Family mediation is often used as a last resort before the final escalation, but if possible it should not even get that far. As soon as you realize that family life is becoming difficult to manage, that you are constantly arguing and can no longer find compromises that are acceptable to all sides, you should start mediation. You have nothing to lose, whether you are the parents of adult children or minors, a married couple or prospective divorcees. Family mediation can be very helpful for issues and problems such as separation, divorce, conflicts between children and parents, conflicts between spouses or cohabiting partners, disputes in patchwork families, inheritance disputes, generational conflicts and many more in various constellations.

The question is what you mean by "psychoding". If you mean lying on a coach, talking about your problems and the psychiatrist nodding from time to time and questioning you about precarious behavior from your past, then clearly not. In family mediation, you will meet with trained and experienced mediation experts who will first gain an overview of the events, dynamics and constellations within your family and find out about the problems that each individual has with the current family situation. As psychologists should be, they are neither judgmental nor presumptuous, but above all neutral. During the sessions, you never take the side of one person or one opinion, but act exclusively as a mediator. Like psychology, mediation aims to ensure that the parties involved recognize the core problem and find a solution to it independently. The parties to the conflict should learn to perceive and acknowledge the behavior of the other party and relate it to the problem that has arisen. The family mediator does not give well-intentioned advice or subjective assessments, but guides the parties to find ways that are acceptable to all parties involved. Therefore, family mediation can actually have a tangible benefit, which is usually a compromise that benefits everyone involved.

Legally speaking, you are not allowed to force a person to do something they do not want to do. Only the court can order such a measure, which falls under the term "ordered mediation" and is mandatory for all parties involved. Such family mediation is ordered, for example, in the context of child protection, where the healthy development of the child is no longer guaranteed due to long-lasting and escalating conflicts. However, since the beginning of 2011, the court can also recommend mediation instead of stratification proceedings, but cannot enforce it. It is best to contact family counseling centers if you are unable to persuade your husband to enter into family mediation, or use systemic counseling or therapy to develop your own solutions to your difficulties, which will help you to gain the skills to take action and initiate measures.

Whether your children are your biological, adopted or fostered children does not play a role in family mediation. It is not conducted according to the mother-father-child concept, where the father has the say, the mother mediates and the child has to obey. Instead, the needs, fears and problems of each individual with regard to family life are addressed in order to bring about a situation in which everyone involved feels comfortable again, including your wife's son. Such mediation can open your eyes to the difficulties that exist within your family, or between you and your foster son, so that together you can find a way to address and, if possible, resolve these problems. It is best to speak directly to the relevant family mediation counseling centers about your concerns, who will point you towards the appropriate therapy or counseling, be it mediation, systemic counseling or another form of counseling.