At Homeward Bound, we believe family is the cornerstone of a happy life. Family is the natural support system developed for everyone at birth. Today, families take many shapes, sizes, changes, formations, and commitments, but the fundamental purpose of family has remained the same throughout – families look out for each other.

A healthy family should be involved in each others lives and help keep each other safe emotionally, mentally, and physically. A family’s functionality predicts other social influences that individuals intentionally or inadvertently develop for themselves. At Homeward Bound we believe that admitting a family member has a problem is the same as admitting that the entire family has a problem. In modern society, negative influences abound, so the modern family must be equipped with the latest strategies and methods to protect each other so all in the family can live a full and happy life.

Transition: A Metaphor for Positive Change
Transition is our natural, therapeutic process for coping, dealing, and coming to terms with the changes that impact our lives. It is a process of ‘letting go’ of the past and ‘taking hold’ of the present, leaving behind the expectations, fears, and attitudes for a situation that no longer exists. This process applies to toddlers, children, adolescents, young adults, and all the way up to grand parents. Naturally, we all resist transition. Whether it’s puberty, divorce, growing older, death of a loved one, peer pressure, or any other dramatic change, letting go of a self-image, a disposition towards other people, as well as letting go of old habits and routines that once served us well, can be as difficult as letting go of a lifeline. ‘Taking hold’ of something new is equally challenging and often terrifying.

In transition, after we’ve resigned and ‘let go’ of the past, but before we ‘take hold’ of something new, we enter a neutral zone. Our lives become open to completely fundamental ideas of “who we should be,” and “what we should do with our time.” We experience feelings of freedom coupled with mixed feelings of terror, euphoria, opportunity, or ambivalence. Life is fresh again, but uncertain. New behavioral patterns have yet to impress themselves into our routines and relationships because we don’t know how to fill the vacancy or even what we want to fill it with. The neutral zone is a place where we are open-minded and impressionable as we actively search for something to ‘take hold.’ The vast majority of our life-altering decisions take place in this neutral zone.

Transition doesn’t happen over night. It is a complex process with multiple functions that involve reorientation, personal growth, personal validation, spirituality and creativity. For children and teens, it is the creative function of transition that is critical in the neutral zone. Children and teens must find brand new ways of behaving in a changing world. They must interact with family members that might carry old perceptions of them. They must develop new routines and adjust to the presures of peer groups, and they must respond to an ever-growing list of negative behaviors presenting themselves as 'viable' options. Parents too must be creative and not just live up to concepts or models of authority. They must present viable alternatives and establish a family environment that suits everyone including themselves. If the creative function lacks direction, provides too much or not enough freedom, or proves unfulfilling, the family will often live in the past.

Today, families have many options for assistance; they don’t have to go it alone. Hoping and trying harder are not plans that provide real help to children, teens, and families to overcome the challenges they face. Real help means proper training and support so families can explore the neutral zone with an open mind and sense of safety. Parents can feel secure in their journey as well as that of their child or teen’s journey. This approach brings method to the creative process of discovering life, not forced compliance to models of what a child, a teen, or a family should or shouldn't be. Individuals, and the family unit as a whole, learn techniques and skills so they can make better decisions for themselves, decisions they can live with. These become skills not only for immediate survival, but for a lifetime of successful relationships.
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Systems: A Clinical Description
Systems is a term used by various therapeutic models, including family systems theory and ecosytemic theory, to describe the interdependent elements of group of people or a person’s life. Discussing family crisis in systems language provides a clinical perspective that often reveals, otherwise unnoticed, patterns of behavior.

The graph illustrates the disequilibrium often experienced in a family system after a small fluctuation is introduced. In this case, the family system experiences a tidal wave effect from the return of a teen after extended time apart due to wilderness therapy or a residential treatment program. It’s important to note both systems were in a healthy state of equilibrium prior to the merge.
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