Inspiration

It is crazy how much can change in the course of a year and a half. Since I first started this blog as a project for a class that I wasn't interested in, I have now changed my major to Marriage and Family Studies, and am looking forward to my internship in January with United Families International. 

The family is amazing and I've finally realized how important it is that we are educated about the issues, and speak up and protect the family. 

I just wanted to share a story about a lady who inspired me

 

So Natalie has been a friend of mine for many years. I went to visit her at work the other day and she was telling me about making a sign that said closed for Thanksgiving for the company she works for.

However when she went to make the sign the only pictures they had were of pumpkins. This really bothered her because Thanksgiving is not about a dried up piece of fruit, it is about family. So she did something about it. She called marketing and asked about having a family focused picture for Thanksgiving. They directed her to someone further up in the company. However in this department, suggestions were reviewed regularly but for them to change there needed to be several comments. So she spread the news around to the other employees and asked if they could also recommend a family themed picture. Natalie then figured that was all she could do, but that nothing would happen.

But when she checked a week later a family picture had been added to the Thanksgiving selection. It was simple, but it was about family. 

Her story inspired me. It is so amazing that she could make a difference. It wasn't a huge things she did, but it was a small way of allowing people to look past the food and see the people we are sharing the day with. 

This story also makes me think of how much I have learned. Before I would have thought why bother, it is a sign. But now I realize the importance of the family and I am blown away by the effort she took to support the family. 

new blog

So for another class we are addressing some threats to the family. Me and my partner picked cohabitation and abortion. So here is the link for that.

http://familythreats.blogspot.com/

Divorce:
Divorce has never been part of my family, and for that I am thankful. But it is part of many people's families. So it is good to look into it and realize the difficulties that come because of it and remarriage.
We looked at the divorce timeline and the things that contributed to it's rise. One of the major things was the new divorce law. This was a no-fault divorce law which made it so that you didn't have to provide evidence of how bad the relationship was. This made it easier to get a divorce, and less embarrassing.
One of the things we talked about was that the average divorced father lives 400 miles away from his 12 year old children. This is due to many reasons but the main one is he has to find a better paying job. Divorce tends to effect the finances negatively of both parents. One of the major factors on the father's income is that now he has to pay child support.
We then talked about the difficulties that are associated with reconstituted families. The second marriage is less likely to make it than the first. This is due to the fact that not only does the couple have all the challenges of a first marriage, they also have many more. One of these challenges is the children. New rules and expectations come with a remarriage. But we learned some steps that can help a family deal with this time.
-It takes at least two years to reach normalcy
-the biological parent needs to handle the heavy discipline
-the step parent needs to take on the role of a good uncle/aunt. One who the child can turn to, and talk to, they also need to give their support to the parent.
-and the parents need to be conferencing together.

Parenting:
Today in class we learned about parenting. I found this subject very interesting because we took a different approach to what I normally hear. We talked about active parenting and how we need to focus on the needs of the child, and not just the negative behaviors.
Which I agree with, it has always bugged me when people talk about how they just want to teach their children to obey, listen, and follow instructions. Because I have always thought that parenting is so much more, we should be trying to teach our children understanding. W want our kids to understand why they are listening, not just doing what we say because "I said so."

Everyone has needs and when our needs are not met we try different things to have them met. The two needs that we talked about in class were contact & belonging and Power. And lets say our need for contact & belonging is not being met. We try to satisfy it with other things like misbehavior or by annoying others. But we can never get enough of what we don't need. So we can be annoying as we can but our need will not be met. And that goes for every need, if we try to satisfy it in the wrong way, no matter how much we try our need will not be met.

I just find this amazing, and it makes me look at parenting differently.

This week was alot of work.
Actually it was, we talked about work, and the affects that it has on the family.
We discussed the history of work which I found very interesting. How it hasn't been until recently, since the industrial revolution, that families have been separated during work. Before then everyone did most everything together. Which I had never though about before. Yes there was still some division of labor but it was due to the skills that people possessed. Since men are generally stronger they would do some of the heavy lifting, and women and more detail oriented.

This is not the case anymore. Dad works outside of the home, and in many cases mom does too. The children used to work in factories, but now they are gone all day for school, then scouts, sports, dance, piano, and hundreds of other things.

I grew up working, and I love it. I don't have a job right now and so I feel extremely lazy. I used to get mad if there was family work that I wasn't able to do. Work has always been part of my life, and I see the benefits of it.

Communication and Conflict:
Two topics of this weeks discussions. We started off with communication which is something that I feel is always talked about when looking at relationships. But that is okay because there is always new things to learn.
words= 14%
tone= 35%
nonverbal=51%
these were the numbers that we used when looking at how we communicate. Even though there are many different studies that quote all sorts of percentages. But all of them have nonverbal as being the majority. Which is something that I find cool. How much we say when we are not saying anything.
Which brings me to something else that we talked about. Which is that you are always communicating. Even if you walk away or give people the silent treatment then you are still communicating some message. Which means you should always be aware of the messages you are sending.

We stated out our conversation of conflict by talking about power and what power actually is. The definition that we came up with was the ability to influence they way someone thinks feels, or behaves. And there are different types of power.
One of the things the book talked about was styles of conflict. When didn't go over this in class but I found it interesting. These are competition, avoidance, accommodation, compromise, and collaboration. I thought about what style I use. and I think it is one of two depending on the situation. I'm either accommodation, where I neglect what I want in order for the other person to have what they want. Which isn't always a good thing. But I realized that I am also collaboration. This is when you are very concerned about your interests but also the other's interests. I can think of situations where I wasn't going to give in, but at the same time I didn't want the other person to give in to me, because I cared about their opinions.

It is good to be aware of these things because once you realize how you operate you have a better ability to know what is going on. You can build your relationship, and work on establishing healthy boundaries.

This week we learned about family crisis.
We looked at how families can go through similar trials but the responses to it are completely different between families. This can be explained using the ABC-X model.
A- actual event
B-behavioral response
C- cognition (thoughts)
and then all those together equal X which is total experience.

We then went on to discuss the other things that effect how stressful a crisis is.
It can be internal or external, normative or nonnormative, ambiguous or non ambiguous, volitional or non volitional, chronic or acute, and cumulative or isolated.
One of the things that I found interesting from this list was volitional or non volitional. Because if we have some choice in the event then it is not as stressful to us. Because we like to feel in control.

We then talked about ways of coping with crisis.
If you are prepared for them, then they will not have the same effects, and the stress will push our families closer together instead of opening up a gap.

Responsibility during an event was another things we also discussed. How we need to recognize the responsibly that we have. But we also talked about in some crisis that we are the victim and didn't have control over the situation. but the responsibility for that is spelled response-ability. We are still in control of how we respond.