Can a parent also be a child?

[thollowood]

I have a link here to a screenshot of my relationships table Relationships Table. My question is this:

We work with families and generally we enter the parents as our primary contacts, which fall under family_id . Then, we can enter their children and the various info for each child through a portal to the youthserial_fk link.

Here is my problem. Every once in a while we have a youth whose parent is a primary contact, but who is also , as a youth, an independent client themselves - and I don't know how to create a relationship where both parent and youth can be seperate records under family_id, but then still allow access to the youth's information as a child record of the parent.

I know, why couldn't I be talking about apples and trees instead of actual families when we use parent and child for relationships. Sorry about that! I hope someone can understand what I'm getting at here despite the awkward vocabulary. Thanks in advance! Tia

[Vaughan]

I cannot work out your relationships because I cannot see what the tables actually are.

However, you talk about a FamilyID so I assume you have a Family table, and so you must also have a Person table (since families are made up of people).

So for each family you associate multiple people and I guess you mark one as being the primary contact.

But I reckon this is actually a business process issue: when the youth becomes an independent client, should they get their own Family record? After all in tile they might have their own children attending. They could still be associated with their original family.

[Phillip Holmes]

thollowood

I have a solution for you. It is the only way I know of to over come the proble you have. Take a look at the attached FM DB.

Regards

Phillip

TestDB.zip