What are systemic effects?

A systemic effect is when one small change causes big changes all around a group or system.

Imagine you're playing with building blocks, each block is like a part of a bigger structure. Now, if you gently push one block, it might just wobble a little. But if that block was holding up the whole tower, pushing it could make everything fall down!

Think about systemic effects like throwing a stone into a pond. The stone is the small change, maybe you drop your ice cream cone on the ground. That one little mess might make you sad. But then you start crying, and that makes your brother laugh, and now he's making funny faces at your dog, who starts barking loudly, which wakes up your mom, who then turns on the lights, and suddenly everyone is awake, including your dad, who was pretending to be asleep!

That’s a systemic effect, one little thing sets off a whole chain of changes in your family system.