Four Tricks for using Genograms in School Counseling

Genograms can be an amazing asset for school counselors to use in the school setting. This flexible tool can be easily adapted to use with most students and doesn’t require spending a ton of money. In fact, I bet you have everything in your office already! Keep reading to see four ways to structure school counseling genograms.

1: Individual Family Structures Genogram

In the school setting, school counselors are trying to make the most of their time. When you’re trying to get an idea of a students family structure or family history. Try using genograms! You will be able to gather information in a short amount of time and detect patterns within their family structure. This helps students talk about their families in a “storytelling” way and helps them organize their thoughts. While the student leads the way, you can use a whiteboard or a piece of paper to draw out the genogram and let the student tell about their families or if they are older, have them create one themselves!

Genograms can be very complex. I suggest if you enjoy doing these and want to do them full out, you should get further training. You can find some great books to help here and here (affiliate link). They can be very intricate with a lot of symbols. But they can give you a lot of valuable information. For the purpose of school counseling, I like to do very basic versions of genograms with students…especially in elementary. Also, even making a fun craft with the family tree can be turned into a genogram!

What exactly is a genogram? In basic terms, they are just like a family tree but instead of focusing on who the relatives are/were, genograms focus more on the relationships and behaviors of each person to reveal generational patterns. They are very very flexible so don’t get scared away by all the intricate symbols. In fact for school counseling, you can use the very basic symbols when working with kids!

While you’re drawing out the genogram, you may start to notice points of intervention or barriers each generation has faced. This may be valuable when trying to provide relevant resources to students and families. The information you collect about the family can also tell you if there has been a history of divorce, death, incarceration, relational violence, substance abuse, out-of-home placement, etc. While some of the family history may not be as pertinent as current student information, it can help you understand the whole child and define where they are coming from in terms of family structure, culture and trauma.

2: Identifying ACE’s Genogram

What better way to identify  Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s) than to just talk about their family history. If you are specifically talking to the student about a traumatic event or there has been ongoing complex trauma, it might be helpful to see how many ACE’s they have had personally or their family has had all together. When drawing out your genogram, ask the student if there has been anyone experience any of the ACE’s and mark them down for each person. You might want to list it out next to the person’s box or write a corresponding number for each ACE. While this promotes open communication, students are able to reveal trauma of their own as well as generational trauma within the family. This will show you patterns the family has faced and some opportunities for positive change.

Here are some ACE’s you might be able to identify within a student’s genogram…

• Emotional Abuse
• Physical Abuse
• Sexual Abuse
• Mother Treated Violently
• Substance Abuse
• Mental Illness
• Parent Separation or Divorce
• Incarcerated Household Member
• Emotional Neglect
• Physical Neglect

3: Career Genograms

Okay… so earlier I talked about doing a family tree craft with younger students. This can be so fun because students will get to color their tree and mark their family members on there. If you want to go all out you can have them glue little pieces of construction paper to make the tree! Anyway… if you are doing a family tree for the basis of a career lesson, I suggest starting with three generations. The student can be at the bottom of the tree and they can list out their grade and interests. Then by the trunk of the tree, they can list out their father and mother on each side and what their careers are. Finally, towards the top they can list their grandparents with their career choices. This will show them how career choices can be influenced by those people closest to them.

With older students you can get more detailed and do traditional genogram symbols with more generations. It’s even really fun to do an interview piece with this and have students go home and interview their relatives to find out why they chose the profession that they did.  Then you could have them either write up the interview or compose a narrative and complete their genogram. There are so many different ideas to go along with this assignment that would be very fun!

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4: Friends Genogram

Sometimes trying to decipher friendship issues can be challenging. Try doing a simple friendship genogram with the students inner and outer circle. Start by drawing a circle in the middle of the paper. The students name can go inside this circle. Then they can basically draw a web diagram with each friend and talk about struggles that are going on. Students can identify friends that are good influences and ones that are not. You can also start to see patterns of exclusion and inclusion when talking about the different friend connections.

Doing something like this can help identify any communication barriers the student may be having with their friends. This can help you teach various social skills and give the student a plan of action and practice with someone they trust.

 

I truly LOVE doing genograms and hope this provides you with a little insight into the valuable resource they can be! Do you use these in school counseling? If so, what’s your favorite way to use them?