Assignment Two

Question 0

Alcoholic parents tend to under control or over control their toddlers, or vacillate between both extremes. True or false?

Answer 0

True.

Question 1

Erikson proposed that healthy child development requires children to master age specific psychosocial crises. True or false?

Answer 1

True.

Question 2

Preschool children will alter and deny their own perceptions to identify with the beliefs and values modeled by their parents rather than risk abandonment by questioning the family myth. True or false?

Answer 2

True.

Question 3

Many children of alcoholics rarely have friends visit for fear of being embarrassed by the alcoholics unpredictable, poorly controlled behavior. True or false?

Answer 3

True.

Question 4

Struggles with identity formation experienced by adolescents in alcoholic families are often expressed by confusion about their sexuality. True or false?

Answer 4

True.

Question 5

Children in alcoholic families cannot be compared to concentration camp captives. True or false?

Answer 5

False.

Question 6

Nylander studied 229 Swedish children of alcoholics fathers and found a significant number of them had ———–symptoms

Answer 6

Psychosomatic.

Question 7

List four emotional and psychological problems children with alcoholic parents have.

Answer 7

Fear.
Fear of abandonment.
Anger.
Sadness.

Question 8

Childhood depression can be divided into three types in alcoholic families.

Answer 8

Effectual (expressed sadness, helplessness, hopelessness).

Negative self-esteem(worthlessness).

Guilt, feeling wicked, guilty.

Question 9

Caine suggest that one fifth of teenage suicides are alcohol related, and notes that alcohol is the adolescents drug of choice for abuse.

Answer 9

True.

Question 10

The etiology of alcoholism appears to be a genetic predisposition to alcoholic drinking among many offspring of alcoholics. True or false?

Answer 10

True

Question 11

It has been estimated that approximately 10% of children in alcoholic homes are what have been called “invulnerable’s”. True or false?

Answer 11

True.

Question 12

The negative impact of an alcoholic mother was greater than that of an alcoholic father. True or false?

Answer 12

True.

Question 13

It is believed that the younger the child the more severe the impact of parental alcoholism. true or false?

Answer 13

True.

Question 14

List 10 traits found under the responsible one/family hero.

Answer 14

Believes he or she is okay only when doing something for someone or being “good”.
Takes the name of mommies or daddy’s “Little helper”.
Helps parents control other children. Gives orders.
Needs perfection in life to gain “strokes”. Average is not good enough. High achiever in school.
All activities focused on helping the family or the family image.
Feels comfortable around adults;
Behaves older than age.
Can only feel for others and doesn’t recognize own needs.
Becomes very organized and scheduled; requires ability to take control of crises.
Believes that asking for help shows weakness.
Feels overwhelmed and resents siblings for not helping out.

Question 15

List 10 characteristics of the scapegoat in the alcoholic family.

Answer 15

Learns to receive attention by negative means; acts out or express his anger and anxiety through antisocial behavior in the home.
Takes the focus off the alcoholic; gets some sympathy from co-alcoholic parent.
Blamed for all the family problems;
Learn that negative behavior brings the family together.
Receives emotional or physical abuse.
Puts up a front of not caring; begins to challenge authority.
Stuffs feelings; ask tough; builds walls.
Becomes a troublemaker.
Has poor grades; cuts classes at school.
Doesn’t like routine.
Gives up easily, and is addicted to excitement.
Avoids doing anything society says is good;
Becomes involved in promiscuity, delinquency, and or hazardous lifestyle, such as addiction, abortion, and accidents.
Is attracted to others who act out.

Question 16

List 10 traits of the adjuster/lost child in the alcoholic family.

Answer 16

Doesn’t know how to get attention.
Doesn’t feel like he or she fits into the family.
High rate of allergies, asthma, accidents.
May hide under the bed, in the attic, etc. during stressful situations.
Has difficulty making friends in school. Feels like an outcast (peers ridicule him or her),willing to do anything for a friendship.
Average student; not involved in any school activities.
Stays out of situations that would draw attention to self.
Socially immature, sexually naïve, and feels controlled by everyone.
Neglects own needs.
Cries alone. Feels a lot of hurt, fear of abandonment, very low self-esteem, but “stuffs” feelings.

Question 17

List 10 characteristics of the

play cater/mascot in the alcoholic family.

Answer 17

Usually the youngest child;
Is overprotected by the family.
Learns to get attention by being cute; Tries to be everyone’s friend.
Changes personality like a chameleon depending on who is present.
Protected from family secrets.
Gets average grades;acts like the “class clown.”
Is never really listened to or taken seriously.
Has many acquaintances but few friends.
Can get along with almost anyone.
Is sensitive but never shows emotion; Smiles while crying on the inside.
High incidence of Ritalin abuse.
Acts younger than his or her age.

Question 18

List the characteristics of

a “hold it in”child.

Answer 18

Children of alcoholics are generally responsible, adjusting, functioning on the surface. They learn to hold in their feelings and never talk about the problems of their alcoholic parents.
One such boy Michael waited for 45 minutes for his mother to come pick him up after school but eventually walked home. He found her in the closet, having been in the process of attempting to take her life, but sitting there sobbing. Michael’s thoughts, “maybe no one will know,”he would never tell. Hold it in.

Question 19

Dr. Janet Woitiz and Perrin’s list of negative characteristics of adult children of alcoholics:

Answer 19

They guess what normal is.
They have difficulty following a project through from beginning to end.
They lie when it would have been just as easy to tell the truth.
They judge themselves without mercy. They have difficulty having fun.
They take themselves very seriously. They have difficulty with intimate relationships.
They overreact to changes over which they have no control.
They constantly seek approval and affirmation.
They usually feel that they are different from other people.
They are super responsible or super irresponsible.
They’re extremely loyal even in the face of evidence that the loyalty is undeserved.
They are impulsive and tend to lock themselves into a course of action without giving serious consideration to alternative behaviors or possible consequences.This impulsivity leads to confusion,self-loathing, and loss of control over their environment.
They look for immediate as opposed to deferred gratification.
They seek tension in crisis and then complain about the results.
They avoid conflict or aggravate it but rarely deal with it.
They fear rejection and abandonment, yet are rejecting others.
The fear failure, but sabotage their success.
They fear criticism and judgment, get criticize and judge others

Question 20

List the negative characteristics of ACOA’s in four areas: Mental, Emotional, Physical and Relational.

Answer 20

Mental:
Confusion. Memory gaps. All or nothing thinking. Perfectionism. Indecision. Hyper vigilance. Compulsive thinking. Self devaluing. Self hatred.

Emotional:
Fear. Guilt. Shame. Depression. Sadness. Anger/rage. Resentment. Loneliness. Anxiety/panic. Numbness.

Physical:
Migraine headaches. Ulcers, colitis, other digestive problems. Muscle tension. Sleep disorders. Stress disorders. Eating disorders. Allergies. Chemical dependency. Sexual dysfunction.

Relational:
Distrust. Intimacy problems. Crisis orientation. Hard to have fun. Over – dependent. High tolerance for inappropriateness. Manipulative. Controlling. Over – responsible. Approval addiction.

Question 21

List five emotional characteristics of adult children of alcoholics.

Answer 21

Fear,especially of abandonment. 
Guilt. 
Shame. 
Depression that is sadness/grief. Anger. 
Numbness.

Question 22

In one large eating-disorders clinic, approximately 62% of the patients were adult children of alcoholics. True or false?

Answer 22

True

Question 23

Dr. Wilson’s research results supported the widely reported clinical observation that adults from alcoholic families have difficulty trusting appropriately. True or false?

Answer 23

True.

Question 24

Dr. Wilson found that the divorce rate among subjects raised an alcoholic homes 32.8% was higher than among those from non-alcoholic families 9.7%. True or false?

Answer 24

True.

Question 25

Define codependency.

Answer 25

Codependency was applied to people whose lives had become unmanageable as a result of living in a committed relationship with an alcoholic.

Question 26

List 10 rescuing moves adapted from The book Dependent no more.

Answer 26

Saying yes when we mean no.
Doing something for someone although that person is capable of, and should be, doing it for him or herself.
Meeting people’s needs without being asked and before we’ve agreed to do so.
Consistently doing more than ones fair share of work after our help is requested.
Consistently giving more than we receive any particular relationship.
Trying to fix peoples feelings.
Doing people’s thinking for them. Solving peoples problems for them. Protecting people from the consequences of their own choices, and/or suffering people’s consequences for them.
Not asking for what we want, need, and desire.

Question 27

Regarding individual differences:

Answer 27

Some ACOA have siblings that do not behave or feel like adult children of alcoholics. It can be due to the level of denial. 78.2% have been highly affected. 11% claim to have been moderately affected and 10.7% said they were not affected. The quality of relationships with parents is also a factor.

Question 28

Thoughts on “cause to stumble”.

Answer 28

Stephanie Brown suggests that children in alcoholic families are forced by their dependency needs to except the cognitive distortions of the alcoholic and co-alcoholic parents that there is no alcoholism in the family and all the problems are caused by something else.
It is the acceptance of this family myth, accompanied by a denial of reality, that is the basis for a child’s attachment to the family.
Alcoholic families speak the language of lies – lies about facts and lies about feelings. As adults, these children make the choices that shape their lives based on these lies. I see the unhealthy characteristics of adult children of alcoholics as a combination of their nature of innate sin, their brokenness from being caused to stumble as young children, and their subsequent wrong and sinful choices.

Question 29

List two mental characteristics of adult children of alcoholics.

Answer 29

Confusion.

All – or – none thinking.