The approach to family explorations described here grew out of a psychoanalytically-informed model of a four-session consultation service for young people in the Adolescent Department of The Tavistock Clinic. The author has drawn on this, along with her other training and experiences there, for example, of crisis theory, group and couple work, and contemporary psychoanalysis, to develop her approach to work with families. The exploratory meetings can serve as the beginning of a much longer contact and/or can function as a significant therapeutic encounter in themselves. The two examples given here are of relatively well-functioning families. Both were feeling the effects of recent parental separations with children in difficulties, one anorexic, one stealing and acting up. It is suggested that appropriate help at such times of crisis can be crucial in altering unwanted generational cycles and/or shifting the balance from breakdown to breakthrough.