Introduction

As you develop professionally, you may find certain issues more meaningful to you and center your practice around such work.

Maybe, for varied reasons, assisting lesbian and gay couples in the process of becoming parents is central to your interest and your vision of your clinical work. Perhaps you are interested in helping empty-nest parents adjust to their new phase in life.

You should seek continued training on such specialty issues as you develop a clinical focus. On the other hand, maybe you experience challenges, for various reasons, when dealing with certain life transition or development issues.

This week you continue to explore life transition and development issues so that you may begin to think about areas around which you may experience challenges.

Awareness of these issues and the steps you might take to overcome them will ultimately help you narrow down your clinical focus in the future. Finally, as in last week's Application Assignment, you conceptualize cases and select theory-based interventions for couples and families experiencing life transition and developmental issues.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this week, you should be able to:

Analyze personal challenges to working with couples and families experiencing life transition and developmental issues

Develop and justify treatment plans for couples and families experiencing life transition and developmental issues

Apply counseling theories and theory-based interventions to couples and families experiencing life transitions and developmental issues