The Reitan Family is an example of family unit sense-making. Family unit sense making involves active engagement, perspective taking, turn-taking, and understand the story’s meaning in a similar way. All of the family members shown in the movie were mostly on the same page in all the events that happened. This is seen when parents and their son Jake discuss the same topic they all seemed know what was going on with each other. An example of this I saw in the movie was that the mother was not hurt as much that her son was gay, it hurt more that he knew he was gay and told his sister first and waited a year before telling her. It hurt that she was not on the same page as her son at the time and that seems to be an important thing in their family. …show more content…
Individual sense making is when family members participate in telling the story but they have separate versions of the story and get different meanings from it from different conclusions. During this family’s story telling each of them had their own account of what happened with little insight to what the other people involved felt or thought. The daughter kept many things from her parents especially her mother. The mother was also resistant to listen to the daughter and expressed this in her side of the story. The father also had his own version, he expressed dislike for the lifestyle his daughter has, but still loves her; which the daughter also somewhat acknowledges, but not as much. They did not seem to be able to understand each other’s perspective until towards the end and even then they seemed resistant. The mother in this family especially demonstrated this point. She and the father were unable to understand the struggle their daughter was going through. The mother mostly did not try and in the end she still somewhat understood what her daughter but did not really support her. Each member had their own separate account of the story and when the parents were together they did not interrupt each other. It seems like they did this because they were telling different types of the same story. In the end, all of the family members had a different interpretation and conclusion of the