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