[Family therapy with young children.]

In this article, the author demonstrates, using clinical examples, that family therapy must not consider the symptom uniquely as the expression of the family problem. Therapy must focus on it, if the symptom seriously compromises the child's development, or if it is the sole means of obtaining the family's cooperation in the treatment, as in the case of school phobia, of cystenosia, and of anorexia nervosa. In cases in which the symptom does not compromise the child's immediate development, it can be considered as a distress signal and the intervention of the therapist will then direct itself at the interactional models and the underlying family rule.