• A privately transacted system of understanding reflecting the attitudes, actions and identities of participants in a relationship.
• Every family system creates its own world view that reflects members' shared beliefs and meanings.

• Patterns that form an invisible web of complementing demands that regulate many of the family situations.
• Non-verbal behaviour is an important contributer to the relational culture.
• Complex entity that becomes more complex as more poeple enter the family.

1. Family communication rules
2. Family secrets
3. Family communication networks
4. Family narratives

• Relationship agreements that prescribe and limit a family's behaviour over time.
• Create regularity
• Eventually rules become patterns.
• Helps families gain a sense of shared reality and mutual understanding.
• Rules may be recallibrated explicity and implicity as family members pass through certain developmental stages.
• Conflicts often arise when some breaks an implicit rule they were not even aware existed.
• What can be talked about?  When and with whom?

• You learn some explicitly (Straight forward) and some implicitly (complex).
• Partners tend to bring rules into relationship with hopes of combining them with their partner's.
• The implicit rules are more subtle, harder to deal with, and more challenging to change.
• Rules are maintained through negative (maintenance) or positive (growth) feedback process.

• Helps with primary and secondary family functioning
• Sets limits
• Provide stability in interactions
• Serves to socialize younger/newer memberts.

• Involve information purposefully hidden or concealed by one or more family members.
• Making, keeping, and revealing secrets all shape a family's interaction patterns.
• Becomes an issue when the 'hidden' parts of a family cause pain to its members.
• Members tend to keep secrets if they're worried about relationship.
• Secrets create and reinforce boundaries.
• Family secrets are decreasing with the increasing value of open communication.  

1. SWEET SECRETS: Protecting good surprises; usually have a time limit.
2. ESSENTIAL SECRETS: Includes talk about fear or insecurities, which enhances closeness and fosters personal relationships.
3. TOXIC SECRETS: Secrets that poison family relationships; significant family stories and issues remain unadressed.
4. DANGEROUS SECRETS: Puts their owners in immediate physical jeorardy or cause such emotional turmoil that their capacity to function is threatened.

1. BONDING: Can increase cohesiveness.
2. EVALUATION: Can help members avoid negative judgement.
3. PRIVACY: Appears personal and is not relevant to others.
4. MAINTENANCE: Some secrets help keep family members close while protecting them from stressors.
5. DEFENSE: Volatile secrests protect information from outsiders who much use it against family members.
6. COMMUNICATION: Secrets reflect a general lack of communication among family members.

• Family secrets link to family power patterns.
• Many secrets are created or revealed at periods of intense relationshop change.
• Family secrets affect how information moves between and among family members withing the family's communication network.

DIRECT EFFECTS MODEL: Suggests that power in families has a direct influence; it suppresses the desire to reveal sensitive information for fear of negative consequences.

INDIRECT EFFECTS MODEL: Suggests that power diminishes members' closeness and commitment, compelling them to conceal negative secrets.

• The family systems that establishes patterns for connecting.
• Networks and rules operate with mutual influence; rules may dictate the use of certain networks, which create patterns.  

1. CHAIN NETWORK: Occurs when family members talk along a series of linksl maybe vertical of horizontal.
2. Y-NETWORK: A key person channels messages from one person on a chain to one o more other family members.  Can be an inverted-Y.  
3. WHEEL NETWORK:One member serves as the clearing house, or the hub of the wheel, who relays messages to other family members.  It is a position of power and control. Person becomes critical to family functioning.
4. ALL-CHANNEL NETWORK: Facilitates exchanges between or among the whole family, supporting direct interaction and maximizing immediate feedback.

• Story telling is a way of making meaning.
• It is an effective way of making one's own interpretation of events of ideas available to others.

1. TO REMEMBER
2. CREATE BELONGING AND FAMILY IDENTITY
3. TEACH EACPECTED BEHAVIOUR AND DEEPLY HELD VALUES
4. DEVELOP FAMILY CULTURE
5. CONNECT GENERATIONS
6. MANAGE STRESSES
7. ENTERTAINMENT

LINCHPINS convey infortmation across generations through their stories.

BUFFERS close down transmission to the next generation.

• CONNECTED COUPLES: Tells stories as if they're co-owned.
• FUNCTIONAL SEPARATE: Demonstrate respect, validation, and support but tell stories individual.
• DYSFUNCTIONAL SEPARATE: Exhibits contradictory, disagreement, poor listening.