Godliness

Hello Everyone! In class this week we talked specifically about blended families. My thought for this week is a bit different than this, but I feel it is important and needs to be shared. The thing that stuck out the most to me was a phrase that Brother Williams said. He said, "Marriage is not natural..." and he just left it like that for a moment. The class was kind of taken back by that. We all thought, "How in the world is marriage not natural? People do it all the time? What are you saying Brother Williams?" Those were the thoughts going through my head at least. I was confused for a second until Brother Williams continued. He said "Yes, I believe marriage is not natural. It's supernatural. It's Godly." I get it now. The merging of two lives, even in the best of situations, is a lot of work. That's how it's supposed to be. It makes us better people! If we want our relationships to be great we need to make the chose to make them great. Also, even though having a great relationship with your spouse is a choice, it's a two person job. Both people need to be willing to sacrifice and work for the other in order for the marriage to work properly.

I think it's pretty special to be compared to our Father in Heaven, our God. I want to do my absolute best someday to ensure that I have a great marriage, and I'm going to expect the same from my future husband. I know I can do it and I know that everyone else can too if they are willing.

I just want to give a quick shout out to my amazing professor, Brother Williams has taught me so much and I'm so glad I got to participate in this wonderful class! He is so passionate about the family and you can see it every single day. You can tell he has an amazing testimony. I'm grateful for the experience I've had this semester.

With love: Sydney

Parenthood

Hello Everyone! This week we got to learn about parenting. To be honest, I never knew how difficult parenting is. Children are trick little people! The only thing I can think to accurately depict parenting is a balancing act. Dr. Micheal Popkins, a parenting publisher, shared this quote that is pretty accurate. He says, "The purpose of parenting is to protect and prepare a child to survive and thrive in the world they live in." The balancing act comes in when we try to protect our children and protect our children. If patents protect too much then their child won't be as prepared for life. If we prepare our children too much for the world then we have neglected to protect them.

Popkins suggests that there are 5 needs that every child has. The needs are contact/belonging, power, protection, withdrawl, and challenge. Now if these needs aren't being met then the child might exhibit behaviors that aren't the best as a way in order to try to meet their needs. Popkins suggests parenting skills that can be used to help your child to meet their needs

1. Contact/Belonging:

• Child's unwanted behavior: Undue attention seeking. This might include being overly obnoxious or clingy in order to feel contact and belonging.
• Parenting skill: Offer contact freely and teach your child to contribute. By offering contact freely, such as, giving hugs, high fives, pats on the back, and others, your child won't need to act out in order to receive that contact. Then by teaching your child to contribute it will help them know that you love and care about them. It lets them know that they have a special place in your home.

2. Power: 

• Child's unwanted behavior: Controlling others and rebellion. 
• Parenting skill: Parents can create choices and also let their child experience consequences. By creating choices you are allowing your child to feel like they are a little more in control of the situation even if the choice is what consequence they would rather for not eating their dinner. By you, as a parent, allowing your child to experience the natural consequences/ logical consequences of their choices they are then able to see why they need to follow the guidelines provided. Therefore there will be less rebellion.

3. Protection:

• Child's unwanted behavior: Revenge
• Parenting skill: Parents can teach their children to be assertive. They can also teach forgiveness. Teaching children to be assertive can help in so many ways, but children can't really learn to be assertive unless you let them be assertive in the home. This might mean letting them disagree with you at times. I understand that this can be hard, but learning to voice your opinion is so important. The best way to teach your child to be forgiving is to show them that you, as their father or mother, can forgive them. By teaching them these skills children can better handle situations that make them frustrated and they won't need to lash out against others.

4. Withdrawl:

• Child's unwanted behavior: Undue avoidance. This means procrastinating a stressful situation until it becomes overbearingly stressful.
• Parenting skill: Parents can teach their children to take brakes. This is different from undue avoidance because instead of abandoning the project or assignment or whatever is might be, you teach your children to work hard at the problem, take a brake, then come back and finish.

5. Challenge:

• Child's unwanted behavior: Undue risk taking.
• Parenting Skill: Parents can provide opportunities for skill development. Parents can do this for children of any age. From toddlers learning to walk all the way to High School seniors getting ready to graduate. 

I have personally seen how each of these parenting skills can have a positive impact on the lives of children. I hope this has helped someone. Have a fantastic week!

With love: Sydney

Education

Hello Everyone! I really enjoyed our lesson this week in Family Relations. We talked about the statement some people make that women who chose to become stay at home mothers are wasting their degrees. I disagree with this statement 100%. The major I have chosen is Marriage and Family Studies and I absolutely love it. I chose this major not in the hope of gaining a ton of money, but to benefit my future marriage and family. Julie B Beck have a great quote during one of her talks. She said, "Education about the family is the most important schooling you can get." Even if you aren't specifically studying the family I would encourage you to take some classes about the family. Family is the only thing we get to take with us to the other side, I want to work as hard as I can to create a strong and healthy family while I'm here on earth.

I know that my approach on education is different than a lot of other people, but I think that anyone who chooses to gain a higher education, no matter what your degree is, can be greatly benefited. By gaining a higher education you can also gain people skills, learn how to work well in groups, become disciplined, learn how to work hard, learn how to problem solve, and so many other great blessings. These are all things that can make life at home easier. Home and families are greatly benefited when both the mother and the father obtain a higher education, whether or not you are using your degree in your everyday life.

I hope everyone has a great week. Happy Thanksgiving!

With love: Sydney

Communication

Hello Everyone! This week in Family Relations we talked about the way people communicate with one another. I found this to be very interesting and I definitely learned a lot of great things that I can use for my current and future relationships with the people around me. We talked about a three step process that all of us go through when trying to communicate an idea, thought, or feeling to another. These steps are encoding the message, the medium the information is presented with, and then the message then being decoded.

I want to focus on the media (medium) we use when we communicate which are basically the different ways people communicate with each other. In class we identified three different types of media which are words, tone, and then non-verbal communication. When I first thought about these I thought words were probably the media people pay the most attention to, but I was wrong. We were asked as a class to guess what percentage of each of these three media people pay the most attention to during a conversation. After we gave our guesses brother Williams told us the actual statistics and I was really surprised. Words turned out to be only about 14% of communication, tone is 35%, and non-verbal communication is 51%. I had no idea, but it makes so much sense now. I've noticed that whenever I'm having a conversation with someone and they are on their phone, it doesn't matter what they say to me because I know they weren't trying to pay attention to me while I was talking. It might not be that way for the person I was trying to talk to, but it most certainly feels that way for me.

Brother Williams shared a quote with us that I really liked. It says "We can never not communicate." I feel like that sums up what I learned this week pretty well.

With love: Sydney

Family Crises

Hello Everyone! I learned a lot from this week's lesson. We talked about dealing with, and managing, family crises. One things we talked about that I found extremely helpful was the idea of coping. Before this week, whenever I would hear the word coping I would think about what you do after a struggle or conflict. I have a completely new definition of coping.

In class brother Williams told us about what goes into making the crown molding in homes. He told us that after each piece of wood is crafted carefully it can be "coped" which means that the piece of wood that will go on the short wall of the home is measured and cut at a 45 degree angle just slightly larger than the wall's actual size. Once that is put into place the larger piece of wood is cut at a 45 degree angle just slightly larger than the wall's actual size. Then the wood is put into place. The people working on the crown molding start in the corners and work their way into the middle until the piece of wood can be nailed into place. Now, because the two pieces of wood were coped, they can become one under pressure.

My new definition of coping is to make fine, planned adjustments (like talked about potential family struggles and reactions to those struggles) so that when put under pressure two things can become one.

With love: Sydney

Becoming One

Hello everyone! In class this week we talked a lot about the physical intimacy that is a such a special part of marriage. One thing that really stuck out to me was that the act of physical intimacy or sex should be a very selfless experience for both the husband and wife, and in fact married couples say that when they were purely focused on their spouse and their spouse's needs those were the times that they both felt the best. Part of making this so selfless and sacred involves understanding each other and communicating effectively with each other. God gave married couples the ability to create children and by doing this you are literally becoming one. You are not only becoming one with your spouse but also with God. This is very important to understand. When you and your spouse have a stronger connection, you and your spouse in turn will have a stronger connection with our Father in Heaven.

Some say that after the first few years of marriage physical intimacy sort of takes a back seat and you don't seem to enjoy that activity as much. Many have studied when the best physical intimacy occurs in a relationship. Surprising to some, the best sex is experienced by those married couples in their 40's and not by those who are just newly weds.

Sorry that this post was a bit more graphic, but I hope that someone learned something.

With love: Sydney

Premarital Habbits

Hello Everyone! This week in Family Relations we talked a lot about the transitions one goes through during the first year of marriage. One thing that really stuck out to me was that the habits developed during engagement are the habits that are carried into marriage. This means when your fiance doesn't help with the dishes that person more than likely won't do the dishes when you're married. Communication is so, so key! Communication is one of those habits that is developed in a relationship you can be so happy. Nothing is ever perfect, but things will be much better. If something is bothering you the best way to fix it is to address it. I know that is a really hard concept to put into practice, but every time I decide to address my problems and frustrations I can the resolve my issues a lot faster and with less unnecessary drama.

I hope everyone has a great week! 

With love: Sydney