Top Ten

   

    So for my final my teacher wanted us to make a list of our top ten things we learned, so I decided to share them on here!

1.     Communication

I feel like it was really important what we learned about not only communicating, but also communicating effectively. It is not enough to just talk. It’s important to have a safe environment to talk. Learning to listen and care about the other person will help you communicate better. I feel like if we spend more time trying to understand the other person and make them happy, we will be more effective and happy in our relationships. It was meaningful to learn about the 3 mediums of communication. 1. Words, 2. Tone, and 3. Non-Verbal. I feel it is important to recognize these things so that our communicating can be effective.

2.     Boundaries

This one goes along with communication. The most important boundary lesson I learned was the appropriate boundaries for husband and wife. I learned that you only discuss your issues, struggles, and fights with each other. Your sex life is also private and should only be between the two of you. You need to be united as a couple, and deal with issues together. It was interesting to learn about how the man should be involved in the wedding details, and not all things should be done just between the wife and her mother. There need to be boundaries between married people and their parents. Learning about these boundaries has been really important to me. I also found it important to learn how to have friends and not to do things with the opposite gender alone it only leads to trouble.

3.     Family system theories

I thought what we learned about family systems was really meaningful. How important the family is to society and the importance of it. What I got most out of this was that the family is very dependent on each part. Anything one member does effects all the other members even if it is just in small ways. We all lean on each other and need each other. As a family we are stronger, but we can also be damaged most by our family when they break our trust. I think understanding that the different family systems that people have grown up with will change how they act and behave. Understanding this will help us give people the benefit of the doubt and really try to understand where they are coming from.

4.     Including husbands in pregnancy etc.

It was very eye opening for me to realize how un-involved fathers often feel. I really liked talking about and figuring out ways to include fathers in all aspects of parenthood and child rearing. I loved the baby blues power point, and recognizing the potential issues and ways to help marital satisfaction stay high after having children. Children are a really stressful part of life, however they can bring lots of joy to people. I loved learning about and being aware of things that I can do to be successful. I also found it important that the husband does not feel replaced by the children; he still needs to be number one to his wife.

5.     RAM Model

I loved learning how important it is to know whom you are marrying before hand. We went over so many valuable things to look for in dating and things you should know before you are married. I loved the reminder that we should be doing certain things when we date. I had always believed it, but I have really come to understand better that we need to really know someone before we have a physical relationship. I also really liked the 3 T’s Time, Talk and Togetherness. I really want to get to know someone before I get married. The idea of misattribution of arousal was very eye opening, it is really important to know about that, so you are not misled by your body’s signals.

6.     Counseling together

I loved the guidance about counseling together. I liked the steps of, expressing love, praying for the Lords guidance, discussing until you come to a consensus of the Lord’s will, then pray and thank the Lord. I found the guidance very helpful and instructive. I feel like this is a great way to make decisions as a family. This also goes along with including children in different processes and letting them feel involved and important.

7.     Importance of fathers

Fathers are so important and often we take them for granted. We need fathers in the home. The role they play cannot be replaced. I really want to help my future husband know and feel this in my family. Along those lines it was interesting to see that families often lose money when they have both parents working. I often felt that although I do not want to work when I have children, I would have to too make ends meet. So I really liked learning about the statistics of this particular trend. From the readings and things we discussed in class, families are much better off with a father in the home. It is just a fact, they are important and needed, if we understood this better, we would have stronger families.

8.     Problem Handling model

I loved this model for raising children. I especially loved learning about how we as adults should respond to a child who is misbehaving or needs to do something. The step of politely asking is such an obvious thing, yet we often go way past it into aggression and demands. I am really excited to try this with my younger brothers, as I feel like it will help me communicate better with them, and give me a better relationship with them. I loved learning that there are better ways than yelling and threats. I have often felt like there was, but I was not sure what the steps would be. I found this information marvelous! I also loved the thoughts about respecting your children, if we respect them, they are much more likely to obey and respect us. We need to model those good behaviors to our children.

9.     Crisis handling

I loved learning about how to handle a crisis, and what makes a crisis such a big deal. I especially loved the Chinese symbol and the message of a crisis being danger and opportunity. I love learning that if we can look at a crisis in a positive way and pull together not apart, we can become stronger. I really want to try this in my life, and hopefully will become good at being positive! I feel like the ABCX model is something I will remember and apply in my life when challenges come. I loved the counsel about what strong families do. These are preventative measures for before the challenges come, if we are strong before hand, we can come through stronger. Learning that coping is an action word is really important as well.

10.  Marital satisfaction.

I guess what I learned most with this is that there needs to be love and mutual self-disclosure. Marriage needs to be a covenant, not just a contract. We need to think of others and how we can make them happy. If we go into a marriage thinking about what someone else can do for us, we will not be as satisfied. We need to respect our spouse’s thoughts, desires, and concerns. There will always be things that bug you about someone else; the key is to love them anyways. Having incompatibilities does not make the marriage fail, our responses and what we do with our incompatibilities can. If we work hard to follow these other patterns and counsel, we can make a marriage not only work, but be joyous! In the end this class helped me see that we need to take an active approach in our relationships, and we need to work for them. It also has taught me, that marriage and child rearing can bring the ultimate joy. From what I read and we discussed I feel like happiness is very possible, but also a lot of work. You cannot get something for nothing!  The harder we work for it, the more rewarding it will be.

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Parenting

This week we have been talking about parenting, parenting styles, disciplining and that sort of thing. One of the things that was said, by whom I cannot remember was something to the affect of  “the more we seek to control, the less likely we are to influence”. Think about that in regards to children and parenting?

We talked about the Problem Handling Model from Michael Popkins, Active parenting. One of the important things to see there, is that it is not necessarily the problem solving method, but handling. This is important when it comes to children. Children don’t always need us to “solve” things, and things do not always have a perfect solution, what we need to do is learn to handle situations. In the Problem Handling Model, there are different approaches depending on who “owns” the problem. Owning the problems does not mean who is to blame, but who is most affected by the problem or wants the problem to change.

If it is the child’s problem, the best thing we can do is provide verbal and emotional support. We must allow our children to learn from natural consequences. Natural consequences are things that will happen well, naturally. We cannot swoop in and “save” them, unless

1. The natural consequence is too dangerous.

2. The consequence is to far in the future to provide a learning experience.

3. If the consequences will affect others negatively.

 It is also important to step back as the parent and not “preach” at them. Typically when someone does something stupid, they don’t need someone else to point it out to them, they get it. Let the child feel your love, and let them learn. Show confidence that they can fix or help the situation they have put themselves in. We talked about how it is really important for us to respect our children, when we respect them they respect us. They say that the only power you have over your kids when they become teenagers is the power of your relationship, so make it positive and strong. 

We spoke about how “punishment” is not really a great way to teach your children, disciplining is different then punishing. Discipline means to teach. Whereas punishment is something a superior does to someone inferior.

Now we move onto what should be done if the parents “own” the problem.

1. Is a polite request of the child, to do something or change a behavior. We need to speak in a calm and respectful manner.

2. If this does not work we use an “I” Statement. “I” statements have four parts to it:

·      You would say something like “When you (insert issue)

·      “I” Feel (insert emotion)

·      Because (insert why)

·      I would like (insert request)

3.If this still does not work, we then move onto a firm request or statement.

4.Lastly if we are ignored, we use Logical Consequences, consequences that the child knows about, and logically connects to the issue. If at any time the issue is corrected, remember to acknowledge it and thank them!

            This is a very brief summary of a very interesting and helpful model, I just wanted to share how awesome this stuff is, and encourage everyone to try it out! Like I said this is Michael Popkins model, feel free to look him up!

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Fatherhood Importance

     I was asked to look up some articles about the importance of Fathers in the home. I was then supposed to find 5 things that were important and write about them. Here are some of the things that I wrote about.

I chose two articles one entitled The Importance Of Fathers According to Science

The second was called The Important Role Of Dad

Why and how are Fathers important?

Both of these article talked about similar things, the five points I will focus on are as follows.

1.     Fathers are important to the emotional well-being and happiness of their children.

Some benefits talked of in the article “The Important Role of Dad” of having an affectionate, supportive, and involved father in the home are: enhance children’s cognitive, language and social development, academic achievement, a strong inner core, sense of well-being, good self- esteem and authenticity. It is important to notice that these things come from an involved father; simply having a father will not necessarily bring these results. Having a father helps children feel secure and safe. There is certainly a sense of security when you have a father.

2.     Fathers influence children’s relationships.

In the article “The Important Role of Dad” it expressed that a child’s relationship with their father can affect all of their relationships their whole life. It talked of how girls look for men who follow patterns that her fathers had. So if a father is loving, caring and encouraging, she will most likely look for a spouse with similar qualities. However, if the father was distant, emotionally unavailable or mean, a girl will often be drawn to similar men, because it is what she is familiar with. Boys on the other hand, they tend to model themselves after their father. They closely watch all that the father does and look for approval in all actions. They imitate those actions they see as successful. So if the father is controlling, abusive, and dominating, those are typically the behaviors the son will model in their lives. If the father was kind, loving, supportive and protective, the boys will most likely copy that.

3.      Children with Fathers are less likely to abuse drugs or alcohol or do jail time.

In the article “The Importance of Fathers According to Science” it talks about the statistics of drug and alcohol abuse. They sited a report that showed even after controlling for community context, there was still significantly more drug use among children who live in father-absent homes. I feel like part of the problem is also the fact that there is no father example. Fathers are often heroes to their children, without that guidance it is often easy for children to follow the crowd. Higher statistics of children without a father present are likely to do jail time, compared to those who have a father at home.

4.     Children with Fathers are less likely to live in poverty.

In article “The Importance of Fathers According to Science” also reported that 44% of kids in mother only families lived in poverty, compared to 12% who lived in homes with a married couple. Another statistic said that 47.6% of those without a father lived in poverty, over 4 times the amount of married couple families. As fathers are meant to be the providers, it makes sense that without that protection and care from a father, families would suffer.

5.     Children with Fathers do better in school.

In that same article it said that children that had highly involved fathers were 43% more likely to receive A’s. Father absent homes were 2 times as likely to repeat a grade as students with a father at home. Often fathers will help children with school, read to them, and help encourage them to want to succeed. Mothers also do this, but without the support of a spouse, the time and energy are a lot less available.

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