END OF THE SEMESTER!!!

I am so thankful that I was able to take this class this semester. I have been able to learn soooo much over the course of the semester.  I am really thankful that I was able to learn all of the many aspects of marriage and the family, and family relations all together.  I know that I am definitely going to apply many of the concepts that I have learned in this class to my own future family.  Even though I do not have a family now.  I can still apply many of these concepts.  One of the things that I have enjoyed learning about this week was just some of the things about blended families.  I thought that it was interesting that it takes an average of two years for the blended family to normalize.  Even though this seems like it would be a bit long for the normalization to occur, it is not a big surprise.  I have no experience with blended families, so I really don’t know that much about what goes on in them. I just thought that this was really interesting.

One of the most important things that come about in a child’s life is the way that they are raised.  Their parents have a huge responsibility to raise them and to teach them the things that they need to know.  We need to always make sure that we are there for our kids so that they have someone to turn to when they have problems and when they need a helping hand.  One of the main things that parenting does is that it provides a foundation for the child.  Parents have the responsibility to teach them right from wrong. We need to make sure that we are doing what we need to so that our children are good.  The way that we raise them is going to set the standard for how they are going to live the rest of their lives. Something else that I found to be interesting is that the younger that you have kids, the more generations that they are going to get to know.  We should not postpone parenthood because of all of the valuable things that they are able to learn from their living relatives. I really think that this can be a great blessing for the child.

WORK!

Work is a very important principle that we need to make sure we are teaching our kids.

I have it to be very interesting just how much work can teach a child.  One of the things that I have learned growing up about the importance of work is the wise use of it as well.  When I made money, I learned that I need to save that money so that I can buy something that I want or need.  It also helped me to save for my mission.  Work has taught me many values that I think that I would not have learned if I would not have had a job when I was younger.  It taught me to never give up, dependability, honesty, and many other values.  One of the things that we learned in class was just how important it is that we pay our tithing first, before we do anything else with our paycheck.  I think that this principle is very inspired.  When we pay our tithing it is basically our fire insurance.  It will help us when we have to go through hard times.  It is giving back to the lord what is already his.  My parents taught me this very important principle and I am very grateful that they did.

Communication!!!

We need to make sure that we are communicating better.  One of the things that I learned in class this week that I thought was extremely interesting was just how much our words aren’t really communicating anything.  According to bro. Williams, I’m not sure or his sources he just said a study, which could be anything, he said that words make up 14% of communication, tones make up 35%, and nonverbal communication makes up 51% of communication.  If this is true then we really need to work on our tones and our nonverbal body language when we are trying to communicate with someone.  When we say something that we mean, but our tone is off, they are going to take the message in a way that we never intended.  We are going to be communicating to them a completely different message than we had probably had planned in the beginning. I really think that if we understand this, then we are going to have a happier marriage and family life.  We really just need to make sure that our nonverbal and our tones are not communicating something that we don’t want to be communicating.

Coping with stress with the family can really make it so that the family comes together and become stronger.  One of the things that I have found to be extremely interesting in this weeks class was the lesson about the coping saw. I just thought that it was so interesting how, when the saw is used correctly, it can make it so that the two pieces of the crown molding can be put together and look nicely.  If we apply this to our families then we are going to become closer together as a family.  With all of the stressors that we have today, we need to make it so that we are depending on our families in our times  of need. One of the things that can really help us out as a family when we are in these stressful situations is the ABC X model.  When we apply this model to the stressful event, it can just open up a whole new world of solutions for us.  When we apply this model we have to look at the A which is the event, the B which is the resources, and the C which is the cognitive experience of everyone that is in the family.  I know that if we just do these simple things while we are in in stressful situations that we are going to be able to overcome them and really grow together as a family.

One of the things that I have found to be very interesting this week in class is just how much we need to make sure that we are including the Lord in everything that we do.  When it comes to marital intimacy we need to make sure that we get a confirmation from the lord that it is ok.  We need to absolutely make sure that we are being faithful to our spouses.  We should not be looking for other relationships with other people.  When we get married it is our job to make sure everything that we do revolves around the partners.  You shouldn’t be sharing your personal problems with someone that is not your spouse.  If you do this then you have the chance of creating a bond with them and this is not good.  When we get married we are supposed to cleave unto our spouses and no one else.  This is where the problems come in.  It is when we go through troubles and difficulties and we are not talking about them to our husbands, or our wives, but to other people.  Marriage is sacred and this is the way that we need to keep it. 

The 3 P’s of dating, paired off, paid for, and planned. These are some very powerful P words, especially when it comes to dating.  Dating should be something that we do frequently, it is the prep that we need for marriage. It is a great learning experience and we really need to take advantage of it while we are at this school.  One of the things that I think that we really need to take advantage of while we are at this school is the ability that we have to go on dates with so many different people from so many different walks of life.  While we need to go on many dates before we find the person that we want to marry, we need to make sure that our dates consist of the 3 p’s/  They need to be paired off dates, not necessarily group dates, or even double dates,  The need to be paid for.  You can’t be dining and dashing, that wouldn’t be a very good date, and they need to be planned.  I have been on some dates where nothing was planned, and those dates turned out to be awful.  There never really is a waste of a date, but those dates that I have been on that weren’t planned, were never really productive and they usually ended up being really short and not very fun.  But if we do keep to the 3 P’s we can have better quality dates, and dating is really going to help us to prepare for marriage when the time comes.

I have really found what we have been learning this week very interesting.  I really think that it is interesting why people date the way that they do and what the difference between real love and false love is.  One of the things that I really found interesting was actually in another class of mine.  We are going over basically the same stuff.  One of the principles that I have found to be interesting is the idea of fragmentation.  I know that we didn’t go over this in family relations class, but I really just think that this principle is very interesting.  What fragmentation is, is when someone, for lack of a better way to say it, falls in love with the idea of falling in love.  This can happen in many different ways. For example if someone falls in love with someone because they just like the idea of being in love with somebody, that is fragmentation.  This isn’t real love and it is never going to last.  You need to make sure that you are focusing on more than just one aspect of the person.  When you do this you are going to have better success with your relationship and you are more going to have a longer relationship as well.  I just thought that this idea was so interesting because I have seen so many people fall in love with someone just because of their looks, or because they have a lot of money.  You need to focus more on the person as a whole and not just the individual attributes about them.

Man and Woman need to work together for the betterment of the family and for the community.  Both genders have different roles, but this does not mean that one is more important than the other.  They need to work together in their different roles.  Studies show that men tend to be more aggressive while on the other hand, women tend to be more sensitive and more based on the relationships that they have with people.  It is very important that these two very different roles come together for the sake of the family.  The father is there to preside on the home, but that does not mean that he is supposed to rule the house with an iron first.  He needs to consult the wife and they need to make sure that they are making the decisions together.  When they get married, they are not just two separate people living together.  They need to change themselves and become one in purpose.  Only when they are one in purpose are they going to be able to raise their children in righteousness and help to fulfill the plan of the Creator.  Everything that we do should be for the betterment of the children and the family, and to make sure that we are doing everything that is within our power to make it back to live with our heavenly father once again, and to live in everlasting glory with him and with our families.

There is nothing that can take the place of a good family.  Unfortunate there are not a lot of people now a days that can say that they came from a good nuclear family.  There are so many groups of people that have been divorced or just do not have spouses in some way.  These families have many hardships and that makes it hard on the children as well.  One of the things that really stuck out to me was that some families are really having trouble with keeping themselves together as a coherent group in this day in age.  One of the videos that we watched for classes addressed this.  I what happened was that there was a lower income family and there was a lady and her kids, and that was it.  She wasn’t married.  The son thought that in order to be cool and fit in at school, that he needed some nice new clothes.  He didn’t want to go around without a shirt on either because that was considered lower class to him.  He also didn’t want to bring anybody over to his house because he was embarrassed about living in the house that they did.  All the meanwhile the mom was working hard to provide support for her family.  This really made me think because even though we may not have the same income as some other family.  Money is no the root of happiness.  I would have to say that the family is.  As long as you have your family everything is going to be ok, and I find that to be really comforting.

 

One of the things that I have learned this week as I studied about the family was just how important it is to look at the family through family systems theory.  Families operate according to the different roles that they fall into within the family system.  They do not necessarily get to choose what role they are going to fulfill, they just fill what is needed.  We can see this with the example of the good kid and the bad kid.  When the bad kid leaves the system and moves out, then his role is free and needs to be filled.  This is where the good kids comes into play.  Because there is a role that is not being filled, the good kid fills the void that has become.  The good kid starts to act out and to make trouble and this helps to fill the hole that has been created in the family.  We are able to learn so much about our families and other families when we look at different family systems.  There are tons of possibilities that can happen within a family and if we look for the different subsystems we can learn a lot about families.

One of the other things that I found to be very interesting was circular casualty.  This just basically means that we play different roles in different systems.  We play a different role when we are at home as opposed to when we are at work or with our friends.  I just thought that this was extremely interesting because it’s true.  When I look at my life I act differently in different situations, but I think that this is the case with lots of different people as well.  Everyone fulfills different roles according to what the system needs at that moment.

There are so many things that I have found to be so shocking about the family.  One of the things that I thought was just crazy was the fact that so many people think that the family is so old school.  They thing that marriage is a failing tradition and they are trying to change the definition of it altogether.  Marriage should be between a man and women, but recent trends are pushing the envelope on this.  They are saying “Hey!!  Marriage can be between a man and a woman, a man and a man, a woman and a woman, or even, one of the latest things that I have read, a woman and the Eiffel Tower.  Marriage has just changed so much that it has almost become a mockery to many different people.  It is taking one of the most basic institutions that there is, and one of the most essential ones, and changing to so that it can be just whatever.  I don’t think that this is right, and I believe that many people need to think about what they are doing. 

One of the other things that I found to be shocking was just how many people don’t think that what they are dong has any effect on anyone but themselves.  Marriage isn’t just something that affects the two people, or objects involved, it affects everyone.  It affects extended family members, neighborhoods, the community, but most importantly, the children.  Children are affected in many different ways. They may act out, they may do other things.  I am not a child professional, but what I do know is that children are out futures.  We need to make sure that they have the best set up for growing up and being successful in life.  They are our future and we need to make sure that they have it better than we did.  There is no need for them to be confused about the moral dilemmas that are going on in our world.  Just think of the children.

I really hope that this works.  This is just a test.  I am really glad that I have the opportunity to share my insights!