Week Eleven

This week we talked about parenting and everything that goes with it. We talked about different parenting styles and practices, some styles are Authoritarian, Authoritative, and permissive. The Authoritarian approach is to exercise maximum control and to expect unquestioning obedience. The Authoritative approach to parenting is to put boundaries on acceptable behavior within a warm, accepting context. Finally in Permissive parenting, the approach is to minimize any control. Parenting practices are behaviors that help achieve a specific goal. I especially liked the stop light theory when it comes to parenting Red means no, Yellow is maybe a ? if you will, and Green means go. In Class we covered several areas of parenting, I feel like we covered the topic pretty well. A quote that I thought was interesting is, "When we focus on the unmet needs of children we are unable to set aside the temptation to punish. We then help the child recognize and seek to fulfill their own needs in productive ways." This means that children need structure in their lives and that as parents we should focus on meeting the needs of children, and be proactive about what the child needs. Usually when a child misbehavior's it is because the child needs something. Its important to remember that when you are punishing a child its to extinguish an undesirable behavior and that good parenting does not come by accident it takes some work.

Week Ten

Well the beginning of this week we talked about working mothers and characteristics of a housewife/home. these characteristics are 1.) Exclusive Role to women, 2.) economic dependence, 3.) non-working "not a real job," 4.) priority over other roles. and their are 3 types of marital roles the traditional the participant and the role sharing. It was interesting to here everybody's opinion on working mothers and when they should have kids. I personally think that if you want to work then do it go for it, there are ways for making things work, like a supportive family or friends or even day care. If you don't want to work and stay at home then that's great as well. Either option is a full time job and lots of hard work. I also feel that we should not judge others for whichever option they choose, simple because we don't know there situation and its not our place to judge others especially our brothers and sisters of the church.

The Rest of the week we talked about money. How to budget and how much a family costs per/month. Lets just say it costs a whole lot of money, I feel that you should really be ready to have a family and just prepare for when you do. It costs a lot of money and you should do your very best to prepare. If we keep the lord involved in our every decision when will be blessed in our lives and in those situations we feel like how am I going to do this.

Week Nine

This week we talked about couples relationships. We covered all the basics to this topic, in fact I think we have talked it to death, but for the sake of the blog, we started talking about crisis in a a relationship and how to prevent it and how to react to it. For example, prevention would be like savings, food storage, 72 hour kits, and just plan things out, also another very important aspect to this is good communication, insurance, medical, car, life, family and friend support, and education. This is a pretty good list to help prevent a crisis or at least make the burden of a crisis a little bit easier. I think its also import to learn good coping strategies and what works best for you and your spouse or significant other, so when a crisis comes your way you know how to work through it. Also we talked about 9 dimensions of a couples relationship; they are satisfaction w/ partners personality traits and habits, the amount and kind of communication, how conflict is handled, how finances are managed leisure activities, sex, children/parenting issue, relationships w/family and friends, and religion.

We Finished the week talking about The family life cycle and all the different stages of a family, from the day you start your family, your wedding day, to when you have an empty nest again. According to our book, their are six stages to this cycle and I feel like its pretty accurate, they are, 1) Independence-leaving home, 2.) coupling-the journey of families through marriage, 3.) Families with young children, 4.) families with adolescents, 5.) empty nest- launching children moving on, and 6.) families in later life. I Thought this was interesting to study because its true we see this happen all the time and don't usually say anything about it, or don't notice that it is happening. But there is a pattern in all things and why would the family be any different.

Week Eight

This week our discussion continued on the topic of conflict. we talked about the different types of stresses in our lives and their effects on each of us. It was a very interesting conversation and nice to know each type of stressor events. Also I liked talking about how the stresses turn into a crisis its interesting to know how and when that happens, and also how its different for every person and every situation.

Week Seven

This week was all about communication and everything that goes with communicating. When Brother Winfree walked into class on Wednesday, it was like any other class day, he walked in put his stuff on the table and started writing stuff on the board. After he was finished writing stuff on the board he then sat down with the students. On the board it gave us our directions for today's class discussion. On the board it said to discuss Power, so one girl started the discussion, and it was no surprise who started the conversation, because she literally comments every class discussion and has an opinion on everything. Anyway, you could tell who was going to be talking the whole time so I knew that I wasn't going to get much in and just kind of kept quite this time. It was interesting to see and listen to how the discussion on power shifted to semi-related topics. It felt like I was listening to some group of girls conversation more than a class discussion, but I saw the point that brother Winfree was making, without someone there to lead the class, the power shifted from person to person. Therefore, not one person had complete control to guide the conversation. At the end of class Brother Winfree stood back up and made his point.

Also it was interesting to re-learn all the basic communication principles. I have a minor in communications so I have learned these principles before, and it was a good reminder and refresher on these principles, because it is good to know how communication works and also I find it interesting to learn about something that we do everyday.

Week Six

This week was a short week and only had two class periods. we had a class review on Wednesday and went over everything that we had talked about thus far in the semester. At the end of class we learned the 4 stages of Human Sexual Response they are 1.) Excitement/Arousal 2.) plateau 3.) orgasmic stage and 4.) resolution. On Friday we took the big Mid-Term.

Week Five

This week was an interesting week, we talked about dating, falling in love, and selecting a life partner. All though we did not cover everything in detail. we did talk a lot about dating and all the different functions of dating. So as a class we came up with a "definition" of dating, we decided that dating is exclusive and pairing up, very specific with romantic intentions. I really enjoyed President Oaks statement on dating; planned, paid, and paired off. We spent a big part on talking about attraction, Brother Winfree gave us 4 laws of attraction proximity, similarities, physical attraction, and familiarity. These things are all important to have when developing a relationship they are needed.

Also we talked about how their is a difference between dating and hanging out and hooking up. I agree with this and how important it is to know the difference between each of these things. But I also think that hanging out is not necessarily a bad thing, it provides opportunity to meet people, hanging out is a prerequisite to dating and you should be hanging out to date. This helps you get to truly know who the person is and be friends first. I met my husband in a group situation and I defiantly was not looking for any relationship. We hung out for a while then a half a year latter we went on a date and the rest is history. I am so glad that we had that time to be friends first cause I saw him for who he is and I really got to know him in various different situations. Which helps us now as we are married in many different ways.

Week Four

This week we talked about gender and specific gender roles that are defined by preferences and environmental expectations. Basically we decided that gender is apart of our eternal identity and in the family proclamation it tells us a lot about what roles we are supposed to fill. Also we defined gender a little more specific;

Sex-is the biological identification.

Gender- Social Male Social Female, Male and Female as social creatures.

Gender role Orientation- refers to the conception of yourself as having combination of masculine and feminine traits.

Also we talked about a number of different characteristics that Christ has, and he has both "female" and "male" characteristics. Which means that we should strive to be Christ like and try not to label as much.

Week Three

This week we talked a lot about Social Class, and all the different levels of social class, they are, lower class, the working class, the middle class, and the upper class. We also discussed all the different levels within each class. I personally don't like the class system. I think that a person should be judged on who you are as a person, not how much money you make or where you live, to me that shouldn't matter. I honestly didn't know that people judged others based on what class you are in. Where I grew up it didn't matter if you lived in a trailer house by the creek or if you lived on a big ol' farm on the hill, people are people and it shouldn't matter what class you are in.

I also think that as members of the church we have a big responsibility to not judge others based on where they live or how much money we make. We should make righteous judgement's, and love and accept all of God's Children for who they are.

Week Two

This week we talked a lot about the Family Systems theory, Basically this theory explains the family dynamics and how the family works as a system, also we talked about all the subsystems that are involved within the family. We also talked a lot about Family Rules and the rules about the rules otherwise known as Meta Rules. We had to make a List of 9 family rules that we had in our families growing up and here are some of mine:

1.) Curfew at Midnight, no later or big trouble.

2.) We were not allowed to say certain words like shut up and stupid, also no swearing.

3.) We had a chore chart so everybody had work to do.

4.) Always tell the truth and have open communication

5.) Make your bed everyday!!!!

6.) Treat everybody as you would like to be treated.

7.) Respect

8.) Ask for Permission

9.) Try to serve someone everyday.

It was really fun to learn about the family system and how the family works I really enjoyed listing my 9 rules, it was fun to think back to when I was growing up and all the different rules that me and my siblings had it brought back a lot of good memories.

Week One

This week we talked about all the different Elements that make up the structure of a family, like the roles, who does what, and where time and money is spent. Also we talked about 5 other elements that are needed in any family; they are, flexibility, Adaptive, Cohesive, Energized, and stability. All these are really important elements that are needed in a family, because you never know what is going to happen in a given situation and its really important to have all these elements present. We also spent some time talking about the different trends that happening right now, some of them are, low birth rate, increasing number of people living alone, delayed marriage, divorce rate is down, but more and more people are cohabiting instead of getting married. These are big problems in our society right now and are changing the very definition of what a family is.

We also talked about traditional families. I feel that its important to have a traditional family and the different roles distributed in a family, and I also feel that every family is going to be different. With the way things are right now in the economy we are finding that more and more mothers are going back into the workforce to help with the financial situation in their home. I don't see this as a problem, I feel that Its a good thing, its kinda like you have to do what ya have to do to provide for your family.

Introduction Week

This week we talked a lot about what was due, and when things were due ect.... typical introduction week. We introduced the family and what we thought a family is.

Family Relations 160 class MWF 11:30-12:30