The Finck Family

The Finck family from Brookfield, consist of eight family members. The husband or

father of the family is Paul Finck, working in the basement of their house. Meanwhile,

the wife or the mother of the family is Deborah Finck who is a fulltime housewife. They

have three pairs of twins. The eldest is their adopted twin girls Amanda and Alex, age 9

years old. The second twin is Stephen and Katarina, age 4 years old, conceived through in

vitro technique. The youngest twin is David and Daniel, age 3 years old, conceived

naturally. The nanny assigned to the family is Nanny Deborah, with 22 years of

experience, from North Wales.

The existing problems in the Finck family are that, the parent is always occupied in

handling their children. Whining, yelling, crying and fighting are heard almost every

second. The husband, Paul, working in their basement, couldn’t concentrate in his works

because of all the havoc created by their children. But then again, Paul also can be seen

doing nothing to help his wife with the children. Paul is also unsupportive of his wife,

being demanding, undermining her and being insensitive. The wife, with constant

pressure from the children and housework, tend to shut down and resort to scolding and

punishing the children.

The father, Paul, in dealing with the children, he act as the good guy since he leave all the

responsible of taking care of the children to his wife. For example, in the morning Paul

prepares to go to work at their house basement only to leave his wife with all the tasks to

care for their misbehaving children and only joins in when their children is behaving.
This method is clearly not working, because he is not being hand on parent. Meanwhile,

the wife, in dealing with the children, seems to be the bad character since she’s the one

scolding and punishing the children. She deals with the children the best she can but

clearly have no idea how to and tends to snap at the children when things get out of

control, resorting to punishing and scolding. For instance, when one twin started hitting

each other and the other twin breaking things elsewhere and everyone weren’t listening to

her , she lost her temperament and scold her children and punishing them. We can see

that that the wife method wasn’t working because she is unable to control her children,

instead it was making it worse. Paul, the husband does nothing to solve the problem he

had with his wife and it is the same the other way.

When the nanny arrived at the Finck family resident, she made a few observations. The

problems with the children are that they whine constantly. Nanny Deborah found that

lack of communication skills among the children is what causing all the fighting, yelling,

hitting and etc. Nanny Deborah also pointed that the children think that the parent don’t

listen and understand them. The nanny observation of the husband is that he doesn’t have

much trust or believe in his wife. He thinks that his wife is incapable of change. The wife

in the other hand is clearly out of ideas in dealing with her children and in getting the

support of her husband.

Nanny Deborah use number of method in solving the Finck family problems. One of it is

to set the Finck family rules. She also set up a schedule for the children to follow and

introduce a reward system for the children. Apart from that, she showed examples on
how to deal with the children using communication skills for the parent to follow. To

solve the problems between husband and wife, the nanny made them to discuss their

problems and communicate with each other.

The Nanny underlines that communication as the source of all trouble in the Finck

family. That is the difference in the methods used by the family members with the one

nanny Deborah proposed. She shows the power of communication in dealing with the

children, how to teach communication skill to the children, how to communicate

effectively. The methods used by nanny Deborah is also very fun for the children. If to

compare the method used by the parent with the one of the nanny, they lack

communication, that is why when they deals with their children the only way the children

know how to respond is through physical actions and emotional actions. The nanny’s

method proved to be very effective, since all the children get along with each other well

through communication, all the yelling, whining, hitting, crying and fighting have all

stop. Through communication the parents get to understand their children better and in

doing so help them in dealing with their children. The relationship between husband and

wife is also been strengthen since all the problems have been resolved through

communication. The husband is more understanding and supportive of his wife, and in

doing so helps to improve not only the relationship between them but also between their

children and them.

In my own opinion, nanny Deborah has done a great job in teaching the Finck family

how to be a functional family. She pointed out that communication is the source of the
family troubles. Communication is indeed a great tool in social life. It is a two way

process. A process of giving and receiving information. A good parent should have great

communication skills so that he or she can interact among family members effectively. In

doing so, parents will be able to teach their children communication skills themselves. As

mention earlier, communication skills is an essential tool, it will not only allow us to

communicate but also to understand others. When we understand we will be able to do

the right actions. This will then satisfy all parties involved and a very peaceful

environment can be achieved.