Class this week was wonderful we talked about parenting and how to do it.

                We talked about Popkins theory that it is a mistake to focus only on the children’s behavior (their actions only). We need to be willing to look deeper and find the source or the ‘why’ of the child’s actions and then we can help them the most. We also talked about how the best thing you can do for children is to allow them to experience the natural consequences of their actions. There are however 3 exceptions to that.

1.       If it is too dangerous. (Example: Not letting kids play in a busy street)

2.       If it is too far in the future. (Example: Not letting a child miss school completely so they learn by the time they are 30)

3.       If other people are affected. (Example: Not letting a child see what happens if they throw something at their sibling).

We talked for a moment about Maslows Hierarchy of needs which in a nutshell is if people have their needs met in a certain order then they are less likely to do bad things. We used a few examples:

1.       The child needs a sense of belonging, if they don’t have that in the home/from the parents they will seek it out in friends which can be good or bad. But ultimately they need to be taught how to contribute to society and the best place for that is in the home (usually).

2.       The child needs to feel like they have some power over their life. If they can’t feel that then they will seek it in rebellion and the controlling of other people.

3.       The child also needs to feel a sense of protection in the home. Hopkins says that we need to teach children assertiveness (the ability to confidently make change on the things of the environment) and forgiveness. Most children have a desire to master things, it comes in a child working so hard to walk, crawl and master our bodies as we grow.

The best method to teach a child something you need to be logical. It needs to make sense to them or else it becomes a punishment and can end up causing more problems than it fixes.  If we see a behavior we are concerned about we start with a polite request “Will you please…”, then you bump it up a bit with an “I” statement “When you do ______ I feel _______ because I would like_______”, finally start with a firmer statement (still not angry) but treat them like an adult and relate it to them.

The other thing we talked about was time out. Let’s face it when you ground a child sending them to their room is not the best way to do things because they are not going to do any self-reflection in their room they are just going to be angry. The best thing to do is to ‘ground’ them to you (they have to spend the day with you). By them spending time with you, you are able to help them, talk to them and teach them.

In the history of America the times that families have done the best and be the strongest is when America had a lot of farms, when families worked together to make sure that everyone survived. By having the kids work side by side with the parents they were more involved in the teaching of their children, and the children learned how to work with other people. You would think there would be more problems and anger and I have no doubt there was but there was also a special bond that was made by working side by side with other people. When money was not as important as trading of good and time.

I am not suggesting that that was a better time of life but there are some values that I think would be a good idea to bring back.

So class this week was interesting because we only met once but what we walked about was fascination to me because it coincided perfectly with the situation that my wife and I are in right now.

Interestingly the first thing we began talking about was “Why do people like going out and camping?” We had a few people who were not too enthusiastic about the idea of going out and camping in the cold (it is too cold to snow up in Rexburg right now) but I digress. We talked about how there is something bonding about going out in nature and ‘working for survival and comfort’ that is provides a unique opportunity to work side by side with someone and get to know them and the work ethic that they have. I don’t know if you have ever heard the adage that goes something along the lines of “Don’t marry someone until you have taken them out camping”. We talked about how that is a unique opportunity to see not only how people are with working and providing, but also to see how they handle being away from day to day comforts that we tend to take for granted.

We moved the conversation to the past and the industrial revolution and how things in the dynamic of the family changed so dramatically with women and children leaving the home to work. We talked about how that was ‘supposed’ to make life easier because that would get rid of the financial burden that the family had and since that is the biggest stressor it would make sense that getting rid of it would solve a lot of problems right? Wrong as the families separated and were more influenced by the world without any kind regulation on the part of the parents it just drove families apart and they did not rely on one another. The flip side of that being when people would work on farms as a family, and would trade goods for goods and money was always tight, but the families were always together, the kids being taught by the parents and the families learning how to work together. We talked about the benefits and the costs of the husband and wife both working now a days because the mentality that we have is more like the industrial revolution.

If we look at the American history most people would readily admit to the industrial revolution being one of the hardest times that America had when it came to the family and financial situations. But if we could let go of that a bit and think more about the time of ‘farming’ and the things that the families gained by working side by side, relying on one another and trusting not just each other but the community as a whole things worked more smoothly for family life.

There was a study done I think shortly after 2000 of men and women who work outside the home. The average income for him was $42,000/yr and after one maternity leave for her was $21,000/yr but when they factored in the cost of child care the final amount that they were making as a couple was a grand total of $40,000. So the couple was in the end paying $23,000 so their child could be raised by a stranger, not having enough time as a family, constantly being worn out by their jobs and not getting to know their spouse or their child as much as they could.

I know that is not the standard for everything, but when considering the benefits of having two parents working outside the home remember to factor in more than just the financial benefits, but the impact that will be felt by your family structure.

My post this week will be a bit shorter than most of my other posts have been for two main reasons. 1. I didn’t take a lot of notes in class because of the way the discussion went (I had a hard enough time taking the notes I did) 2. I am crazy tired right now and am having a hard time focusing.

Our discussion was focused around the question

“Why do bad things happen to good people/good families?”

We talked about a few different points

-          Because this world is not designed to be easy.

-          Because it is in the hard things that we do that we find and define ourselves.

-          When bad things happen you can ether let is define you or refine you, as a family you can use it to let you break apart more or come together more.

-          Bad things happen because that is the plan that God set up and we knew that when we came here.

-          Bad is a possibility to everyone, to assume that bad things are not or will not happen to everyone is a statistical improbability.

It was funny to me because one of my hobbies is to collect quotes that are about getting over hard things and so I kept having quotes roll around my mind for the entire class period which gave me a chuckle. We talked about hard times and the things that we as students have experienced and the things we have learned from those hard things.

We have a student who speaks Chinese and my teacher asked her to write “Crisis” which consists of two symbols that by themselves stand for “Danger” and “Opportunity”. We began talking about the opportunities that come from hard times and how people and families can do two things when it comes to hard times, they can ether let those hard times put wedges in the relationships or they can turn towards one another and lean on one another instead of away from one another. Apparently women have more of a tendency to go to her mom and talk about things with her mom and men have a tendency to draw inwards and just ‘deal’ with the problem alone.

Both of these reaction is allowing the wedge to be put in the relationship, but if instead of that she talks to him and he listens then he talks about his pain they can actually grow closer together, but to grow closes of all they can both turn to Christ and allow him to wrap them together and help honor their marriage vows and help them maintain them.

If you are willing to put yourself aside and focus on your spouse and they focus on you then there is not anything that can tear you apart but it cannot be one person putting everything in, it must be both of you putting everything you have on the table and reaping the benefits of the meal.

So this week we had an interesting discussion about sex in class, and it was not one of those that everyone was blushing and giggling about the whole time we talked about sex and the effects of it on relationships. We also talked about the different effects of the hormones in the body and even about the different stages of sex. I had no idea people had classified it into four different stages of sex. It makes sense that someone would have but I had honestly never thought about it like that, but I will get to that later. We also talked about the different problems that happen in marriage with intimacy and the different ways that men and women look at things and how misunderstandings can come into the mix without either him or her realizing.

On to the fun part of what happened in class. The first and most obvious thing that we talked about to get it out of the way was the physiological differences between arousal of men and women. We were talking about the 4 stages of sex as we talked about this, and the first stage is called Excitement.

1.       Excitement: When the person is aroused. Men have an erection, Women lubricate, but both prepare for Sex.

2.       Plateau: Pre Orgasm. Men tend to get to and through this much quicker than Women.

3.       Orgasm: Women sometimes take longer of getting here, but sometimes Women can experience more than one, Men cannot.

4.       Resolution: coming down from the Orgasm, usually women come down in descending waves while men drop like a rock.

The hormones experienced during sex.

-          Serotonin: Feels a sense of emotional warmth.

-          Dopamine: Feeling of excitement/thrill.

-          Oxytocin: A strong sense of Bonding.

Each of these hormones creates a blend that in all humans foster or essentially throw miracle grow in relationships, fondness and ultimately love. They are each important individually and quite honestly serve important roles.

We talked about some of the problems that come with intimacy. There are many potential problems in intimacy of any kind. There is no ‘one size fixes all’ when it comes to problems in the marriage. Sometimes men don’t understand that Women may want snuggling/kissing to be a totally separate act than sex. Sometimes she needs to know that those things are still there in the marriage in order to feel more secure in the marriage. It is something that men need to remember and be sensitive too, however on the flip side of that is that when women say no to sex for men it makes men feel as though something is wrong (even if there is not) and it can add to the problem if women don’t tell the guy ‘why’ they don’t want sex. So all in all both men and women need to be willing to talk about whatever they are feeling because let’s face it, it is hard to know what is going on in another person’s mind.

This week in class was interesting, we focused a lot on defining what is ‘attractive’ and how it differs from culture and person. We also had a long and involved lesson on co-habitation and the impact it has on marriage and relationships however in this blog I will not be talking about that but focusing more on the attraction aspect.

                So the best place to start is the most basic aspect, “what is attraction”?

                Well quite frankly that is really hard to describe because we all think about it in a different way. There are definitely somethings that we all look for in a potential spouse, things like physical attractiveness (one of my mission companions put it best, he said something along the lines of “you don’t want to wake up, roll over one day and look at your wife and think eehhhhhhh!!!!), we tend to look at a persons values, if they feel the same way you do about things like money, religion, kids etc…, we also look at their personality and try to figure out if we are “compatible”. So those are a few things that we as humans tend to look for in a potential spouse, but the way we defined those in class was by calling them ‘filters’ that we put people through. It is different for every person too usually based on how they were raised and the things and people they grew up around. For instance when I was looking for a wife I wanted to marry and be around women who were strong personalities but not ‘in your face’ annoying about it, but that was because my mother and my older sister were ‘very strong’ in their personalities. After all I didn’t want to marry someone who needed me to baby sit her or take care of everything in the house and out of it. We all have things like that that we have or did look for and so those kinds of filters  help us choose people we want to date or even hang out with.

                We talked about hoe people who have similarities tend to get married, but lets face it if you were to marry someone who was another you than one of you would be totally irrelevant.  We took a poll of the class and everyone agreed that they would rather be married to someone who balanced them out by being different than them. It was interesting to hear the kinds of things that women wanted in a man and the guys wanted in women. Generally the women wanted a sensitive guy who was in touch with his emotions, and the men wanted a woman who was willing to stand side by side with him.

                So then the discussion shifted around until we were talking about ‘how’ we become attracted to one another and our teacher talked about how instead of it being one great big earth shattering moment it is usually a process. Yes you can be immediately attracted to someone and yes it can be earth shaking, but it doesn’t just stop there it tends to grow or shrink from that initial moment. There are 3 things that are needed in order to have attractiveness grow or shrink.

                The first is “Time”, he made the argument that it takes a minimum of 3 months to know someone well enough that you are really attracted to them and not just the idea of them. Or in other words that is the time that it takes to have put people through all or at least the majority of the filters that you put people through.

                The second thing you need is to talk, you need to be willing to tell the other things about yourself frankly and honestly (because a relationship built on lies is almost always destined to fail) and so by talking about yourself and the other talking about themselves it allows you to learn about each other and frankly to start to grow closer together. I am not saying you should throw all your dirty laundry at their feet and hope for the best but as you slowly reveal the things about yourself that make you unique, when it comes to your likes and dislikes; also talking about your past and what makes you the way you are it shows trust that is being built up in the sharing and receiving of every part of the person you are wanting to grow around and with.

                The third thing you need to have is togetherness, you need to be willing to do a variety of things together to share experiences and build memories together. But there is another aspect of it as well and that is that you will see the person in situations and learn things about them that you would not be able to learn any other way. Someone in class said the best way to tell how some is under pressure you take them camping for the weekend, so you can see how they are after a few days of hard work (hiking), no luxuries, and frankly uncomfortable situations all around. If they do well under that kind of pressure than perhaps they would do well when/if you are married and have kids and don’t get sleep because of kids and you have to work hard and be in uncomfortable positions because of moves or jobs etc…

                It is not a full proof thing but the principle is valled and can be applied to a lot of things but I digress that I don’t have enough time to talk about them all.

                I feel like I could talk about this kind of thing a lot but I am trying not to get on a soapbox so I will stop myself here and hope for the best.

                Please let me know what you think about my blog and feel free to comment on anything in here. 

The discussions that we had this week were very interesting, we were talking about gender and the differences that can be found in men and women. We talked for a while about the people who are trying to blur the lines between the different genders and the impact that that is having on society today.

As we spoke about the differences of men and women it was funny to me (as it always is) to note the difference that men and women have. A couple of years ago a friend of mine and I were talking about things and she commented how she wished more men would think like guy men so that more guys could understand girls. I couldn’t help but laugh when she said that but it does bear some thinking about. What differences are there in the mentality of men and women? Are they good or bad?

We talked about how society tends to teach each of the genders what they ‘should’ be like. They try to force ideas onto each other, and while I do not advocate that by any means there are some good things that can come from societal teachings. When we opened the class we talked about a quote that talked about raising boys to be more like girls, and while I disagreed initially I know that there is some merit in the idea. Instead of raising boys to be more like girls what if we were to raise boys to be men, girls to be women and then we do our best to help them understand one another.

As our discussion progressed we ended up talking more and more about how the differences between men and women is not a bad thing but instead something that can balance each other out. Stereotypically men don’t do as well with babies as women, and men tend to be more violent than women. The argument of course being that men are the ‘hunter gatherers’ and women are ‘nurturers’ when it comes to the roles. Now there are exceptions of course but they have shown with studies and reports that boys have a greater tendency to pick up a stick (or anything for that matter) and pretend it is a gun, and women tent to pick up a stick and pretend it is a baby and take care of it. As we talked and discussed the readings that we had and the observations that we made for ourselves I couldn’t help but wonder why people want to blur the lines between genders? I am not trying to say people who have same gender attraction are bad, or the fact that women tend to make less money in the work place is the way it should be, but why should men be more sensitive if they do not make the choice to for themselves? Why should women be pushed to work outside the house if they don’t want to?

To be quite frank the stereo typical roles that men and women have has built a working society for how many hundreds of years or at least builds working families in society for hundreds of years, so why are we working so hard to change it? Again I would be happy to see women making more money in the workplace if that is what they want to do, or for men to understand women regularly, but why are we forcing change instead of motivation change? I have had many conversations with my wife where when she tells people that she wants to be a full time mom she is questioned and told that she is wrong. But I can’t help but ask why? If that is what she wants who should be able to question that?

I firmly believe that genders existed before we were born and there are not ‘mistakes’ with gender. Are there more masculine women than me absolutely, are there more feminine men than my wife? Heck yeah there is. But does that mean that they have to be ashamed of that? Why is that not accepted by society to the point where they feel the need to change? A story was shared of a woman who has a medical condition that causes more testosterone in her body than the average woman, she was not into babies or dresses, and she liked going out and doing guy stuff more than the average girl. She is happily married to a man, and lives as happy and satisfying a life as anyone else and it didn’t require her to do anything other than live up to herself.

I am not trying to sound arrogant enough to say that I know the answer to every problem going on out in life, but I do know that if we were to raise boys to be men (however they chose to be) and girls to be women (again however they choose to do that) than I think there would be a lot more satisfaction in the lives of people in general. Why is who, how, why and what you are bad? Why do you need to change?

I was never a ‘normal person’ and for many years I was angry about it but once I started to live true to myself, then I started to be happier and I grew into a better person. Somehow I convinced my Beautiful wife to marry me and you know what, this still not normal guy has a happy marriage with a wonderful wife who completes me and helps me be my best self. We get in arguments about x-men, jedi’s, and she indulges my nerd-iness when buying me gifts. I love her desire to dress up our kids and research medical conditions that just don’t make sense to me. Life is not easy nor will it ever be but if you own who you are then what is the big deal? Why do we push our own ideas on other people about ‘how they should be’?

I am not a philosopher however and honestly would love to hear anyone’s thoughts on things like this. If you try to change my mind about any one thing then honestly ‘good luck’ but I realize your opinions are important to. Please share if you are willing.

  I forgot to post this information last week because I got caught up in things that are not that important. By the way I am not really sure how to begin a blog post so I will be jumping in each week with both feet.
  We began talking about the different systems that come with family, relationships and in general any kind of dynamic that sets up over time (I say that because I am including unmarried couples living together and single parent families).
 
  The first theory we talked about is called "Family Systems"; it is the idea that the whole family is greater and more important than the parts. It is the idea that a person looks more to the needs and wants of the whole family rather than being worried about each of ourselves individually.
 
  The second theory is called "Conflict"; This is the idea that one person is trying to influence or even control the other person (or people) in the family. It is on the most basic level a power struggle in the family. It tends to lead to arguments and trouble further down the road if the family is not careful. Of all the things we talked about this one was the most interesting and disturbing for me because I hate conflict with a passion. I get uncomfortable when I am around any kind of conflict (not to be mistaken with argument which is different in my mind because conflict is loud, angry and negative every time, but arguments can be worthwhile and helpful in order to resolve problems before they become serious) that I can't help but just want to leave. Learning about something like this helped me be more careful about how and why I do things in order to avoid it more in my own home.

  The third is called Exchange theory; this idea is more about the give and take that comes in life. It usually involves more of a healthy relationship that has give and take (remember this includes family, work, and friend relationships). When you are around and with people they are willing to give back and invest in the relationship, and  you are investing in the relationship as well.

  The fourth and last theory that we talked about is called Symbolic Interaction. This one is one that I had a hard time understanding but I will explain it as best as I can. It is the idea that everything that happens is symbolic, or represents, the heath of the relationship. For example if a husband and wife choose not to sit next to one another when they watch a movie that could be 'symbolic' of them fighting, or it could be 'symbolic' of any number of things that could be happening.
  It would take a psychological degree that I don't have to go into that kind of thing more but the basics of it is that the families actions show the way the family feel and the things they are going through.

  It was interesting to hear about all of these because while the idea of them are not too new, to be able to lay it out so black and white. To think about these things and look at how/where I am in my life and wit the relationships that I have in my life is kind of insightful when I look at it seriously. If I am willing to look at the way things are and apply even the ideas of these things I actually think it can help give a critical measuring stick in which to see how your relationships are and how they can be improved. No it is not a 100% science by reading a blog that comes from the notes of a college student, but it is a place where anyone who wants can find a place to start and work for an improved relationship.
       Cool right?