A Family APGAR to Heal

When a baby is first born it undergoes an assessment called an APGAR then the baby is given an APGAR score. It is an acronym for Activity, Pulse, Grimace, Appearance, and Respiration.

Since the inception of this type of assessment another has developed for the family also called an APGAR. The Family APGAR is an acronym for:

• Adaptation (How the family helps and shares resources.)

• Partnership (Lines of communication and partnership in the family.)

• Growth (How responsibilities for growth and development of the child are shared.)

• Affection (Overt and covert emotional interaction among family members.)

• Resolve (How time, money, and space are allocated to prevent and solve problems.)

The meaning behind the acronym and the defined explanations of responsibility clearly do not rest with the child as much as it does with the parent(s) of the family, and if it is only one parent then all of this assessment/responsibility lies on that one parent. Then there is that third yet seldom discussed situation where there may be married parents but one parent assumes the majority of the responsibility with the children while the other parent utilizes the "Well, I am here," parental mentality.

Here is how the assessment works:
Scoring: For each area of APGAR a person will rate the frequency of feeling satisfied with each parameter on a 3-point scale ranging from 0 (hardly ever) to 2 (almost always). The scale is scored by summing the values for the five items for a total score that can range from 0 to 10.
Score Interpretation: A higher score indicates a greater degree of satisfaction with family functioning.
(Although it is recommended that Family APGAR scores from each member of a household be collected, it has been suggested that an estimate of family satisfaction by the female head of the household will provide an accurate assessment of family functioning (Chao, 1998). In Chao's study, poorer family satisfaction was highly correlated with poorer individual spirits, greater degree of recent individual stress, poorer subjective rating of health, greater number of office visits, and increased number of missed appointments.) Source--http://www.iprc.unc.edu/longscan/pages/measures/Baseline/Family%20APGAR.pdf

Why bother? Because we, the adults are effecting our children. Our lack of growth and maturity in resolving the issues that directly effect them (communicating, sharing responsibilities, sharing resources) leaves them undeveloped, sad, aggressive, rebellious and violent.

Minister Farrakhan taught us in the Introduction to Self-Improvement Study Course:

"This Book, the Holy Qur'an, teaches that man is created complete, yet incomplete. How is man complete, yet incomplete? There are stages of evolutionary development. We start, as the Qur'an teaches (and biologists will bear witness), from a cloudy drop of water called sperm, mixed with ovum. Then we evolve into a clot, then into an embryo, then into a fetus, then we come forward --- complete, yet incomplete. You are today complete, yet incomplete.

Human life has a pre-determined goal. The pre-determined goal of all human life is not to walk the streets of Phoenix with dope, no hope, no direction, no guidance. The pre-determined --- now listen to this --- I didn't say 'determined', but, 'pre-determined'. Before you came into existence, there was a goal set for your life and that goal for your life is written in the Bible and in the Qur'an: that goal is to make that life meet with its Source; its Creator."

We can say that we agree with his words, but how do you go about assessing the short comings that you know exist within yourself to become complete? Do you wait until the bottom falls out and the child is at what appears to be the point of no return? Because we see the signs and then ignore them either because we don't know what to do or just don't want to face the problems.

Let's just go home, reconstruct our families for the sake of our children, and maybe this APGAR instrument will start the process. I have a saying "Our children are the tuning forks of our relationships." If something is not right with us it will definitely show up in our children one way or another. Can we see the things that are "not right" in our children today?