Family Functional Assessment

Functional Assessment
Functional assessment of a family deals with how the individuals of the family essentially behave in relation to one another and is broken down by instrumental functioning and expressive functioning.
Family’s Instrumental Functioning. The family’s routine activities of daily living generally include waking in the morning, eating breakfast together, L.M. getting ready for work, then getting J.M. ready for daycare, dropping J.M. off at daycare, L.M. going to work, meeting the daycare provider after work to pick up J.M., going home, making dinner, eating together, bathing, reading a bedtime story or playing for a short period of time, then putting J.M. to bed, L.M. doing homework, then going to bed for the night.
Expressive

Functioning.
Emotional communication. L.M. and J.M. appear to be comfortable expressing their emotions around each other. I was able to observe incidences of happiness and sadness but did not see any episodes of anger or hostility. J.M.’s vocabulary is very small but he is able to communicate his emotions through facial expressions and demonstration. L.M. was very attuned to his wants and needs and was able to communicate her emotions as well though the same route so that he was able to understand her as well.
Verbal communication. Mom and son are able to effectively and directly communicate verbally even with J.M.’s limited vocabulary. L.M. stated that she has been working with J.M. on his verbal communication by encouraging him to say what objects are versus pointing at them. She also encourages him to talk when he is upset versus grunting and whining.
Nonverbal communication. L.M. has a very have open body posture, she maintains eye contact appropriately, uses a soothing touch when talking to her son, facial movements are appropriate as well as gestures. Due to L.M.’s age and maturity he tends to have poor nonverbal communications skills as compared to his mother. He tends not make eye contact if he is doing something he should be and mom is trying to redirect the behavior. He also tends to fidget during these situations as well.
Circular communication. All circular communication observed were adaptive and/or positive. Even if the communication started out negative, as in redirecting a bad behavior, L.M. was able to end the communication on a positive note or with positive reinforcement. See Figure 2 for an example of circular communication between mother and son.