself as the therapist?
What did you learn from this experience about what you might do differently as a therapist?

Response Guidelines

Respond to at least two other learners by asking questions and adding comments that expand and deepen the conversation. Your responses to other learners are expected to be substantive in nature and reference the assigned readings, as well as other theoretical, empirical, or professional literature to support your views and writings. Please remember to be respectful of the ideas and experiences of others.

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