Individuals and Families ISPJonathan BeilesFamily dysfunction can be any condition that interferes with healthy family functioning. Many families experience some dysfunction during times of stress. However, healthy families are able to return to normal once the crisis has caused distress to the family. A dysfunctional family “will have difficulty returning to normal after a major negative event occurs in the family.” These events may include: “parental alcoholism, mental illness, child abuse, or extreme parental rigidity.” » Unfortunately, “the effects on children can sometimes persist long after those children have grown up and left their problem families. Adults raised in dysfunctional families often report difficulties forming and maintaining intimate relationships, maintaining positive self-esteem, and trusting others; they fear a loss of control and deny their feelings and reality. » Parents' behaviors have a strong influence on the children in their family. A parent's behavior can affect children positively in the long term if they create a functional family or negatively if they create a dysfunctional atmosphere. Some things must go wrong in the family for the family to become dysfunctional. Children learn to grow up much faster if they have deficient parents. Poor parents need a lot of emotional support because they are unable to provide it to their children. Being forced to mentally care for their parents, when they are not fully emotionally developed, has a negative effect on children's emotional development. This leads to the inability to meet their parents' emotional needs, creating a sense of guilt that persists into the child's adulthood. The ...... middle of paper ...... step towards recovery is taking small steps in allowing others to know them. “Adult children from dysfunctional families tend to approach relationships in an all-or-nothing manner. They either become very intimate and dependent in a relationship or they insist on almost complete self-sufficiency, taking few interpersonal risks. Both of these patterns tend to be counterproductive (Forward, 1989). “Dysfunctional families can be identified by four basic roles, such as the mascot, the rebel, the lost child and the good girl/boy. Each member of a dysfunctional family has a different impact that negatively affects the family. Children from dysfunctional families have a lasting impact on their emotional development. Dysfunctional patterns can be broken and children from dysfunctional families have the ability to overcome their difficult past..