How our interpretation of experiences might get in the way of helping families

Dr Paul Prichard | February 2025

Read more from the Reflections on Relational Practice blog series:

  1. 'Hard to reach' families or difficult to access services?
  2. What is relational practice and why is it important?
  3. Listening to speak or listening to understand?
  4. Understanding the broader context of individual families
  5. How our interpretation of experiences might get in the way of helping families
  6. Building and sustaining effective relationships: why first meetings matter

As humans, we are experts at forming internal, often unspoken, mental pictures based on a little bit of information. Here’s an example. Think for a few moments about what comes to mind when you read the following three words – Dark clouds approaching. 

Some might just conjure up a mental image of dark clouds, others might use it as an analogy of a difficult situation, another might think about reading a good book with a cup of hot chocolate, and someone else might think ‘thanks goodness, the drought is about to break’. It is even possible that those three words might be the trigger for further upset or trauma for a given individual. In fact, the internal mental pictures associated with those three words are limitless from person to person. One thing is, the internal pictures we all form, and the feelings associated with those pictures, will be unique. Why is this the case? Why don’t we all draw the same picture in our minds?  

How we construe what we see, hear and experience 

We all construct our own pictures from what we experience based on our personal previous experiences. My lifetime of personal lived experiences, and even what others have told me, lead me to make sense of everything I experience in my own unique and human way. These internal pictures (personal constructs) lead us to draw conclusions, often based on very little information. Personal construct theory (Kelly, 1955) proposes that the way individuals make sense of their own experiences is heavily determined by their previous experiences and their current constructions.   

Personal constructions (I construe) help to keep us, and those we care for, safe. Take for example the situation of a toddler walking unsteadily towards a highway. What would you do as the nearby observer of this situation? You would probably quickly react to the danger to ensure the toddler is safe. Why you would do this is your existing personal construction that vehicle traffic is potentially dangerous, especially for a toddler who might not be alert to the danger influences your desire to act immediately. Your personal construction has helped keep the toddler safe by influencing you to act swiftly. 

Sometimes however, our personal constructions can lead us to conclusions that are not helpful. This is true for all people. Imagine the following situation: 

A general practitioner is conducting a consultation with a parent and their child. Despite the respectful behaviour of the doctor, the parent appears to be responding rudely and generally not being helpful. Unbeknown to the doctor, this parent has had a long history of adversarial experiences with doctors and other medical practitioners. The parent has come to hold a construct that medical practitioners are not really interested, they don’t listen, and just look for opportunities to report their family to statutory authorities. 

Through the process of construing, and making sense of experiences based on previous events and learning, the parent is led to judgments, behaviours and actions that could appear out of sync with the interpretations of the practitioner. Without the background information, the perceived hostile behaviours of the parent might be considered by the doctor to be rude. However, if the doctor was aware of the parents’ historical experiences with other medical practitioners, this could be helpful in understanding their behaviour and compensating where necessary to help ensure the outcome of the meeting is positive for everyone involved. 

Personal constructs also have implications for our professional practice. Think of how often we may hear colleagues make generalised statements, potentially even quite judgemental, about the behaviours or attitudes of families from a given community. Such statements might be based on a firm construct, held by the practitioner, based on the experience of working with a couple of families from that community. Their construct might even have been reinforced by the openly shared perspectives of colleagues about families from the same community.

Changing unhelpful constructs

Sometimes unhelpful constructs need to be shifted or changed because they are directly related to, and significantly influence, one’s behaviour. Effective help giving, particularly in relation to parenting support, often involves helping parents shift unhelpful constructs they have about themselves, their children, and their families. This is a particularly complex aspect of helping parents as sometimes it will involve giving feedback, challenging beliefs, attitudes or behaviours, or helping them consider alternative perspectives. While challenging parents might not always be difficult for professionals, building and sustaining a healthy connection with the same family through the process is a more complex thing to achieve.   

Contact

If you would like more information about personal constructs and how these influence our work with families, you can contact us at [email protected]  We provide training for practitioners on a variety of topics and can tailor workshops to meet the specific needs of your service. 

Reference

Kelly, G.A. (1955). A theory of personality: The psychology of personal constructs. New York: W. W. Norton. 

 

About the author

Dr Paul Prichard has extensive experience in early childhood services, specialising in family engagement and relational practice. He works to amplify the voices of disengaged families in the design and implementation of services, ensuring that their unique needs are prioritised. Before starting his own consultancy, Paul worked at the Centre for Community Child Health as Training and Development Manager.