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